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Nov. 1st, 2021 09:17 pmI have absolutely no objectivity about Freya Marske's A Marvellous Light, which I first read a draft of in 2018 and which comes out in the US tomorrow (! !! !!!!); that said, in my undeniably biased but extremely confident opinion, it's an absolute delight and of all the books I've read in its particular rising genre of 'fantasy novels unabashedly structured around the queer romances at the center of them' it is my very favorite (except, perhaps, for its forthcoming sequel.)
A Marvellous Light is the first in a trilogy set in an Edwardian England where some people -- mostly members of a very limited set of families -- are secretly born with magic, and won my simple sidekick-loving heart straightaway by the fact that one of the protagonists has zero magic and the other one has very little of it. Edwin Courcey is the least powerful member of his prominent magical family, an unhappy intellectual with a great research interest in magic and a frustratingly limited ability to test his own theories and hypotheses; meanwhile, amiable out-of-pocket jock Robin Blyth is a paperwork error who is extremely startled to learn that a.) magic is real and b.) his brand new civil service position is meant to involve liaising with Edwin to collate reports about it.
Unfortunately for Robin, his predecessor was Mixed Up In Mysterious Magical Business, which means that instead of getting shuffled back into a safely unmagical department he shortly finds himself:
1. cursed (painful)
2. reliant on Edwin to help him break the curse (socially awkward)
3. stuck in the middle of a boisterous and also potentially murderous magical house party at Edwin's family's country home (probably worse for Edwin than Robin actually despite Robin's lack of magic and ongoing general peril)
Over the course of the book, Edwin and Robin proceed to uncover a magical conspiracy, support each other through various sibling and family issues, trip and fall into various unusual magical inheritances, and, of course, fall in love! Freya is an incredibly romantic writer who's brilliant at drawing connections between outwardly-dissimilar people and showing the draw that they have for each other, but she also has unfair gifts for setting, language, and set pieces that jump back and forth on a dime between extremely tense and extremely funny. I truly hope people will end up drawing fanart for this book; I desperately want to see one hundred interpretations of the bit with the swans.
Anyway! Tomorrow! I am so excited for people to have the opportunity to read this book, and then come talk to me about it!!!
A Marvellous Light is the first in a trilogy set in an Edwardian England where some people -- mostly members of a very limited set of families -- are secretly born with magic, and won my simple sidekick-loving heart straightaway by the fact that one of the protagonists has zero magic and the other one has very little of it. Edwin Courcey is the least powerful member of his prominent magical family, an unhappy intellectual with a great research interest in magic and a frustratingly limited ability to test his own theories and hypotheses; meanwhile, amiable out-of-pocket jock Robin Blyth is a paperwork error who is extremely startled to learn that a.) magic is real and b.) his brand new civil service position is meant to involve liaising with Edwin to collate reports about it.
Unfortunately for Robin, his predecessor was Mixed Up In Mysterious Magical Business, which means that instead of getting shuffled back into a safely unmagical department he shortly finds himself:
1. cursed (painful)
2. reliant on Edwin to help him break the curse (socially awkward)
3. stuck in the middle of a boisterous and also potentially murderous magical house party at Edwin's family's country home (probably worse for Edwin than Robin actually despite Robin's lack of magic and ongoing general peril)
Over the course of the book, Edwin and Robin proceed to uncover a magical conspiracy, support each other through various sibling and family issues, trip and fall into various unusual magical inheritances, and, of course, fall in love! Freya is an incredibly romantic writer who's brilliant at drawing connections between outwardly-dissimilar people and showing the draw that they have for each other, but she also has unfair gifts for setting, language, and set pieces that jump back and forth on a dime between extremely tense and extremely funny. I truly hope people will end up drawing fanart for this book; I desperately want to see one hundred interpretations of the bit with the swans.
Anyway! Tomorrow! I am so excited for people to have the opportunity to read this book, and then come talk to me about it!!!
