Review by lppharmd -- First Lessons by Lina J. Potter

[lppharmd]

[Following is a volunteer review of "First Lessons" by Lina J. Potter.]

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2 out of 4 stars

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First Lessons by Lina J. Potter is the first book in her Medieval Tale series. Main character, Aliya, is a Russian medical student in her fifth year of medical school, training to be a surgeon. The book opens with Aliya traveling home to visit her parents who pick her up at the train station. They promptly have a car accident which is fatal for Aliya…or at least it would have been. Meanwhile in a medieval land from a different earth, an elderly woman who dearly loves a young woman who has been in her care since she was a girl is fearful that the young lady, Countess Lilian, is going to die from a fall down the stairs followed by the miscarriage of her first child and subsequent illness. Desperate, the old woman seeks out a witch’s help. The caveat is that the remedy will bring a soul back into the body, but it will not work if the soul does not want to stay.

As it turns out, the soul that stays in Lilian’s body is Aliya’s who has now been given a second chance at life in a new world and a new body. Upon waking, Aliya quickly realizes what has happened and sets to work getting her castle, her servants, her village, and her new very overweight body into shape. She also learns that her absent husband, the earl, is away much more than he is home and that Lilian is in a loveless marriage. The book follows Aliya as she journeys to a large market in another town with an agenda to improve her new life along with the life of the villagers as she begins buying livestock and introducing modern conveniences such as buttons and fans to local craftsmen. As she introduces these novel creations, she works out a way to get some of the profit from her ideas. She is admirably paving the way to become as independent as she can in a time where women have little independence.

I am giving this book 2 out of 4 stars. I cannot give it 3 because I really struggled to get through reading it, and I absolutely love to read. I love historical pieces, time travel, fantasy, and thus I was very interested in this book. However, it reads very choppy, at times painfully so, and I was halfway through the book before I was truly invested in the story. I gave it 2 over 1 because the story line is intriguing, and there were no noticeable spelling or grammar issues. What I likes most about the book is that it is different from other time travel books I have read. Aliya does not immediately encounter a man that she will fall in love with. She is strong and independent. What I liked least about the book was the writing style.

This book was translated from Russian, so it is possible that choppiness of the sentences has more to do with poor translation than poor writing. I will give the author the benefit of the doubt. There were other issues with the book, too, though. In many places, there are conversations between characters in which the speaker is not identified frequently enough. More than once I found myself having to retrace to figure out who was saying what.

Aside from writing style, I have a few other problems with the book. There are many side stories interjected throughout that I did not find as compelling, and I wish the author would have kept her focus on the main story line. Perhaps these other story lines become more compelling later in the series. Also, it is really hard to believe that one modern woman’s knowledge and hands-on experience with chemistry, glass blowing, farming, herbal remedies, and sewing is as extensive as Aliya’s is, though I did expect expert medical knowledge from her. It all seems way too quick and too easy. Perhaps Russians are better qualified to be dropped into medieval times than the modern American women I know. And while I like that Aliya is a strong, independent woman, I did not like that her first instinct is to yell at people and threaten them to get what she wants from them, even it is only the ones who are not taking care of business. All in all, this was an okay read. Though I was intrigued by the story line, I am not intrigued enough to continue reading the series.

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First Lessons
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[Erin Painter Baker]

I agree that story line sounds fascinating. It's too bad that the book did not translate well from Russian to English. I think in cases where languages are so different, you may need a translator who is as much a content editor as translator because the language and sentences do not just go easily from one to the other, and it may need to be "rewritten" in order to maintain the cohesion it has in it's original language.