jethrien

Title: Shades of Milk and Honey
Author: Mary Robinette Kowal
Genre: Jane Austen, if Elizabeth Bennet learned to cast illusions
Thingummies: 4

Synopsis: In Regency England, the art of casting glamours is as much a womanly accomplishment as playing the piano or painting. Jane Ellsworth is an accomplished glamourist, which is faint comfort when her exceptionally plain face leaves her a wallflower at every ball. Her sister Melody has all the beauty and none of the accomplishments. An influx of newcomers to the neighborhood--a young Navy captain, a girl with a secret, and a mysteriously brusque professional glamourist--set the girls' well-ordered world on its side. Will Jane find herself a suitor at last, or will she watch her family's very honor crumble?

Thoughts: This creampuff of a novel strives to emulate Austen's mannered romances, with one well-executed fantastic element. It succeeds at its aims admirably. The language and characters feel relatively authentic--no hopping in and out of beds like many Regency romances. It's a slight book, but a delightful one. I particularly like the fact that Jane ably stands up for and rescues herself, without behaving in an anachronistic fashion.

The magic is well-woven in, entirely relevant to the plot without upsetting the mood. (The author supplies excellent limitations for why this would be confined to the arts and not particularly useful on say, the battlefield.) While someone well versed in Austen can easily see some of the plot twists coming, there remains some suspense over who will figure out what and who ends with whom.

There are a few elements that, while they did not ruin my enjoyment of the book, I found a bit disappointing, preventing me from awarding this a 5 for succeeding at its category. Some minor spoilers below (nothing that will completely wreck the book).

Jane has some traces of Mary Sue-ishness in that she perpetually mourns the fact that her lack of beauty puts her in her sister's shade. Melody does repeatedly point out that she herself is handicapped by her lack of accomplishments, but the book kind of ignores her. The fact is that Melody is right--Jane ends up with multiple suitors while her sister does not. Nonetheless, the book treats them as if Melody is the popular one and Jane scrambles for crumbs. I feel almost as if Melody was handicapped so as to justify her getting her heart broken as being her own fault, but it seems rather unjust on the author's part. I rather wish that Melody was either a less sympathetic character or that she was treated less as an afterthought.

Also, the ending feels quite rushed, unnecessarily so. Several loose threads are tied up in less than a paragraph, and one poor character is dropped entirely. You never do find out her fate. It's a pity--I feel like one more short chapter could have brought the entire thing to a more satisfactory ending. Instead, once the A plot is resolved, nothing else turns out to have mattered much.

Despite this, I quite enjoyed the book. Extremely fast read. A perfect beach novel, really.

Ed. to fix mispelling of a character's name.