Without a Summer - (Glamourist series, book 3) by Mary Robinette Kowal

Back when I reviewed the first two books in this series, I observed "It seems implausible that no one is exploiting [glamour] on a grunt-level commercial scale. In such a context the physical cost of using the ability suggests some rather horrifying potential consequences of that exploitation." As was pointed out in comments to that post, the third book addresses exactly this topic, with the protagonists Jane and Vincent getting dragged into the resulting social and political upheaval. The "year without a summer" (an actual historic event due to worldwide volcanic fallout) has simultaneously undermined the market for the services of coldmongers and led to them being blamed for the unseasonable weather.

Jane and Vincent have come to London to refurbish the glamurals in the house of an Anglo-Irish aristocrat, bringing Jane's still-unmarried sister Melody with them as a treat. A chance encounter with a persecuted coldmonger, Melody's attraction to the son of their employer, and the son's involvement with political unrest in the coldmongers' guild results in a legal, political, and very personal tangle that forms the crux of the story.

I enjoy Kowal's world-building and the precise and measured way she works to recreate prose appropriate to her era. The magical techniques are familiar now, so less time is spent immersed in the technical details. The interactions between the sisters are believable and their relationship continues to develop. This is, when it comes down to it, a relatively simply-structured story and follows tropes that are familiar enough to be predicted. There is no doubt that Melody will fall for the apparently-unsuitable young man, or that he will be be vindicated. There is one twist that I hadn't expected until the essential clue was dropped, but when dropped, it was unsurprising. The book touches on themes of religious and ethnic prejudice, but in a somewhat heavy-handed way, as if Kowal doesn't entirely trust her readers to be familiar with the underlying issues. I'm once more not entirely certain I will continue with this series. (I've now read all the books I have in-hand.) More plot complexity or a bit more character depth would make a difference for me. When it comes down to it, the books are a pleasant read but don't grab me and suck me in.

Book Intake Post: various sources

I had Laurel Bookstore order me a copy of Adrienne Mayer's The Amazons: Lives & Legends of Warrior Women Across the Ancient World (Princeton University Press, Princeton & Oxford. 2014. ISBN 978-0-691-14720-8) Liz Bourke has a lovely in-depth review of it. I'll probably be skimming it for relevance to the Lesbian Historic Motif Project at some point.

I was over at the U.C. Berkeley campus today to get some library books (see below) and dropped by the University Press Bookstore (as you do) and there on the "recent arrivals" display shelf was: Lanser, Susan S. 2014. The Sexuality of History: Modernity and the Sapphic, 1565-1830. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago. ISBN 978-0-226-18773-0. I've already covered two articles by Lanser on political aspects of gender issues in the 18th century for the Lesbian Historic Motif Project. In this books she examines how "ideas about female same-sex relations became a focal point for intellectual and cultural contests between authority and liberty, power and difference, desire and duty, mobility and change, order and governance." Expect to see more on this anon.

The other two books I picked today are only borrowed and are background research for Mother of Souls. I hope to do a cross-check on some of the Ethiopian research I got from 19th c. European travelers' accounts using: Getahun, Solomon Addis & Wudu Tafete Kassu. 2014. Culture and Customs of Ethiopia. Greenwood, Santa Barbara. ISBN 978-0-313-33934-9. It looks like the book will serve the purpose I need, which is to verify standard spellings of a variety of terms, contextualize the 19th century material within current Ethiopian culture, and provide information that may expand or flesh out some of the more cryptic descriptions. Unfortunately, the book has some serious editorial flaws that are evident on even a brief read-through: typos, awkward phrasings, and badly inconsistent spellings of some of the terminology.

Letzter, Jacqueline & Robert Adelson. 2001. Women Writing Opera: Creativity and Controversy in the Age of the French Revolution. University of California Press, Berkeley. ISBN 0-520-22653-4. While the period covered by this study ends just before the era of my protagonist's opera-writing career, and one must make allowances for differences between French and Alpennian society, I imagine that this book will go some distance toward giving Luzie the proper background. (I may very well end up buying a copy, if I don't have a chance to read it in the next month.)