Sensational!
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I am staggered after reading such discouraging comments from the previous review-
I bought this book after reading (and hearing about) several fantastically complimentary reviews from several leading newspapers.
After I started reading it I realised that it was something special.
The prose and language is clever - and, like the title - enchanting!
I am not suprised why this book won one of Britians major literature awards and I look forward to Mr. Vernon's next enchantment!
If you have a love for reading in depth adventure, with a twist of romance, then this is the novel for you.
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Turgid
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I bought this as a result of my sister seeing a review in The Daily Mail. I should have known better. It was boring, turgid, unengaging - a bit like walking through cold toffee with too big wellies on. I seldom give up on a book but have just stopped after about 150 pages.
The characters are so boring that I just couldn't care less what happened to them.
I read the other review here and gather that most of the action takes place in the final 100 pages, but there are so many good books to read that I can't be bothered to persevere!!
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Not that enchanting
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I found this a very difficult novel to get involved in. The first 300 pages or so contained quite slow moving prose. It is unfortunate that all the activity of the novel is contained in the last 100 or so pages, by which point I really just wanted to finish the book so I could move on to something else.
The story revolves around a victorian gentleman traveller Godwin Tudor who gets caught up in the affairs of an English landowner, Edgar Brooke, who owns a section of land in Greece. Godwin finds himself falling in love with Edgar daughter Lydia. Somewhere along the line a mining proposal, a group of Greek Brigands, a hostage situation, Greek-English-Russian politics also become involved.
This novel won the Daily Mail first novel award, something I had not heard of before. Did it deserve to? Its is impossible to say without reading the other novels but I would have hoped for a pacer, more engaging novel that this.
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