Review: The Tinker's Daughter

The Tinker's Daughter by Josephine Angelini
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I was surprised to discover that this is Book 2 in a series, though it doesn't end up mattering; it stands alone quite happily.

It's humourous, adventurous and romantic, and does well at all three. True, the romance is a bit rapid, but because both of the people involved are actually appealing, I forgive it. The female lead (and narrator) is the kind of competent, pragmatic young woman I particularly enjoy reading, and the male lead is good-hearted, brave, kind, generous and, when necessary, fierce in a good cause.

I did find that some of the minor characters, several of whom were introduced all at once, weren't easy to keep straight; repeating some of the key words from their introductions when they came back onstage would sort that out easily enough.

Its big weakness is that, whether because the author uses dictation software and doesn't check it properly or is just bad at spelling, it's full of basic homonym errors. Most prominent among these is, of course, "horde" for "hoard," since there's a dragon in it, and his hoard gets mentioned frequently; it is, at least, consistently spelled, which is something, even if it's always the incorrect version. We also get ringing for wringing, flair for flare, cantors for canters (which is one I've never seen before), enormity for enormousness (though we've probably lost that fight, which is unfortunate, because there's no other word that means exactly what enormity meant before everyone started confusing it with enormousness), you're for your, chord for cord (and chorded for corded), their for they're, anymore for any more (anymore only refers to time), apprising for appraising, beset for set, lest for unless, and birth for berth (as in "a wide berth").

Note that I had a pre-publication version via Netgalley, so if it goes past an editor who can spell between now and publication, these should all hopefully be fixed. Otherwise, there weren't too many copy editing issues; just commas after "of course" where there shouldn't have been (because it was just agreeing with the previous statement), and two queens calling each other "Your Highness" instead of "Your Majesty," plus a few sentences that would have benefited from a comma to signal the grammar more clearly.

The storytelling is strong, and hits the emotional beats well. The characters are appealing, the conflict is engaging, and the humour doesn't try too hard. It's a recommendation from me, and would be a higher-tier one (silver rather than bronze) if the author knew how to spell.

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