Bite-Sized Book Review: The Gathering Storm by Robin Bridges.

Product details:
Publisher: Delacorte Books for Young Readers
Hardcover, 389 pages.
Release date: January 10th 2012.
Rating: DNF/1½ out of 5 for my partial read.
Ages:12+
Source: Netgalley

St. Petersburg, Russia, 1888. As she attends a whirl of glittering balls, royal debutante Katerina Alexandrovna, Duchess of Oldenburg, tries to hide a dark secret: she can raise the dead. No one knows. Not her family. Not the girls at her finishing school. Not the tsar or anyone in her aristocratic circle. Katerina considers her talent a curse, not a gift. But when she uses her special skill to protect a member of the Imperial Family, she finds herself caught in a web of intrigue.

An evil presence is growing within Europe's royal bloodlines—and those aligned with the darkness threaten to topple the tsar. Suddenly Katerina's strength as a necromancer attracts attention from unwelcome sources . . . including two young men—George Alexandrovich, the tsar's standoffish middle son, who needs Katerina's help to safeguard Russia, even if he's repelled by her secret, and the dashing Prince Danilo, heir to the throne of Montenegro, to whom Katerina feels inexplicably drawn.

The time has come for Katerina to embrace her power, but which side will she choose—and to whom will she give her heart?

The Gathering Storm, the first in a trilogy from debut author Robin Bridges promised so much but failed to deliver on a number of counts. Unfortunately this one with which combines what should have been a glorious historical setting with what should have been an intoxicating paranormal twist, just fell flat for me. The story of Katerina, a Russian Duchess with a deadly secret, was slow moving and convoluted with clunky dialogue, a confusing amount of characters, many with similar names, and a plot and setting which fell completely flat. The Tsarist Russian setting of the book, which is what initially piqued my interest in relation to The Gathering Storm, just didn’t come to life for me on its pages, although I appreciated the inclusion of a number of actual figures from the history of the time, and the research that went into reimagining them for this story.

With its Imperial Russian setting and myriad of paranormal elements, The Gathering Storm sounded like just my kind of book.  The historical and paranormal aspects of the story though, don’t complement each other in this complex debut that I had to give up on.

Disclaimer: I read to approx. page 200 of this book and then skipped to the final chapters to see how things wrapped up.

Bite-Sized Book Reviews: A review in approx 200 words for when I need to play catch up on reviews!