Mary Robinette Kowal: Shades of Milk and Honey (2013, Little, Brown Book Group Limited)
272 pages
English language
Published 2013 by Little, Brown Book Group Limited.
Shades of Milk and Honey is an intimate portrait of Jane Ellsworth, a woman ahead of her time in a version of Regency England where the manipulation of glamour is considered an essential skill for a lady of quality. Despite the prevalence of magic in everyday life, other aspects of Dorchester's society are not that different: Jane and her sister Melody's lives still revolve around vying for the attentions of eligible men.
Jane resists this fate, and rightly so, because while her skill with glamour is remarkable, it is her sister who is fair of face, and therefore wins the lion's share of the attention. At the ripe old age of twenty-eight, Jane has resigned herself to being invisible forever. But when her family's honor is threatened, she finds that she must push her skills to the limit in order to set things right--and, in the process, accidentally wanders into …
Shades of Milk and Honey is an intimate portrait of Jane Ellsworth, a woman ahead of her time in a version of Regency England where the manipulation of glamour is considered an essential skill for a lady of quality. Despite the prevalence of magic in everyday life, other aspects of Dorchester's society are not that different: Jane and her sister Melody's lives still revolve around vying for the attentions of eligible men.
Jane resists this fate, and rightly so, because while her skill with glamour is remarkable, it is her sister who is fair of face, and therefore wins the lion's share of the attention. At the ripe old age of twenty-eight, Jane has resigned herself to being invisible forever. But when her family's honor is threatened, she finds that she must push her skills to the limit in order to set things right--and, in the process, accidentally wanders into a love story of her own.
This debut novel from an award-winning talent scratches a literary itch you never knew you had. Like wandering into a secret picnic attended by Pride and Prejudice and Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, Shades of Milk and Honey is precisely the sort of tale we would expect from Jane Austen...if she lived in a world where magic worked.
This description comes from the publisher.
There's a really interesting take on magic (glamour) here that is absolutely fascinating, especially as it is considered a "women's art".
If you've read your Austen, you can see largely where the story was going, but it is absolutely still enjoyable. Especially with the more explicitly fantastical elements.
Narration by the author is lovely.
I’ve not previously read anything by the author, although I’d put a couple of her books on my wishlist. I decided to start with Shades of Milk and Honey since I was in a fantasy of manners mood.
The prose was easy to read, though some repetitions stood out. In places, the language seemed to stray between period(ish) and more modern.
The setup and environment will be familiar to anyone who’s read Austen—though with the addition of magic, and a reduced level of “formality” compared to what we might expect. I liked the idea of glamour as an additional tool in social interactions, and I’d guess in future books we might see more practical (military?) applications.
Unfortunately, I didn’t feel invested in any of the characters. They did not feel fleshed out. We spend the entire story in Jane’s point of view, and I found her rather tiresome. She was …
I’ve not previously read anything by the author, although I’d put a couple of her books on my wishlist. I decided to start with Shades of Milk and Honey since I was in a fantasy of manners mood.
The prose was easy to read, though some repetitions stood out. In places, the language seemed to stray between period(ish) and more modern.
The setup and environment will be familiar to anyone who’s read Austen—though with the addition of magic, and a reduced level of “formality” compared to what we might expect. I liked the idea of glamour as an additional tool in social interactions, and I’d guess in future books we might see more practical (military?) applications.
Unfortunately, I didn’t feel invested in any of the characters. They did not feel fleshed out. We spend the entire story in Jane’s point of view, and I found her rather tiresome. She was pretty passive and kept belabouring her problems, with a combination of feeling put-upon, gaslighting herself and feeling somehow smugly martyred. OK, the last might have been my imagination, but her ruminations tended to reinforce that impression.
The pacing was sedate until just before the final confrontation, when the tone flipped into melodrama with a rush towards the end.
I came away feeling that the book hadn’t quite decided what sort of book it wanted to be and so it wavered in its direction. Maybe a bit like Jane.
