Gr. 9-12. Once again, Gemma Doyle slips into the realm beyond her Victorian world, this time to find the fabled Temple and rebind the magic loosed in A Great and Terrible Beauty0 (2003). To accomplish her task, she journeys to London, where she sifts through terrifying visions and clues from a young madwoman, weeds out friend from foe, and defends herself and her friends from those, including the clever, evil Circe, who want the magic for themselves. Bray reprises previous events as the story moves along, but readers familiar with the first book will feel most at home here. They will find the same rich social commentary, romance, and adventure, even more sumptuously created. Gemma's relationship with her friends Anne and Felicity is one of the strengths of the book: the girls fight, support one another, and change as the story progresses--in both the real and magical worlds. Bray occasionally relies on magic to cover up bumps in the plot, but readers will sink into her compelling, well-paced story anyway, and relish the combination of historical novel and imaginative fantasy world building. Teens will long for another sequel. --Stephanie Zvirin Copyright 2005 Booklist

(Middle School, High School) Narrator Bailey is more than equal to the gothic challenges of this sequel to A Great and Terrible Beauty, capturing the opulent horrors of the realms and the mannered hauteur of Victorian London drawing rooms with equal ease. Her ability to create and maintain a seemingly endless cast of characters is breathtaking; each is a fully realized and carefully shaded personality. Her crowning achievement, of course, is Gemma Doyle herself: whether tremulous, outraged, bewildered, or terrified, she is eminently recognizable in all of her many moods. Despite a glaring error near the beginning of cassette 8 (a muffed lined is repeated along with a casual comment from the narrator), fans of the first volume will find much to enjoy as they follow Gemma's quest to bind the magic unleashed in her earlier adventure. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.

Gr 8 Up-The sequel (Delacorte, 2005) to Libba Bray's A Great and Terrible Beauty (Delacorte, 2003; Listening Library, 2004) takes up 17-year-old Gemma Doyle's adventures above ground, in Victorian London, and below in the magical Realms, just days after the first book ended. Narrator Josephine Bailey remains consistent and inspired in the range of accents and tones she provides for Gemma, her posh friend Felicity, their whiney classmate Ann, the mysterious and sensual Indian youth Kartik, and the newly introduced characters that include a suspicious new teacher and a patient at London's famous Bethlehem Hospital (Bedlam). Those unfamiliar with the prequel to the current adventures may find themselves a bit lost at the outset, but the flurry of immediate events will soon catch them up as Gemma works feverishly to understand how she can bind the magic running loose in the Realms, whether Kartik is her ally or her deadly opponent, and if her father's moodiness is an expression of the continuing grief at her mother's death or an opiate habit. Added to these Gothic matters is the fact that Gemma must come to terms with her feelings for the young man who pays her court during the Christmas holidays she's spending away from finishing school and in her grandmother's house. Bray realizes the time period not only in her skillfully embedded descriptions of sounds, textures, and smells, but also by evoking the social framework within which Gemma must move, at least while above ground. The Realms, on the other hand, include both other worldly beauty and ghastliness, befitting of hallucinations. Gemma proves her strength and her charity in both arenas.-Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley Public Library, CA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

"Although Bray's follow-up to A Great and Terrible Beauty feels a bit like a bridge between the launch and the next installment in her series," said PW, "fans of the author's first novel will nonetheless remain enthralled." Ages 12-up. (Dec.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

What beastly luck. When Victorian schoolgirl Gemma Doyle smashed the magical realms' runes two months ago (A Great and Terrible Beauty, 2003), she thought she was destroying evil. Instead, she unbound the magic and made it available to any malevolent force. In London for the Christmas holidays, Gemma must bind the power before disaster falls--but bind for whom? The all-female Order, which allowed corruption to enter the realms in the first place? The male secret society of the Rakshana, which wants Gemma dead? Betrayal is in the air, and the backstabbing distrust of London, where any girl or woman might be the evil Circe in disguise, is a far cry from the budding homoeroticism of Gemma's earlier adventure. To make matters worse, Gemma's father has become an opium eater, her erstwhile lover Kartik might be planning her death and her only clues to Circe's identity come from a Bedlamite. While the characters and setting lack the lush richness and depth that made the first volume appealing, Gemma's shivery adventures, lacking easy answers, make for an exciting mystical quest. (Fantasy. YA) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.