Divine by Choice

Just got done reading "Divine by Choice" by P.C. Cast this morning. Despite my whining I am worried this journal is actually part of my grade so...

To be perfectly honest getting through the first two chapters is difficult. If I hadn't already read some of Cast's more recent works I would have put the book down and not looked back. Thankfully the writing gets better as the book moves on.

The novel starts off with Shannon, a thirty something high school English teacher, driving down an Oklahoma highway in her Mustang. She's talking to herself and exclaiming the most random things in order to set up her character. 

Shannon is heading to an estate auction. She notes that she is an antique collector and spends the pre-auction viewing clumsily moving through dialogue. She becomes drawn to a vase engraved with her own image (less shocking than no one coming to find out what she was screaming and flailing about) and through a series of events ends up buying it for 3$.

On her drive home a sudden thunderstorm knocks her car around. The vase glows. She sees a woman whom looks exactly like her coming at her from the mouth of the vase and....

Wakes up in something out of ancient Rome. The writing improves from here on.

Shannon discovers that she has been transported to an alternate dimension where she is high priestess and Beloved of Epona. You know, the horse\war goddess? Her hand maiden (who is an exact copy of her best friend back home. Doubles are everywhere of people she knows) instantly knows that she isn't Rhiannon (the woman who switched with her) and urges her to keep quiet about who she really is. Oh, also could she get dressed in this nice stuff because she needs to get married to a centaur now.

What?! Not exactly what was on *this* voluptuous, tall, red head's agenda! The ceremony is short and sweet. Unlike the next hundred or so pages of her trying and succeeding to get some of that horse booty. Which is smoothed over with "no it's ok he can turn into a human man for a little bit".

Sometimes.

Yeah if you take out the whole "Evil vampire things doing evil evil things to Good people" it's pretty much just one big flirt and fuck fest between Shanon and her new husband (who hates her for all of five pages due to thinking she is Rhiannon.)

Once you get over the oh my god she is screwing a horse bit the book is a decent read. Lots of funny moments where Shannon makes pop culture references and confuses the local yokels. 

The series has at least three other books. I'll let you know how those go. If you want to check out some of P.C. Cast's later (better) works, check out the "House of Night" series. That one has twelve books and a few side novels to keep you busy.