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Title: The Magicians and Mrs. Quent
Author: Galen Beckett
Genre: Austen/Bronte pastiche, with magic
Thingummies: 3
Synopsis: The eldest child of a magician who has lost his mind, Ivy Lockwell has enough of a struggle paying the bills and figuring out a future for herself and her sisters. But when Ivy takes a job as a governess, she discovers that her family is tied in to a struggle amongst magicians, highwaymen, and traitors to the crown. Can she unravel the puzzle her mad father left her in time to save the country and possibly even the world?
Thoughts: Galen Beckett writes that he wrote this book to answer the question "What if there was a fantastical cause underlying the social constraints and limited choices confronting a heroine in a novel by Jane Austen or Charlotte Bronte?" Unfortunately, in the last year alone, Shades of Milk and Honey and Soulless both answered this question far, far better than Beckett manages. For that matter, Tooth and Claw also did this with significantly more creativity a few years ago.
On the plus side--there's some interesting world-building here. Unlike the other two recent Austen/fantasy pastiches, this is not actually set in parallel-England, but a pseudo-England with some rather different history and physics, including days that vary drastically in length from one day to the next. (This makes for some intriguing questions that are never actually answered, such as how this affects things like crops and livestock.) The main characters are quite engaging, although I'm not sure whether Eldyn is supposed to be as unsympathetic as he becomes. The plot arc mostly works, the prose is quite good, and things are set up well for a sequel.
The tone and diction and viewpoint, though, are extremely problematic. It's purposeful, not accidental, but I do not think I agree with the decision. Essentially, the first third of the book is fantasy-Austen, a romantic comedy of manners, with dinner parties, young ladies taking ill for no well-explained reason, match-making, propriety, and a host of amusing minor characters. It's told in third person, skipping between three viewpoints with the swap at each chapter break. The second section abruptly becomes fantasy-Bronte, a dark Gothic romantic mystery, with sickly children, a forboding housekeeper, a brooding master, locked doors, ghosts on the moor, and a host of suspicious and superstitious townspeople. It's told in first person. The third section switches back to third person and multiple viewpoints, and has the tone of a modern fantasy novel set in the Regency. What? What the hell? It's like he couldn't make up his mind what kind of book he wanted to write, and so just wrote all of them in turn with one plot.
SPOILERS! (minor)
So with the schizophrenic tone shifts, the ostensibly main character also rather changes personality. After all, we have her in tight-third-person Elizabeth Bennet mode and then suddenly she's freaking first person Jane Eyre. She's got one love interest in her Elizabeth phase that she totally drops when she goes Jane for no real good reason except that's what a good little governess does. Seriously, you will never convince me that the sensible Ivy of the first section would allow herself to be swept off her feet by a grumpy, lying, manipulative would-be Rochester/Heathcliff. Also, there's no way she would allow for the two kids, whom she's supposed to have grown close to, to be bundled off never to be seen again like the convenient plot device they were.
Also infuriating is the ending. There's two plot lines, the magic plotline with Ivy and her father and the treason plotline with Eldyn, with Rafferdy as the hinge between them. Ivy's plotline gets wrapped up relatively cleanly. Eldyn, however, gets as much page-time as Rafferdy and as much as Ivy in the first and third sections. However, even though his resolution involves soul-searching, a dangerous decision, the threat of not being believed, Rafferdy personally being involved, and a pitched battle, the entire thing happens off-screen and is summarized in one paragraph. I guess Beckett finished with Ivy and ran out of time or interest and decided to skip the entire plotline that he'd spent at least 100 pages building towards. Complete fizzle.
Oh, and the fact you aren't even introduced to Mr. Quent until almost halfway through the book and Mrs. Quent until some time after makes this title particularly baffling.
Circling back to the initial stated purpose of the book, Beckett completely fails. In Tooth and Claw Regency/Victorian manners are explained by the fact that the characters are all dragons, primogeniture determines the right to consume your father's carcass to grow significantly bigger (and so being disinherited is hazardous to your health) and if a female dragon gets too close to an unrelated male, she permanently blushes from shame/arousal (explaining the importance of chaperones). Soulless explains how England took over so much of the world because they embraced their vampires and werewolves instead of fighting them; vampiric support of the arts and werewolf officers in the military explain many of the cultural oddities. Shades of Milk and Honey integrates magic plausibly into society as one of a young lady's accomplishments, much like painting. The Magicians and Mrs. Quent, regrettably, takes two rather different novels, shoehorns them awkwardly next to each other, and kind of throws in some magic at the end.
For all my complaints, I did enjoy reading this. It hums along at a steady pace, and you do care about the characters (even if the Ivy in the second section seems to be a totally different person than the one in the first half). But it's rather deeply flawed, I'm afraid. Not enough to avoid if you like such things--it's still entertaining--but I'd read Soulless first.
Author: Galen Beckett
Genre: Austen/Bronte pastiche, with magic
Thingummies: 3
Synopsis: The eldest child of a magician who has lost his mind, Ivy Lockwell has enough of a struggle paying the bills and figuring out a future for herself and her sisters. But when Ivy takes a job as a governess, she discovers that her family is tied in to a struggle amongst magicians, highwaymen, and traitors to the crown. Can she unravel the puzzle her mad father left her in time to save the country and possibly even the world?
Thoughts: Galen Beckett writes that he wrote this book to answer the question "What if there was a fantastical cause underlying the social constraints and limited choices confronting a heroine in a novel by Jane Austen or Charlotte Bronte?" Unfortunately, in the last year alone, Shades of Milk and Honey and Soulless both answered this question far, far better than Beckett manages. For that matter, Tooth and Claw also did this with significantly more creativity a few years ago.
On the plus side--there's some interesting world-building here. Unlike the other two recent Austen/fantasy pastiches, this is not actually set in parallel-England, but a pseudo-England with some rather different history and physics, including days that vary drastically in length from one day to the next. (This makes for some intriguing questions that are never actually answered, such as how this affects things like crops and livestock.) The main characters are quite engaging, although I'm not sure whether Eldyn is supposed to be as unsympathetic as he becomes. The plot arc mostly works, the prose is quite good, and things are set up well for a sequel.
The tone and diction and viewpoint, though, are extremely problematic. It's purposeful, not accidental, but I do not think I agree with the decision. Essentially, the first third of the book is fantasy-Austen, a romantic comedy of manners, with dinner parties, young ladies taking ill for no well-explained reason, match-making, propriety, and a host of amusing minor characters. It's told in third person, skipping between three viewpoints with the swap at each chapter break. The second section abruptly becomes fantasy-Bronte, a dark Gothic romantic mystery, with sickly children, a forboding housekeeper, a brooding master, locked doors, ghosts on the moor, and a host of suspicious and superstitious townspeople. It's told in first person. The third section switches back to third person and multiple viewpoints, and has the tone of a modern fantasy novel set in the Regency. What? What the hell? It's like he couldn't make up his mind what kind of book he wanted to write, and so just wrote all of them in turn with one plot.
SPOILERS! (minor)
So with the schizophrenic tone shifts, the ostensibly main character also rather changes personality. After all, we have her in tight-third-person Elizabeth Bennet mode and then suddenly she's freaking first person Jane Eyre. She's got one love interest in her Elizabeth phase that she totally drops when she goes Jane for no real good reason except that's what a good little governess does. Seriously, you will never convince me that the sensible Ivy of the first section would allow herself to be swept off her feet by a grumpy, lying, manipulative would-be Rochester/Heathcliff. Also, there's no way she would allow for the two kids, whom she's supposed to have grown close to, to be bundled off never to be seen again like the convenient plot device they were.
Also infuriating is the ending. There's two plot lines, the magic plotline with Ivy and her father and the treason plotline with Eldyn, with Rafferdy as the hinge between them. Ivy's plotline gets wrapped up relatively cleanly. Eldyn, however, gets as much page-time as Rafferdy and as much as Ivy in the first and third sections. However, even though his resolution involves soul-searching, a dangerous decision, the threat of not being believed, Rafferdy personally being involved, and a pitched battle, the entire thing happens off-screen and is summarized in one paragraph. I guess Beckett finished with Ivy and ran out of time or interest and decided to skip the entire plotline that he'd spent at least 100 pages building towards. Complete fizzle.
Oh, and the fact you aren't even introduced to Mr. Quent until almost halfway through the book and Mrs. Quent until some time after makes this title particularly baffling.
Circling back to the initial stated purpose of the book, Beckett completely fails. In Tooth and Claw Regency/Victorian manners are explained by the fact that the characters are all dragons, primogeniture determines the right to consume your father's carcass to grow significantly bigger (and so being disinherited is hazardous to your health) and if a female dragon gets too close to an unrelated male, she permanently blushes from shame/arousal (explaining the importance of chaperones). Soulless explains how England took over so much of the world because they embraced their vampires and werewolves instead of fighting them; vampiric support of the arts and werewolf officers in the military explain many of the cultural oddities. Shades of Milk and Honey integrates magic plausibly into society as one of a young lady's accomplishments, much like painting. The Magicians and Mrs. Quent, regrettably, takes two rather different novels, shoehorns them awkwardly next to each other, and kind of throws in some magic at the end.
For all my complaints, I did enjoy reading this. It hums along at a steady pace, and you do care about the characters (even if the Ivy in the second section seems to be a totally different person than the one in the first half). But it's rather deeply flawed, I'm afraid. Not enough to avoid if you like such things--it's still entertaining--but I'd read Soulless first.
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no subject
Date: 2011-03-14 02:22 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2011-03-14 02:44 pm (UTC)From:I did enjoy reading the book, but it's deeply flawed, I'm afraid. Not sure if I will bother with the sequel.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-14 02:59 pm (UTC)From: