The Cabinet of Wonders

The Cabinet of Wonders by Marie Rutkoski is the first book of The Kronos Chronicles.

Petra Kronos has a simple, happy life.  But it's never been ordinary.  She has a pet tin spider named Astrophil who likes to hide in her snarled hair and give her advice.  Her best friend can trap lightening inside a glass sphere.  Petra also has a father in faraway Prague who is able to move metal with his mind.  He has been commissioned by the prince of Bohemia to build the world's finest astronomical clock.

Petra's life is forever changed when, one day, her father returns home- blind.  The prince has stolen his eyes, enchanted them, and now wears them.  But why? Petra doesn't know, but she knows this: she will go to Prague, sneak into Salamander Castle, and steal her father's eyes back.

Joining forces with Neel, whose fingers extend into invisible ghosts that pick locks and pockets, Petra finds that many people in the castle are not what they seem, and that her father's clock has powers capable of destroying their world.

The Breakdown:
1. I am big fan of Rutkoski's The Winner's Curse, so I decided to give some of her other books a read.  For me, this book is not as beautifully written as Winner's Curse, but does have a certain charm to it.  It has an interesting mix of magic and history.  The characters are well written and I really liked the way the aspects of magic worked in the story.

2.  When Petra is first introduced she is lazy and kind of directionless in her life, the loss of her father's eye at the prince's hand. While she is in Prague, she finds friends and herself, but at times she is very reckless.

3. I found Astrophil, the tin spider, fascinating.  He is a wonderfully inquisitive creation of metal and magic.  I love that he acts a conscience of sorts for Petra.

4. I kind of loved Neel.  His casual disregard for the rules, especially if he can help his family by breaking them. Plus his ghost fingers were awesome, and his stories of the Roma were interesting.

5. The Prince is quite the enigma of a character.  He comes off as charismatic and friendly, but he is truly conniving and cruel. He definitely has some interesting secrets yet to unfold.

To Read or Not to Read:
Read

Currently Reading:
Cruel Beauty
by Rosamund Hodge