![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Book Review: Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho
Zen Cho’s Sorcerer to the Crown joins a growing sub-genre of “Regency fantasy”—not simply the fantasy-of-manners that revolves around historic social hierarchies and settings, but stories specifically playing off the tropes and themes of Austenian fiction (and perhaps more commonly, those elaborated and promulgated through the Regency romance genre).
Cho joins this field with an entry in which magical ability stands in for many of the same functions that social status and wealth fill in non-fantasy specimens of the genre. To this, she adds an interrogation of racial and colonialist themes that are often elided in shallower regions of the genre-pool. (Not that these themes are entirely absent in 19th century literature itself. Thackery’s Vanity Fair, for example, turns its satire on racial hypocrisies, though not always in ways aligned with current thinking.)
In brief, in a world where magic — in various culture-specific forms — is pervasive, and both fantastic creatures and magical realms intersect with our own, the position of Chief Sorcerer of England has unexpectedly fallen into the hands of a black ex-slave at a time of magical crisis and under circumstances some consider suspicious. In addressing the various hazards of his situation, Zacharias Wythe is joined (if not entirely helpfully) by the person of Prunella Gentleman, whose aspirations seem more hindered by an English prejudice against women (at least respectable ones) employing magic than by prejudice against her uncertain, mixed-race, and possibly irregular birth. Fortunately, her blunt, forceful personality and disregard for convention and propriety sweep away the obvious obstacles, aided by some bits of her past that come to light at rather convenient times.
I loved the book’s setting, its worldbuilding, and its premise, slightly less so the characters are they are presented to us. Both central characters seem conveniently inconsistent, with their attitudes and reactions shifting to meet the immediate needs of the plot. I was less enchanted with the prose and certain aspects of the pacing. After a long, slow, repetitive beginning, the plot concludes in a fireworks finale of twists, surprises, and reversals. That some of them were well-telegraphed in advance is not always a mitigating factor.
There are too many coincidences. Or, if not coincidences, a narrowness in what we are shown of the world, resulting in the reader being introduced to only those characters and events immediately relevant to the plot. Too many twists seem implausibly convenient. (There’s that word “convenient” that I keep using.) But these matters aside, there were two aspects of the writing that made it difficult for me to enjoy the book wholeheartedly.
The book seemed to feel the need to beat the reader over the head repeatedly with certain basic facts of the setting. (Or, in some cases, things considered by the characters to be facts.) I felt I was being belabored on almost every page with, “England is low on magic!” and “Women are considered too delicate to do sorcery!” and similarly for various aspects of the Rules of Society. I don’t mind a literary style in which the characters establish these things by (unnecessarily) explaining them to each other, but I mind the implication that I won’t remember them once established. Too many things were explained to me repeatedly when I felt a hint to the reader would suffice.
The second issue is one I feel more hesitant about addressing because I undoubtedly have blind spots and different default assumptions than the story is intended to address. The novel directly attacks the subject of racial prejudice and colonial oppression, not only by the choice of central characters, but by the focus of the plot. But although the text and characters frequently talk about that prejudice, there seemed to be a distancing, an attenuation of the experience itself.
I’m certainly not saying that I wanted to see the protagonists being subjected to on-page insults and aggressions on a constant basis. But in the case of Prunella, I never see her acting (or more specifically: reacting) as if she’s spent her whole girlhood in a state of uncomfortable ambiguity regarding her status. We see her subjected to some verbal insults, but I expected behaviors that would reflect a lifetime of such slights, or the knowledge that her entire world might be yanked out from under her feet with no notice.
Prunella's flamboyant devil-may-care personality is refreshing. But it seems hard to reconcile her lack of any sense of consequences for that behavior given that she should not be able to rely on privilege to insulate her.
Zacharias feels like a clearer portrait of the sort of internal conflict and turmoil that might reasonably be expected from his upbringing and his contradictory position in society. But within the on-page story, he similarly seems to deal with prejudice that exists as an abstract and as lip-service, but that seems oddly absent from his day-to-day interactions. His enemies tend to be overt and direct, and his friends are faithful and supportive.
So, in brief (too late!), I felt that the aspects on which this novel was most ambitious were ones where it stumbled. For me, it falls in the category of “interesting but significantly flawed” rather than mind-blowing.
Cho joins this field with an entry in which magical ability stands in for many of the same functions that social status and wealth fill in non-fantasy specimens of the genre. To this, she adds an interrogation of racial and colonialist themes that are often elided in shallower regions of the genre-pool. (Not that these themes are entirely absent in 19th century literature itself. Thackery’s Vanity Fair, for example, turns its satire on racial hypocrisies, though not always in ways aligned with current thinking.)
In brief, in a world where magic — in various culture-specific forms — is pervasive, and both fantastic creatures and magical realms intersect with our own, the position of Chief Sorcerer of England has unexpectedly fallen into the hands of a black ex-slave at a time of magical crisis and under circumstances some consider suspicious. In addressing the various hazards of his situation, Zacharias Wythe is joined (if not entirely helpfully) by the person of Prunella Gentleman, whose aspirations seem more hindered by an English prejudice against women (at least respectable ones) employing magic than by prejudice against her uncertain, mixed-race, and possibly irregular birth. Fortunately, her blunt, forceful personality and disregard for convention and propriety sweep away the obvious obstacles, aided by some bits of her past that come to light at rather convenient times.
I loved the book’s setting, its worldbuilding, and its premise, slightly less so the characters are they are presented to us. Both central characters seem conveniently inconsistent, with their attitudes and reactions shifting to meet the immediate needs of the plot. I was less enchanted with the prose and certain aspects of the pacing. After a long, slow, repetitive beginning, the plot concludes in a fireworks finale of twists, surprises, and reversals. That some of them were well-telegraphed in advance is not always a mitigating factor.
There are too many coincidences. Or, if not coincidences, a narrowness in what we are shown of the world, resulting in the reader being introduced to only those characters and events immediately relevant to the plot. Too many twists seem implausibly convenient. (There’s that word “convenient” that I keep using.) But these matters aside, there were two aspects of the writing that made it difficult for me to enjoy the book wholeheartedly.
The book seemed to feel the need to beat the reader over the head repeatedly with certain basic facts of the setting. (Or, in some cases, things considered by the characters to be facts.) I felt I was being belabored on almost every page with, “England is low on magic!” and “Women are considered too delicate to do sorcery!” and similarly for various aspects of the Rules of Society. I don’t mind a literary style in which the characters establish these things by (unnecessarily) explaining them to each other, but I mind the implication that I won’t remember them once established. Too many things were explained to me repeatedly when I felt a hint to the reader would suffice.
The second issue is one I feel more hesitant about addressing because I undoubtedly have blind spots and different default assumptions than the story is intended to address. The novel directly attacks the subject of racial prejudice and colonial oppression, not only by the choice of central characters, but by the focus of the plot. But although the text and characters frequently talk about that prejudice, there seemed to be a distancing, an attenuation of the experience itself.
I’m certainly not saying that I wanted to see the protagonists being subjected to on-page insults and aggressions on a constant basis. But in the case of Prunella, I never see her acting (or more specifically: reacting) as if she’s spent her whole girlhood in a state of uncomfortable ambiguity regarding her status. We see her subjected to some verbal insults, but I expected behaviors that would reflect a lifetime of such slights, or the knowledge that her entire world might be yanked out from under her feet with no notice.
Prunella's flamboyant devil-may-care personality is refreshing. But it seems hard to reconcile her lack of any sense of consequences for that behavior given that she should not be able to rely on privilege to insulate her.
Zacharias feels like a clearer portrait of the sort of internal conflict and turmoil that might reasonably be expected from his upbringing and his contradictory position in society. But within the on-page story, he similarly seems to deal with prejudice that exists as an abstract and as lip-service, but that seems oddly absent from his day-to-day interactions. His enemies tend to be overt and direct, and his friends are faithful and supportive.
So, in brief (too late!), I felt that the aspects on which this novel was most ambitious were ones where it stumbled. For me, it falls in the category of “interesting but significantly flawed” rather than mind-blowing.