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Shades of Milk and Honey
Nov. 3rd, 2012 11:34 pmOverall, I enjoyed this book, by Mary Robinette Kowal. She’s writing about a version of Regency England with the addition of magic – along with the womanly arts of needlework, music, and sketching, many young ladies also learned “glamour,” which they use to create three-dimensional audio-visual displays. This new art form was beautifully described. The book was nicely paced and hard to put down!
Unfortunately, there were things that irked me, too. I noticed a typo (“mahagony”) and a grammar mistake (“Your mother has been so gracious as to invite my sister and I for tea tomorrow.”) That one’s one of my pet peeves. The name she chose for one of the main characters, Melody, seemed jarringly anachronistic, though I suppose a world with magic might also be a world in which names not inspired by saints and Bible characters could be more common. Also, in the actual drawing rooms of Regency England, surely references to people’s “bellies” would not have been commonplace.
The one aspect of the book that I found most jarring was that so many of the events and circumstances were drawn directly from Jane Austen books, though with new twists. It almost seemed as if she went through the Austen books with index cards in hand, jotting down favorite passages. Secret engagement where the young man publicly treats his fiancée abysmally? Impressionable young girl previously saved from dire elopement by protective and materially indulgent big brother? Father mildly contemptuous of his silly and neuralgic wife? Strawberry-picking excursion? I picture Kowal then sitting at a big table, rearranging the cards to suit her own plot and adding a generous dash of Brontë dramatics. But I did enjoy reading it, and since the sequel takes place overseas, I think? perhaps she relies less on borrowed Austen scenarios there.
Unfortunately, there were things that irked me, too. I noticed a typo (“mahagony”) and a grammar mistake (“Your mother has been so gracious as to invite my sister and I for tea tomorrow.”) That one’s one of my pet peeves. The name she chose for one of the main characters, Melody, seemed jarringly anachronistic, though I suppose a world with magic might also be a world in which names not inspired by saints and Bible characters could be more common. Also, in the actual drawing rooms of Regency England, surely references to people’s “bellies” would not have been commonplace.
The one aspect of the book that I found most jarring was that so many of the events and circumstances were drawn directly from Jane Austen books, though with new twists. It almost seemed as if she went through the Austen books with index cards in hand, jotting down favorite passages. Secret engagement where the young man publicly treats his fiancée abysmally? Impressionable young girl previously saved from dire elopement by protective and materially indulgent big brother? Father mildly contemptuous of his silly and neuralgic wife? Strawberry-picking excursion? I picture Kowal then sitting at a big table, rearranging the cards to suit her own plot and adding a generous dash of Brontë dramatics. But I did enjoy reading it, and since the sequel takes place overseas, I think? perhaps she relies less on borrowed Austen scenarios there.