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Jul. 4th, 2019 10:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsA 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
...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
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Date: 2019-07-05 02:40 am (UTC)Oh, my God, if he were just a little more socialist we could introduce him to Mingy.
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Date: 2019-07-05 02:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-07-05 02:46 am (UTC)I mean, I'm charmed.