Helpful Score: 5
Because I enjoyed the first few volumes in this series so much, I bought this one in hardcover -- and I'm sorry. It did not hold my interest. Perhaps it was because some of the zip had gone out of the Emily/Colin relationship; perhaps because the latitude in facing danger that Colin gives his wife Emily seems improbable to me (especially in that era); perhaps because I just don't like the setting (it's set in a harem culture in which women are owned like furniture with little chance to develop as human beings and zero chance of freedom or escape). It's not that the author ignores the last aspect I have listed -- indeed, the contrast between Emily's relative freedom and the harem women's imprisonment is the central theme of the book -- it is a personal reaction on my part -- if that particular aspect of male culture fell off the face of the earth, I wouldn't grieve one single instant. For whatever reason, I couldn't stay interested, and I wound up skimming the book just so I wouldn't feel I had entirely wasted my money.
