A company of swans

This may be one of the most awesomely insane things I've ever read: A beautifully threaded complex plot, pretty much all the tropes stirred in liberally and craftily bent to new purposes. Believable characters, from major to minor, fabulously crafted detail, and the best upending of upper class academic puritanism I've seen in ages.

Seriously: Ibbotson has no truck with shaming people for happiness, and it's utterly enthralling throughout.

I did not know that I loved this book in the beginning. It was not a love at first sight book. I became increasingly fond of it as the pages turned. Rom is my kind of hero and Harriet is a cool in a quiet way heroine. Not to mention the exotic location of the Amazon hosting a ballet company.
I enjoyed the themes as well. I loved the idea of chicken feather heroes. The idea of being so in love that you become a fool. One of the ballerinas like calm chicken feather love. Speaking of Romeo, he should have got a chicken feather, she thinks, and laid it on Juliet's lips to see if she was dead. I liked the references to Persephone and the pomegranate.