Ambergate

Ambergate is Patricia Elliot's pretty good fantasy sequel to the novel Murkmere. British readers might pick out that Ambergate is located in a fantasy version of England, and the novel is definitely a Dickensian fantasy with character names like Scuff and Titus Molde.

The novel's heroine is a poor escaped orphan working on the estate of the last book's heroine, Aggie, three years after Murkmere. I didn't read the first book, so I don't know how much more I would have gotten from the story if I had, but there were moments when I felt the novel tossed in characters it expected us to remember and get "ah ha!" moments from. I found certain aspects of the story intriguing, but I don't think it's award-winning. Nay.