![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
turning darkness into light
I read Marie Brennan's Turning Darkness Into Light courtesy of Netgalley.
This is a novel about Lady Trent's granddaughter Audrey, who is recruited to translate a sequence of Draconean tablets belonging to a private collector. The novel takes the form of diary entries, letters, translated excerpts, police reports, and so forth. I definitely classify "getting to be the first translator of an important ancient text" as an escapist fantasy; if you are in the same camp, this book will deliver good, fluffy amusement. (For reasons of literary exigency, the text itself is rather more coherent and rather less bloodthirsty than most of the ancient literature with which I am familiar).
The general villain of the story is prejudice against Draconeans, but the specific villain is Aaron Mornett, a beautiful young man who is "not a reputable scholar." Audrey's mixed feelings about Aaron Mornett are effectively and compellingly represented. I wasn't inclined to be all that patient with them as a reader, though: I've spent my fair share of time dealing with brilliant, entitled young men in the real world, and don't need to be assured that they really are that awful.
Aaron Mornett's opposite is Cora Fitzarthur, the painstaking niece of the man who collected the Draconean tablets. I hoped for a while that Audrey and Cora would fall in love: the way Audrey learns to trust her is so obviously a parallel to the way she learns distrust of Aaron. Also, I grew up on novels about the trials of being an orphan who becomes the ward to someone terrible. I would have liked to read more about Cora's tribulations, or, failing that, about her newfound expertise in volcanoes. Instead, the book ends with revelations about Draconeans, politics, and a surprising amount of violence and rushing about. (And, of course, with footnotes, which are not to be skipped.)
This is a novel about Lady Trent's granddaughter Audrey, who is recruited to translate a sequence of Draconean tablets belonging to a private collector. The novel takes the form of diary entries, letters, translated excerpts, police reports, and so forth. I definitely classify "getting to be the first translator of an important ancient text" as an escapist fantasy; if you are in the same camp, this book will deliver good, fluffy amusement. (For reasons of literary exigency, the text itself is rather more coherent and rather less bloodthirsty than most of the ancient literature with which I am familiar).
The general villain of the story is prejudice against Draconeans, but the specific villain is Aaron Mornett, a beautiful young man who is "not a reputable scholar." Audrey's mixed feelings about Aaron Mornett are effectively and compellingly represented. I wasn't inclined to be all that patient with them as a reader, though: I've spent my fair share of time dealing with brilliant, entitled young men in the real world, and don't need to be assured that they really are that awful.
Aaron Mornett's opposite is Cora Fitzarthur, the painstaking niece of the man who collected the Draconean tablets. I hoped for a while that Audrey and Cora would fall in love: the way Audrey learns to trust her is so obviously a parallel to the way she learns distrust of Aaron. Also, I grew up on novels about the trials of being an orphan who becomes the ward to someone terrible. I would have liked to read more about Cora's tribulations, or, failing that, about her newfound expertise in volcanoes. Instead, the book ends with revelations about Draconeans, politics, and a surprising amount of violence and rushing about. (And, of course, with footnotes, which are not to be skipped.)