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Sep. 14th, 2012 11:26 amMy current light feel-good subway reading has been Y.S. Lee's The Agency trilogy -- A Spy in the House is the first one, followed by The Body at the Tower and The Traitor in the Tunnel.
I pretty much knew I was going to find these books delightful when I read the author's essay about why she decided to write about a historically implausible all-female detective agency in Victorian London: "I chose to start The Agency, my series of young adult novels, with a bright and shiny anachronism: that a young Victorian woman without money, family, or education, and with a seriously chequered past, could be more than a tragic victim."
In other words, LADIES GONNA HAVE AGENCY (lol pun intended), HATERS GONNA HATE.
So: our protagonist Mary Quinn is a former street child and a private detective! She goes undercover and pluckily fights crime, supported by her awesome lady mentors and having belligerent chemistry with her love interest, an irritable engineer who provides valuable information on things like building codes and sewers, and spends the first book valiantly trying to pretend he does not think she's the best thing since sliced bread.
The first book is probably my favorite; it has my other favorite female character in the series, and is probably the most Bechdel-y. It also has the heroine saving her love interest from a burning building. On the other hand, the third book has Queen Victoria BEING AWESOME AND KICKING ASS, which is a rare enough portrayal these days that I appreciated it for the sheer novelty!
For light wish-fulfillment detective stories, the books also do a really good job engaging with issues of gender and race and class. "People assume all the time that Victorian London was lily-white, with a clear-cut and never-changing social order," says the author, in another great post. "The reality is much more complex, as I try to show in the Agency novels" -- and without trying to spoil anything, I am going to say that I really wish I'd finished them before Kaleidoscope nominations, because they are totally eligible and now I REALLY want fic.
I pretty much knew I was going to find these books delightful when I read the author's essay about why she decided to write about a historically implausible all-female detective agency in Victorian London: "I chose to start The Agency, my series of young adult novels, with a bright and shiny anachronism: that a young Victorian woman without money, family, or education, and with a seriously chequered past, could be more than a tragic victim."
In other words, LADIES GONNA HAVE AGENCY (lol pun intended), HATERS GONNA HATE.
So: our protagonist Mary Quinn is a former street child and a private detective! She goes undercover and pluckily fights crime, supported by her awesome lady mentors and having belligerent chemistry with her love interest, an irritable engineer who provides valuable information on things like building codes and sewers, and spends the first book valiantly trying to pretend he does not think she's the best thing since sliced bread.
The first book is probably my favorite; it has my other favorite female character in the series, and is probably the most Bechdel-y. It also has the heroine saving her love interest from a burning building. On the other hand, the third book has Queen Victoria BEING AWESOME AND KICKING ASS, which is a rare enough portrayal these days that I appreciated it for the sheer novelty!
For light wish-fulfillment detective stories, the books also do a really good job engaging with issues of gender and race and class. "People assume all the time that Victorian London was lily-white, with a clear-cut and never-changing social order," says the author, in another great post. "The reality is much more complex, as I try to show in the Agency novels" -- and without trying to spoil anything, I am going to say that I really wish I'd finished them before Kaleidoscope nominations, because they are totally eligible and now I REALLY want fic.
