Great and Terrible Beauty (Reader's Circle (Prebound)) Library Binding – 22 March 2005

To be honest, I didn't really get these books from Amazon, but since no one had reviewed them, I find it my duty to do so.I will not tell what the back of the books can, unlike some people who have the time and energy to waste for those things.Picture this.You are bored. You want to read a trilogy that is easy to get into, has a superb main character and a great friend group, while also managing to have a little bit of romance, a lot of history and a significant amount of fantasy. However, you also want it to be emotional and deep.Pick it up. Read it. Enjoy it.Now, now. This is for all the critics and reviewers. This book is not for you. Read it like a normal person, without pointing it's faults out, and you will enjoy it. Otherwise you will not.And I, not being a feminist in any way (and being against feminazis in all ways), still say that this trilogy is a feminist's delight. Sure, the setting is Victorian London, but these girls will not submit to norms and will not tolerate being treated badly.

I don't know why for so long I just assumed I wouldn't like historical fiction, it's not as if I don't love history - I picked it for one of my A levels in college. But, I guess it's just one of those genres that sounds tedious and you imagine it to be all oppressed sexuality and prim and properness. Diana Gabaldon forever changed my mind with her oversexed and aggressive depiction of history and it was only a matter of time before I looked towards other works of historical fiction.This book is both everything I expected and also everything I didn't expect. It's set for the most part in a boarding school for educating girls in the art of being 'ladies', or in other words: wives. The girls were expected to be reserved, polite and, most importantly, beautiful. This I was prepared for. I was also prepared for the customs, superstitions and blatant sexism of the times. However, it never occurred to me that this novel would be simply a 19th century take on a modern school. There's gossiping, bitchiness and bullying of those who are different (in this case, from a lower class).It's a good dose of chick lit as well as a historical book. And that's before we've even gotten to the whole magic/fantasy aspect. This novel completely transcends genres and does it well. I didn't see the whole other-realm mysticality thing coming but I loved it. The gypsies are awesome as well, we have crazy gypsies, fake fortune-telling I-speak-with-dead-people gypsies, sexy gypsies (don't believe the rumours, 19th century girls didn't just lie back and think of England). And that's another thing I liked: the exploration of the girls' sexualities behind closed doors. It may not be the most reliable source, the book was written in modern times, but it's easy to imagine that beneath the surface of Victorian society's repressed sexuality, girls probably did talk about 'having' thousands of men: Earls, Dukes, Barons, Princes... Anyway, lost myself on a smutty tangent. I was saying that I liked the idea of weaving fantasy into history, I'm all for spicing up times gone by.I didn't give it 5 stars because it wasn't quite up there with my other 5 star rated books. I liked it, I loved the many different elements that made the novel hard to categorise and I liked the characters. I always like it when things aren't just as simple as "she's a bitch" and "she's a freak" in any kind of genre. I liked how, even though Gemma lost her mother at the beginning, the relationship was still built up throughout. I liked that the protagonist wasn't a pushover, even more so because the novel setting was in a very sexist society. And I love anything with dreams and/or visions.

I suspect that if I'd still been a teenager (sigh!) I'd have loved this book but, as an adult, it's a good read but not a great one. With more than a shade of Jane Eyre about it, it yet subverts that story while maintaining some of the gothic and emotional elements.Gemma leaves India in 1895 after the mysterious death of her mother and is sent to a boarding school in England. Alongside the struggle to make friends and find a place in the pecking order, she discovers her own powers to cross magic worlds. But some people fear her and even she is not sure whether she can control her own power or not...This is written in the first person and Gemma's voice works well: sensuous and poetic at times, with the snarky tone of a teenage girl at others. I guess this dropped a star as it sometimes felt a bit rushed to me, with lots of trails starting then not being followed through. Perhaps that's because this is the start of a trilogy?Overall I enjoyed reading this but wasn't completely enthralled. But I suspect my nieces will be.

You'll find this book very hard to put down - it is a period novel, the action takes place at an english girls boarding school.There is much unexplained magic and supernatural power surrounding Gemma Doyle, and the mysterious Kartik, who has followed her from India and is now hiding out in the gypsy camp nearby. The heroine struggles to fit in with the elite girls at her new school, she finds herself constrained by society's expectations of females and she feels cut adrift from her family. See my blog for a more detailed review, and if you enjoy this book, it is a trilogy, so there are 2 more to read!

A great and terrible beauty is set way back in the 1800s, gemma is sent to a school for girls called spence after her mother is killed.Soon into the story she makes three friends bitchy and easily led. The three make a group called the order after discovering an old diary with magic going ons within it.Overall this book shows how vindictive and horrible girls are to each other, it also tells of how inferior girls were back then, the term girls should be seen and not heard fits well to this book.Much enjoyed and will probably get the second one.

First of all, I couldn't put it down so that's always a good sign, I'm now nearing the conclusion of the third book. I warmed to Gemma (Victorian name?) she's got a bit of spark, and she's not the typical mary sue I was expecting her to be, she's not the most beautiful, or the most talented at almost anything, and she sometimes makes the wrong choices, I like that in a protagonist. Most of the characters are well rounded and realistic but the problem for me lay in some of the word and grammar choices, not exactly in keeping with the time period, but it's not too bad.I loved the gothic edge, being set in a victorian school, although verging on cliche, it definately added to the story. Lots of twists and turns along the way, I grew to love her friends, with all their flaws and eccentricities.If you are looking for fantasy adventure, with a smidge of romance with well rounded characters then I would definately recommend this. The concluding books are great too, as I hate series that start off well and deteriorate.