The Magicians and Mrs. Quent by Galen M. Beckett

This book promised a lot more than it delivered. The teaser on the back flap of the book says: ""What if there were a fantastical cause underlying the social constraints and limited choices confronting a heroine in a novel by Jane Austen or Charlotte Brontë? Galen Beckett, ... began The Magicians and Mrs. Quent to answer that question ...."

Although the book is very much a "Pride and Prejudice"/"Jane Austen" type of story (with some Charles Dickens thrown in there too), it does not seem to address that particular question as promised. It also starts out very slow--I think it took me almost 100 pages (out of nearly 500) to really become engaged. It is very much a "Jonathan Strange and Mrs. Norrell"
kind of book--slow to start, lots of details--a book of manners and a limited amount of magic.

I did like the book. I think I liked what it promised to be rather more than what it ended up being, but when I finally did become engaged, I really felt captured by the story and by the characters. The Jane Eyre-esque romance is a little disappointing when the first part of the story is so Pride and Prejudice-y. But the Mr. Darcy character doesn't follow his model and so our Elizabeth character is left to play out the Jane Eyre scene with Mr. Quent. I like the additions of magick (although the spelling of that word in this book drives me batty) and I really like the alternative world that the characters live in--it's England but not England. All in all, I really enjoyed the book and can recommend it to fans of regency romances and magic who are willing to wade through the first part of the book in order to get to the interesting parts.

By the way, this is the first in a series of 3. I've started the second one but haven't liked it nearly as well as the first. I feel the long shadow of 21st century political correctness falling over the story. But! Perhaps it's like this book and will just take a little while for me to get into. I'll let you know.....