Book Review: The Gathering Storm by Robin Bridges

• Genre: YA Paranormal Historical Fiction
• Hardcover: 400 pages 
• Publisher: Delacorte Books for Young Readers
• Release Date: January 10, 2012
• Series: The Katerina Trilogy (Book 1)
• Source: Amazon Vine

Blurb: St. Petersburg, Russia, 1888. As she attends a whirl of glittering balls, royal debutante Katerina Alexandrovna, Duchess of Oldenburg, tries to hide a dark secret: she can raise the dead. No one knows. Not her family. Not the girls at her finishing school. Not the tsar or anyone in her aristocratic circle. Katerina considers her talent a curse, not a gift. But when she uses her special skill to protect a member of the Imperial Family, she finds herself caught in a web of intrigue.

An evil presence is growing within Europe's royal bloodlines—and those aligned with the darkness threaten to topple the tsar. Suddenly Katerina's strength as a necromancer attracts attention from unwelcome sources . . . including two young men—George Alexandrovich, the tsar's standoffish middle son, who needs Katerina's help to safeguard Russia, even if he's repelled by her secret, and the dashing Prince Danilo, heir to the throne of Montenegro, to whom Katerina feels inexplicably drawn.

The time has come for Katerina to embrace her power, but which side will she choose—and to whom will she give her heart?


Review:

The Gathering Storm seemed to have it all: Russian nobility, a mysterious paranormal element and an interesting protagonist who wasn't willing to accept the norm for young women her age. Despite the book's rather generic name, I was ready to dive in the second I got the book. Sadly, it just didn't live up to my expectations.

Russia: 1888. Young royal noble Katerina is caught up in the world of fancy balls and the European marriage market, though she tries to hide her dark secret: she can raise the dead. It doesn't take long for rumors of Katerina's strange power to grow, and for it to attract unwanted attention. In this re-imagining of Imperial Russia,vampires, witches and other paranormal creatures go bump in the night.

I really wanted to like this book, but, overall, it just wasn't that great. There were moments that were really enjoyable and well-done, but others elements that just didn't work.

Things that did work: Katerina is a decent character who has some honest emotions and an unique struggle because of her necromancer powers. The use of paranormal characters, such as a the vampires was interesting and I enjoyed the more classic, Bram Stoker-esque approach, but it still seemed a little hazy. I liked Bridges' idea of re-imagining turn-of-the-century Russian nobility, but it didn't take long before my head was whirling with too many characters, difficult names to keep track off, and somewhat convoluted family connections that needed a map to fully understand.

Things that didn't work: Most of the characters are very flat, and I couldn't get very invested in any of them. The plot got really confusing, really fast. There seemed to be too many things jammed into this one book: vampires, werewolves, necromancers, witches -just too much at once. The setting was fairly weak, it was very hard for me to envision, and I was only reminded of the fact that I was in Russia because of the difficult-to-pronounce Russian names.

Basically, when it comes down to it, The Gathering Storm had an interesting concept, but it wasn't well-executed and it just never got anywhere. Sadly, this is one that still needs some work.