Sorcerer to the Crown

I posted mid-book & it’s late, so I will say: ending did not disappoint! Enjoyed this a lot, will definitely seek out other books by this author.

The main thing I want to say is that I listened to the audiobook, by Recorded Books, and it was Great. Really polished and that voice actor seems to really know their stuff.

I am a sucker for light comedy of manners/Wodehousey kind of banter, so the diversions into this were welcome for me. If you aren’t a fan of polite and not very substantial regency back-and-forth then I can see those bits dragging a bit.

Spoilers below: . . . . . . . The romance conclusion was very sweet. I do love Prunella throughout this book and how she’s neither ‘not like the other girls’-d or made normal - she stays ambitious and confident and expresses emotions Prunella-ly.

The sacrifice of her familiar was shocking! I am interested by the spending of fairy life for human life, not callously but definitely with a ‘it was worth it’ kind of attitude, and I guess the assumption that her familiars still… have a non-messed-up relationship with her? I would like to see this engaged with more but I reckon it probably won’t be, which is alright.

This one took a while to grow on me. For, probably, the first third to half of the novel, I wasn't really enjoying myself. Some other people in the reviews say that it's a bit of a slow burn, and I agree. Stick with it though, and you'll find yourself a really charming Victorian England novel -- with magic.

The world is a bit of an alternate history/alternate universe Victorian era, where magic is commonplace (if restricted), and upbringing and reputation is everything. Zacharias is the Sorcerer Royal for England by merit of being chosen by the previous Sorcerer Royal, though not without protest from other magicians and aristocracy in London. With an ever-deepening problem involving the flow of magic into England, he by chance meets Prunella, an orphaned girl at a school for witches. She has the unfortunate fate of being extremely talented in magic in a society that frowns upon and shuns sorceresses. Prunella, fearing her fate of being locked away in an inconsequential life and wanting more for herself in London society, schemes her way to London with Zacharias. From there, friendship amidst hardship develops, and Prunella and Zacharias both have to confront the past that brought them to where they are now.

It's an interesting premise, and I'm not doing it justice through summary, I'm afraid. There's a lot more to it, involving the fairy kingdom, some assassination attempts, some political machinations, and dragons. Despite the plot seemingly tackling a lot of things at once, I feel like it does so fairly well. It was a fun romp in magical Victorian England that I'm glad I stuck with. The writing style is a bit wordy, and I noted one reviewer comparing the style to a Jane Austen novel, which I can totally see. I thought it lent the story some charm and fun. There's a bit of a feeling of Anne of Green Gables in some places as well, if Anne did magic (can you imagine?). I really did feel like the language lent the book some humor and charm, and was appropriate for the tone the author was going for.

My only real quibble was Prunella's character. Her motives felt all over the place, and in some places her character really annoyed me. By the end, though, I felt like the author had more or less decided where to go with Prunella, and I really did like the ending between her and Zacharias.

I really recommend this book for anyone who's willing to stick through the (appropriate) stuffy language and a bit of a slow start and experience a really fun magical adventure.

I started this book up and then put it down for a year, despite enjoying the beginning I got bogged down in the School chapter which I just didn't find that interesting. It picked up after that, though! However, the romance at the end genuinely baffled me. I liked the female lead as a character, but I struggled to see why someone so different from her (he liked studying for the sake of studying, she doesn't and faked an interest to get what she wanted) would have romantic interest in her, and it seemed a little out of the blue to me. If the author had just stopped before the romance bit I would have been satisfied.
Mostly. Her having access to 7 familiars when every other character has apparently 1 at most seemed... a bit over the top (especially since she only uses 3 - why did she need so many extra, then?), and I kept expecting this theft of familiars from the other world to be the reason magic stopped pouring. Not so - totally different reason, although an enjoyable one.

Ultimately, this has the seeds of a really phenomenal book in it, but they are smothered by the ghost of Georgette Heyer.

Let's get the Heyer out of the way first. If you love Heyer, you may love this book. I find Heyer-style dialogue and characterization extremely frustrating (they're more reminiscent of the period she lived in than the Regency) and don't like to deal with chits just out of the schoolroom who know better than everyone else.

Starting out the book to find that the hero was black (and later, that the heroine was half-Indian) primed me for something that would really deal with the racism and classism of Heyer and the books written in her wake - it's typically implicit rather than explicit, the total neglect of politics and the wider world beyond the war with Napoleon - but unfortunately, it's more of a Heyeresque novel that from time to time acknowledges period racism, mainly by having the bad guys think bad things about Zacharias because of his race. Apart from a couple of moments where he has to think a little badly of his adoptive father, who bought him as a child, his relationship with his aristocratic white parents is unproblematic and serene. There is no mention at all of raging debates over abolition; were they happening in this world? In ours, Sir Stephen would have bought Zacharias right around the time that there was a massive boycott on sugar in protest of the Caribbean plantations. Likewise, there's a brief mention of a battle at Mysore in relation to Prunella's history, but the book doesn't get into the fact that the British were waging war to take over southern India for decades and what that could mean. Neither character thinks much about their relationship with white English society. It's an opportunity lost.

It deals with sexism in the same way. Women aren't supposed to do magic because [old-timey beliefs about women's education], and the only ones who do are poor, but Prunella knows she can do magic and wants to learn to do it better. I hoped there would be some tie to Mary Wollstonecraft and other protofeminists who were advocating for women's rights, but again, no.

I liked Zacharias, I liked the magic, I liked the politics with Janda Baik - I just wanted more depth.

This book is, I think, a very deliberate response to the Regency romance genre, albeit one that is sensitive to the genre's appeal.

It is also a fantasy book, but to me that was almost secondary. Zacharias Whyte is the Sorcerer Supreme Royal, who is not widely accepted by the rest of sorcerous England, almost entirely because he is the adopted, black heir of the previous Sorcerer Royal.

Prunella Gentleman is the unfortunately and undeniably brown orphaned ward of a woman who runs a girls' school which teaches girls how to not do any magic.

Prunella and Zacharias encounter each other by chance, and come together to pursue their respective agendas: Prunella to enter society and marry someone white and respectable, Zacharias to discover why magic is fading from England. (Spoiler: both of them end up achieving very different things than they set out to.)

This book deals really well, I thought, with the complicated feelings of transracial adoptees, which is maybe not what you go into your regency romance looking for. It is quite aware of the class issues usually swept under the rug, although I think, by the end, they are side-stepped more than upended. (I mean, asking two minority characters to upend all of England's class issues is an astronomical ask.)

There are some bits that are, however, all too brutally real. Prunella is forced to be ruthless to survive, and the book wants you to understand and embrace her; I think the reader will.