(no subject)

[skygiants]

To continue the trend of catch-up reviewing fluff I've read over the past month, the Cecelia and Kate novels recently came out in super-cheap omnibus edition, so I spent my work trip back in September rereading them for the first time in about 12 years.

For those unfamiliar, Sorcery and Cecelia: or, the Enchanted Chocolate Pot is basically the ur-example of the Regency fantasy genre recently taken up by such folks as Mary Robinette Kowal and Galen Beckett. It's an epistolary novel co-written by Patricia Wrede and Caroline Stevermer, featuring two sprightly young Regency cousins, one of whom (Kate) goes to London to have her Season with a melodramatic magician, while the other (Cecelia) stays home, starts picking up magic, and bickers with a cranky local squire. Kate and Cecelia write each other copious letters to complain about their respective love interests, gossip about their aunts and siblings, and exchange information regarding important magical conspiracies and also about important new dress patterns, and it's all incredibly charming.

Subsequently Wrede and Stevermer wrote two sequels, The Grand Tour and The Mislaid Magician, or: Ten Years After, which are still enjoyable but do not have the same spark. The Grand Tour is written as a combination of diary (Kate) and court deposition (Cecelia) about events that occurred on their honeymoon trip, which means, first of all, that the book feels sort of unbalanced, because Kate is going on and on in her diary about her magical new nights with her new husband while Cecelia is like OK PALS HERE'S THE FACTS; but also, second of all, neither format really works as well as epistolary for conveying either the voices of the characters or the dynamic between the cousins. Like, they spend all book in the same place, but they don't actually spend much time talking to each other. Which is sort of frustrating!

The Mislaid Magician is better, because it's back to epistolary, but it also incorporates letters from the respective husbands (James and Thomas) along with the ones between Kate and Cecelia, and -- well. Hmmm. You know, I used to like James and Thomas a lot? And it's not that I dislike them now, but all the things they sort of take for granted as Regency dudes grates on me much more now than it did when I was 18. They're not awful! They're perfectly fine! But Sorcery and Cecelia, both Kate and Cecelia spend a great deal of time challenging and deflating the assumptions and self-importance of their love interests, and once they're married -- especially with Thomas and Kate, of whose married relationship we see a great deal more -- it settles into much more of a Regency household status quo. Like, there's a sort of layer of paternalism, an assumption of the husband's rights to Forbid Things and Act Protectively that is of course thoroughly plausible, and it's probably likewise plausible that it wouldn't bother Kate. But it bothers me, a little, though not enough to ruin the books.

Comments

[sophia_sol]

When I first read these books I actually read The Grand Tour first without realising it was a sequel to anything, so it's what introduced me to the world and the characters and so I adore it just as much as the first book! So it's weird to me to hear anyone describe it as the last favourite of the three. Though I will agree that the deposition especially is not quite the right venue for telling the story

(Years later when the third book came out I found it disappointing and I don't remember why, though it may well be because of the stuff you talk about.)

[skygiants]

I sort of wish I'd read The Grand Tour first, honestly! I think I would like it better in its own right if I had, instead of expecting more just like the first one. I'm glad you love it as much!

[sovay]

For those unfamiliar, Sorcery and Cecelia: or, the Enchanted Chocolate Pot is basically the ur-example of the Regency fantasy genre recently taken up by such folks as Mary Robinette Kowal and Galen Beckett.

How do you feel about Wrede's Mairelon the Magician (1991) and Magician's Ward (1997)?

[skygiants]

Well, I last read them in 2008. My 2008 notes on Mairelon the Magician read: "Presumably this takes place in the same world as the Kate and Cecelia books? I do like those a little better - Kate and Cecelia both have stronger voices than Kim does, fun as she is - but this book has some lovely slapstick moments that I'd forgotten."

Though I always feel like I should like the Mairelon books best, given crossdressing tropes!

[sovay]

Presumably this takes place in the same world as the Kate and Cecelia books?

I'm pretty sure it does.

Though I always feel like I should like the Mairelon books best, given crossdressing tropes!

I haven't read either of them in a while (and they are still in boxes with most of my fiction), but I remember really liking Mairelon the Magician and not much liking Magician's Ward except for the romance, which is not usually the way that goes.

[thistleingrey]

It feels to me like a slight AU. *shrugs*

I liked Mairelon, though not as much as I loved Kate unabashedly in S&C. That was in 1991 or '92--I almost feel justified in resenting Ward for not living up to my expectations by the time it rolled around. Almost. Of course it is always up to the author, in the beginning.

S&C was also a milestone of sorts, in retrospect, because I'd read Wrede plentifully and no Stevermer before 1991, and after it (Ward and collabs aside) I read Stevermer and no longer Wrede.

[sovay]

S&C was also a milestone of sorts, in retrospect, because I'd read Wrede plentifully and no Stevermer before 1991, and after it (Ward and collabs aside) I read Stevermer and no longer Wrede.

I bounced almost completely off Sorcery and Cecelia when I read it—shortly after reading Mairelon the Magician—and never followed Stevermer despite multiple recommendations. I wonder what happened.

[thistleingrey]

I think I would now find A College of Magics a bit sweet, and it's of its time in turning upon ballad tags (not as deftly as DWJ, whom I hadn't really read at the time...). Scholar feels comfortable in memory, however, FWIW, and I ate up When the King Comes Home, which is set in the same world as the other two, albeit earlier. Even King was too early for me to have blogged it; I made an LJ account in 2003.

I'm not sure I'd rec them specifically to you specifically, if that makes sense, but I like them.

[sovay]

I'm not sure I'd rec them specifically to you specifically, if that makes sense, but I like them.

That makes perfect sense. I'm glad you like them!

[skygiants]

For the record, my guess would be that you would like them, or at least find them interesting -- they're both weird enough, and play enough with expected tropes (especially Scholar, which essentially drops a character from a Western in the middle of a fantasy of manners and expects him to cope) that I think you would enjoy turning them over, if you ever had an urge that way. But you might equally bounce off!

[skygiants]

I am deeply fond of both A College and Scholar, although I think both of them are very -- technically weird books? Like, College is basically just two books in one, one of which is a sweet girl's-college school story and the other of which is a surprisingly dark Ruritanian political adventure and the two are NOT THE SAME BOOK. And then the character arcs in Scholar are fascinating and unusual but the plot when unraveled makes no sense whatsoever. Why is there a super-weapon being developed around the plot of Comus? I MEAN WHY NOT I GUESS.

[thistleingrey]

Those are definitely important aspects to call out! I had actually forgotten about the super-weapon....

[kate_nepveu]

I would really like to know what you think of _When the King Comes Home_. It's short! But out of print.

[landofnowhere]

The Cambridge public library has a copy! (sovay, I'm under the impression from your journal that you are also in the general Camberville area?)

I wasn't quite sure what to make of it, but concur that sovay would have interesting things to say about it.

[skygiants]

This fact is interesting to me as well!

[landofnowhere]

(I suspected it might be...)

Back to the original topic, your post is making me want to reread Sorcery and Cecelia which I don't think I've read in more than 12 years... (I forget which if any of the sequels I read; I have no real memory of them.)

[aamcnamara]

...also I own a copy of When The King Comes Home and could lend it.

I perpetually forget what happens in WTKCH and have to reread it to remember. It's a strange book and it never sticks in my head, but I always find reading it to be a pleasant experience.

[melita66]

This. An AU is certainly possible. The magic systems don't seem to be the same. I don't remember any requirement to use a foreign language for the spells.

I highly recommend Stevermer's A College of Magics and Scholar of Magics. The first has an...interesting ending. Scholar has a raft of charming characters.

River Rats is also very good, but deuced hard to find.

I think I read Magician's Ward first of all these after having previously read some of Wrede's earlier fantasies. I found MW a near-perfect little romance that really hit my sweet spot at the time.

[thistleingrey]

Right--and the physical-artifact work that a secondary character does in S&C (name = spoilery) doesn't have a parallel that I recall in Mairelon, either.

[skygiants]

I barely remember anything about Magician's Ward except for the romance, which I liked at the time, although I wonder how I would feel rereading it now.

[pedanther]

In case you didn't know, Caroline Stevermer has also written a book for younger readers called Magic Below Stairs which is set in the servants' quarters of Kate and Thomas's household.

[bookblather]

...well, I didn't know this and now I need it. Off to the library!

[skygiants]

I read it several years ago but had forgotten everything about it until I went back to remind myself just now. I forgot it was set in Kate and Thomas' household, though!

[wakuchan]

I have an original '88 edition of Sorcery and Cecelia that I picked up used somewhere, I keep meaning to compare it to the reprint to see if they changed anything. Maybe the time gap between the first book and the second two is part of why they feel so different? (I never actually read the second two somehow, I guess those are going on my TBR list as well)

[skygiants]

Yeah, I wonder if that's part of it, and I also wonder if it has to do with the fact that the first was written as a game without planning for publication and the later ones were -- there's something about the way that the first one really does feel like an exchange of letters, with plenty of inconsequentials scattered cheerfully among the plot.

[coffeeandink]

I also reread these recently. I took great comfort in the amount of doting Thomas does on Kate in The Grand Tour, but otherwise found it the weakest of the three. I think I felt that Kate and Cecy pushed back more at their cousins' husbands trying to be paternalistic than you did, but it was very clear that Thomas and James had managed to get that their own spouses were adult humans, but had not generalized to other women.

I used to view Aunt Charlotte as strict and repressive and now see her as actively emotionally abusive, but I'm not sure the authors' views changed with mine.

Which is a lot of criticism for a reliable comfort read that brought me great comfort! BFF cousins!! Also I wish I had Kate's hairpins spell.

[skygiants]

Ha, the doting was nice, but I think also played a role in some of what grated on me a bit towards the end -- though I don't think it would have, if we'd seen more of the comparable development of James and Cecy's romantic life, which is something that gets lost in the deposition format and that I found I missed. I suspect their romance is a bit less doting and that the balance would have made me appreciate both versions of romantic Regency life more.

I never know quite what to make of Aunt Charlotte! I'm not sure the authors do, either. I did actually really like the bit in The Grand Tour when it turns out Aunt Charlotte sent Kate a beautiful and useful magical present that's exactly to her taste, and Kate assumes it came from Thomas' mother because she likes Thomas' mother, and the present ends up saving the day and then Aunt Charlotte gets huffy that she didn't receive a thank-you note, because I have an aunt who behaves exactly like this and she does send very useful presents and I never know how to feel about it.