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A literary use of lavender soap
Jan. 22nd, 2015 11:02 pmI started reading Mary Robinette Kowal’s Glamourist Histories series pretty much just to get to the newest book, Valour and Vanity, which was advertised as The One Where They Get Kidnapped By Pirates. This is not entirely false advertising (or… well), but it does form the basis of my biggest critique of the book: NOT ENOUGH PIRATES. I thought it was going to be a pirates book! But I suppose that is on me.
What it is instead is a heist novel, which is pretty freakin’ awesome, and it is a heist novel that is also a Regency romance and a fantasy novel and a psychological novel about dealing with stress, poverty, and self-blame (in this case, for being the victim of a con job). It’s also a solid continuation of Jane and Vincent’s character developments as they build and maintain their life together and deal with each other’s issues, and also build their artistic partnership and invent funky new ways to work with glamour.
I have to say, Kowal has really done a great job on building the magic system for glamour in a believable, internally consistent, natural-seeming way, so that parts of the plot that hinge on glamour technique are understandable to follow and can keep good narrative tension and all that kind of stuff—there’s no bouncing the graviton particle beam reverse-the-polarity technobabble going on here. You get what’s going on and why it’s important.
I was also impressed by the practical, sensitive way in which Kowal handled Jane’s sudden change from (professional glamourist, but otherwise) useless two-bit country gentry with no housekeeping skills to someone who actually had to take care of herself. I think she did a really good job of showing how stressful being broke and feeling stuck can be, both materially and psychologically, without going the route of sensationalized “I will just lie around and be Tragically Ruined because being poor is something other people live with but I can’t possibly” bullshit that a lot of fallen-beneath-her-station stories fall into. The psychological toll it takes on Vincent and his ideas about his role as a husband (i.e., to be the “provider”) are also heartbreaking to read.
But especially as we near the end, all this thoughtful sensitive stuff about social issues gets largely displaced with HEISTY GOODNESS, although for me to say much about the heist at all would be massive spoilers, including who they are heisting and what they are heisting about. Let us just say that it is a wonderfully complex heist with much running about and setting things on fire, even if it is a little short on pirates.
What it is instead is a heist novel, which is pretty freakin’ awesome, and it is a heist novel that is also a Regency romance and a fantasy novel and a psychological novel about dealing with stress, poverty, and self-blame (in this case, for being the victim of a con job). It’s also a solid continuation of Jane and Vincent’s character developments as they build and maintain their life together and deal with each other’s issues, and also build their artistic partnership and invent funky new ways to work with glamour.
I have to say, Kowal has really done a great job on building the magic system for glamour in a believable, internally consistent, natural-seeming way, so that parts of the plot that hinge on glamour technique are understandable to follow and can keep good narrative tension and all that kind of stuff—there’s no bouncing the graviton particle beam reverse-the-polarity technobabble going on here. You get what’s going on and why it’s important.
I was also impressed by the practical, sensitive way in which Kowal handled Jane’s sudden change from (professional glamourist, but otherwise) useless two-bit country gentry with no housekeeping skills to someone who actually had to take care of herself. I think she did a really good job of showing how stressful being broke and feeling stuck can be, both materially and psychologically, without going the route of sensationalized “I will just lie around and be Tragically Ruined because being poor is something other people live with but I can’t possibly” bullshit that a lot of fallen-beneath-her-station stories fall into. The psychological toll it takes on Vincent and his ideas about his role as a husband (i.e., to be the “provider”) are also heartbreaking to read.
But especially as we near the end, all this thoughtful sensitive stuff about social issues gets largely displaced with HEISTY GOODNESS, although for me to say much about the heist at all would be massive spoilers, including who they are heisting and what they are heisting about. Let us just say that it is a wonderfully complex heist with much running about and setting things on fire, even if it is a little short on pirates.
