In an unprecedented move for me, I have decided to stop reading this book halfway through. At 55%, I am the most interested I have been thus far and I still neither know nor care about ANY of the characters. After loving Wildwood Dancing, I was eager to jump into the second book, but this doesn't even feel like it wasn't written by the same author. Where Wildwood Dancing was breakneck from page 5 to the end and had some beautifully haunting lines, Cybele's Secret is sedate and boring with absolutely no creative zing. There are opportunities all over the place for the author to ramp up the tension, but she does not. I assumed this was to hit the reader with a really good middle leading into the rising action and climax, but no such luck. The boring characters have simply been shifted to another boring, claustrophobic location.

I had such high hopes for this book. The main character is Paula, who is known from the previous book to be the "scholarly" sister and practically handled almost all the major problems in Jena's story. However, in her own she merely likes to say how "capable" and "scholarly" she is while spending at least the first half of the book alternately crying, acquiescing to her father's every desire, or mooning over one of the two ridiculously tall and good-looking gentleman who have, for unknown and unexplained reasons, ended up in her path and interested in her. Jena at least tried to assert her independence against insurmountable odds, but Paula is perfectly happy, and in fact pleased, to have men tell her where to go, what to do, and even what to eat. This is the least independent heroine I have read in a long time and the only times Paula exhibits any sort of strength, she is immediately punished for it.

The best part about this novel, in fact perhaps the ONLY good thing about it, is the city of Istanbul. Descriptions of its buildings, culture, and food are utterly tantalizing and have managed to skyrocket Istanbul to the top of my to-travel list. However, even here the author hobbles herself by locking her main character (also the only point of view character) inside cramped and monotone buildings for the ENTIRE first half of the novel. Where I stopped reading, the character had instead been cramped into a different room, where her view of this fascinating place and time had similarly disappeared. Furthermore, the descriptions of Muslim and Turkish life we are privy to come in long streams of dialogue from Paula's father, interjected randomly into unrelated conversations. Most of these conversations have to do with listing concerns for Paula's safety (generally unsubstantiated by ANYTHING that has actually happened in the story) as reasons to further restrict her mobility.

Thinking back on the first half of this book, I feel like I read something about blank paper people moved about on sticks in a blank paper room while the MAGNIFICENT CITY OF ISTANBUL loomed in the background, frustratingly out of reach. Nothing but the author's singular talent in creating low-level tension throughout scenes has kept me reading this far. So, it is with a heavy heart that I consign this book to my pile of disappointing "dnf" and mark it as "read", never to return to it again. I'm not worried, as I'm pretty sure Paula will be perfectly fine in her safe little paper room without me having to watch her there.