Book Review: Cybele's Secret by Juliet Marillier

I made a big mistake by not reading Wildwood Dancing first. I've wanted to read that book for a very long time, but whenever I thought about it and walked into a bookshop, I tended to leave with three different things after finding its spot on the shelves vacant. Actually, it was my search for Wildwood Dancing that led me to Cybele's Secret--I recognized the author's name. About two pages in I realized it was something like a sequel, but a brief search online told me it was a "companion novel" which I took as safe to read. Not that it wasn't safe, but I do believe I've been properly spoiled for Wildwood, and I was confused about a few things at the start. My advice: read Wildwood first.

That said, I found Cybele's Secret to be a thoroughly enjoyable novel following the adventures of Paula, an intellectual girl stuck in a world where men did the scholarly work. She was brought to Istanbul by her father, a merchant on a quest for a valuable item -- Cybele's Gift. Paula works as his assistant, making deals with other merchants and gathering information on Cybele's Gift in an all-women library, and working out Cybele's secret with her bodyguard, Stoyan, while fighting off the interest of Duarte, a well-known pirate who is also after the Gift.

My only complaint was that I couldn't place myself in the story, which perhaps is a problem from not reading its prequel. Set in Istanbul, I didn't know enough of the city's current culture to know when the story was set (the author note at the back, which I read at the end, said early Ottoman Empire). Part of what threw me was Paula's name--I have an aunt by the same name, so I place it in the 1960s. It threw me, though it shouldn't have--swordplay and ships ought to have set the time back a few hundred years.

Mystery, secrets, quests, a mysterious woman dressed in black embroidering the faces of Paula and her sisters--Cybele's Secret was an enchanting, thrilling,enjoyable read, and made me all the more exciting for Wildwood Dancing.