Stars of Fortune, by Nora Roberts

I really only had one problem with Nora Roberts's Stars of Fortune, but it's a big one: Roberts simply isn't very good at writing fantasy. She keeps trying, but the genre does not play to her strengths.

Roberts's latest heroine is a reclusive painter named Sasha Riggs. Sasha has spent years trying to ignore her prophetic dreams. Unfortunately, her latest round of visions is very insistent—she needs to travel to the island of Corfu, meet five mysterious allies, and go in search of a legendary fallen star.

Nora Roberts has two great gifts as a storyteller: she creates believable, endearing friendships between her characters, and she writes beautifully about work, which gives her characters a focus and passion independent of their romantic relationships. (She's not picky about the type of work, and has written convincingly about everything from horse-trainers to housekeepers.) Fantasy, sadly, doesn't showcase either one of these strengths. In Stars of Fortune the characters don't have normal relationships or run-of-the-mill day jobs; they have mystical bonds and magical gifts, neither of which Roberts portrays convincingly. The end result isn't straight-up unreadable, but it's a waste of the author's time and talent.