Dear Ms. Nichols,
Since I only read 148 of the 443 pages that comprise your first novel, Sunburst's Citadel, there are a number of things I'm not qualified to say about it. I can't say, for example, how much the characters grow or change over the course of the book, or whether the plot takes exciting or unexpected twists and turns in the latter two-thirds of the book. For all I know, if I'd stuck it out, I might have been rewarded with something really wonderful, and if so, that's my loss.
What I can talk about, though, are the things I liked and didn't like in the first 148 pages, and the reasons why I did not make it to page 149. What attracted me to Sunburst's Citadel was the unusual setting, medieval India, and the fact that the hero, Karim, was a Moghul and a Christian, and the heroine, Shamsi (a name that means “sunburst”), was a Rajput and a Hindu. Cultural or religious romantic conflicts often add dimension to characters, and this book, I thought, promised to be something different from the same-old, same-old.
After an intriguing opening in …
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