Reserved For the Cat

I read Reserved for the Cat a 372 page book by Mercedes Lackey. This novel is about Ninette Dupond. Her mom had died and her father had disappered when Ninette was young. Ninette is a dancer at the Paris Opera Ballet, however one day the lead ballerina sprained her ankle and Ninette had to play her part, Ninette is so good that in order to make the lead dancer feel better Ninette isfired. Ninette could not find another job until a strange talking cat showed up at her apartment and told her that he could help her get another job as a ballerina. Since Ninette had no other options she decides to trust the cat. The cat has her go to England and then pretend to be this famous Russian ballerina that had gotten shipwrecked. She is rescued by these owners of a music hall. One of the owners is an elemental master, or wizard, of air. His assistant is sensitive to magic and has some telepathic powers. There is also a talking parrot that claims to be the reincarnation of Mozart. At the music hall Ninette performs well and even though she just copies dances and ballet tricks from other performers, she is still good and can appease the audience. However, the real Russian ballerina that Ninette is impersonating has been taken over by an evil spirit that ate people. This spirit is angry that Ninette is stealing her reputation and so the spirit decides to kill Ninette. However, all of the spirit's attempts are thwarted by the music hall owner and this fire master that also performs at the music hall. Eventually Ninette told them the truth about who she is and though they were upset, they forgive her. It is also discovered that Ninette has some telepathic powers that give her this charisma that makes the audience enjoy seeing Ninette perform and from that enjoyment Ninette gets energy back. The elemental masters and the cat are trying to find out who is trying to hurt Ninette. The cat gets a lead and managed to find the evil spirit's hiding place, unfortunately once he was there he was trapped. The cat used to be an earth elemental master but was sealed in cat form because he lost a duel. The cat is also Ninette's father. Anyway the cat did not have enough power to kill the spirit and Ninette could tell that the cat is in danger and so she goes after him. Before she left she gave the brownie that lived in her apartment the message that when her maid came back, to tell the elemental master where she went. Anyway she goes to the evil spirit's house where she shots it and kills it. However the spirit had evil servants that were no longer under control, but the other people arrived in time and saved them. The book ends were Ninette will continue dancing at the music hall and the cat falls in love with this other person that was stuck in cat form.

I liked reading this book. Now I want to read the other Elemental Masters novels. I think that they are about different people, but they are in the same setting. I did think that this was a good book and I liked the main character Ninette. She is a strong female character even though she didn't have much magic. She is very determined and stubborn. She works really hard to be good at dancing and she spends basically all her time practicing. I thought that it is kind of sad that all Ninette really does is dance, but she does have a lot of friends and she really does enjoy dancing. Ninette does have her flaw that she really likes attention and enjoys having a lot of men come up to admire her and she loves the audience's applause and attention.