Prospero Lost

Prospero's Daughter #1

by L. Jagi Lamplighter

More than four hundred years after the events of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, the sorcerer Prospero, his daughter Miranda, and his other children have attained everlasting life. Miranda is the head of her family’s business, Prospero Inc., which secretly has used its magic for good around the world. One day, Miranda receives a warning from her father: "Beware of the Three Shadowed Ones." When Miranda goes to her father for an explanation, he is nowhere to be found.

Miranda sets out to find her father and reunite with her estranged siblings, each of which holds a staff of power and secrets about Miranda’s sometimes-foggy past. Her journey through the past, present and future will take her to Venice, Chicago, the Caribbean, Washington, D.C., and the North Pole. To aid her, Miranda brings along Mab, an aerie being who acts like a hard-boiled detective, and Mephistopheles, her mentally-unbalanced brother. Together, they must ward off the Shadowed Ones and other ancient demons who want Prospero’s power for their own….

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Urban Fantasy, Retellings, Shakespeare, Magic, Mystery

352 pages, Hardcover

First published August 4, 2009

About the author

L. Jagi Lamplighter is a writer of fantasy and children's stories.  When not writing, she reverts to her secret ID where she lives in fairytale happiness with her husband, writer John C. Wright, and their four delightful children Orville, Ping-Ping, the Cherubim, and Justinian the Elf King.

For more information, see:

Prospero Lost:  A Writer's Odyssey -- an essay about how Prospero Lost came to be, the rigors of the writing life, negotiating the labyrinth of the publishing world, and the Great Agent Hunt.

All About The Wonder:  Why I Write Fantasy -- an essay about wonder and the real magic of life.

Reviews

[Amanda · Rating 2 out of 5]

Frankly, I was disappointed. I expected a rousing adventure with a good deal of humor. Instead, it was a lot of posturing. I mean, i didn't LIKE any of the characters. At first glance, the characters seem clever. Miranda seems a strong female character, Mab is a humorous paradox, a spirit who hates magic, even Mephisto seems kind of cool, a magician with dual personalities, as happy as a child one minute, a huge demon the next. But as you read on, the author really doesn't give you enough to keep you interested. Instead of revealing more vulnerability and becoming more likeable, Miranda is a pretty static character, Mephisto gets a little annoying after a while, and even Mab's Sam Spade routine gets tiresome. As they go on and find various family members, Lamplighter just keeps bringing up more questions and never giving any answers, none. Mephisto doesn't even turn into a demon a second time. It's more than a little frustrating. And there are so many of Miranda's flashbacks that leave you cold, cuz she's pretty boring.

What I did like about this book was the variety and depth of the myths Lamplighter utilizes. There were a lot of interesting ideas on how various mystical folk would deal with each other as well as the integration between pagan lore and Catholic/Christian fundamentals.

[Karissa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have had this book on my TBR pile for a long time. I was initially drawn to the beautiful cover and then intrigued by the synopsis. This one was a DNF for me. I read the first hundred pages of this book and just didn’t connect with the story or the characters.

The story is slow to start and the writing style is awkward. The dialogue is especially tough to read and doesn’t sound at all natural. The idea behind Miranda is interesting but she comes across as very cold, distant, and ends up being hard to engage with.

I didn’t necessarily hate this book but I wasn’t enjoying reading it either. I’ve been trying to be stricter with myself about reading a book just to read it; if i am not enjoying it after the first 100 pages I try to stop reading it. I have so many books to read that I don’t have time to read ones that are a struggle for me; especially if they are a struggle and I am not really gaining anything else from the book (knowledge, insight...something).

Overall this was an okay read, but was plagued by awkward writing and indifferent characters. It just wasn’t for me. Those who enjoy retellings/extensions of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” might find this intriguing.

[Liviu · Rating 5 out of 5]

This one I heard of for a while but never thought I will read it and did not bother to request an arc but I opened it just to "do my duty" so to speak since I tend to open all new sff releases in bookstores just to get an idea of what's what, and it hooked me from the first page so I bought it that day and it went to my top of the reading pile

Just superb - whimsical and with all creatures from myths, legends and fairy-tales or at least it seems so..

Great narrator in Miranda the 500 year old daughter of Prospero who has to solve the mystery of her father disappearance, keep civilization going by smoothing the dealings of supernatural beings which has been Prospero Inc mission for a while, warn her brothers and sister about the Shadowed Ones that Prospero belatedly let Miranda know about and just maybe finally become a Sybil so she can marry...

A delight from page one to the end, though of course it is to be continued in volume 2 Prospero in Hell

It is a very, very inventive novel and one that you will let it roll and enjoy or your suspension of disbelief probably breaks...

The second installment became another asap

[steven · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't understand.

I like the concept of following Prospero's daughter on a mystery. But why undo his character development when all you're going to do is repeat it with his offspring? Why go against the word of what Shakespeare says went on in the story for the sake of a simpler tale? At the end of Tempest, Prospero broke his staff and swore to no longer practice magic - the events of this book would have been little different. Miranda, after all, swore no such vow.

But even accepting the author's premise, Miranda is an unlikeable slave driver (literally) caught outside her home century with outdated morality and a questionable drive. She is cruel and heartless to her servants, only mildly interested in the fates of her siblings, and disturbingly devoted to her father. I'm OK with protagonists that are not heroes, but something about her naive behavior after four hundred years of living rubs me the wrong way.

Then there's the plot, which meanders quite a bit, parceling out tidbits here and there between larger segments where Miranda gets distracted. By the end of the book, the text can only offer us the barest of cliffhangers, leaving the main issue - Prospero's titular disappearance - regulated to mere scenery.

I'm probably not going to read the rest of the trilogy. I recommend you not bother at all.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was pretty excited about this book! I've been taking a break from my rather hectic "Pulitzer" to-read list, and enjoying some of what I call my "laid back" fiction... and this was perfect! The Tempest is probably my favorite Shakespeare work, and this fantastical play of the characters, however much of a tangent away from Shakespeare's merit, was a really enjoyable read! It reminded me a bit of Susanne Clarke... Miranda, Mab, and Mephisto (I found hysterical, I mean, the chimera?) traipse around the world trying to find the wizard Prospero, and warn their oh-so large cast of brothers and sister of impending doom! The reader is devouring tons of fun anecdotes of loosely based historical moments via the Prosperos' point of view, and interestingly timed mythological/folklore references! All in all, entertaining, although I am royally peeved that I didn't have the sense to start this once it was all ready over... now I must wait for the next one!

[Jeff Young · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jagi's book is a wonderful adventure that harkens back to Roger Zelazny's Amber series, contains hints of C.S. Lewis and makes use of an immense amount of mythology. This is a rich tapestry of ideas carefully woven together into a complex story. But not woven so tightly as to follow merely linear predestination to an inevitable conclusion, no this is joyful lark that bounds about to numerous locations all in search of the clues that will answer the question "What has become of Prospero?". It is a tale that will delight you with characters such as the sprightly Mephisto, the cynical Logistilla and hard-boiled detective, former north wind, Mab. This is the story of Miranda, 500 years after the events of Shakespeare Tempest as she seeks to warn her family of impending danger and find her missing father and it is over too soon leaving one longing for more.

[Nicole]

i stopped about a third of the way in. couldn't get into the story or characters and the writing seemed stilted.

[Kat Hooper · Rating 3 out of 5]

ORIGINALLY POSTED AT Fantasy Literature.

Shakespeare didn’t give us the whole story of Prospero, Miranda, Ferdinand, Ariel, et al. If you want to find out what really happened to the characters from The Tempest, pick up L. Jagi Lamplighter’s Prospero Lost. It turns out that Miranda and Ferdinand didn’t get married, Ariel wasn’t freed, and Prospero didn’t get rid of his staff and books. Instead, Miranda found The Well at the World's End and brought back the life-preserving water for her father and her siblings.

Now, centuries later, she runs Prospero Inc, a corporation that negotiates with many of Earth’s supernatural beings so they’ll stay content and won’t lash out at humans. If Prospero Inc wasn’t on the job, we’d have a lot more hurricanes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, and other “natural” disasters. You didn’t know about all this because it gets covered up by the Orbis Suleimani, the Circle of Solomon from which the Freemasons split off. This secret society has managed to keep most evidence of the supernatural out of our history books and to make us believe that most “legends” and “myths” are only fiction.

When we meet Miranda, she’s just found a note from her father which indicates that he’s in trouble, that The Shadowed Ones are trying to steal the Prosperos’ magical staffs, and that she must warn her siblings. You might expect that Miranda, a CEO who has assistants, a cell phone, and flies a Lear jet, could easily take care of this with a few phone calls, text messages, emails, or an announcement on the family blog, but if that were the case, the entire plot of Prospero Lost could have been condensed into 3 pages, so… no. Not knowing the whereabouts of any of her siblings, Miranda calls her servant Mab, the Aerie spirit who inhabits a body which looks and acts like Sam Spade. While they hunt down her family and dodge Hell’s minions, Miranda is forced to think about some heavy issues such as slavery, salvation, duty, insanity, loyalty, and faith.

I was attracted to Prospero Lost because of its gorgeous cover and because the description reminded me of Roger Zelazny’s Amber Chronicles (and Kage Baker said Amber fans should like it). While it’s true that both books contain an assortment of powerful and ambitious siblings who have lived for centuries and have abnormal concepts of familial bonds, the similarities end there. While the ideas in Prospero Lost are intriguing and Lamplighter’s writing style is pleasant enough, the story lacks the inventiveness and style that characterizes Zelazny’s work.

The first problem is that Miranda (the viewpoint character) is a prissy daddy’s girl. While I admire her loyalty, I think she’s boring. Other characters give her titles such as “Ice Queen” and “Maiden of Ice,” which tells you that she’s kind of hard to warm up to. Her brothers aren’t any better: Theo is dull and sluggish, Mephisto is insane and obnoxiously silly. Their sister Logistilla is better — she lives on a Caribbean island with animal servants who used to be her boyfriends.

The next problem is that the world-building is mostly done through flashback or dialogue, mostly as Mab interviews Miranda and a couple of her brothers. This is the way we learn about the Prosperos’ ancient connections with Peter the Great, Charlemagne, Napoleon, Louis XIV, the Loch Ness Monster, the Three Musketeers, Father Christmas, the tulip craze in Holland, the East India Company, a raid on the holy relics in the Vatican, etc. Through exposition Miranda explains how characters and creatures we thought of as myth or legend are real and that much that we consider mundane is really arcane. Some of these items are clever and fit well, but many seem thrown in (sometimes in list format) simply as an attempt to add weight to the world building. Unfortunately, they interrupt the action and make the plot feel slow and plodding. There are some exciting action scenes, several of which are amusing, and a couple of which are frightening, but there are also some that are just weird and never seem to settle into the plot very well. For this reason, Prospero Lost reminded me most of Matthew Sturges’s Midwinter — gorgeous cover art and lots of cobbled-together mythology masking a thin story and weak characters.

By the end of Prospero Lost, Miranda and Mab have a long list of questions without answers. Nothing has been resolved and we realize that we must read at least the next novel, Prospero in Hell, to get any sense of accomplishment. I have Prospero in Hell on my shelf, but I’m not sure that I’ll open it. I could have very easily left it alone if the most exciting part of Prospero Lost hadn’t occurred at the end of the very last sentence. Also, I’m a little curious to see where Lamplighter is going with this, especially since I suspect she has Christian allegory in mind.

[Judy · Rating 4 out of 5]

L Jagi Lamplighter spent 15 years writing, re-writing and revising her Prospero's Daughter Trilogy before this first volume was published in 2009. Other compelling data include her history as a roleplaying gamer and the novel's roots in a game she was involved with in the early 1990s. All of this can be perused on her website. It also explains the slightly dated feeling of the novel.

During those 15 years I was reading and completely enjoying a type of novel that has elements of fantasy or non-reality while it crosses boundaries between science fiction, fantasy and mainstream fiction. (See list of examples at the end of this post.) Only when I was introduced to Prospero Lost did I learn that such novels belong to a genre called "slipstream," coined by sci fi writer Bruce Sterling.

I have had some difficulty writing about Prospero Lost because it does not in all ways measure up to some of these other "slipstream" novels while at the same time it surpasses the wonders of them. One more sentence in this distressingly long prologue: Having a familiarity with Shakespeare's The Tempest enhanced my enjoyment while reading Prospero Lost, but unless you are a hopeless nerd like me it is not required reading.

Prospero Lost introduces Miranda some 500 years after the time of The Tempest. She has been the CEO of Prospero, Inc for many years. Prospero created the company long ago by means of contracts with the Airie Ones (think Ariel in the play) with the purpose of using magic to keep natural disasters at bay and ensure the safety of petroleum and electricity when in human hands.

In The Tempest, Miranda's mother died in childbirth. Since then, Prospero remarried and had seven sons and one daughter. Over the centuries the second wife passed away and the family had disintegrated due to these siblings going off in different directions, taking with them magical gifts from their father and leaving only Miranda to keep Prospero, Inc running. Prospero himself has been up to other secret projects. When Miranda receives a cryptic cry for help from Prospero, she attempts to gather the family back together and give them Propero's warning of impending doom.

Full of conflicting desires, Miranda is hard to pin down as a character. For one thing, she is kept perpetually young and beautiful by a magical water from the end of the world, yet when working for Prospero, Inc she acts like a seasoned executive. She is committed to Eurynome, a Goddess affectionately known as The Lady, who provides guidance in matters both temporal and spiritual. Miranda also has two love interests: Ferdinand, to whom she was engaged at the end of The Tempest, and Astreus, an elf. Her unreasoning loyalty to Prospero compels her to put his demands above all else.

I liked best the overall idea that magic and supernatural entities are at work in the world, unbeknownst to humans. I also found the centuries long history of the Prospero family entertaining and sometimes thrilling. I was not so enamored of the plotting. I suppose that continuous battles with evil enemies are a necessary element in the fantasy genre, but I found them boring after a while, especially since Miranda's immortality means that she can't ever truly lose.

Due to her publisher's wishes, the author broke her 1000+ page tale into a trilogy, so by the end of Prospero Lost, Miranda has found only half of her siblings and is not one whit closer to finding Prospero. But a gift from Atreus, the passionate elf, has put into reach the attainment of her deepest desire. Since that desire is in direct opposition to the foundations of Prospero, Inc, Lamplighter leaves the reader hanging by a cliff. Will magic save the world or destroy it?

SHORT LIST OF SLIPSTREAM NOVELS I HAVE READ

Little, Big, John Crowley
A Brief History of the Dead, Kevin Brockmeier
The Thin Place, Kathryn Davis
The House of the Spirits, Isabel Allende
One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Marcia Marquez
Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison

[Cheri · Rating 2 out of 5]

There was a lot of interesting promise going into this novel. I listened to a really good retelling of The Tempest earlier this year, so I thought that reading another spin-off of the story would be interesting. Turns out it's not a retelling, but instead a "and here they all are five hundred years later" story. Which was okay with me, because that, too, has a lot of potential.

But, in the end, this is a novel with potential unrealized. The narrative is just to inconsistent, alternating between name-dropping data dumps, too many exclamation points, and a lot of hand wringing. It also bumps against one of my main beefs, which is a novel that isn't a novel. This book should have "One of Three!" stamped on it (the exclamation point is simply irony). I am a fan of series - but there should be a story arc that belongs to each novel, so that I can finish it, feel like I accomplished something along with the characters, and then CHOOSE to read the next one. Here, though, I am denied any story-thread accomplishment without committing to the next book. No thanks.

It's not all bad. Like I said, there is interesting stuff here. The Prospero siblings are interesting, and I think Lamplighter tries to reflect how centuries of nearly immortal life changes a person and her perspective. I liked that there was angst and conflict. The story of how Miranda's hair turned silver is interesting. But in the end, the interesting stuff wasn't enough to prompt me to read the next of the series.

[Adrienne]

Review is also available on my blog The Shameful Narcissist Speaks.

I'm in love with the works of Shakespeare, though I haven't yet read The Tempest this is based on. Miranda and co not only inspired The Bard in the world of Prospero Lost, but they use the play as a mythology to in which to conceal themselves. Since people believe Shakespeare made it up, the information therein is obfuscated by fable, and Prospero Inc., the family company, is allowed to do its good works unhindered.

The main character Miranda, her father Prospero, and most of her siblings are immortal and have been alive for 500 years, aided by the power of magic staffs the sorcerer crafted. Of course like most magical objects, they're coveted and sought after by nefarious agents, in this case the Shadowed Ones who are more than likely the cause of Prospero's disappearance. This is the catalyst for the story that sends Miranda on a worldwide search with only her mentally unstable brother Mephistopheles and her aerie servant Mab for company and succor.

The concept behind this story is interesting, but one of the major issues with the novel is how much is introduced. Since the Prospero family has been prosperous (I'm not sorry) for 500 or so years, there's a great deal of history there, and the author attempts to reveal it in exposition throughout. However, this occurs as dreaded info dumps that take you out of the mise en scene far too often. I'm usually okay with exposition/author explanation, but it was so egregious and long-winded in this case. There's obviously a huge history there, but the way it's presented is it too haphazard and random. Miranda will start to ponder something that happened in the far past for several paragraphs, and it messes with the flow of the story. Ms. Lamplighter also uses exclamation points a bit too liberally.

I also wish there'd been more about the company, Prospero Inc., and the work they do in it rather than just brief mentions and exposition. The blurb states that they use their magic for the good of the world, but there were no examples of this in the novel itself. It's another example of showing instead of telling.

Despite this I didn't declare this unfinished because I didn't like it (it's why I made the distinction between Unfinished and DNF on Goodreads), but rather because it wasn't quite holding my interest at the time. I'm hoping to finish it at some point in the future, as there were numerous plot points introduced that I'm curious about. The author also did a great job differentiating the siblings (that were introduced), which can be a daunting task with you have multiple ones.

I may read Shakespeare's The Tempest before I return, since it relies heavily on that narrative and having it in my mental lexicon might make the beat points in Prospero Lost more pronounced, easier to digest, and I may be more forgiving towards the extensive exposition.

No rating for this since it's Unfinished and I intend to remedy that one day. I do have a rating in mind (as I usually do with most novels by the time I get to a certain point), but I'll leave it until such time as it's complete.

Note: I did declare this book Unfinished this year, but since Goodreads counts anything you shelf towards your reading challenge, I've altered the Reading Dates to a prior year to compensate for this. Hopefully, in the future, the website will allow more flexibility with what counts towards that challenge.

[Celia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I heard about this book through the Book Smugglers blog (amazingly helpful and entertaining blog for anyone who enjoys fantasy, YA, or romance) and immediately placed a hold on it through my library. Most of the characters in the story are from Shakespeare's The Tempest (which I haven't read). Prospero is a sorcerer who manages to bind the Aerie Ones to his will. His daughter Miranda, who provides the perspective in the story, has been granted immortality by being a Handmaiden for a goddess and she has shared that immortality with her father and siblings. For several hundred years, the Prospero family have used the Aerie Ones to make the world a safer place for mankind. But now the family has scattered and lost touch with each other. Only Miranda remains obedient to her father and runs Prospero, Inc. dutifully. Then Prospero disappears, leaving a note warning of danger and that Miranda should warn her siblings as soon as possible. Miranda and her trusty detective/Aerie One Mab set off on a trek that leads them to more questions than answers.

I really loved this book. The writing is fantastic; very lyrical and poetic at times, but also humorous in places. I also liked the way that Ms. Lamplighter deals with memory. Miranda is immortal because she has the Water of Life, but she still has a mortal brain that doesn't hold hundreds of years of memories very well. Many times, she describes her memory as foggy or clouded and sometimes she and her siblings disagree on events that have happened in the past. I've read reviews that cast Miranda as somewhat of an unreliable narrator because she is SO devoted to her father; anything he says, she believes, anything he commands, she does, without question. I found her to be a strange mix of naivete and strength. She has successfully run her father's vast business for years, yet she comes across as being very innocent, not a cut-throat businesswoman. I also enjoyed the character of Mab and Mephisto (her insane brother who accompanies them throughout much of the book). They provide the humor in the book and I like seeing the relationships between Miranda and Mab and Mephisto grow. A book I would highly recommend and I can't wait for book #2 to come out!

[Betsy McTiernan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Elizabeth Nunez gives Shakespeare's The Tempest a contemporary spin (1960) from an African American perspective in her novel, Prospero's Daughter. Nunez builds her plot around characters who are stand-ins for the main characters in The Tempest: Dr. Gardner (Prospero), Virginia (Miranda), Ariana (Ariel), and Carlos (Caliban). Dr. Gardner escapes possible prosecution by moving to an island--a leper colony--off Trinidad. There, he intends to raise his daughter, Virginia, as a proper English lady--including teaching her proper distain for the "darker" and "less evolved" natives. Given that Virginia has no idea what England actually looks like, or what it feels like to be English, she eventually becomes her own version of what it means to be a human being. Not only does Dr. Gardner overestimate his power to control his daughter, he also cannot control himself. But the real focal point of this story is the mixed-race boy, Carlos, who lives with Dr. Gardner after Dr. Gardner steals his mother's house after she dies leaving him in the care of her housekeeper and her child, Ariana. The anchor for the narrative is the investigation by local English investigator Mumsford of a charge made by Dr. Gardner that Carlos attempted to rape Virginia. Mumsford has been asked to investigate because he is English, and therefore, "sensitive" to the racial unrest that such a charge might cause at a time when Trinidad is pressing for independence from England. This is a novel of ideas: race, gender, class, colonialism...and their influence on these characters. It is told in three parts, from the perspectives of Dr. Gardner, Carlos and Virginia--in that order. If I could ask Nunez one question, it would be this: Why did you choose to tell Dr. Gardner's story in the third person but give Carlos and Elizabeth their own voices? Is it because you are empowering the usually disempowered? Do you want to put some distance between us readers and Dr. Gardner, the character with the most cultural power? I'm hoping these questions might be considered in some of the reviews I've yet to read. Obviously, the downside of reading books years after they come out is that everyone else has moved on. Sigh.

[Beth · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was the Shakespeare that drew me. Unfortunately, that was not enough to keep me interested. This is an odd mix of Shakespeare and Urban Fantasy. Prospero and Miranda are still alive 500 years after the events of The Tempest and are running a company called Prospero Inc., in which they are busy keeping control of the world's various malevolent spirits, and demons who wreak havoc on the earth by causing earthquakes, volcanoes, etc. When Prospero goes missing and sends an ominous warning to Miranda, she sets out to track down her 8 siblings and warn them of potential danger.

I had a terrible time getting through this one. The characters are uninteresting. Miranda is cold and frankly boring. Her brother Mephisto is just a little too silly to be believable. The plot is slow and does not seem to progress. It is full of flashbacks intended to fill the reader in on the back story of Miranda and her family, but really just serves as annoying interruptions to the flow of the story. I'm still not sure where this story was going. One minute Miranda is intent on finding all her siblings to warn them of their father's disappearance (of which she only gets to 3 of them), the next minute she is suddenly distracted by a different problem.

The worst part. There is no ending. The book just stops mid-action. It's as if she just randomly chose a point to stop writing and continue the rest in the next book. Fortunately for me it gave me a place to stop reading. I have no interest in continuing on with the next book.

[Caressa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was really torn on how many stars to give this interesting little book. I decided to go with 4 stars based on Lamplighter's efforts. The modernized take on Shakespeare has been done so many times before, but Lamplighter takes a new twist on it. This isn't just 'The Tempest' for the 21st century, but rather an update on where the characters are now, 450 years after the events of the famous play.

I think Lamplighter may have tried to do too much in a single novel, however. We learn more about Miranda's siblings through extensive flashbacks rather than seeing them interact. "Prospero Lost" almost feels like the second book in a series, rather than the first. An entire novel could have been devoted to the last 450 years, then kick off a sequel with the modern-day plot. For me it was forcing a 300 lb woman into a tiny corset...too much backstory/lore/family drama forced into flashbacks, so that I never could get a good feel for the characters. Too much talk about how great/evil/irritating a sibling was, but then I hardly got to meet them long enough to make up my own mind.

Miranda was very cool and aloof to the point that I just didn't care about her at all. I mean she makes Al Gore look like an emotional basketcase. I didn't feel like I could connect or empathize with her at all.

All in all, I think this novel was a valiant effort at an inventive idea, but didn't quite pull it off. Maybe the sequel will shine a little brighter

[Kerry · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wasn't expecting to like this as much as I did.

I find myself wanting to describe it as a "happy mish-mash" of all sorts of mythologies and literature. And it all worked.

There are deeper themes going on here that I don't think have been fully revealed and there may well be unhappiness coming, but this book felt, well the only word I can come up with is "fun", which doesn't feel like the right one.

I don't mean it was light, like a brain-candy kind of read. There's a lot in here and I'm sure there is a lot more to unpack in the later volumes (I've already requested Prospero in Hell from the library) but for all that there's a charm to the book that stops it from behind a difficult or exhausting read. And considering how easily I get exhausted these days, that's a compliment.

I zoomed through the book and ennjoyed myself all the way through. I wasn't certain about reading this one, although I had noticed it when it was first published. So I am very gald Erika chose this for the Women of Fantasy Book Club and I read it after all.

[Uriah Blatherwick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Okay I'm going to try not to be really grumpy and annoyed because this book ends in a complete cliffhanger. It is part of one of a series and does not stand alone at all, so commit to reading the second book at least if you want any closure.

Okay so all that aside, it's a pretty fun little world the writer invented where magic is real and so is mythology and so even is christian monotheism. Mix all that with at least some nod to Shakespeare and you have an interesting setting.

The story (as it stands so far) is a fun and interesting play between the children of Prospero and their plotting and scheming with each other and the forces of hell. I'm enjoying it as a narrative although I'm not sure it has anything meaningful to say about the human condition or anything. It's well written fantasy without much depth.

The cover mentions the Chronicles of Amber and there is definitely a good bit of similarity there. Now I have to go buy the next one...

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very engaging kind of old urban fantasy series based on the Tempest by Shakespeare, about Prospero and his children who are still alive thanks to the water or life. Story's main character is Miranda, who is tasked to save her father, abducted by demons. Good myth and folklore.

[Danielle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have read pieces of this pre-publication and I cannot wait to read the whole polished work. Years in the making and well worth the wait!

[Claire · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a romantic fantasy for Shakespeare lovers. Sadly, it cuts off rather abruptly saying that it is just part one, and part 2 hasn't been published yet.

[Joanne G. · Rating 4 out of 5]

It took me awhile to get into the story, but by the end, I was thoroughly invested and sorry that I didn't have book two in hand.

[Maura Woika · Rating 1 out of 5]

Actually I couldn't finish this book. It is a good idea but the characters are not written well.

[Andrew Craig · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book! Great author and very interesting with many historical and fantasy elements built into a unique world.

[Rk Stark · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book dragged on and on, but it has a really interesting concept and world building. It imagines a world in which Prospero of Shakespeare fame and his daughter Miranda have become immortal and when they returned to Italy after the end of the "history" recorded in the play, Prospero remarried and spawned quite a few children. These children are also all immortal thanks to Miranda being a Sybil and being able to get water from the well of immortality at the end of the world. They have used the enslaved winds to create a global corporation that protects the world from all kinds of magical and mythical creatures by providing incentives and materials the "masters" want, but the family has mostly broken apart. Miranda is the only sibling left to run the company as the rest have run off on their own. Miranda is reading a book when a message from her father informs her that he is in Hell and she must warn her sibling. Then begins a long and rather boring trek across the world in search of her various siblings who are all hiding secrets which Miranda seem disinclined to investigate fully or hold them accountable for. Probably the most interesting thing in the book is the concept that Fairies are actually fallen angles and that the world described in the bible is much more extensive than most people think.
While I would love to learn more about the world, the many subplots and extremely long and boring side quests do not make me wants to read the rest of the series. I do wish someone who read the other books in the series would provide a summary and answer important questions, like is her father a demon? Is her brother? What is Lilith's role in this and did Prospero enslave the winds to give them souls or just because he wanted the free labor, or some sort of both? Did her father place Miranda under a compulsion to always obey? Does her goddess reject her because of her cruelty? So many questions, but the book is not engaging enough for me to slog through the rest of the series for the answer.

[Alecia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Amazing concept, flat execution. This book was the equivalent of dating someone who looks great on paper, and says and does all the right things, but doesn't give you that warm tingly feeling. The first few pages didn't really hook me in but sometimes books just start slow. As the plot developed I was intrigued but there was just a sense of something missing.

There's a lot going on here. This is a truly original take on Shakespeare's "The Tempest". This version picks up centuries after the source material when Miranda, her father Prospero and her siblings are basically the Illuminati. Turns out that most of our natural disasters and wars are the result of supernatural causes. The Prospero family keep these eldritch powers in check by being the baddest sorcerers on the block. Unfortunately, after one of their brothers died, most of the kids gave up the family business to pursue their own interests. Now father Prospero has gone missing and Miranda needs her family to find him.

We trek across the globe as sibling rivalries are revealed, an old lover resurfaces, Miranda is chased by demons goes to a party with Santa Claus and the King and Queen of the elves. And yet, none of it moved me. This book had all the ingredients of something I should love but it was oddly soulless. Miranda Prospero is focused and responsible to the point of being rigid. Duty and family are the most important things to her. She's the type of female character I love to read but I never related to her at all. It's part one of a trilogy and ends on a cliffhanger and I should have been on the edge of my seat but instead I was just bored. However, if anyone decides to adapt this for the screen I will be first in line.

[Zeek · Rating 2 out of 5]

I started off really liking this book long languishing in my tbr pile. Such promise follows characters immortalized by Shakespeare's The Tempest. But about halfway through, the story had lost its luster with so many characters and little resolve- even by the end I am hard-pressed to feel any sort of resolution.

Poserpero is indeed lost, though he sends a cryptic note to his daughter Miranda who is charge of the family business. The setting is no longer Renaissance but Modern, which intrigued me at first, but I soon found myself feeling a sort of cognitive dissonance. There is also a hodgepodge of religions and old gods and mythical creatures and realms mentioned and found. It really became too much to keep after.

In this story, set long after the actions of The Tempest, Miranda along with her indentured aerie servant Mab, sets out to find her scattered brothers and sisters to help her find their Father.

Along the way, they run into various sundry magical beings, witches, and elves- including Father Christmas and Mrs. Claus I kid you not.

I also wasn't sure who her love interests were in this story and whom to consider for her as neither presented seemed trustworthy nor interesting. The ending has her on some sort of mystical ride through the stars with one of the love interests that seems suspiciously like an acid trip. By then I decided the story should be called Reader Lost.

I added the second book in the series to my tbr pile early on but now Im not so sure I will read on.

[Kat · Rating 4 out of 5]

With urban fantasy on the rise, it's hard to stand out and be memorable, but L. Jagi Lamplighter's debut novel certainly does! "Prospero Lost" is an interesting mixture of classic literature, historical fiction, urban fantasy, numerous mythologies, and film noir mystery with a dollop of romance. There are a lot of familiar creatures mentioned like slyphs and elves and salamanders, but they are presented in a completely new way. Miranda is the eldest child of the wizard Prospero, immortalized by Shakespeare in his play "The Tempest." But this story continues their tale as this family of pseudo-immortals hold the magical world together by, of all things, running a corporation. You learn about the world slowly, and some things are presented in a different order than what I'm used to. (For example, we don't see what a normal day at the office looks like for Miranda or what that job entails until halfway through the book... and yet before that, you still get a pretty good idea of how things work, just from circumstance and context.) I recommend this book to fans of fantasy who like a new spin on the UF subgenre, especially if you have a fondness for literature and mythology. Can't wait to read the next book in the trilogy!

[Lissa Notreallywolf · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a wonderful read, remaniscent of Mark Helperin's A Winter's Tale, also having a Shakespearian twist. But I didn't rush out for a viewing of The Winter's Tale after reading it, and I did find a film version of Twelvth Night to view after reading this book. I am already quite conversant with Tempest, my favorite Shakespeare play. But the literacy level doesn't abate with Shakespeare, and the scenes that unfold are fabulous, a magical cape found at a secluded thrift store, a mad brother who may be quite untrustworthy, given that he turns into the spitting image of a Hellion without any sort of recollection. A sniping older sister on her island of beasts, a nod to Circe, but her basement is full Italian bodies, women, children and men. A bear proves to be a courtly guest there echoed by a polar bear at the North Pole, belonging to Santa. In short the book is a trip as well as a quest. I may reread it when I can get my hands on the second volume.

[Rebekah · Rating 3 out of 5]

So, I got about halfway through this book and stopped. It started out well enough. The pace is a little slow and the writing is a bit stiff or off, but it also seemed similar to the Umbrella Academy which is fun. I also enjoyed the general tone of the novel. However I found myself unable to continue after the author shared her fictional version of the fall of mankind wherein mankind was saved from demon mind control with the forbidden fruit. This was so utterly ridiculous and appalling (the story was shared by Father Christmas of all people) that as a Christian I personally cannot justify continuing to read this book. I’m sure that it’s a nice book objectively, but I personally feel like I cannot continue beyond this point.

[Gordon · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dnf at 70% - this is much darker than I expected and the core character very distant, though she does seem to be on a growth arc. I don't much like the gnostic elements either, which combined with the layers of character deception mean it's very difficult to identify any moral compass. (Prospero is off page but seems to have been arrogant, manipulative and quite possibly wicked, and his family is very messed up). The structure is very episodic, possibly a side effect of it being based on a role playing world. There are some interesting ideas though. I've never read Zelazny but it reminds me a little of Diana Wynn Jones' Archer's Goon, albeit much darker.