I knew Jeannette Ng's
Under the Pendulum Sun leaned hard into creepy Victorian fae tropes, so I was pretty much expecting something in the same general wheelhouse as
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell and
Sorcerer to the Crown.Instead I got the Venn diagram between Jane Eyre and the works of Kaori Yuki, with the wackiness ramped way down and the Victorian theology ramped way, way up. A different experience!
The protagonist, Cathy Helstone, has traveled to the outskirts of Arcadia (fairyland) to find her brother Laon, a missionary who for the past several years has been failing dramatically to keep up with his correspondence while attempting to convert fairies to Christianity.
The mission so far has one (1) convert, Mr. Benjamin the gardener, but honestly that's better than
I would expect of such an obviously doomed enterprise, so ... good job!
Unfortunately, Laon is away on some sort of ambiguous mission business when Cathy arrives, so her only company is Mr. Benjamin and Ariel Davenport, an incredibly tryhard polite and awkward changeling who's temporarily acting as her guide and household companion. Ariel Davenport, for the record, is my favorite character in the book.
However, Cathy does not really appreciate the company of either Mr. Benjamin or Ariel Davenport -- mostly she just finds Mr. Benjamin's constant theological questions stressful and Ariel's desperate attempts at uninformative politeness frustrating, although
I find them both deeply charming -- so instead she turns to the project of trying to translate the journals of Laon's predecessor, a missionary who died under mysterious circumstances. Also, there are strange mysteries and forbidden locations in the house! And possibly the presence of a mysterious screaming woman? MAYBE IN THE ATTIC??
Things go on like this for a bit until Laon finally shows up in a pitch-perfect recreation of the Jane-Rochester scene from
Jane Eyre ... and that should tell you all that you need to know about the relationship between Cathy and Laon, whose hobbies, once reunited, include "reminiscing fondly about their close and very normal childhood" and "staring longingly at each other while thinking about how the other's face looks like theirs, only sexier."
( Spoilers get more Gothic from there )At the end of the day, my feelings were pretty mixed; I honestly enjoyed the book's exploration of religious faith and thorough dive into weird literalized Victorian theology, and I respected its commitment to the Gothic, but I often found Cathy herself a fairly frustrating protagonist. Justice for Ariel Davenport!
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