It’s a delightful blend of magic and manners, as well as wit
and romance. It’s the sort of book you can happily read while drinking a cup of
tea on a rainy day, letting it transport you to a world where fairies are real
(and sometimes deadly), and so is magic; where a scathing word can cut deeper
than a blade, where dances are utterly serious, and where everyone should know
their place.
Muna, the protagonist, isn’t particularly good at knowing
her place. She begins her journey on a beach, with no memory of who she is, and
with a sister. Muna is grounded, considerate, thoughtful, and unbending in the
face of adversity. You can feel her quiet strength suffusing every line she
speaks, and parse it from her quick thinking and craft in the face of danger.
By contrast, her sister is imperious, sharp, sometimes thoughtless – but also
fierce, witty, a being of air and fire . Their relationship is characterised by
their love for each other. Though they bicker, squabble and banter as much as
siblings do, there’s an undercurrent there of trust and affection, a bond which
sustains each, even as it holds them to fight for each other. This familial
bond is given a sympathetic rendering in the text, and it’s wonderfully drawn,
as the pair of bickering siblings strive toward their mutual goals.
I’d also be remiss if I didn’t mention the friendship she
has with Henrietta, one of the magieiennes
of Britain, whose family issues probably deserve a novel all of their own. The
two of them are kind to each other, supportive, fierce and endearing. The time
they spend together, through thick and thin, was an absolute delight.
Still, Muna is our viewpoint on the world, and it’s with her
we explore Regency Britain once again. Well, actually, we begin at Janda Baik, near the straits of Malacca The text brings to life the myths of the area – sometimes literally, with a
vividly realised originality. The warmth and life of the island on which Muna and
her sister find themselves has a constant dynamic thrum, and it’s brushed into
being with care and vitality. The contrast of an island where power lives
informally with its dependents, and cheek-by-jowl with its own mythology, is
contrasted cleverly with the more formal, colder, more regimented world of Regency England, where Muna finds herself after
something of a mishap while trying to trace her identity.
Identity is something of an issue here, actually. Muna is
looking for who she is, but the English are more than happy to try and craft a
role for her, layering on colonial expectations as well as gendered and social ones.
Muna I thought, was expected to be a magicienne,
of a strange (to the English), far away
tradition, and to be at once a divergence from the expected role of women and
one of its exemplars. Unsurprisingly, she doesn’t take this overly well. Still,
it means we get to see Regency society once again – the parties where people are
willing to talk about what dress someone’s wearing, the scandal of that one
fellow who is up to his ears in debt, and of course, that cousin who ran away
to join the faerie court, or, more scandalously, that daughter who now does
magic. That baroque sense of style is back, and it wraps around the text,
giving it a style and grandeur of the period. We do get to see more of the
faerie realm as well, an odd, ineffably cruel place, where nothing is quite
what you’d expect.
Muna is going into these places looking for herself. What
she finds may be something else entirely.
The plot takes a while to get rolling, but don’t let the
gentle tone of the characters disguise the scheming and steel which lies
beneath. By the mid point I was intrigued to see what happened next, and where
it was all going. By the last quarter, you would have had to pry it from my hands
to stop me getting to the end.
This is a clever, thoughtful book. It explores a lot of
interesting ideas around identity, gender, and empire. It draws and builds some
marvellous relationships, which feel vivaciously human. And it’s a book which
is hopeful, and a genuine balm for the soul. If you’re new to the series, maybe
read Sorcerer to the Crown first; but I’d say if you’ve read the first book,
you know what you’re getting into – this one is a delight, and worth your time.
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