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Nov. 17th, 2016 08:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsTo 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.
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.
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Date: 2016-11-19 05:22 am (UTC)That makes perfect sense. I'm glad you like them!
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Date: 2016-11-19 04:12 pm (UTC)