I would estimate that the ideal reader age is between thirteen and sixteen, for both a male and a female audience. The style is both descriptive and interesting, with emotions and decisions playing an important rôle.

I thought that A Gathering Light was a bit slow, with perhaps not enough action and too much description. The blurb on the back cover of the book is, in my opinion, misleading, as the book is not really about a murder mystery. I found the end a bit of an anticlimax, considering what had happened in the previous chapters, but I still enjoyed reading it. One of the things which I really enjoyed about the book was learning more about the characters, who were so much more than two-dimensional names. The stoical yet feisty Miss Wilcox, the resentful yet affectionate Royal Loomis and the slightly disturbing Man at Table Six all gave the book a sense of realism which compensated for the fact that it is set around a hundred years ago.

I think that A Gathering Light is not a book for the faint-hearted, but it does challenge some stereotypes of America at that time, and it also much more than a soap opera in the countryside. Although the quote on the front cover saying "If George Clooney had come into the room…" is a bit optimistic, I think that A Gathering Light should certainly be a serious contender for the Carnegie Medal 2004.

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