The Magicians and Mrs. Quent | |||||
Galen M. Beckett | |||||
Bantam Spectra, 499 pages | |||||
A review by Tammy Moore
Ivy Lockwell is the eldest daughter of Mr Lockwell, a magician whose sanity has been shattered in a mysterious magickal
accident that has left his family impoverished and socially isolated.
Dashton Rafferdy is the wastrel son of one of Altania's great magnates who views claims that he is descended from one
of the great magical families as a potentially dangerous distraction from his pursuit of shallow enjoyment.
Eldyn Garrick is poor as a church mouse despite being descended from a family once just as great as his boyhood friend
Rafferdy's and dreams of re-establishing his family fortunes, securing his and his sister's futures. A future that
does not include the dangerously charming highwayman who has been wooing Eldyn's sister.
It's hard to imagine three people whose paths are less likely to cross in the rigidly structured society of Altania,
but their fates, both past and present, are entwined. More so than even they know. If one of them should fall,
then everything could come crumbling down around their ears.
The Magicians and Mrs. Quent has an interesting premise, a promising plot and enjoyable characters. Galen
Beckett is clearly a very talented writer with a knack for world-building and leavening the tension in the plot with
a carefully measured seasoning of humour. I expected to love this book when I picked it up -- it seemed to have
every element that I require to love a book -- but I didn't. I liked it well enough -- Beckett really is a very good
writer -- but it never truly engaged or excited me. I was never really worried that the author would do something
dreadful to the characters nor would I have really cared if he had. I felt that we never got to see below the
surface of the characters.
None of Beckett's main characters seem to have any serious character flaws or make any serious misjudgements
during the course of the book. Ivy in particular was frustratingly perfect -- always fair, kind and sweet. Even
when she discovered a particularly dark secret about her past that her husband had kept from her, she was angry
for less than a paragraph before apparently putting the whole thing out of her mind completely. Like a swan, she
just glided placidly along and we never saw much sign of her paddling madly under the surface.
Which is a shame, because there were glimpses of a much better book hidden under the carefully constructed
framework of Austenian tropes. Ivy is an extremely promising character -- one of the reasons why I felt frustrated
at the fact I never felt I got to know her -- the student political insurgents we glimpsed in a coffee shop, the
fact that the villains of the piece were actually those working towards democracy and equality in their society
and the world itself. Altania is a complex, fully realised and enormously promising world with a huge amount of
potential -- their magick, the brooding threat of the Wyrdwood and the beautifully presented glimpses of their
history and mythology that Beckett weaves into the text.
The Magicians and Mrs. Quent is a good book if you're
a fan of Austen, Brontë and magic. Beckett has a clear respect for the source
material that inspired him, combined with a knack for coming up with an intriguing fantasy world. Which is the
reason I have hopes that the second book in the series will surpass this one. With any luck, Beckett will have
gained the confidence to let his own style dominate in the sequel. If he does, I think this series could still
have the potential to be very good.
Tammy Moore is a speculative fiction writer based in Belfast. She writes reviews for Verbal Magazine, Crime Scene NI and Green Man Review. Her first book The Even -- written by Tammy Moore and illustrated by Stephanie Law -- is to be published by Morrigan Books September 2008. |
If you find any errors, typos or anything else worth mentioning,
please send it to editor@sfsite.com.
Copyright © 1996-2014 SF Site All Rights Reserved Worldwide