DNF Audiobook Review – All that Glitters by Gita Trelease, Narrated by Justine Eyre (3/5 stars)
Reading Level: Young Adult
Genre: Historical Fantasy
Length: 12 hours and 56 minutes
Publisher: Macmillan Audio
Release Date: February 05, 2019
ASIN: B07JMYH3DR
Stand Alone or Series: 1st book in the Enchantee series
Source: Borrowed audiobook from Library
Rating: 3/5 stars
“Paris is a labyrinth of twisted streets filled with beggars and thieves, revolutionaries and magicians. Camille Durbonne is one of them. She wishes she weren’t….
When smallpox kills her parents, Camille must find a way to provide for her younger sister while managing her volatile brother. Relying on magic, Camille painstakingly transforms scraps of metal into money to buy food and medicine they need. But when the coins won’t hold their shape and her brother disappears with the family’s savings, Camille pursues a richer, more dangerous mark: the glittering court of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.
Using dark magic forbidden by her mother, Camille transforms herself into a baroness and is swept up into life at the Palace of Versailles, where aristocrats both fear and hunger for magic. As she struggles to reconcile her resentment of the rich with the allure of glamour and excess, Camille meets a handsome young inventor and begins to believe that love and liberty may both be possible.
But magic has its costs, and soon Camille loses control of her secrets. And when revolution erupts, Camille must choose – love or loyalty, democracy or aristocracy, reality or magic – before Paris burns.”
Series Info/Source: This is the first book in the Enchantee duology. I borrowed this audiobook from the library to listen to.
Audiobook Quality (4/5): The narration for this book was easy to listen to and well done.
Thoughts: I stopped reading this about 60% of the way through. The author does a decent job of trying to incorporate magic into French culture right before the French Revolution (think Marie Antoinette in power). That portion of the story is intriguing and the idea that some people are trying to develop airships is also intriguing; unfortunately, the rest of this is just outright boring.
Our main protagonist, Camille, is trying to make a living to help her and her sister survive in Paris. She decides to use her magic while gambling at Versailles to do this. How could that possibly go wrong? And in traditional style, even when she has enough, she keeps going.
It was a dull storyline and moved so incredibly slow that I just didn’t care at all. It is a long book and at even half way through it felt like I had been listening to it forever. I didn’t care about any of the characters and kept hoping something (even something bad) would happen just to make things interesting.
My Summary (3/5): Overall I thought this sounded amazing and did like some of the magic and inventions going on in this world. However, it ended up being so incredibly dull that I just couldn’t pay attention. I very rarely DNF audiobooks but this was one I just couldn’t stomach listening to anymore.
