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.