Shades of Milk and Honey

Supposedly, this book is like a Jane Austen novel if magic existed. It follows the sisters Jane and Melody, two daughters of Mr. Ellsworth, whose estate inheritance is - alas and surprise! - entailed away to his nephew. This is all carefully explained within the first few page and never spoken of again or relevant in any way to the plot, since happily Mr. Ellsworth has also been conscientiously putting away a sum each year to make sure his daughters won't be left penniless. (It's also entirely clear the author has no idea what "entailed" actually means, as she simply states that the estate "was entailed" and therefore the nephew will inherit it -- but an estate has to be entailed TO someone and that someone doesn't necessarily have to be to a male heir, that just happens to have been the condition of the property deed in Pride and Prejudice.)

If you actually enjoy reading Austen, then reading this book will be similar to listening to nails on a chalkboard, because the author is TRYING so hard to sound "old timey" and is completely incapable of writing in a style anything resembling the beauty and subtlety of Austen's writing. She switches between American and UK spellings; she picks and chooses "old" forms of words that she uses inconsistently, like teaze, surprize, chuze, and shew, and just throws these around as if that's all that's needed to sound like Austen; and she picks up other words that sound archaic and uses them without apparently understanding what they really mean (e.g., she appears to think "nuncheon" is the same as "luncheon").

"Almost, Jane had declined to accompany them at that point, knowing that her own dress would be but a masquerade to delay the confirmation of her spinster status a while longer, but for all that, she was still a girl at heart and loved pretty things."

The plot itself is heavily influenced by Austen but very basic. The two sisters are more like Mary and Lydia than Jane and Lizzy; there's no sisterly love between them and they spend most of the book resenting each other. Jane harps constantly on the fact she is "plain," and Melody acts like a petulant cross between Kitty and Lydia. The Mr. Darcy equivalent - initially seen as haughty and unlikable and then turns out to be the love interest - is actually just grumpy and haughty all the way through until it's revealed in his secret diaries that he's in love with Jane, at which point she suddenly discovers she's in love with him too. No round of realizing his imperfections and improving himself here. No real explanation at all of why Jane would change from simply admiring his professional talents to feeling wild passion. And Melody's various romantic disasters are wrapped up in one sentence on the second last page that essentially says "the happy couple's frequent visits to the great houses led to Melody finding a love as true as their own, the end." Unlikely in the extreme given how Melody's character is described.

The magic system is probably the most interesting part of the book, but it's still disappointingly skimpy. Magic seems to be treated as an "art" that cultured women are expected to learn, like painting or playing music. It's referred to as "glamour" and seems to be used almost entirely for decorating houses. Most of the discussion of magic is about using "folds" of "glamour" to make drawing rooms look prettier or create "glamurals" and tableaux. The creation of these glamours apparently causes the magic user to overheat, sometimes to the point of fainting and a dangerous fever. At only one point is magic discussed with a military officer as having potential tactical use and that's almost immediately dismissed, even though it clearly would be extremely valuable in battle. It was in fact fairly inexplicable how few other applications of magic there seemed to be.

The best things I can say about this book is that it has a few somewhat interesting, though incompletely explored, ideas about magic; and it's blessedly short. I probably read all 300 pages in little over 2 hours and definitely don't intend to pick up the inexplicably numerous sequels.

I loved this book. The combination of Austen-esque Regency romance and magic piqued my interest from the first review I read, and I've been waiting for it to come out in the UK ever since. It certainly did not disappoint. The glamour magic is woven into the Regency setting with a light touch, and I thought it fitted perfectly. I liked the characters, I liked the story, and I liked the whole feel of the book. Fantasy doesn't have to be epic to be a page-turner, which this was for me. If you like Jane Austen and magical fantasy, then I heartily recommend this book.