Product Description

It's 1895, and after the death of her mother, 16-year-old Gemma Doyle is shipped off from the life she knows in India to Spence, a proper boarding school in England. Lonely, guilt-ridden, and prone to visions of the future that have an uncomfortable habit of coming true, Gemma's reception there is a chilly one. To make things worse, she's being followed by a mysterious young Indian man, a man sent to watch her. But why? What is her destiny? And what will her entanglement with Spence's most powerful girls - and their foray into the spiritual world - lead to?

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5427 in Books
• Published on: 2006-05-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 416 pages

Customer Reviews

A Wonderful Book - Converting Me In To Fantasy
I had never really bought in to the whole teenage fantasy novel , or any fantasy novel at that.
But this caught my eyes while I was Amazon surfing , but the moment I saw that dreaded word " fantasy" I had visions of Lord of the Rings goings on.
And skipped over it .
I came back to it a few weeks later and I bought it off a whim.
I was about to go on a long trip and needed something to keep me amused - this did so much more than this.
A wonderful classical world with vibrant modern characters - my personal favourites being Gemma , Felicit and Kartik.
I found it refreshing , being a book written from the view of a teenage girl ( very much like my self ) and I didn't find my self hating her because she was stereotypical "teenage" there where reasons to her irritation and other feelings
A Great and Terrible Beauty is beautifully descriptive , especially the realm , making the reader feel they are in the garden , without it being heavy and too wordy , this is often helped by Gemma's wonderful dry humour and her feeling towards the people around her.
The moment I finished it , I bought the rest of the series and finished them in under a week.
I fear if my house was on fire I would debeat whether to put it down ( a slight dramatisation maybe )
Perfect for anyone who loves fantasy or not !

10/10

A must read for all!
I don't want to spoil this trilogy for you so I'll keep this short and sweet.

Libba Bray has written a truely fantastic storyline set in the late 1800s about a 16 year old girl who has to find her way in a suffocating victorian society whilst also coming to terms with being the High Priestess of the Realms...a magical world full of wonder and horror.

The three books lead seamlessly into each other with great individual characters, thrilling sub-plots and great action packed sequences. This is definately a page turner and if your sucker like me it may even have you wiping a tear from your eyes.

Fun stuff but annoying historical errors!
An enjoyable enough book with plenty of fun, adventure and mystery; however I found I was annoyed by the lack of attention to historical detail. Any regular reader of historical fiction will spot them too. The girls do and say things that are definItely not in context - they are all very modern indeed! - and there are factual errors too (in the second book they are on the London Underground before it was built etc). To be honest it will probably only irritate you if you know the period but I thought it fair that at least one review should point this out.