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Sarah Monette, Mélusine and The Virtu: I really enjoyed these fantasy books (a third is soon to be published), but I’m afraid I’m going to do a bad job explaining why. Plot basics: Felix Harrowgate is a wizard with a shameful past, which his former mentor/lover exploits to destroy him and to use him to destroy the Virtu, the magical core of the city to which Felix has pledged his loyalty, in the process sending Felix mad. Felix loses his favored position, his powerful lover, and his dignity along with his mind. Mildmay the Fox is a thief living in the lower city, which is almost a different world, though not quite – it’s thrown into upheaval by the destruction Felix wrought. Felix and Mildmay, whose first-person narratives alternate through both books, are connected in a surprising way, and end up uniting to try to restore Felix’s mind and, ultimately, the Virtu itself.
I usually don’t pay much attention to worldbuilding, but this was very well done. I especially liked the way that Monette used language to signal geographic and social differences – Mélusine’s nobles had French names, and other groups sounded Greek etc., but these functioned as indicators of group membership rather than exact analogues. Likewise, I understood Mildmay’s “ain’ts” etc. to signal that he was speaking a particular low-class dialect of whatever his actual language was. Giving the reader the sense that the language is something other than English is not easy, but Monette made it all but transparent.
Other things to like: Felix has been royally screwed over, but he’s a total jerk, arrogant and enamored of his ability to hurt other people, and being crazy doesn’t fix that. Even when he acknowledges that these aspects of his character are bad, he has trouble changing them. He felt like a real person, occasionally trying very hard to be a better person and occasionally not trying so hard. Mildmay goes a little overboard on the low self-esteem, and his ways of showing love are sometimes painful for the loved one, but Monette makes him so loyal and well-meaning that he’s irresistable. Did I mention that Felix is gay and gorgeous, while Mildmay is not, and Mildmay is in fact convinced he’s unloveable in part because of a disfiguring scar?
The Virtu ends at a natural stopping point, but there are still unanswered questions, particularly about Felix and Mildmay’s past/s, so I’m very glad that I will soon get to read the next volume.
I usually don’t pay much attention to worldbuilding, but this was very well done. I especially liked the way that Monette used language to signal geographic and social differences – Mélusine’s nobles had French names, and other groups sounded Greek etc., but these functioned as indicators of group membership rather than exact analogues. Likewise, I understood Mildmay’s “ain’ts” etc. to signal that he was speaking a particular low-class dialect of whatever his actual language was. Giving the reader the sense that the language is something other than English is not easy, but Monette made it all but transparent.
Other things to like: Felix has been royally screwed over, but he’s a total jerk, arrogant and enamored of his ability to hurt other people, and being crazy doesn’t fix that. Even when he acknowledges that these aspects of his character are bad, he has trouble changing them. He felt like a real person, occasionally trying very hard to be a better person and occasionally not trying so hard. Mildmay goes a little overboard on the low self-esteem, and his ways of showing love are sometimes painful for the loved one, but Monette makes him so loyal and well-meaning that he’s irresistable. Did I mention that Felix is gay and gorgeous, while Mildmay is not, and Mildmay is in fact convinced he’s unloveable in part because of a disfiguring scar?
The Virtu ends at a natural stopping point, but there are still unanswered questions, particularly about Felix and Mildmay’s past/s, so I’m very glad that I will soon get to read the next volume.
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