Heartless by Stengl

[Hope]

I made it through almost 200 pages of this Christy Award winner before giving up. Although Stengl has a gift for fantasy writing, the characters failed to grab me. The book lacks clarity and consistency. An occasional mystery that will be explained later is okay, but there were too many unresolved questions. At times it reads like a comedy (a princess who breaks out in red splotches when nervous) and then it attempts to be serious. The language was old-fashioned at times and then suddenly modern."