MH Thaung reviewed Shades of Milk and Honey by Mary Robinette Kowal
A fantasy of manners that hasn’t quite decided what it wants to be
I’ve not previously read anything by the author, although I’d put a couple of her books on my wishlist. I decided to start with Shades of Milk and Honey since I was in a fantasy of manners mood.
The prose was easy to read, though some repetitions stood out. In places, the language seemed to stray between period(ish) and more modern.
The setup and environment will be familiar to anyone who’s read Austen—though with the addition of magic, and a reduced level of “formality” compared to what we might expect. I liked the idea of glamour as an additional tool in social interactions, and I’d guess in future books we might see more practical (military?) applications.
Unfortunately, I didn’t feel invested in any of the characters. They did not feel fleshed out. We spend the entire story in Jane’s point of view, and I found her rather tiresome. She was …
I’ve not previously read anything by the author, although I’d put a couple of her books on my wishlist. I decided to start with Shades of Milk and Honey since I was in a fantasy of manners mood.
The prose was easy to read, though some repetitions stood out. In places, the language seemed to stray between period(ish) and more modern.
The setup and environment will be familiar to anyone who’s read Austen—though with the addition of magic, and a reduced level of “formality” compared to what we might expect. I liked the idea of glamour as an additional tool in social interactions, and I’d guess in future books we might see more practical (military?) applications.
Unfortunately, I didn’t feel invested in any of the characters. They did not feel fleshed out. We spend the entire story in Jane’s point of view, and I found her rather tiresome. She was pretty passive and kept belabouring her problems, with a combination of feeling put-upon, gaslighting herself and feeling somehow smugly martyred. OK, the last might have been my imagination, but her ruminations tended to reinforce that impression.
The pacing was sedate until just before the final confrontation, when the tone flipped into melodrama with a rush towards the end.
I came away feeling that the book hadn’t quite decided what sort of book it wanted to be and so it wavered in its direction. Maybe a bit like Jane.