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Shades of Milk and Honey by Mary Robinette Kowal

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Good God, I resent this book so much for not being awesome. Georgette Heyer put me in the mood for another regency, and combine that with fantasy? Sold.

I want a refund. The Heyer danced along, sparkly with charm; this book plodded, leaving me with an overwhelming sense of claustrophobia and boredom at the shallowness and banality and insipidity of well-to-do country life. The conversation didn’t sparkle wittily, it clunked. And the heroine was frankly too stupid to keep breathing.

Mostly though, I resent the muddle. The magic here is glamour, a womanly art of illusion, used largely for entertainment. It is both dismissed and underestimated, largely by men. Hello metaphor for the entire practice of upper-class female husband-snaring existence. But Kowal seems to have no real control over that, and the overlapping stories of lies and truths are a mess. With a vapid little lesson about how real art requires passion plunked on top.

Feh.

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