This review seems full of nothing but criticism, so I'll frame it by saying that I didn't hate it, I actually enjoyed it, though you might not figure out why. Monette's involvement in recent blog affairs, plus her online present and most peeps in my environs feeling they have to read this book, made me hesitant to list it at all.Lots of the genre-usual invented names right from the start, perhaps not overly much compared to other fantasy books, but still more than I think necessary, ever. The split pov is always labled, which makes it feel like meant for sluggish minds. Felix is a fucking woman - if it weren't indicated that he had paid to beat up and rape child prostitutes, he'd obviously be 100 % cliché female, with the scandal from having once been a whore (in a bi society, what's the fucking big deal?) - and what with his subjecting himself to his old master again, orgasming in unwanted sex, wibbling and being caught before escaping and scorn from those he pushes away to protect them from his evil master. All of that is worst heroine crap. Similarly the story is, like all fantasy I might say, is basically historical fiction written by someone not PhDed enough to pull a Dunnett, therefor saying it's fantasy to get away with it - everyone does it, and most much less well! But with the pocket watches and wall safes and modern language, the costumes really seem nothing but cosplay, or the whole thing a boring steam punk setting. The Virtu itself is the grail. I wished the author would stop throwing all those Middle Earth names about. Often, I wish fantasy would be forbidden and people had to deal with real history. *g*While it sounds like the worst of both worlds, it's still a good read and much preferable to Deanna Raybourne et al who claim to write proper historicals but also just transplant to get the "pretty costumes" and sexual mores she can then pretend to overthrow (gah, that whore outrage, so annoying).At one point big bad Malkar says Felix is "as stable as aspic", and that is the truest description ever to me - he's just a wibbling weak nothing, and to have him be called "the deadliest wit of the court" a few lines later makes that all the more unbelievable. While Mildmay the Fox is described in action and capable, Felix keeps wibbling about being raped or made a catamite which makes NO SENSE AT ALL considering he also tells us he's used to it and good at dealing with it, except to make himinto the aforementioned woman, but since he isn't, I'm blissfully uncaring, I can actually enjoy the drama! It has come to this, huh. Go on, ohsotall ohsopretty crying man, make my day (no, seriously, huh).Mildmay keeps daring-doing, interacting and rescuing, even has an appealing lady friend, while Felix keeps being stoned and tortured endlessly, until I have to say it was simply a very bad choice to interweave them so rigidly, the 120 little repetitive paragraphs of whatfreshhorror achieving the opposite to intended effect. Felix should have been SHOWN to be dangerous and beautiful and witty, the torturing then compressed, so there would have been more weight, and an equal weight to Mildmay, rather than me despising Felix - for different reasons, but just like his tormentors.I kept not-hating it, though, I'd even say it's enjoyable, and that the annoyance of plonking some odd names into an ahistorical historical novel to make it "fantasy" is the same for most of the genre and that I'm glad there's no magic here, no matter what the blurb says. But that still leaves Felix who KEEPS FAINTING. Every bloody little segment ends with "the darkness swallowed me". Apart from the start and hints of his past - men who are ashamed of scars, both of them? in such a traditional society that whoring is frowned upon? I don't buy it! - he really is mostly just shoved around, so I feel less and less and less while we are meant to see him descend, when they don't even break or pull or do anything that humans did to each other for millenia.While Mildmay keeps having adventures in the Dickensian setting, his Ginevra is suddenly just a gossip girl bitch instead of the interesting woman he fell for, so by the time their relationship ends one feels nothing, and his grief - doesn't work (even less in following books where it's still harped on). Also the book is nearly half done and the two (male) leads have never met, and while the pathetic Felix is seven feet tall we don't know much about Mildmay's looks objectively.Felix then cries a lot and is actually sent to his bedroom (I am not making this up) while Millyfox has an obsession of having toenails pulled. Joking aside, at around page 300 of those 400+, they finally meet.AND THEY SEEM TO BE BROTHERS?! For a few hours of not reading I calmly thought that they'll be revealed just to be cousins, bad cliché since Troy but still ... and then SUDDENLY I WONDERED IF I WAS SO MISLED AND THEY WEREN'T AND WOULD NEVER BE A COUPLE. And I asked a friend and she googled that "one of the heroes is gay" ... one? If this means ... I just can't ... Felix was the wussiest sissiest whimpiest dishrag imaginable and if she made him male just to not be accused of being sexist and writing the women so awfully while Mildmay is a fun antihero ... I can't believe I did this to myself, hoping that fandom antipathy would lead me to enjoyment. I daren't spoiler myself now, it still might be ... ohgahdifeelsicknow.This would require listing and quoting, but note that the book is still set in PRE-INDUSTRIAL times, and COMPLETE UN-SENSUAL. Don't believe the blurb. :)I already mentioned that the magic is pastede_on and that I don't care, I can do without it. To me it's obvious that it's not "decadent" magic at all (rape-sex-magic is probably the worst handled element of the author, see the atrocious Wolves book) but rather the perfect excuse to write a historical without in-depth knowledge or research. I prefer that infinitely to books where magic can solve most problems, though it seems nothing but a ploy to get fantasy readers. But the lack of description goes very bad when I think we are in wide open country and we are in fact in towns, with street lamps, and walls! That smacked me right out of it twice. I had thought the lack of description was due to the pov and them being used to whatever was around, but considering the repetitive omgdaaaarkness omganimalheads sights of Felix, maybe Monette really is much worse than I think.At least once the two men meet, they are finally VISIBLE. I had not known for 3/4 of the book that Felix was older or that Mildmay was smaller than average. While Felix "illness" makes more sense from the outside, his supposed cutting tongue when sane is still only mentioned, not even shown now that Mildmay supposedly meets it for the first time. With 100 pages to go and I'm hoping against hope they will have sex and not be brothers. Otherwise I need psychoanalysis about why I refuse to hate this book (when I hate everything about the hero).The story finally picked up then, even though it frustratingly kept to the pattern of the same thing repeated over and over when Mildmay was in hospital, not getting better (how many times can you get worse while staying the same?), and the various "magical cures" on Felix were as obscure ie. never shown or explained, as his curse. Both the prostitution and the rape was meant to be a huge reveal - what an anti-climax! I had hoped for 500 pages to find out something new about him or them, and then Felix just tells Mildmay what we all knew from chapter one on. But they cared about and finally for each other, and even though I had finally cracked and jumped ahead to when finally the sane Felix would come to Mildmay, I then got up in the middle of the night to read the last chapters properly. As I'll repeat over the next books, it all depends on the final outcome of the series if I've just been cheaply had or read small signs correctly.
This review should probably have accompanied a 5 star rating but it does not, intentionally so.Had this been an entertainment-only attempt, I could write line after line with praises about the clever plotting, the fine, elegant writing, the accurate characterization, the originality of the setting, etc. etc. etc. This IS a good book, after all, a quality fantasy you might want to cherish (and read only when you are in the right mood: to enjoy it you need more than the standard attention).Problem is, this is, in my opinion and despite the choice of a mass entertainment genre, an attempt at fine literature coming from a PHD in English literature with enormous potential. This being my view, I feel compelled to criticize the novel most severely, underlining every flaw I find in it so that, should the author be willing to read this review, she will perhaps find it helpful.Those readers who have enjoyed Lynn Flewelling's "Nightrunner" series will probably see similarities between that and this book: the magic citadel torn by power struggles, the lower, multifaceted city full of atrocious crimes and the small kingdom surrounded by hostile and powerful enemies are much the same.Mildmay closely resembles Seregil too.Ms Monette's setting is even darker, murkier, dirtier, so much more disgusting because the reader will realise how our own society could turn into such a living hell if our own real governments will keep on ignoring the real problems of real people.Mélusine's powers that be are too engaged in their own disgusting power struggles to care about people and their well being: as a result crime and corruption are rampant and destroying the social contract.The two main characters are the results of such upbringing: antiheroes is not strong enough a word to describe them: they are just too f***ed up individuals to be true. They have been abused, raped, coerced and what else you may think of as children and they sport now as adults appalling mental AND physical scars that prevent them from having a decent life (and many other children in Mélusine are being abused during the time span of the plot). They struggle to survive but spend most of their time in a rather futile attempt of repairing the damage.This is all very well, I mean, it is not really entertaining nor escapistic, but it all makes perfect sense in Ms Monette's story.What about the flaws then?- Well, for a start, the first third of the book is really slow. It goes without saying that such a complex society needs time to be set in motion, but the author allows herself too much time.- Secondly, she is very self complacent about her skills at describing disturbed psychologies: she is good, really good, but after a while I started getting annoyed at the two main characters; that was before I realised that that was due more to the author's indulging in her sadistic streak than to anything else. Take Felix: we know from the start how he was abused but we are given a minute per minute account of his internal struggles until we wish to throttle him for a whiner; then we realise that he has good reasons for being self-destructive and that it is Ms Monette who should have cut some descriptions.After the first third of the book the plot kicks in and useless dallying becomes rarer.Other flaws, in no particular order, are:- the linguistically inconsistent and not too accurate rending of Mildmay's peculiar grammar;- some redundant attempt at setting descriptions;- some redundant paragraphs;- some clumsy sexual acts, mostly those involving mental as well as physical violence.- names are similar to those of various existing civilisations (the Troians (!) have Greek sounding names, for example) but the world depicted here is not geografically and historically comparable to ours; confusion is bound to be extreme and no map is included.Due much more to its cruel content than to the explicit homosexuality mentioned throughout, this book is absolutely NOT suitable for minors or sensitive people.
What do You think about Mélusine (2006)?
Hrm. A hundred pages into this novel, I had to come back here to see if my friend's review was really is as glowing as I remembered it to be. I'm baffled.I'm struggling to keep interested in this book. This is a poorly-explained world, where magical and social elements are introduced in passing, but not fleshed out; the book itself is structured with a bizarrely flip-flopping POV, reminiscent of a soap opera, which changes so frequently as to prevent me from getting interesting in either of the intertwined stories. Do we really need to swap main characters every few pages? Every few paragraphs?Most disappointing, perhaps, is that I can't seem to care at all for Felix, one of our two main characters. There certainly wasn't enough development prior to his decision to throw himself back under Malkar's heel for me to develop any attachment. And I really don't know why I'm supposed to feel any empathy for his character now. We've been told repeatedly that he's a powerful wizard, but are given no evidence of anything like; at the slightest provocation, he returns to his (one-dimensional, tritely evil) former master and promptly reclaims a drug addiction that leaves him passive and powerless for the remainder of what I've read. Um, what? I should care enough to read about this guy's self-destructive spiral in loving detail?It's not that I don't enjoy a good anti-hero, mind you; it's not that I don't like the characters, but that I'm entirely indifferent to them. I hate to give up after seeing so many glowing reviews -- and I hate to toss aside a book after spending $8 on it -- so I'll try another hundred pages or so before admitting defeat and sending this one to the sell-back pile.
—Sarah
After reading a very mixed bag of reviews, I've come to the conclusion that Melusine (and the whole Doctrine of Labyrinths) are books you either love or hate, with very little room in the middle. I confess I personally tend towards the former. The terminology is difficult to grapple with at first, because the style of narration leaves little room for explanation of the plethora of colloquialisms peppered throughout the novel. However, if you bear with it, it does become much easier to understand. The breadth and depth of Monette's world-building is very impressive. She has an eye for details and a phenomenal ability to combine traditional fantasy elements in new and intriguing ways. There are some very generic elements of these novels (sorcerers, thieves, assassins), but I never once found myself bored by them because she creates such interesting characters and combines a lot of standard fantasy tropes in new ways. If you have difficulty dealing with some very dark sexual elements, these aren't the books for you. While I think some of the scenes in Melusine are probably the worst in the series, the issues they raise are played out all across the novels. There IS rape, there IS child abuse. However, I didn't find the way Monette dealt with them at all distasteful. The scenes are hard to read because they are horrible, but rape and abuse are never portrayed for the sake of titillation. She doesn't hesitate to explore the darker side of her characters' sexualities, but I find that much more realistic than pretending that everyone in the world happily has vanilla sex, and nobody ever suffers the ramifications of sexual abuse. There is a fair amount of both heterosexual and homosexual sex, though nothing immensely graphic. Personally, I found it refreshing to find the full sexual spectrum being dealt with in a well-written fantasy novel. They can be hardgoing at times, but only because Monette writes tragedy so very well. Love or hate the characters, they are always interesting. I know a lot of people strongly dislike Felix. Personally, I think he's a brilliant character, whose moments of malice and cruelty are cleverly offset by his own self-loathing and insecurities. It is very difficult to dislike Mildmay. Overall, I'd highly recommend these books. They are dark, and they won't be to everyone's taste, but they are also marvelously enthralling and kept me up at night finishing them.
—Bec
I was very excited when I started reading Melusine . Reviews were generally quite good and the summary was interesting. When I read the prologue, I was a little surprised by the relative.. childishness of the writing. Writers do this sometimes, have the narrator speak as though talking out loud. And this is fine, except that the reader is reading and it comes off as uneducated. I prefer a narrator that formulates complex sentences and, in most cases, doesn't address the reader. But I still had hope. But then, the story jumps immediately into the middle of everything. The summary sold me a "dashing,highly respected" wizard, one who's past is hidden, except that everyone figures it out on the first page.. And Mildmay is an assassin and thief. And yes I understand he isn't supposed to be super educated, but that doesn't mean that his mind isn't. I've have read other books where thieves narrate, and their language doesn't bother me. I tried to give this a try. I did read 267 pages. Felix's maddness was interesting, but we don't understand it BECAUSE WE DON'T GET TO KNOW FELIX AT ALL. and Mildmay is annoying. I am not going to finish this book. The plot looks fascinating and I love the brutality lurking in the corners, but I simply cannot get past the childish first perspective. I just can't.
—Alice
