skygiants | (no subject)

A Twitter friend of mine was posting the other day about the Mirror Visitor, a French-language fantasy novel series by Christelle Dabos, and it sounded interesting enough that I put the first book on reserve at the library. It came in for me yesterday!

...now, twenty-four hours later, I have zoomed through both the first and second books (A Winter's Promise and The Missing of Clairdelune) and am furiously kicking myself for not waiting, like a sensible person, until all four were actually available in English. The fourth book isn't even published in French until November! The third English book isn't coming out until NEXT MAY. What a rookie mistake!

The books are set in a post-some-kind-of-apocalypse world that's broken into a series of independent floating islands, each populated by the descendants of powerful family spirits who possess Unusual Magic Powers like illusion magic, or teleportation, or being a weird family hive mind. Our Heroine Ophelia comes from Anima, which has a vaguely Victorian vibe, and her particular hereditary talent of being able to read the history of an object through the memories of people who have previously handled it comes in useful in her job at the local museum.

Alas! the vaguely Victorian vibe extends to arranged marriages, so very soon after the book begins a very reluctant Ophelia is shipped off to the North Pole floating island for an Unusually Terrible Arranged Marriage, with only a grumpy and respectable aunt for company. Soon: murders! mysteries! culture clash! complicated court politics!

The overall vibe of the books overall is like -- ok, it's a bit like Frances Hardinge's wacky worldbuilding stuffed with morally ambiguous adults who are usually both better and worse than they seem at first glance got overlaid with Naomi Novik's taste in het romance tropes. Which, as you know, can often be a miss for me, but despite myself I actually became really fond of Terrible Arranged Marriage Romantic Lead Thorn, the dour and unpopular COURT ACCOUNTANT with negative thirty charisma but an overwhelming sense of duty! who under his rude and forbidding exterior turns out to be driven by a passionate belief in humanity's right to have free will and a deep desire to personally punch God in the face!

... yes it is a little like someone stuck Sir Kay into a YA fantasy novel, and, you know what, I'm OK with it. I also enjoyed the fact that rather than being oblivious to his feelings, Ophelia correctly clocks that he's started stoically pining after her like two-thirds of the way through book one and her reaction is a hilarious YIKES. She was pinning all her hopes for the future on a marriage of mutual respectful detestation! She didn't ask for this!

Ophelia herself is a very enjoyable heroine, firmly in the common-to-YA mousy-awkward-and-clumsy mode but with a stronger than usual sense of pragmatism and, more importantly, a deeply endearing set of Serious Professional Ethics. She spends most of the first book just trying to gain enough independent footing to maneuver on, but by the second (which is stronger overall) she's become an extremely active player.

Other important characters include:

- Farouk, the family spirit of the North Pole; absent-minded, obsessed, capricious, occasionally terrifying
- Rosalind, the aforementioned stuffy and respectable aunt, a paper restoration specialist who is not particularly good at creative thinking or navigating court politics but surprisingly good, it turns out, at being a supportive ally to her niece
- Thorn's aunt Berenilde, a court lady with a complicated position whose relationship with Ophelia shifts between abusive, manipulative, genuinely supportive, and genuinely in need of support, depending on context
- the Knight, an extremely creepy ten-year-old; think Tsuwabuki from Utena with very unfortunate superpowers
- Archibald, the court ambassador; flamboyant, self-interested, ostentatiously honest; trying his best to become Ophelia's secondary love interest but unfortunately for him Ophelia has no open positions
- Fox, a savvy servant who's willing to offer a decent amount of help for only very reasonable compensation
- Gail, a Judgmental But Dreamy Mechanic with Secrets
- the rest of Ophelia's large and boisterous family, who are largely conventional and often deeply annoying but also genuinely do care about her and want good things for her, even though what they want is often not actually the best thing for her, and I appreciate that Christelle Dabos understands that all of these things can be true at once
- Ophelia's ever-present and very irritable magically animated pet scarf

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

sovay

Terrible Arranged Marriage Romantic Lead Thorn, the dour and unpopular COURT ACCOUNTANT with negative thirty charisma but an overwhelming sense of duty! who under his rude and forbidding exterior turns out to be driven by a passionate belief in humanity's right to have free will and a deep desire to personally punch God in the face!

Oh, my God, if he were just a little more socialist we could introduce him to Mingy.

From:

skygiants

He's a little too lawful-aligned to be as socialist as we'd all like, but I feel like Mingy would approve of the fact that he dedicates a big chunk of the second book to a political effort to reintroduce a bunch of exiles with useful skills to the capital city because PEOPLE, WE ARE OUT OF FOOD, THIS TERRIBLE ARISTOCRACY IS NOT SELF-SUSTAINING.

From:

sovay

he dedicates a big chunk of the second book to a political effort to reintroduce a bunch of exiles with useful skills to the capital city because PEOPLE, WE ARE OUT OF FOOD, THIS TERRIBLE ARISTOCRACY IS NOT SELF-SUSTAINING.

I mean, I'm charmed.

From:

landofnowhere

I may have to try this! Especially as I'm always looking for things to practice my French on.

From:

skygiants

If you read it in French you can lap me before May! :D (I know just enough French that I could probably try and read some of the third one myself but by this point I'm accustomed enough to the translator's prose style that I'll probably wait.)

From:

landofnowhere

My library has all three in French, so I've put a hold on the first one! (The book I really want to read to practice my French is the French translation of Howl's Moving Castle, which I picked up in a Montreal library and was enjoying the start of, but for some reason it's been out of print for ages and now fairly expensive to get used.)

From:

skygiants

\o/ I hope you enjoy it! (And that you're able to fortuitously find another copy of the French Howl's Moving Castle sometime in the future!)

From:

bookblather

....I need it.

WHY DOES IT NOT COME OUT UNTIL NEXT MAY.

From:

skygiants

The fourth one doesn't even have an English release date yet! ;___;

From:

whimsyful

Oooh this looks interesting. *adds to library holds list*

Also, the base concept of floating islands + powerful families with specialized magical powers + plain heroine shipped off to an arranged marriage reminds me a lot of Curtis Craddock's An Alchemy of Masques and Mirrors.

From:

skygiants

I haven't heard of Craddock! Would you recommend?

From:

whimsyful

It's pretty good if you're in the mood for some sci-fi swashbuckling! I felt like Craddock could have examined the social implications of his worldbuilding more, but given that he was obviously going for a Three Musketeers feel it didn't bother me that much. It's also very het, but all the major relationships were familial or friendships (heroine's two most important relationships are with her adopted father in all but name and female friend, romantic sideplot only starts at the 85% mark and basically consists of him going sparkly eyes after she saves his butt).

Edited Date: 2019-07-05 06:36 pm (UTC)

From:

skygiants

Hm, OK, good to know - I will keep that in mind, thank you! :D

From:

genarti

Okay, this sounds GREAT and I want to seek it out right this instant. *____* (You had me at PRAGMATISM AND SERIOUS PROFESSIONAL ETHICS, let's be real, especially with wacky YA fantasy worldbuilding thrown into the mix.)

From:

skygiants

And here I thought I was going to have you at the grumpy and respectable aunt! (She's SO GOOD about the ethics, I kept expecting that plot was going to push her into using her object-reading powers in ways not proscribed by her professional guidelines and it never did.)

From:

genarti

THAT TOO, EXTREMELY SO; I was just already largely persuaded even before her.

From:

lacewood

This sounds great but thank you for the warning that there are still 2 books left to go. I'll definitely look forward to your update when all the books are out! *thumbs up*

From:

skygiants

look out for my post on this topic ... some years from now!!

From:

etirabys

I am extremely interested in your description of Thorn! Library hold placed. :D

From:

skygiants

God's whims interfere with the beautifully random statistical probabilities of the universe and that's unforgivable!

From:

dharmavati

Yeah, I was unexpectedly charmed by this series and wished I hadn't devoured both so quickly before the wait for the next books.

From:

skygiants

I was kind of nervous about the faint Not Like Other Girls vibes I was getting from the first chapter or so, and then her aunt arrived on the scene and I was like "oh we're gonna be fine" and indeed we were!

The only bright side is that by the time the next one comes out, it will have been long enough since I read the first two that I might be able to get double the enjoyment by rereading them first..

From:

osprey_archer

This sounds delightful. I'm not sure if I'm more into "Ophelia correctly clocks that he's started stoically pining after her like two-thirds of the way through book one and her reaction is a hilarious YIKES" or "Ophelia's ever-present and very irritable magically animated pet scarf"; they both sound amazing.

The description of the scarf in particular is giving me a bit of a Diana Wynne Jones vibe. Is that accurate?

From:

skygiants

Yeah, there's definitely something of a Diana Wynne Jones vibe -- whimsical and slightly out-of-control magic, untrustworthy adults/parents/authority figures, and Thorn in all his immense gawky awkwardness really feels like he's got some DNA from Mitt or Erskine -- although the sharp edges come in slightly different directions.

From:

troisoiseaux

I keep meaning to read this series!!! French-language YA seems like as good a way as any to keep up with my French skills now that I'm out of school, but this review piqued my interest enough that I may cheat and just read it in English if I can get my hands on a copy first...

From:

skygiants

If you read the first two in English, and like them as much as I did, that will probably be a good motivation to go on and read the third one in French and get the practice anyway! :D?