Author: Freya Marske
Publisher: Tor, 2021 (Hardcover)
Length: 372 pages
Genre: Adult; Fantasy, Historical Fiction
Started: November 12, 2021
Finished: November 19, 2021
Summary:
From the inside cover:
Robin Blyth has more than enough bother in his life. He's struggling to be a good older brother, a responsible employer, and the harried baronet of a seat gutted by his late parents' excesses. When an administrative mistake sees him named the civil service liaison to a hidden magical society, he discovers what's been operating beneath the unextraordinary reality he's always known.
Now Robin must contend with the beauty and danger of of magic, an excruciating deadly curse, and the alarming visions of the future that will come with it - not to mention Edwin Courcey, his cold and prickly counterpart in the magical bureaucracy, who clearly wishes Robin were anyone and anywhere else.
Robin's predecessor has disappeared, and the mystery of what happened to him reveals unsettling truths about the very oldest stories they've been told about the land they live on and what binds it. Thrown together and facing unexpected dangers, Robin and Edwin discover a plot that threatens every magician in the British Isles - and a secret that more than one person has already died to keep.
Review:
This book has been hyped for months now as being an LGBTQ version of Downton Abbey with magic, and after reading it that's a fairly good description but doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of how amazing this book is.
Robin Blyth's family belongs to the gentry, but poor spending by his late parents have forced him into a job in the civil service to support himself and his younger sister. Robin becomes the replacement to a liaison that's gone missing, and when he discovers that magic exists and there's a ministry devoted to keeping relations between magicians and regular humans peaceful, his amazement is short lived. When he's cursed by men following the trail of his predecessor, Robin and his magician coworker, Edwin Courcey, have to uncover the mysteries behind Robin's curse and the impending doom facing them all.
First off, the characters in the book are both endearing and well-rounded. Robin is an insecure ray of sunshine, and Edwin is a weak magician who's constantly reminded of his shortcomings by his powerful family, so he has a bit of a chip on his shoulder. I appreciate how the author made Edwin a weak magician so he's forced to use his intelligence and voracious reading to compensate when he's in a bind. Both men have baggage they need to work through, in addition to the issues of being gay men in the book's Edwardian setting. Their relationship is handled well (the dialogue between them is phenomenal) and in my opinion there's nothing better than unresolved sexual tension in a library (except for maybe the sex scenes that come after that).
Though the characters and their development were by far my favourite aspect of the book, the plot wasn't too bad either and the story is engaging. The prose itself is wonderfully done, and there's quite a lot of stand-out lines throughout the book. The author even addresses the elephant in the room (aka colonialism) that's brought up whenever you set a book in historical Britain by having Indian secondary characters that aren't simply tokens.
Recommendation:
This was a beautiful read and a lovely example of LGBTQ fantasy that's actually handled well. It's the first book in a planned series, so I look forward to the subsequent books.
Thoughts on the cover:
The pattern and colour palette do a good job of echoing the time period, and Robin and Edwin in the centre is a nice touch.
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