Kate Elliott - Cold Magic

It is the dawn of a new age... The Industrial Revolution has begun, factories are springing up across the country, and new technologies are transforming in the cities. But the old ways do not die easy.
Cat and Bee are part of this revolution. Young women at college, learning of the science that will shape their future and ignorant of the magics that rule their families. But all of that will change when the Cold Mages come for Cat. New dangers lurk around every corner and hidden threats menace her every move. If blood can't be trusted, who can you trust?

Comment: As I've said before, I do monthly lists of books I intend to read that month. Sometimes I can't keep up and some books go on to the next month and so on... This one, I a serious, was marked in my list for...January. Yep, January. I had the idea of reading Cold Magic in January. But some books took more time than what I wanted, sometimes RL doesn't allow me more time than I intended in the fist place and well...things get postponed.
This book did, and for quite a long time at that.

So, this is the story of Cat, a young woman that lives with her cousin's family because her parents were killed when she was a child. Her cousin is the same age and they share everything. One day, after school, the dreaded cold mages come for the oldest girl in the house and that is Cat. Then, cat travels with her new husband to his house and along the way she sees and learns a lot of new things, including secrets from her past. However, things aren't what they seem and Cat runs away to her family, because the most important thing to her is the safety of Bee, her cousin.

Well, my impressions...to be honest I was a bit bored with the beginning, I thought the reader had to wait a bit for the good parts to begin, but after Cat's sudden wedding things started to look better. There were many details about the world and the way we're supposed to understand how the society works that can be confusing at times. I confess some details here and there lost me, but in the general concept of what was happening I managed to understand it. the author has a very vivid imagination, and I felt many of those scenes were vivid to, so I guess she was successful in trying to portray her images to the reader.
The characters are intriguing yes, I wanted to know more about their secrets and personalities, what made them think certain things, what drove them to act this or that way, but as we see everything from Cat's POV we loose that, so in my opinion I think it would suit this story to have a 3rd person narrator. Cat was obviously the most important character but her husband and her cousin too. I also liked Cat's links to her family, very surprising.
The story kept things interesting and the pace was good for the things that were happening. I was surprised some times, which is good, nothing like "I didn't saw that coming" to spice up the book. Still, I think I'd prefer if we could get a more obvious separation between some scenes, specially when Cat travels to other dimension or something, magical stuff, because there were moments where I felt a bit lost like I said.
In the end, the story seduced me yes, and I was happy to see it end and was a bit curious about what would happen in the following books (it's a trilogy) but I've made the mistake of reading a spoiler from book #2 and now I'm so...disappointed by what I've read my will to read the book is gone. Perhaps one - faraway - day I'll try.
As for this book, I think it's a great take of a fantasy story, I enjoyed reading it, at least most of it.