Something Dangerous

It had been some time since I read No Angel the first of Penny Vincenzi's “Spoils of Time” trilogy. I could remember bits of the story and therefore when I began the second in the trilogy I worried how long it would take me to get back up to speed. I needn't have worried though as the book was written really well so as to reintroduce all the key players and I found ask the important plots from book one flooding back.

The Spoils of Time trilogy continues to follow the Lytton family, publishing magnates and rich socialites as head of the family Celia and her very different children navigate their way through life. whilst the first book “No Angel” focused upon the first world war and Celia's loves and life this second book focuses on the years before and throughout the second world war and the lives of the children in the Lytton family as they grow and fall in love and begin families of their own.

I felt like this book took forever to read, it is one of those really involved family sagas on par with those written by Barbara Taylor Bradford and it covered such a wide variety of dramas and love affairs that it felt quite like it was undertaking a mammoth read. The characters are all really well structured and there are a huge variety of different ones in the book but it's one of those books which some might find frustrating as you can pretty much guarantee its full of cliches such as girl sleeps with boy girl gets pregnant type of thing. None of the plot lines can't be seen coming but somehow there is something strangely comforting in that.

The book has left all the characters nicely poised for book three which I know I will definitely read but perhaps after a little gap again. After a book so full of high drama and family in fighting I feel I need to take a break and try something faster paced.