tilly_wizard's reviews
209 reviews

The real miracle is that Leigh, my nemesis since 2014, has finally (finally! after 10 years!) written a book with a decent ending.

Absolutely everything else about it is thoroughly average (the plot, which is awfully paced and irritatingly YA-adjacent owing to the wholly unnecessary magic tournament; the lack of deep exploration and development of the characters, none of whom have what I would consider “authentic” or believable perspectives for their historical context; the prose, which is decent but not brilliant, etc etc), but my expectations were in the pits of hell, so I’m willing to forgive all that and I’m still feeling generous towards it. All’s well that ends well, as they say.

I expected another Darklina redux, this time with a superficial 16th century Spanish veneer, and that is pretty much exactly what I got, with one important difference(!).

Even more so than in Ninth House, quite a few of Darklina's greatest hits are remixed in this book. Observe: 

The Familiar: 

Rule of Wolves: 

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The Familiar: 

Shadow and Bone:

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The Familiar: 

Shadow and Bone: 

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The Familiar: 

Shadow and Bone:

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The dual imagery in this one is a bit disorderly and not as effective, because it's impossible to beat the sun and the moon, the light and the darkness. Santangel's symbol is the scorpion (self-explanatory; unfortunately he can't transform into a giant scorpion, or a swarm of scorpions, or anything fun like that); more broadly, venomous insects symbolise greed or profane magic (Luzia's attempts to multiply
gold and jewels spontaneously generate spiders); Luzia's symbols are oranges and orange blossoms (which do put one in mind of the sun, and are generally symbolic of good fortune, happiness, prosperity, and so on),  and pomegranates (and of course Leigh must take a whole paragraph to assure us that she knows that pomegranates have many symbolic meanings outside of Greek mythology). Because I've spent too long haunting Leigh's walls and I'm too aware of her influences, the use of the orange trees to symbolise Luzia's Spanish origin did put me in mind of GRRM's persistent association of Daenerys with the lemon tree, but I expect that's just a nice coincidence.

My emphasis on Leigh's repetitiveness is by no means a disparagement. The assortment of dubiously accurate 20th century psychoanalytical/anthropological theories from which TGT was ultimately derived (the Death and the Maiden folktale archetype, Estes' Underground Forest, Graves' White Goddess theory, etc), by way of pastiche of teenaged-Leigh's favourite Mean Wizard Stories of the mid-80s-90s and a handful of other genre classics, are eternal winners that have loomed large in the landscape of modern fantasy on and off since the 1970s, and I will never, ever tire of these types of stories.

Since Leigh is a known fan of Anne Rice and we are having a minor Ricean resurgence owing to the AMC series (and, I suspect, in retaliation to the Twilight Renaissance, because quite a few of those killjoys who insisted that Twilight was The End of Feminism and the Death of Literature the first time around have become authors in the past few years), I was anticipating this as a posthumous Rice tribute. There are some passing similarities to Rice's early works (Santangel being the immortal guardian of a family line is the obvious point of comparison, although nothing in this book is anywhere near as gruesome as the events of The Mayfair Witches, and there is also a middle-aged woman trapped in the body of a young girl), but this feels like a TGT historical AU more than anything else, even moreso than Ninth House felt like a Dark Academia AU. The research bibliography at the end seems outsized considering that the level of detail given to the milieu isn't anything you couldn't learn from reading a few Wikipedia pages, but honestly that's fine; after the treatment of Russian history and language in TGT, anyone who comes into a Bardugo novel expecting deep historical authenticity is kidding themselves. In any case, the book is too short with too many characters taking up space to allow for a thorough exploration of the setting.

Once again, an impoverished girl of persecuted racial background is supervised in the use of her uniquely special magical powers by a sinister but sexy immortal man, who is secretly planning to exploit her powers in order to free himself from the cruelty of the bloodline he is bound to serve; the heroine's magic and inner light begins to restore his humanity and he develops tender feelings for her. Unfortunately for him, the embittered women in the heroine's entourage attempt to sabotage the burgeoning romance by urging the heroine to beware of his dangerous allure and to run away, but fortunately for us all, this time the heroine has a spine and a decent amount of faith in her own abilities, so she decides to give him the benefit of the doubt and sticks by him, sparing both of them (and all of us readers) an eternity of misery.

In fact, this book constantly positions itself as being aggressively in opposition to TGT, often directly recreating the same scenarios and then overturning them. Luzia's defining character trait is that she is hungry for power, love and a comfortable life, and she is allowed to have all of these things! And to keep them at the end! Although this particular immortal sad man is quite a bit less sympathetic than dear old Darkles (rather than being a member of the oppressed minority who was born with the curse of immortality and has dedicated his life to fighting a centuries-long battle for the freedom of his people, Santangel was born into some kind of aristocracy - the time period and political geography of this backstory is very vague - and sold his soul for an eternal life of hedonism, with no greater purpose), for some reason

he is allowed to have the happily ever after ending that the Darkling was denied.

He's just not as much fun though, not as intense - the fact that the Darkling, upon first encountering Alina, stabs her in the arm with a dagger, and then in the next book threatens to skin her alive, is just very special to me, ok? - now that "dark" love interests are the common thing, and this book is in the Adult demographic, I was hoping for more dastardly behaviour, but as far as morally grey tortured immortals go, Santangel is disappointingly milquetoast.

Leigh isn't very active online these days but I hope someone puts the question to her, in an interview or something - Is this a tacit acknowledgement that she has listened to and learned from the 10 years worth of backlash against the disempowering and just plain depressing ending of TGT? Now that enemies-to-lovers, immortal romance and "dark" romance are hugely popular and widely accepted tropes, has she finally gotten over whatever personal damage she blamed on her teenage self for being in love with Raistlin (my beloved), Jareth (not even slightly scary lmao), Randall Flagg (definitely the worst of the bunch, but still definitely fictional and thus incapable of causing real harm) et al, and accepted that human civilisation won't come to an end if women are allowed to read silly fantasy books where morally imperfect magic people live happily ever after? Does she honestly think different moral standards should be applied to books published in the YA and Adult categories? What is the reason for this about-face?

I really would like to award five stars for this Real Life Character Development of the Author, but unfortunately some of Leigh's worst habits from Ninth House are still on flagrant display - most notably, every male character other than the love interest is The Worst Ever in ways that are repulsive and entirely unsympathetic, and scenes take random swerves into the grotesque and disgusting for no particular reason aside from shock value (at least one minor character is mentioned solely for the purpose of having a man attempt to sexually coerce the heroine); meanwhile, the bad behaviour of female characters is always ascribed to the trauma of life under The Patriarchy.

In general, this is about the level of quality I expect from a debut novel, but considering this is Leigh's thirteenth(!) book (including the short stories) I feel it ought to be held to a higher standard.

Here's hoping for an even better conclusion for Ninth House #3. Can she do it again?

Never has a book been so completely rescued by its last line.