Review by houligan19 -- First Lessons by Lina J. Potter

[houligan19]

[Following is a volunteer review of "First Lessons" by Lina J. Potter.]

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4 out of 4 stars

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Aliya is a budding medical student, well on her way to becoming a top surgeon, when a trip home to visit her parents ends in a fatal car crash. Aliya dies and wakes up her to nanny caring for her after she nearly dies in childbirth, and the servants are all calling her “My Lady.” This must be a strange dream, or is it?

First Lessons is the first book of Lina J. Potter's “A Medieval Tale” series. Aliya, who has died and come back in the body of Countess Lilian Earton, soon realizes that this is not a bad dream, and that she will have to figure out how to acclimate to her new surroundings without anyone knowing who she really was. She feared that she could be burned at the stake for being a witch if she shared too much information with the wrong person.

Aliya's first obstacle is to recover from childbed fever. Her new body needs to be in bed for a week after a malignant miscarriage, which is what killed Lilian. Once she can walk, Aliya gets up and seeks out a library and learns all she can about her new world, starting with geography; Aliya didn't even know where she was. As she begins to settle in as Lady Lilian, she discovers the long list of challenges she will have to overcome to survive, and maybe even thrive in this world: her husband only needs her to be an incubator for his heir, women are generally property here, the comptroller of her estate is embezzling, and all her people fear starvation over the winter. She knows she can help make things better as Lady Lilian, but she needs to be sure she doesn't take things too far.

I give this book a rating of 4 out of 4 stars. Lina J. Potter does an amazing job of capturing a woman of today's day and age and immersing her into a medieval world. I love the use of a medical student who also understands herbal medicine to make a connection from present day to medieval times. Aliya is able to make use of advance medical knowledge, but must, as Lady Lillian, use herbs instead of the pharmaceuticals she generally uses. I thought the author also did an amazing job putting consideration into what technologies could and should be introduced into this more primitive world. “In her previous life, Aliya had read somewhere that technology should never be allowed to outrun morality.” I did not find any errors in this book, so it appears to be professionally edited.

Many people of today have little to no knowledge about the use of any “primitive” type of skills. Aliya's mother was a healer, and practiced herbalism and survival situations. Aliya learned much of this from her mother, and then she went on to practice medicine, and eventually surgery. Having extensive knowledge in herbalism and survival medicine allows her to function in the medieval society, and her knowledge of new age medicine will allow her to improve the health of her new people. This connection proves to provide a very intriguing basis for a person who is nearly lost, but has that rock to stand on. I personally connected with the character in this way, and while I'm not a surgeon, I have worked in the field and also studied herbal medicine. I was afraid that my experience could ruin the book for me, as with T.V. Shows, but the author did an excellent job making everything seem quite plausible. I never once thought about her treatments and said, “No way, that could ever happen.”

Aliya puts serious consideration into what introducing too much technology could have on a society. She remembers her friend's collection of Sci-Fi books, which she considers when deciding what she should do next. It was amusing that she was wishing she had paid more attention to these stories after teasing her friend for having them all. She knew, at least, that she couldn't take things too far. I feel that this is not a point often covered in Sci-Fi books very often, and Aliya covers it well in her plans to further her society. It adds another challenge to the story that the new Lady Lilian must overcome just to keep her morals intact.

There are a few other characters that are addressed in their own chapters throughout the book. Initially, I had no idea what these other characters had to do with Lady Lilian, but as the plot unravels throughout the story, the characters' individual tales all come together. You learn also learn quite a bit about the new world from the various characters who are all living in different ways throughout this world. Each of these characters are well developed and add their own twists to the plot.

The only thing I could say negative about the book is that it could be offensive if you are overweight. Aliya often complains about the obese state of Lady Lilian's body and is quite unhappy with it. She does say clearly, however, that she cares about the state of the body simply because she cannot physically do what she could do in her own body. Aliya does an excellent job working her new body towards being in shape through a healthy diet and exercise. I found that this aspect added more to the story, so it wasn't a huge negative.

I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys time travel, medieval tales, or fantasy genre. This book contains some minor adult scenes, so it may be good for more mature young readers.

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First Lessons
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[Chigo Nwagboso]

I enjoyed your review. It seems to be an interesting thriller books.

[houligan19]

Thank you, it was a very interesting book. I hope to get to the next soon.