You've had Since Tuesday!

So what did y'all think of Katherine's MANOR OF SECRETS and Veronica's INTO THE STILL BLUE? I bet you loved them as much as the Muses did.

WHAT?! You haven't finished both of them yet?

C'mon, you've had since Tuesday!

Kidding aside, I want to echo all that's been said this week about these two wonderful books and their two even more wonderful authors. When I first met Katherine and Veronica all those years ago, their writing skills blew me away. I would've laughed at anyone who told me that they could get much better. But they have.

Though MANOR and STILL BLUE are wildly different in genre and era, they have an incredible amount in common. The most impressive to me was the world building. As Donna mentioned, if you like Downton Abbey, then MANOR will blow your mind. The entire time, I felt like I lived in an episode. Katherine tossed the limitations of television out with the rubbish and lets us taste the cream-filled tea cakes, feel the silky silks, and tire from dancing the new hesitation waltz. STILL BLUE builds on a world equally rich and nuanced, though in the future in a world on the brink of collapse. Veronica paints the collision of the outsiders and the dwellers with a master's hand. The hovers rumble below our feet. We huddle in the cave and can't decide which is worse: the aether outside or the political tensions inside.

The characters in both novels were also fantastic. And, as with all good stories, the characters were the hearts of the stories, independent of genre. The good were never all good and the bad never all bad. They were complex and real and I'm sad that I'm not seeing their world through their eyes any more.

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