In Kowal's quasi-Regency fantasy debut, plain Miss Jane Ellsworth envies her sister's looks, while flighty Melody envies Jane's talent with magical glamour. Rude, mysterious Mr. Vincent, a brilliant glamour artist hired to create living murals in a nearby mansion, shows little interest in the niceties of society, and none (it seems) in Jane. As Jane shyly seeks Mr. Vincent's tutelage and approval, Melody pursues a disastrous romance. A sprinkling of Jane Austen's idiosyncratic spellings (shew, teaze, etc.) doesn't hide the lack of her trenchant wit or distinctive characters, and period errors abound. Despite the tremendous potential in the magical manipulation of light and temperature, glamour is used solely for decoration and entertainment, with implausibly little effect on history or culture. The story plods at a wooden pace until the climax, which achieves a sprightly comedy-of-errors froth. (Aug.)
Mary Robinette Kowal’s debut novel, the Jane Austen fantasy pastiche Shades of Milk & Honey, was published to critical acclaim (not to mention award nominations) in 2010, and since then, she has followed husband-and-wife “glamourists” Jane and Vincent through three subsequent, ever-more-daring adventures. Next month, Tor Books will publish the fifth and final volume of the series, […]
Mary Robinette Kowal’s Glamourist Histories series, five books of Regency-era alt-history in which magic is a means of artistic expression, comes to a conclusion with the suspenseful Of Noble Family. This isn’t your grandmother’s Jane Austen-era romance. Well, okay, it is. But it’s also a lot more.
My own romance reading is rather varied, but I have a weakness: magic. Psychic abilities, being able to shoot fire from one’s hands, or even just mystical elements is enough for me to give a book a double take. Magic adds an extra, fantastical element to a romance as characters need to contend with their […]
Editor’s note: Joel is reading his way through the finalists for the 2012 Nebula Award for best sci-fi/fantasy novel. Read his introduction here. Look, I love Jane Austen books as much as the next guy (provided the next guy’s love of Jane Austen books is limited to reading her shortest book and watching at least […]