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Sep. 23rd, 2011 01:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsI think it was kate_nepveu who told me about the existence of Magic Below Stairs, a kid's novel set somewhere around the middle of Stevermer-and-Wrede's epistolary-Regencies-with-magic series.
This was another one of those "MOVING IS STRESSFUL, BRING UNTO ME THE FLUFF" books for me and for that it served its purpose very well! It is a very sweet kind of book aimed squarely at ten-year-olds; it has a plucky-and-conscientious orphan boy who goes into service, and a helpful supernatural creature, and the sort of mundane magic ("and now, mysteriously, I can tie a perfect cravat every time! WHAT WITCHERY IS THIS") and mild but big-for-a-ten-year-old moral dilemmas that you would expect. There are high stakes somewhere for somebody in there but they're sort of buried in among sweet and pleasant domesticity. I've seen comparisons to Diana Wynne Jones, but even the sweetest and most pleasant DWJ books have a definite and substantive bite to them that this does not, which is not to say that Sophie Hatter and Frederick would not have anything to talk about, because they would.
Basically you will probably know very well if and when you're in the right mood for this book. And it MAY WELL BE when you're trying to shove everything you own into a box and wishing you had a helpful supernatural critter to do it for you. I'm just saying.
kate_nepveu who told me about the existence of Magic Below Stairs, a kid's novel set somewhere around the middle of Stevermer-and-Wrede's epistolary-Regencies-with-magic series. This was another one of those "MOVING IS STRESSFUL, BRING UNTO ME THE FLUFF" books for me and for that it served its purpose very well! It is a very sweet kind of book aimed squarely at ten-year-olds; it has a plucky-and-conscientious orphan boy who goes into service, and a helpful supernatural creature, and the sort of mundane magic ("and now, mysteriously, I can tie a perfect cravat every time! WHAT WITCHERY IS THIS") and mild but big-for-a-ten-year-old moral dilemmas that you would expect. There are high stakes somewhere for somebody in there but they're sort of buried in among sweet and pleasant domesticity. I've seen comparisons to Diana Wynne Jones, but even the sweetest and most pleasant DWJ books have a definite and substantive bite to them that this does not, which is not to say that Sophie Hatter and Frederick would not have anything to talk about, because they would.
Basically you will probably know very well if and when you're in the right mood for this book. And it MAY WELL BE when you're trying to shove everything you own into a box and wishing you had a helpful supernatural critter to do it for you. I'm just saying.
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Date: 2011-09-23 07:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-23 11:12 pm (UTC)