Book Review: The Secrets of Ormdale
A Five Part Fantasy Series by Christina Baer
Book Review
The Secrets of Ormdale
A Five Part Fantasy Series by Christina Baer
The first words of any piece are important to get through. Did you read that first sentence? Have you gotten to the end of this one yet? I’m glad I pushed through the first few sentences of this excellent series by Christina Baer (the opening page is a bit clunky) because the rest of it — literally from page two onward — is fantastic. It’s the most entertaining thing I’ve read this year. I ignored my family for four days while reading these books — my children re-wore their dirty school uniforms and ate cereal for dinner — and I have no regrets.
Christina Baer has done something unusual. She has produced a rollicking adventure and fantasy series with a touch of romance, set in Victorian England — written with elegant turns of phrase, elevated language, literary and classical allusions, humor throughout, and (most marvelous of all) a smart and strong heroine who needs help once in a while. In fact — brace yourselves — the men in her life are neither incompetent nor unreliable. What a delight to read a book in which the heroine overturns all our 21st century expectations by being smart and resourceful and knowing men she can count on.
In Book 1, Wormwood Abbey, our heroine Edith Worms discovers that her distant family are Dragon Wardens — have been for centuries — and that her clergyman father has just inherited the ancestral burden. Shattering more of our post-Christian assumptions, this clergyman is an excellent man — wise, learned, funny, and faithful — who tends his parish in the East Midlands of England while his daughter Edith — of marriageable age — manages the newly acquired estate and dragons in Yorkshire. Chaperoned, naturally. Adventure ensues.
Each book in the series pits Edith against new adversaries who would exploit the secrets she is bound to protect. Extricating her friends from ever-increasing danger takes her to various parts of the kingdom where she grapples with disparate political movements of the day and weighs popular ideas with her winsome faith. It’s all an unalloyed pleasure to read, and my only disappointment is that the fifth book in the series isn’t published yet — but it comes out before Christmas!
Which means you have time to read the first four. Get them here. Enjoy!