Book Review: Blood of the Bull by Jo Graham

The third novel in the series takes Giulia and Rodrigo through a very rough patch in their relationship. Oh, and there’s a French Invasion too.

Jo Graham’s Memoirs of the Borgia Sybil series continues in this third book in the series. For those to catch up, Giulia Farnese, in this world next door, is not just the mistress of Rodrigo Borgia (aka Pope Alexander VI, the “Borgia Pope”), she has a connection to the spirit world that is exploited and used in book 1, A Blackened Mirror, and also in book 2, The Borgia Dove, where she is our viewpoint character to the infamous Papal Election of 1492. Now, not long has passed, it's near 1494 in fact, and Renaissance Italy is in turmoil. Not just because the French are invading, but the relationship between Giulia and Rodrigo has turned sour. Giulia finds out that the Bull (the symbol of the Borgias) is a literal metaphor, and the betrayal of what she thought was an exclusive relationship sets the pair at odds. Combine that with the French invasion, and you have the throughline for the story.

And therein, The Blood of the Bull, tells its tale. I am going to come to this story through a historical lens. This novel, like the second, is somewhat less focused on the supernatural elements of Giulia and her life and much more interested in the interpersonal dynamics of the pair. It takes a while for any real supernatural elements to come out of the woodwork. In the main, most of this novel, even more than the first two, is a richly done historical fiction novel. If the first novel was a coming of age story, and the second something of a mystery novel, this is more of a social conflict novel between Giulia and Rodrigo, with the French army as a leavening agent.

So, once again, we get Graham’s view of the Renaissance and its history. It is a considerably brighter view than some¹.As such, until Giulia leaves Rome after tempers flare between her and Rodrigo, we get the see the rich life of being the Pope’s mistress and how both Giulia and Rodrigo have to navigate it (we are, like the first two novels, always in Giulia’s point of view in the book). In our historical records, Giulia Farnese was one of the most powerful women in Rome with her relationship to the Pope, but not just for that. Graham makes it clear such a powerful woman has allies, clients, networks and in the course of a dangerous French invasion, Giulia needs all of them and they need here, and we get very much a social web. In a real way, Giulia is not just a partner to Rodrigo but an heir, a student, a pupil of him as well. And possibly the father of her child. The historical record is uncertain, but baby Laura, in the world of the novels is most definitely Rodrigo’s daughter. 

Having Giulia leave Rome when she discovers Rodrigo’s infidelity is an invention, as far as is well known in the historical records, she does not go off with Lucrezia and her new husband. This does give us a look at Italy outside of Rome for a while, especially with that looming threat of the French becoming a very real and potent danger as they move south. The threat of a seemingly unstoppable force, coming to erase all that she has come to treasure, is a real emotional button in the book that Graham presses well. 

Eventually the narrative joins the timeline we know again as Giulia goes to the estate of Capodimonte because her brother is dying. This happened in our timeline, but this story has Giulia go from Lucrezia’s estate to there, rather than from Rome, as what we know happened in history. We see Giulia at her most vulnerable and isolated here, feeling duty to her dying brother, and the strain of being apart from Rodrigo, and of course, the bloody French. The book keeps us in line with historical events when Giulia, heading back to Rome at last, is captured by a French officer, Yves d’Allegre, who ransoms her back to the Pope. Since we are only in Giulia’s point of view, we do not see the mysterious machinations directly that allowed Rome, and Pope Alexander VI’s papacy, not to be toppled by King Charles and his army. Graham does add a helping of her supernatural elements here to explain the motives and actions of some of the participants in this drama, and gives Giulia agency to oppose them.

The novel ends there, more or less, with Rome and the Papacy safe, Giulia and Rodrigo reunited, but the French are poised to rain down on Naples next. Interesting times are indeed what is in store for the next adventures of the Borgia Sybil. As always Graham is interested in the historical events and the allo-supernatural elements that help cause them to happen as they really did. Does this make her novels a magical secret history? Maybe! There is a little what-if speculation toward the end as Rodrigo’s fate is uncertain, and both Giulia and Rodrigo (but especially the magically talented Giulia) wonders if Rodrigo might have to be a sacrifice, a martyr, in the end. This ties nicely into the title Blood of the Bull. 

So who is this book for? Should you read this? Readers of the first two books is a rather flip answer, and that has the advantage of being true. I suppose you could start the series here, if you were really interested in this period of Italian history or wanted to get in on this series and did not want to read books one and two. But really this is a big narrative and a series that together forms a tapestry of a life (the choice of title Memoirs of the Borgia Sybil is a telling one).

But who is this series for, then? In general, if you want historical fiction with some supernatural elements that don’t change the history, and a strong sense and grounding in its point of view with a strong female protagonist (and other women as well). If you aren’t absolutely and resolutely anti-Borgia (and to be clear there is a case to have that point of view), then yes, this series may be your cup of tea. Graham is a hell of a writer and she is writing what she loves passionately about. It comes through with the intimacy she describes art in the papal apartments, the depth of feeling in her letters as she struggles with Rodrigos’ infidelity, with the blood and terror of the French invasion³. It’s here, should you want it.

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Highlights:

• Strong historical fictional grounding
• Excellent use of female characters
• Amazing immersive look at Renaissance Italy
• Yet another spectacular cover for the series

Reference: Graham, Jo The Blood of the Bull, [Candlemark and Gleam 2025]

POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I’m just this guy, you know? @princejvstin

¹ This is going to be a footnote of some length but it is a diversion from talking about the main subject of the novel itself and is not essential to that part of the book review, but it is an essential bit nevertheless. So this is more of a Pratchettian footnote than, say, a Vancean one. Graham’s view of the Renaissance, and perhaps the Borgias in particular, is far more positive and bright than, say, the recent Inventing the Renaissance by Ada Palmer, and reading this book after reading Palmer’s book was an interesting experience. I also in recent history have read Will and Ariel Durant’s Story of Civilization volume on these times. So I have gotten several runs through of the events of these times and perspectives of these times. Palmer’s thesis is the clearest because she says it on the tin “The Myth of a Golden Age”. She makes it clear time and again that in research and perspective, which is formidable, that the Renaissance was no golden age at all and in fact was not the greatest time and place to live in. From invasions to plagues to the vicissitudes of life in 15th century Italy, it was no golden age at all--even if its remnants and products make it seem so.

The whole project of the Renaissance, too and its history and it’s historification as a golden age is a matter of manipulating history. The Durants take a middle course, since they never go to primary sources. They are a product of their time and place, reading texts written mostly contemporary with themselves, so they have a more positive view of the events, and see the end of the Renaissance and the decline of Italy after the French Invasion and subsequent wars (spoiler, the French Invasion is just the beginning) as a tragedy that extinguished a turbulent but fecund period. Graham’s view is far far more positive, and takes lots of pains to show the light, the art, the vision that the humanist faction under Rodrigo (and to be fair, Giulia) want to bring. She sees those forces as fighting as war of light against dark (which melds into her grand supernatural conflict). 

So who is right? All of them! None of them! (as Palmer points out, history is an ever refining project, and our own views are going to be looked at with shaken heads a century or two from now). 

² In a conversation between myself and Graham, she compared Giulia and Rodrigo to Mystique and Magneto. And I definitely can see it, Mystique learning a lot at Magneto’s knee in the way of mutant and worldwide power politics, learning intrigue and manipulation and social graces and skills but applying them ultimately in her own way. And of course having a sometimes thorny relationship with her mentor as a lover. We didn’t see much in the way of the thorns in book 2, Graham reserved them for book 3. 

³ Maybe someone like H. Beam Piper or Poul Anderson never lived long enough, but surely, one could do a space opera version of the papal election of 1492 and the subsequent French invasion and make it a high SF drama. Such rich and interesting characters, times, and conflicts. It would be hellacious to research (reading these books and the aforementioned works by Palmer and the Durants might get you some of the way there) . Doing it as a fantasy novel could also work but I kind of like a space opera treatment better. 

Review: The Book of Gold by Ruth Frances Long

 The Book of Gold by Ruth Frances Long starts off as seemingly a simple heist novel that evolves into something more complex, especially theologically.

Lyta Cornellis is a thief, and a good one. She loves a good score as much as she loves her younger brother Kit. Kit is a printer and publisher, a new and expanding business in the city of Ambres, hub of commerce in an alternate 16th century Europe.Various powers are always lurking, from the King of Castile, Aragon and Leon to the dread Duchess of Montenbleau. So when Kit is arrested for printing a pamphlet that is declared treasonous, Lyta has to save him. To do so, she makes a deal with the king to steal a magical book from an impregnable fortress. But even with a small god on her side, she is going to need help with her biggest heist yet.

This is the beginning of the story of The Book of Gold, by Ruth Frances Long.

The novel features an interesting set of characters whose alignments, relationships, agreements and more feel three-dimensional.  Lyta is our primary point of view. She runs by her skills, her devotion to the small god Eninn, and her love for her brother.  Also, the knowledge that her husband has been long lost to the very fortress she agreed to break into. We slowly peel back and learn more about her backstory as the novel progresses, further deepening our understanding of how she, and Kit, got to where they are.  Kit, who is also a major point of view, is idealistic and somewhat oblivious to what the power of his printing profession really is.  Add in Sylvian, now the King’s loyal guard, but was Lyta’s first love. Finally, there is Ben, a very noted scholar,  who is needed for the book heist, and has secrets and power of his own.  

The worldbuilding for the most part is fascinating, although a couple of things irked me that I will leave for a footnote because I don’t want to totally detail the review with them.¹.  Ambres is a cognate of 16th century Antwerp, an entrepot if there ever was an entrepot. This is the high age of the low countries mercantile influence, while still being under the control of Spain (here Castile and Leon and Aragon). Power, money and influence pour through the city. Oh, and did I mention the Church Imperial is also potent and has interests and influence here? Add in the paradigm-shattering effects of the early days of the printing press and you can see why Long chose this location to build her not-quite-our Europe and her city of Ambres for the action to take place. This is a book for those who like this sort of historical fantasy, with a lot of period detail particularly on printing and publishing along with the thievery and other hijinks.

The novel is very well paced, with good mixtures of action beats as well as character moments. As a result, Long’s book is extremely readable and goes down easy. The set-piece of the break into the Fortress, with its successes and reversals, is the highlight of the book, but the novel begins with a bang with a heist at a party. The novel as a result is lean and well paced.

So, instead, I want to talk at length now about what I really want to get into in this piece. Not just about The Book of Gold, but its place in terms of its theological fantastical context. The theological setup in Long’s world is of a cognate of the Catholic Church, the Church Imperial. Their stamping out of heresy is not of Calvinists and Lutherans, but rather the older Gods who have been stamped out and suppressed with the rise of the God-Emperor. Long here has merged the idea of the divine Emperor of Rome with the Holy Roman Emperor and made him an off-screen living God. His goal is to be the *one* God and to wipe out the rest, and the efforts of his minions and servants plays a large part of the book.

Thus, as I was reading this, a sheaf of connections came to mind. There seems to be a small cluster of books interested in a spectrum of Gods, some or all of which are under siege or threat.  Hannah Kaner’s Godkiller comes to mind, where small Gods are being hunted by characters such as our titular main character Kissen. Ari Marmell’s Widdershins novels, where she is the sole devotee of a small God. The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson has a set of eight Gods, the Raven being the most seen and active among them, but again, their power and controlling them comes into play. And of course, the Tyrant Philosophers series by Adrian Tchaikovsky.²

All of these works, from Long’s to Tchaikovsky's are interested in the use of theological power of the Gods and how it might be captured, transformed, diffused by man. Gods are not dead in these works, but they certainly are being harnessed, diminished, destroyed or transmogrified at the hands of power-hungry humans. The tyranny of this is consistent, throughout. It is often portrayed as being for the good of everyone, or the good of society, but in the end, it is a road to power, by either removing a rival source, or absorbing that power directly. 

Whatever the portrayal, in the end it is definitely a loss of theological diversity, something that Long’s book and the Tyrant Philosophers novels by Tchaikovsky make absolutely clear. One belief system, one mode of thought, one correct way to mold society. Like any monocultures, though, they are almost always inherently bad and the drive for one distorts and hurts people and society. 

But why is this suddenly a popular topic? Why in this secular age is there a series of novels and stories like this. This crop of limited theologically oriented beings, whose power is sought to be extinguished, or bound or even just drained by larger entities?  Is this all a subconscious metaphor for small companies being eaten up by billionaires and entities like Meta and Amazon? Is it a metaphor or allusion to the rise of fascist-curious or fascist regimes, who reach for power and extinguish dissent, different thinking and rival power centers? Is this some Nietscheian reaction to lots of fantasy novels with Gods and Goddesses running around doing things with and to mortals and against each other? Or is this an echo of superhero novels and stories and movies, which have made up so much of our zeitgeist, which are of course all about ordinary people gaining powers formerly attributable to Gods? 

In The Book of Gold, we get to see a number of these entities, revealed slowly as the perspective and tone of the book goes from simple heist to theological conflict. Eninn, a god of tricksters and thieves, is the first and primary one we meet. He’s small, doesn’t apparently do much, but can escape the grasp of those who might bind him, and he has Lyta as a loyal follower. He corresponds very well with the Fox in The Raven Scholar.  More of these are revealed as the novel progresses. Kyron,a god of soldiers. Ystara, a goddess of love. The aforementioned living God-Emperor himself, too, with his dread plans.  And it makes sense that Ambres, trading and mercantile hub, would have these powers arranged and interested in it. The author’s love of the space and place of 16th century Antwerp really comes through, and it makes sense that this is where Godly powers might come...and might be caught and captured thereby. Or, when the Gods have power, anoint or expouse champions of their interests, either unofficially or officially. There are some nice reveals and power plays that occur in the denouement of the book.

There are also hints of darker, older deities as well afoot. For all of its power, the Church Imperial has made great strides over a millennium but has not extinguished, cowed or bound all of the deities out there. It gives the theocratic landscape of Amberes much more of an late antiquity/early medieval Catholic Church feel.³ 

There are a lot of potential rabbit holes one might go down in this book besides the theological one I just did. The role of the early printing press and the focus on books as treasured items, for example. Or you might focus on the romance dynamics in the interplay of characters (there are past and present romances, heterosexual and queer, and Long makes good use of all of them for character and plot development). And other angles to explore as well. It’s a rich quasi-historical fantasy with a lot to offer a reader interested in these sorts of worlds just next door. 

Highlights:

• Engaging and dynamic inspiration (16th c. Antwerp) used for her fantasy setting

• Strong use of romance and characterization among the protagonists

• Intriguing theological models and Gods. 

Reference: Long, Ruth Frances,  The Book of Gold [Hodderscape, 2024].

¹ Okay, so here we go. So the inconsistency of names of polities and locations irks me. There is a Castile, a Leon, an Aragon, That’s the parts and titles for the rulers of Spain, that’s easy. That’s right from our world. But then why rename England as Albion? And someplace in Scandinavia gets renamed as the Kingdom of Geatland? The use of Brabatine to identify the Spanish Netherlands, where the story takes place, is also a piece of this. It’s not quite wrong, but its not quite our history’s name, either. And there are references to Caput Mundi, which given that is the city of the Church, must be Rome. But then why keep the pieces of Spain with the same names as our history? I get that it would be hard to convey “Spain” without using the real life parts of it, but it still feels a little discordant. 

² Of course this is nothing new. Terry Pratchett’s Small Gods, of course. But it seems like there is a boomlet lately in such works, exploring limited divinities and often putting them under strife and danger. 

³ The worldbuilder in me has lots of questions--like, what is happening in North Africa, the Middle East? Is there a cognate of Islam? There is one reference to a “Byzantine coffee shop” --does the Eastern Roman Empire still survive in this version of the universe? What’s going on there, politically and theologically if it is? And given the date in history...what about the Americas?

POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I’m just this guy, you know? @princejvstin.

Review: The Cautious Traveller's Guide to the Wastelands, by Sarah Brooks

An eerie exploration of the dangers of mimicry and control, on the Trans-Siberian Railway.

Cover design by Steven Marking, illustration by Rohan Eason

I was at Worldcon this last weekend, and one of the panels—'Monster Theory’—discussed at length a certain tension pervading all dark, scary things that go bump in the night: Who, really, is the monster here? As the panellists agreed, if we treat the monstrous as a metaphorical extension of the dark parts of ourselves (and we usually do), then the most natural revelation follows that the real monsters were the humans we met along the way.

Externalizing all that is dark and scary about ourselves is a fundamentally human way of interacting with the world—not a nice way, to be sure, but relatable. We’d much rather invent an other to embody all the bits of ourselves that we don’t want to acknowledge; and out of the soup of self-loathing (or, if you prefer, clear-eyed understanding of human weakness), dripping and eerie, emerge works of insight, including Sarah Brooks' excellent tale of train horror, The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands.

The year is 1900, and the iron rails rule the Eurasian continent. Distances are shorter than ever before; imperialism unites the world; commerce is king; and The Company will let nothing stand in the way of its drive to unite Beijing and Moscow through its Trans-Siberian railway. Only, in this history, Siberia is not as amenable to ferrous conquest as it proved to be in other timelines. In this history, in the preceding century, Siberia turned weird. Villages disappeared. Refugees told tales of horrors taking their place, horrors followed them, creeping outward. Japan closed its borders. China moved the Great Wall. Russia built a wall.

But The Company is unafraid. The Company will conquer the Siberian Wastelands. The Company built a railway, and runs a train, and by God and King and Country, nothing will prevent this train from making its 15-day crossing. Not the strange creatures that can be seen out the windows during the crossing; not the odd effects of the crossing on the passengers; and certainly not the engineers and train crew who report with increasing desperation that the repeated crossings are changing things.

This book is about one such crossing of the train. Tensions are high in the wake of a previous crossing in which something went badly wrong—something that none of the passengers or crew can quite remember. Marya is the daughter of the engineer who designed the window-glass that shattered on that last crossing, and who died shortly afterwards, under odd circumstances. She wants to know what happened. Next is Grey, a British naturalist, who is determined to uncover the secrets of the Wastelands and display them at the Great Exhibition in Moscow, because how dare nature resist the conquest of science? Finally, we have Weiwei, an adolescent who was born on a previous crossing. For reasons of jurisdiction and expediency, she was de facto adopted by the train crew upon being orphaned shortly after birth, and lives and works on it as her only home. Over the course of this crossing, all three pursue their own agendas, which naturally produce conflict—but not so much with each other as with the larger powers controlling the train inside and the Wastelands outside.

The details of unfolding events are less memorable than the details of setting and vibes, which are provided in lush profusion. The Company is determined to offer its passengers (in first class, at least) comfort, luxury, and the overwhelming impression of security, confidence, and control in the face of the uncontrollable weirdness outside. But the price of that control is a claustrophobic denial of reality. Passengers close the curtains of their windows rather than face what confronts them outdoors, chasing the false security of mundane civilization.

This false security reflects an important theme of the book: the psychology of control. The Company aims to control everything—the crossing; the Wastelands; heck, the world too, while it’s at it. Grey wants to control knowledge and nature. Although he presents himself, and indeed thinks of himself, as a scientist seeking to understand, it is not enough for him to understand the Wastelands on their own terms. Rather, he aims to force the Wastelands into his own framework of understanding, distorting them so they fit in with what he believes he knows about the natural world. Except the Wastelands are not knowable in that way, because they are not natural in that way. These attempts at control are doomed to failure; reality will assert itself, in whatever weird and uncanny way best suits the version of reality outside the closed and curtain train windows.

But not immediately. For a while you can pretend that everything is fine, is normal, is under control. Because that is another theme in this book: mimicry, the ability to look like something that you’re not. Nothing is as it seems, inside or out. Humans on the train cloak themselves in false identities, and Wasteland entities take on human-inspired forms. Odd, massive earthworm things move along beside the train, imitating the shapes of the cars as they hump through the ground. For all its luxuries, the train is not safe; the Wastelands will not go away, no matter how many panes of glass and curtains are interposed; and The Company is not in control.

Yet these mimicries—of safety, security, control, civilization—are only half of the picture. When passengers close the curtains and drink cocktails, they are pretending that something strange and dangerous is in fact safe. But mimicry can go in the opposite direction, too. Early on, Grey contemplates hoverflies, syrphidae, which camouflage themselves as bees. They are weak, and so adopt the form of the strong for protection. They are something harmless trying to look like something dangerous.

So: which type of mimicry are the Wastelands engaging in, when its exponents take on human-inspired forms? Are they something dangerous that humans are invited to see as safe (or, at least, controlled)? Or are they something that, for their own protection, must take on the form of something more dangerous? Who, really, is the source of the monstrous in this tale?

Well, another panel at Worldcon—about the purposes of reviewing books—had some divided opinions about whether spoilers should be avoided. I believe they should be, and so I will not answer that question. But perhaps, if your own preferences fall on the other side of the line, you can guess what my answer would be.

Highlights

Nerd coefficient: 8/10, well worth your time and attention

•     Eerie, creepy, otherworldly Siberia
•     Locked trains
•     Mimicry

Reference:  

Brooks, Sarah. The Cautious Traveller's Guide to the Wastelands [Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2024].

CLARA COHEN lives in Scotland in a creaky old building with pipes for gas lighting still lurking under her floorboards. She is an experimental linguist by profession, and calligrapher and Islamic geometric artist by vocation. During figure skating season she does blather on a bit about figure skating. She is on Mastodon at wandering.shop/@ergative.

Book Review: Queen B by Juno Dawson

Returning to the world of HMRC for a Tudor throwback with a witchy, lesbian twist

Anne Boleyn, historically accused of witchcraft—what if she really was a witch? I mean, you're not getting points for the originality of the premise, but I can't say I'm not interested. The eponymous Queen B exists in the background of the existing two HMRC novels as the progenitor of what grows into a national, official coven, and this novella purports to give us the beginnings of it all.

And it does well... kinda?

We are not following Anne for this story. Instead, we begin with the perspective of one of her ladies-in-waiting, her closest companions, her coven, watching as the swordsman takes her head. The narrative then jumps backwards and forwards in time between the year of her death and the time, a few years earlier, when she prepared to ascend the throne, and her brief time on it, all from the perspective of Grace Fairfax, transplanted Yorkshire girl, lesbian and witch. Because we couldn't stray too far from the métier of the original two novels, after all. Grace has the proximity to give us an intimate view into Anne's life and goals, trying to get a witch onto the throne of England to make life better for all her sisters in the process, as well as an emotionally invested view into the aftermath of her death—what this means both for the witches of England and for those who were closest to Anne herself. This ultimately leads to some events that in some ways prefigure the world we come to know in Dawson's novels.

But don't go in expecting a story about the creation of an official bureau of magic. This isn't that. This is, instead, a much messier, more personal story about love and people, and wanting and betrayal. It's about the risks people take, the lies they tell themselves, and the things that matter enough to them that they will make terrible choices to get them. Also, lesbian witches. Plenty of that.

As it happens, that's exactly the sort of story I like, so I was very happy reading this. Grace is a great narrative viewpoint character, occupying a half-in/half-out position with the royal household, thus giving us a way to evaluate the events of the story with a slightly more objective eye while still being invested in them. And by god is she invested. We get a good bit of rage, as well as some more complex emotional moments from her, and if nothing else, the woman doesn't go by halves, which is great fun to read.

But despite not being the protagonist or a viewpoint, it's the characterisation of Anne herself, occupying the edges of the narrative, that is the most striking. Obviously Anne Boleyn is a much covered fiction staple—her position in English history, her relationship with Henry and his break from the Catholic church, her ultimate end, all serve to make her a fascinating, shifting character onto whom a number of takes can be projected to suit the narrative need. Temptress, victim, political machinatrix, religious reformer, pawn—all available angles to take, all options explored in fiction already. But Dawson chooses simply to make her... messy. Which I'm absolutely sure has been done before as well, but it's the first time I'm reading it and I rather like it.

Dawson's Boleyn is compelling, charismatic and political, yes, but she's also someone whose motivations and ambitions are a little opaque, even to her. Possibly (probably?) she is lying to herself. The options are left open to interpretation by the reader, but what we are definitively given is a person, someone who exists as more than one thing to more than one of the people around her, and does not do it flawlessly. Someone whose perfection is only in the eye of the ones who love her more than they see her, for a time. We also see her exclusively through the people around her, and her own legacy-making—half of the story exists once she has already gone away, and some of it through what she has left behind, the words spoken to friends and lovers, letters hidden, gifts bequeathed. For a story not told from Anne's perspective, it does an awful lot of interesting centring of her, her interests, her propagandising and her failings.

Particularly interesting is that it does all of that, all of that focus on Anne, her wants and her machinations, while at the same time almost entirely sidelining Henry as both a character and a narrative force. He exists off to one side, reported on, creating change, but rarely spoken of directly or the focus of discussion. And even for the stories that centre Anne elsewhere, this is incredibly rare—as with all of the wives of Henry VIII, her entire narrative is conveyed to us now through the lens of her relationship with the king.

I have mixed feelings about this, as a choice? On the one hand, I deeply appreciate the narrative detaching the story of a really quite famous and interesting woman from the male framing and focus she receives in almost all tellings. More stories of people who get to exist outside of their status as wives, mothers, siblings and daughters of the powerful men of history, please. But at the same time, the story is deeply interested in a lot of things that were going on because of Henry. Anne's death is extremely central, as is the impending coronation and installation of Jane Seymour as her successor. For the women who are telling this story, Henry is an important motive force in their lives. He is the architect of the seismic changes in the world they live in, and will be again. To ignore his presence in the story renders its telling a little strange. We see the ripples in the pond, but never the stone that made them, and I wonder if the story would be less effective if it did not rest on the assumption of knowledge on the part of the reader—is this story less well told for someone not familiar with this bit of British history?

Then again, for all that those dramatic ripples shape the story, they are not the substance of it, and perhaps it truly does not matter—maybe the knowledge of things works against me, distracting me from what is on the page and back to the conventional narrative? Who knows.

In any case, this is a story that lives in the empty spaces, the rooms of women in a court of men, the relationships between women in a world whose documentary evidence largely ignores them, and aside from any concerns about narrative framing, that is wonderful. The moments that focus on the relationship —romantic, in case that wasn't already abundantly obvious from the blurb— between Grace and Anne are few, but nonetheless moving. Dawson has a knack of capturing moments, little frames of view that work as vignettes, as if we're seeing fond or closely guarded memories, sectioned off from the world around them. In those moments, we can clearly see the foundations of Anne and Grace's affections, as well as the faultlines, and they give us a great deal more insight into both characters as much through implication as by actually showing.

What is likewise wonderful is how clearly Dawson acknowledges the limits of the perspective she's chosen. Grace, our narrator, is a noblewoman and member of the court, in the inner circle of the queen, but also someone whose beginning was... if not humble, then rather more middle class than many of her now-peers. She has enough of an eye for social disparity that, when faced with people of much poorer origins and lives through the course of the story, she gives us someone whose sympathy and understanding seems plausible. She's not one of them, but she's those few steps closer, able to exist in the space between, and mediate. And this has allowed Dawson, though briefly, to do some very necessary acknowledgment that, while the problems the witches the story follows are serious and significant, impacting them all deeply and emotionally, at the same time they are living charmed, gilded existences, and their oppression as women and witches exists on a spectrum that continues well past them. This is a story about a Tudor royal court with commoners in it fully willing to speak up for themselves, to name the hypocrisy of the wealthy, noble women and look it straight in the eye.

But it is a novella, so the space for such things is brief. Good, well managed, pleasingly blunt, but brief.

Likewise, Dawson does not go into great depth, but there are glimmers of a very well handled approach to religious belief and witch-hunting in a story that could very easily have leaned into an easy good guy/bad guy approach. We see witch-hunting and the religious fervour underlying it used both cynically and entirely in earnest, by different groups of people with different aims, and understand that for every person using it as an excuse to squash such female power as could survive in the world of 16th-century England, there is another who truly believes that his actions follow the will and mandate of god himself.

Warlocks, too, get an interesting complexity. We have met them in the series' novels previously—typically less powerful than their female counterparts, sometimes resentful of this difference, but fundamentally under the same umbrella of magical ability, if separate in hierarchy. Here we see them before that union, men existing in an explicitly and intensely patriarchal system, using their social superiority in opposition to the witches' magical one. And then again this is unbalanced by class hierarchy—a noble woman witch and a common man warlock exist in extremely interesting dynamics of shifting power in different contexts, and it's a space Dawson is very happy to play in. This is possibly my major criticism of the story; I wanted to see more of this. The narrative is at its best when it plays with the messy social and power systems it has created, but we simply do not spend the time with them to truly explore what they mean to the people living under them. It makes sense: the novella is a novella because the linear story, the set of actions it follows are fairly simple and brief. Extending it would risk wallowing and soggy pacing. But there is so much in what Dawson has created that is fascinating and unusual that I nonetheless wish there had been more story to tell, just to give us the time to spend here.

But it's not, alas, the book we are given. What we do get —an emotionally engaging, historically interesting little snippet into the history of the world of the HMRC books— is still extremely enjoyable. It's a book that's easy to consume in a single sitting, a narrator it's easy to sympathise with, understand and root for, even as she makes decisions the reader may not agree with, and a little insight into how the world of HMRC came to be. If we imagine them as an alternative history, this is in many ways simply a story of the branching-off point, the slight difference that leads to the dramatically different present.

And that's neat. Is it a great deal more than neat? Of that I'm less sure. But if you go in with your expectations set, knowing it's a window into a short period of time, an implication of what's to come after, rather than a thorough explanation, it is very easy to have a great time with it and see some interesting storytelling choices while doing so.

The Math

Highlights: Genuinely interesting choices in depicting Anne Boleyn; brief glimmers of some cool intersectionality; fun backstory and worldbuilding to the existing books

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10.

Reference: Dawson, Juno. Queen B [HarperVia, 2024].

POSTED BY: Roseanna Pendlebury, the humble servant of a very loud cat. @chloroformtea.bsky.social

Review: The Pomegranate Gate by Ariel Kaplan

A beautifully structured story of duality and Jewish-flavoured mythology

Jews in Inquisition-era Spain are having a bit of a moment this week. Roseanna's review of Leigh Bardugo's The Familiar gave a nice mention to Ariel Kaplan's new book, The Pomegranate Gate, and it gives me great pleasure to flesh out what worked so nicely about it.

Perpetual persecution, expulsion, and pogroms mean that your typical Sephardic Jew in, say, 16th-century Spain can never fully relax. One such person, young Toba Peres, has been raised with this wariness her whole life. Her grandparents, scholars, live in a house full of books, and in her youth she learns geography by poring over maps, while her grandmother plays a game with her, a game that is not a game at all: ‘Of course, we are safe—but if you had to flee, where would you go?’

Naftaly Cresques is the son of a tailor but not terribly good at his inherited profession. Instead, he has inherited a different skill from his father: the ability to travel in dreams. He’ll see his father in his dreams, along with strange people whose pupils are square like goats’ rather than round. His father never speaks to him of their shared adventures, but one night, when some upheaval roils the city of Naftaly’s dreams, he wakes and goes downstairs, where his father tells him, ‘Do not go back to sleep tonight.’

From these two starting incidents, the entire structure of the book is laid out with exquisite skill. The overarching principle at play here is duality and crossover. Toba introduces us to the historical world, of 16th-century Jews facing expulsion from Spain, while Naftaly’s dreams introduce us to a parallel world, occupied by square-pupiled Maziks, types of demons mentioned in the Talmud briefly, but in Kaplan’s imagining fleshed out into a combination of djinn and fae. They are poisoned by salt, bound by their promises and their names, fundamentally reliant on magic to exist. The human and Mazik worlds are intertwined and mirror each other in nebulous ways: the upheaval of the expulsion of the Jews is reflected in a political power struggle in the world of the Maziks, and in the chaos of flight, Toba and Naftaly become separated from the rest of their friends, forming the two poles around which the rest of the plot is built. Following the theme of crossover, Toba stumbles into the world of the Maziks, while Naftaly joins forces with an old woman who refuses to give her name, and must make his way through mortal Spain on his wits. Yet Naftaly continues to visit Maziks in his dreams (and one specific Mazik in particular, if you understand my waggling eyebrows), because, as the Mazik world mirrors the human world, the dream world of the Maziks visits their own world.

This theme of duality and crossover is everywhere. Toba and Naftaly are a pair whose adventures remain mostly separate, but occasionally intersect. The human and Mazik worlds are mostly isolated, but join at the full moon.  At one point, Toba splits into two versions of herself, which share some degree of knowledge and perception about the world but rapidly diverge into two separate characters, Toba and Toba Bet. Even the smallest details of magic are flavored by this unstable, linked duality. Naftaly, in learning to transform cloth into gold, learns that linen will hold the transformation but wool will revert more quickly. Linen paired with wool, fabric paired with gold, transformation and reversion—it’s all part of the broader structure.

Although Kaplan’s research in describing the people and cities and neighbourhoods and politics of 16th-century Spain and Portugal shows clearly, I found myself more engaged with learning about the world of the Maziks. Possibly this is because human history is fixed, while our small band of heroes has a hope of changing things more substantially with the Maziks. And change is needed there: The realm’s political turmoil can be traced back to a catastrophe which swamped the city of Luz beneath the poisonous salt ocean. Luz was also home to the ruling monarch of the whole world, and the ensuing power struggle has led to an unfortunate series of coups, assassins, and lost heirs whose status as next in line is inconveniently manifested by marks on their bodies as each predecessor is assassinated. Things get very lively. There is a certain degree of dismemberment.

Things also get very confusing in places. The reader is well advised to keep an eye on the glossary, as the names of secret societies and political movements do have a habit of being introduced as mysterious allusions, and then referred to later as accepted fact. Somehow the narrative keeps skipping over the bit where they are properly defined. And, since this is the first book in a trilogy, many plot elements are introduced without being resolved. Those secret societies are surely not completely disbanded. Their secret studies that were maybe responsible for the destruction of Luz are surely not completely abandoned. And it cannot be trivial that the old woman who joins Naftaly in his plot arc is never given a name, and is ‘the old woman’ throughout the entire narrative. In a world where knowing someone’s true name binds them to you in a very fae-like manner, the old woman’s reticence about her identity is definitely going to come back in some important way.

I have already had the pleasure of obtaining from Netgalley the second book in this series, The Republic of Salt, which develops some of these plot elements in extremely pleasing ways. But it still plays its cards close to its chest with respect to the old woman’s identity. I have suspicions, though! I can’t wait to see if they’re correct when the third book is released.

Highlights

Nerd coefficient: 8/10: Well worth your time and attention

• Elegantly structured plot
  
• Jewish-norm characters
  
• Binding promises

CLARA COHEN lives in Scotland in a creaky old building with pipes for gas lighting still lurking under her floorboards. She is an experimental linguist by profession, and calligrapher and Islamic geometric artist by vocation. During figure skating season she does blather on a bit about figure skating. She is on Mastodon at wandering.shop/@ergative.

Reference:  Kaplan, Ariel. The Pomegranate Gate [Rebellion Publishing, 2023].

Book Review: The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo

A step somewhat outside of the author's usual métier... but plus ça change for Leigh Bardugo, it seems

Luzia is a maid in 15th-century Madrid, a poor girl with Jewish heritage trying to hide from the attention of the Inquisition in already hostile circumstances… and it's made only worse by the fact that she has something more to hide: Luzia can do magic. Little charms, taught to her by her aunt, things that help around the house—unburning the bread, mending things that have broken. But little things could be enough to put her in big trouble. So Luzia keeps it all under wraps, until a slip-up means her mistress catches on. Under pressure, knowing the trouble scrutiny could get her into, Luzia is forced to use her magic to help her employers grasp for better social standing, and from that everything spirals out, bringing her to the notice of those with power to harm her, harm her aunt, and affect the power balance of the whole country. She is forced to compete to serve the king with her skills, and walk a dangerous line of pious, Christian mysticism, hiding who she is, where she came from, and the realities of her magic.

As a blurb, it sounds a little… pat. The "magical competition" angle is hardly underdone in fantasy, after all. But in the reading of it? It actually works. And I think there are two reasons for this.

Firstly, the choice of setting. 15th-century Spain was, to put it bluntly, not a fun time for quite a lot of people. Shit was brutal. And when your central character is someone trying to hide their Jewish heritage from the Inquisition during the worst of it? Well. And Bardugo never shies away from that. She does her best to give us a real sense of what that might feel like, what life might be like. Luzia's day to day is grim and hard, and especially early in the book we get a lot of her musing on memories of her father and the life he faced—not even necessarily one of pointed, deliberate oppression, but the simple cold, awful reality of living in a time where there was no care for people like them, where a slip in circumstances could mean death, where an illness could mean the end of everything. Luzia, we come to know very quickly, is keenly aware of the precarity of her position in the world as a poor person, as a woman, as someone with something to hide from the Inquisition. And having all that grounding laid out so well, so clearly, gives us a really good position to build from when we get into the complexities of Luzia as a person, when the choices she makes begin to contrast with what she ought to do, what she knows is sensible but cannot bring herself to settle for.

Secondly, the pacing and the tone—we don't get to the competition aspect of the story for a good while, so we're bedded into the world, the characters, the reality of it, and we've had time to acclimate to the far more serious and thoughtful vibe that this is going for, compared to many magical competition stories. It's not an action adventure, despite the events of the story fitting that pattern. And the thing that pulls it away from that is the writing, and Luzia's perspective, the way she sees and thinks about the world. It's too real, too thoughtful, too complex—angry and determined and ambitious and fearful and regretful and naive by turns. And because the writing is so closely bedded into her thoughts, that perspective comes through in the tone, making it all the richer.

Because Luzia is, for the most part, an exceedingly well-written character. She has a complexity to her that sells her as a fully realised human being, grounded in, but not wholly bound by, the constraints of her setting and situation. Luzia wants more, when she dares to let herself hope for it, and we cannot help but hope for it with her, even as we see the risks it involves.

And the writing is genuinely lovely. Bardugo focuses in a lot here on descriptions of place, of texture and food, and the little things that build up to a full picture of a real life. Cloth and clothes and scents and lights and movements, temperature and embodiment in the moment. All of it gives us little links into that setting that Bardugo has worked hard to craft, without ever feeling the need to shout about it or go into heavy exposition.

So, focusing on that, on Luzia and her characterisation, on the setting… it seems like a well-told historical novel with some magical elements thrown in, right?

Well. The bit where it gets tricky is that there's another strand to this, another thread of the supernatural that messes things up a little. Because the powerful man whose attention Luzia's magic brings to her master and mistress? He's not a stranger to the supernatural. He already has someone in his employ who has his own expertise and backstory, his own angle. In and of itself, that would have been fine, especially as it gives us some grounding in magic in the world outside of the tight restrictions of what Luzia herself can plausibly know. The problem is that he's a dark, sexy, grumpy man with an extremely chequered and/or dubious past that haunts him still, an archetype Bardugo cannot seem to quite leave behind, especially not as a love interest.

In the novel the blurb sounds like this is going to be, Santangel fits right in. Feared assassin rumoured to have demonic powers? Grumpy but with a sympathetic streak for Luzia? Absolutely, bang on the tropes. But for the novel it began to seem like we were getting? The thoughtful, historically grounded one that cares about a realistic portrayal of 15th-century Spain and the perspective of someone in Luzia's position? The complex character study, giving us someone whose pragmatism, changeability and hunger for a better life are both incredibly sympathetic and full of foreshadowed pathos? He feels like an off note, a character from a different story altogether, dragging us away from complexity and into something altogether more trite.

In the moment of reading, this is easy to skim over. The prose is good, the story moves at an easy pace, and there are some genuinely stunning romantic lines sprinkled throughout, as well as enough of a growing unease within the story, a sense of impending doom, that you cannot help but push through to find out how it's all going to shake out. Santangel's slowly melting heart, Luzia's increasing hunger for life and connection, they make sense in the moment, caught up in the emotion.

But when you look back after the fact, when the book begins to settle in the memory, that off note becomes more apparent. As the memory of the prose and the details fade, what lingers is this strange relationship, this strange foray into the far more typical fantasy repertoire in a book that is striving to break slightly less trodden ground. It's a call back to other Bardugo work, in a book that otherwise feels like a foray into new things for her.

Don't get me wrong, I have enjoyed other Bardugo. But the tropes that work in Shadow and Bone, or even in Ninth House, both of which are quite different but still quite traditional fantasy stories, do not quite land here. The Darkling or Darlington fit their settings in a way that Santangel never seems to quite gel into this one.

It's an interesting contrast to another book set in the same time, with Jewish perspectives, that I read recently: The Pomegranate Gate by Ariel Kaplan. On the face of it, that is a story that goes far more into traditional fantasy realms, with magical portals, fantastical places and people who aren't actually (or fully) human at all. But it has a coherence to it that The Familiar doesn't quite manage, and never lets the fantastical run contrary to the historical, instead having them genuinely work together towards the aims of the story. In some ways, The Familiar is a more ambitious work, striving for a greater closeness of perspective and embedding in the realities of the setting; but by having that single discordant trope, it never quite hits those goals. The Pomegranate Gate meanwhile knows exactly what it wants to be and does it with élan, and feels all the brighter and richer for that consistency.

Ultimately, The Familiar does feel more grown-up than some of Bardugo's other work, a foray into greater realism of setting, greater closeness of character, greater awareness of a complex, rich world putting its feelers through all aspects of the story, but it just does not linger in the memory in the way that Six of Crows or Ninth House does. It's good, it's an enjoyable thing to read, and it has some genuinely lovely prose at times, but it's just missing some of the magic. I hope it's a stepping stone. Because if she does something like this again, and just goes that little bit further with it? All the ingredients are there, and could make something truly special. We just need to leave the spectre of the hot, morally dubious man where he belongs. Or at least try to bed him into his setting as much as the protagonist (or as much as he beds the protagonist—wahey).

--

Highlights: lovely moments of description, absolute banger romantic lines, genuinely complex protagonist

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10

Reference: Bardugo, Leigh. The Familiar [Penguin Books, 2024].

POSTED BY: Roseanna Pendlebury, the humble servant of a very loud cat. @chloroformtea.bsky.social

Review: The Book of Clarence

A unique, irreverent, genre-mixing dark comedy wrapped around deep messages on race and class

The theatrical trailer for The Book of Clarence left me feeling confused and a little uneasy about seeing the film. Was it an alternate history, a comedy, a parody, a tragic epic drama? Was it an allegorical Black social commentary, fantasy/sci-fi, religious, anti-religious? After seeing the film, the answer to all of these questions is: yes. There was so much going on in this story. The quirky presentation style is so unique that it’s hard to know who the target audience is. But sometimes weird is good.

The story is set during the last year of the life of Jesus. Yes, the Jesus. Jesus is a popular local celebrity in the area (due to his legendary miracles) but initially he remains mostly offscreen and is barricaded by an entourage of disciples. Clarence is a local hustler, but with a good heart. He gambles, sells drugs, drag-races chariots, and takes care of his ailing/aging mother. When his ill-gotten debts catch up to him and the local mobster threatens to kill him, Clarence hatches a scheme to make money by taking advantage of Jesus’s popularity as the Messiah. At first he tries to join the disciples but is immediately rejected by them, including his twin brother Thomas (yes, the famous doubting Thomas) so Clarence is prevented from any access to Jesus. Then he gets a better idea. He decides to con people into believing he is a miracle worker to get money.  Clarence enlists his best friend Elijah and recently freed fighter Barabbas to help with the scheme. But things take a turn when the occupying Roman military catches up with Clarence leading to an unexpected encounter with the real Jesus. The additional twist in this film is that, other than the occupying Romans, every character is Black.

The film is initially a parody of classic Bible epics such as Ben Hur or The Ten Commandments, using ironically epic background music, dramatic chariot races, and even 1960s-style gold-framed title pages in between the major acts of the story. On the other hand, it is also fantastical. The drugs Clarence smokes with his friends cause them to temporarily float in the air with their bodies turning and spinning, gravity-free. When Clarence gets an idea, it materializes as an actual light above his head. The fantastical special effects are a surreal juxtaposition against the retro epic vibe.

At first, the feel of the film is epic and historical but also slightly comical/absurd. However, the film eventually dives into the true nature of belief, loyalty, and morality. Although the people in his community have a range of spiritual beliefs, particularly as it relates to the Messiah, Clarence seems to be the only one who doesn’t believe in any form of God or spirituality. However, he is willing to use the existing belief systems to achieve his goals by being a con artist and pretending to be an alternate Messiah. In a dual role, LaKeith Stanfield plays both Clarence and Clarence’s twin brother, Thomas the apostle, who has abandoned everything, including their ailing mother, to follow Jesus. Thomas despises Clarence’s petty criminal behavior, even as Clarence has devoted himself to caring for their mother. Thus we have the set-up of religious piety versus cynical pragmatism that permeates the film.

The best character in the film is Clarence’s best friend/sidekick Elijah. Elijah is open-minded about his beliefs, but also comfortable running scams and being loyal to Clarence and their bestie, chariot racer Mary Magdalene. In a pivotal scene, Mary Magdalene has been accused of adultery and chained to a wall to be brutally stoned to death. Elijah intervenes to protect her, risking his own death, but he cannot free her from the chain. Clarence is nowhere around and death seems imminent for Mary and Elijah until the real-deal Messiah shows up in a quietly jaw-dropping, Marvel-worthy scene.

The set design and costumes of the film are outstanding, making you feel transported to the ancient Jerusalem setting that has been reimagined for the story. The film also benefits from a strong cast reinterpreting classic characters, including Mary, the Mother of Jesus (hilariously played by Alfre Woodard), John the Baptist (David Oyelowo), and an irritable Pontius Pilate (James McAvoy). We also get quirky new characters played by Babs Olusanmokun from Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Caleb McLaughlin from Stranger Things, and an almost unrecognizable Benedict Cumberbatch who takes the film to new irreverence as an accidentally mistaken version of Jesus.

All these strange, quirky characters revolve around Clarence as he tries to make a better life for himself and prove himself worthy of his ill-fated love interest Varinia (Anna Diop). LaKeith Stanfield leans into the cynical, skeptical, onscreen personality he has used effectively in prior fantastical films like Sorry to Bother You, Haunted Mansion, and even Get Out. Despite his cynicism, Clarence has enough cliched character growth to make some positive societal choices for others, even as he still scams those around him. Clarence continues to pursue his fake Messiah miracles with growing success until he finds out the true cost of the path he has chosen. Then the film takes a serious and dramatic turn into a violent exploration of racism and classism. We think we know what is going to happen, but the final crucifixion scenes subvert both traditional narratives and cynical new viewer expectations.

The Book of Clarence throws many important social justice themes and philosophical questions at viewers who may ultimately feel overwhelmed and disoriented by the irreverent and quirky delivery style. The trope of the lovable rascal with the heart of gold is quickly subverted into an ultimate theme of “mess around and find out.” It’s been a long time since a film completely bewildered me in such a good way. This movie is not for everyone. But, if you have an appetite for quirkiness and a tolerance for explorations of hard truths wrapped in an allegory, The Book of Clarence will give you a great deal to think about.

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10

Highlights:

• Weird and provocative. Not for everyone.
• Quirky subversive messaging.
• Strong performances by the lead actors.

POSTED BY: Ann Michelle Harris – Multitasking, fiction writing Trekkie currently dreaming of her next beach vacation.

Review: The Borgia Dove by Jo Graham

The second in a historical fantasy series centering about Giulia Farnese, mistress to Cardinal Rodrigo of the Borgia family. Yes, that Borgia family.

The first book in Jo Graham’s series, A Blackened Mirror, introduced us to the upbringing and early life of Giulia from a historical fantasy perspective. While the actual woman in history is her basis, Graham leavened her upbringing by making her a virginal (and kept deliberately so) seer, and used in magical rites amongst the scheme of factions seeking control of the Papacy in late 15th century Italy. That book ended with Giulia firmly as the concubine of the powerful and alluring Rodrigo Borgia, a man whose ambitions are to become the next Pope.

The Borgia Dove continues this story.

The year is 1492. Columbus has just started to sail the ocean blue, but has not yet reached the Americas, but he will, in a couple of months. What is also going to happen in even shorter order is Pope Innocent III is going to die. Rodrigo, now in his early 60’s, sees this as his last and best hope to become Pope. Giulia, as his mistress, wants to help him, not only because he is her lover, but the humanist side of the Church is far more appealing to her than the more traditional and conservative factions led by Rodrigo’s enemy Cardinal Della Rovere. But no longer a virgin, Giulia no longer has magic powers, and so to help Rodrigo, must cultivate other forms of power to help him succeed in the Conclave, and survive the deadly politics of 15th century Rome.

And so a story is told.

You probably have heard of the Borgias before, and may have seen, for example, the Showtime series The Borgias, with Jeremy Irons as the titular character. Giulia Farnese is an important secondary character in that series, even as it focuses on the Borgias more directly. Here, by making Giulia the primary focus, we get a look at events that are covered in the premiere episode of that series, but with Giulia’s perspective.

With Giulia as the focus, we do get Rodrigo as a major secondary character, as well as other Borgias and the other major characters in late 15th century Rome. Yes, the infamous Lucrezia Borgia is here, but she’s a 12 year old girl. She’s curious, bright, intelligent, and devoted to her father’s success. She is, at this stage in her life, nothing like what her infamy brought her. Also note the aforementioned Showtime series definitely aged her up. She also is, in this novel, most definitely Giulia’s protégé. Giulia may only be eighteen herself (again, the show aged her up), but she provides a female role model for Lucrezia. And their interactions are among the most delightful in the book.

Also, let’s talk about the fantastic elements, since the book does provide more than a patina of historical fantasy that Graham started in the first book. For while she may not think she is a magical “Dove” anymore, Giulia soon learns that while she thought she was finished with magic once she became Rodrigo’s lover, magic, and the higher powers, are not finished with her. Both those who would support her, and those who would seek to tear her down.

It’s a very sensual and sensuous book, and readers of Graham before are not going to be surprised by this. Not just sexual and carnal pleasures, mind you, but the entire world is brought with all the senses in mind. We get to feel, to smell, to taste, to see and to touch the late 15th century Rome that Giulia inhabits. The charm of having breakfast with a friend, spreading soft cheese over bread. The deadly darkness of the streets of Rome at night. The elegant seductiveness of a dance and a party. And much more. Graham’s writing brings us into Giulia’s world, life, passions and desires in a fully immersive way.

There is a lot of talk in SFF circles these days about romantasy: fantasy with a strong romance focus and theme. Although this novel does not claim that title, I think that this novel definitely would qualify for those looking for such work. Giulia is plainly in a romantic relationship with Rodrigo and considers him the love of her life, quite loyally so. Time and again, people outside her think she is in it for the money alone (the simony of the Borgias is portrayed as being part and parcel of the times and is not judged too negatively thereby), and Giulia insists, to others and to herself that she is not. And indeed, we see opportunities where Giulia could, if her heart was truly for gold and not Rodrigo, where she could “feather her own nest” and she does not take them.

Yes, some readers may find it distasteful that Giulia is indeed a third of Rodrigo’s age, and indeed, that does get brought up in the book as well. Graham shows this as a meeting of minds as well as hearts and souls. Together, on all three strands, she depicts Giulia and Rodrigo coming together, the Dove and the Bull (The Bull is a symbol of House Borgia). It may be a May-December romance, but the author makes it believable and more importantly, sympathetic to the reader.

And Giulia is a person a lot of readers can relate with. She’s curious, intelligent, loves to read, and seeks out books. Not just magical books, as part of the fantastic elements of this novel, but just books in general, in a world that Gutenberg has not yet set aflame with his invention. Giulia loves literacy, thought and that way of transmitting knowledge and story and that love comes across the page to us. One could easily imagine sitting to a lunch with Giulia and discussing Plutarch, Dante, and more. The novel is also full of allusions and references to books and writers for the savvy reader to discover.

Graham has done an excellent job here in making The Borgia Dove a standalone novel even as it builds on the life of Giulia and her upbringing from the first novel. While I would never want to turn you away from reading the first book, if you wanted to start the series here (perhaps you are a fan of Jeremy Irons’ portrayal or the whole very cut and thrust life of the Borgias), or just have limited time, I think you completely and utterly could begin here. Unlike the first book, which takes place over a number of years as Giulia grows up, learns who and what she is, and gets plunged into matters, the focus of this book, time-wise, is much narrower. Much of the book takes place during the week or so of that Papal Enclave that, spoilers for 500 years ago, will make Rodrigo into Pope Alexander VI. But what Giulia’s story brings to a story already told is her, female perspective, and the secret magical history of those who would oppose and cast down Rodrigo, and what Giulia must do, and is willing to do, in order to preserve her lover’s life, power and position.

Given the complex richness of Giulia’s life, and of course now the whole Borgia project, I look forward to what Graham will do in the third volume. I think it will be a challenge, since as hazy as history goes for most people, the Borgias are a name that still involve a lot of negativity and while the first two books have focused specifically on Giulia and kept people like the young Lucrezia in minor roles, going forward with the series means Graham will have an uphill climb in further changing people’s perceptions of Rodrigo, Lucrezia and the rest. I look forward to seeing how she takes on this challenge.

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Highlights:

• 15th Century Rome and Papal Politics strongly on display
• Giulia Farnese is a captivating character to capture your heart and mind
• Sensuous and immersive writing to bring you into Giulia’s world.

Reference: Graham, Jo, The Borgia Dove, [Candlemark and Gleam, 2024]


POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I’m just this guy, you know? @princejvstin.

Microreview: The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi, by Shannon Chakraborty

The gang is reunited to buckle some swashes, but they sure took their time getting to the good bits

The hook of S. A. Chakraborty’s newest offering ticks all my boxes: Piracy and magic and spirits and daevas? Ships and trade and 12th century Islamic world? A middle-aged mother who has Lived A Life is strong-armed out of her peaceful domestic retirement into taking One Last Job? Please and thank you, yes, may I have some more?

The story is told from the perspective of Amina Al-Sirafi, who made a name for herself in her youth as the most ruthless, terrifying pirate captain in the Arab world. Tales of her feats are known everywhere:  She is tall, fights like a man, has gold in her teeth and scars on her arm. She poisoned a feast during trade talks in order to rob the attendees; she stole horses from the emir of Hormuz. She robbed Chinese envoys of their cargo and stole their ship while they slept through it all, only to awake drifting in the sea on dinghies. She is not to be trifled with. 

 Or was not to be trifled with. Now, though, she just wants to be left alone to live quietly and raise her beloved daughter, secluded and hidden from the girl’s father, who is clearly bad news of some sort. (The exact badness of his news is kept an irritating secret from the reader, but not a terribly secret secret; I'd figured it out by page 49.) So when a wealthy woman whose daughter has been kidnapped comes to hire Amina to find the daughter, she knows exactly which pressure points to push to make Amina take the job: threaten her quiet retirement, and make it known where the fabled pirate captain now lives. Of course Amina takes the job---and since deep down she misses the old life, the excitement, the seafaring adventures, it’s not a complete catastrophe. One last job. One terrific pay-out. Then she’ll definitely absolutely retire for real. No fooling. Absotively posilutely. Forget that this is marketed as Book 1 of a trilogy. Just one last job, that's all.

From here the plot proceeds in two halves. In the first bit, Amina gets the gang back together. She must track down her old ship and her old crew and get them on board (hah) with her new endeavour. Friends must be sprung from prisons, ships must be stolen from soldiers, and poisoners and cartographers must be persuaded to give up their own comfortable retirements to help Amina find the kidnapped child.  Next, once the gang is all gathered, Amina and company set out to rescue the child. And since the child has been kidnapped by a collector of magical artifacts, with his own plans for how to use them to his advantage, things get real magical real fast.

This book delivers on all of its promises. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a book that provides so fully and completely everything that it promised on the tin. We have sea battles, heists, poisoners, and trips to the world of the Unseen where trees grow people as fruit and court finery includes cloaks of porcupine quills. We meet loyal friends, ambiguous former lovers, mysterious (sexy) strangers, teenage waifs with hidden depths, and a ship’s cat who is so bad at being a cat that it clearly is hiding some other secret. From the midpoint to the end, this book is a sterling example of the sort of historical Arab-centered fantasy that Chakraborty did so well in her previous Daevabad trilogy.

The problem is that in the first half, the Getting-The-Gang-Back-Together-Again half, I found myself chafing a bit, getting restless. Some of these relate to my own personal preferences in reading fantasy, but some of it reflects a slight clumsiness in execution.

I understand exactly what Chakraborty was doing in this bit. She has chosen a wonderful, underused (in western fantasy at least) setting for her story. The medieval Arab world is this delightful mishmash of cultures and languages and peoples, trades going east to China and India, south to Madagascar, north to the Mediterranean. The cities of Aden, of Socotra, Mombasa—these are wonderful, vibrant, exciting settings. By sailing from place to place to gather up her old comrades, Amina is taking the reader on a tour of this world, allowing us to visit the markets, run into the local governments, learn about the world that is so different from the more familiar knights-and-stone-castles of medieval Europe historical fantasy settings.

This approach also allows us to sink into the character histories some more. We learn about Amina’s previous exploits in the regions, we see her thinking about her youth, reflecting on what she has learned and what she wants from her future, having conversations about growing up and growing older with her former (and once-more) shipmates. Structurally, it is a very effective decision.

But, see, it’s boring. There’s only so much navel-gazing about responsibilities as a parent conflicting with one’s desire for adventure that I can take before I start wanting less talk and more plot. And this was a little bit over that line. Not a lot. But a little.

The other issue with this first half of the book is something that is really, really hard to get right, but which must be addressed in historical fantasy. And that is the importation of modern progressive values into a very, very different world. Slavery was a thing in the 12th century Middle East. Women didn’t have much freedom. Queer people and trans people existed, and did not always have an easy time of it. Previously, if such issues were addressed in a historical fantsy, they were folded into the worldview of the narrator and characters, because ‘historical accuracy’. More modern texts don’t accept the presumed worldview of a person ‘of the time’ so blithely, and so must find a way for their characters—who absolutely are ‘of the time’—to be people that won’t come across as despicable bigots to a modern reader.  

This is a hard task. It’s true that we often assume a sort of knee-jerk reactionary worldview in historical fantasy that isn’t actually all that historically accurate, but it’s also undeniable that a 12th century pirate captain is not going to be flying a rainbow flag and speaking the language of trans rights. There’s a balance to be struck. And Chakraborty works very, very hard to strike that balance. Amina knows about the practice of slavery and abhors it. She knows that some of her crewmates are gay, learns that one is trans, and accepts it easily. There’s nothing in Amina’s head that would, I think, offend the modern reader. Chakraborty makes sure of it. She’s very careful. I can tell. She’s doing her job. 

 And that’s the problem—not that Chakraborty’s doing her job, but that I can tell she’s doing her job. It doesn’t feel organic. It feels careful. It feels attentive. It feels like there were sensitivity readers consulted. It feels calculated.

In a way this criticism might be unfair. What else is Chakraborty supposed to do? Not consult sensitivity readers? Not acknowledge that slavery was a thing and queer and trans people existed in this setting? Make her heroine a bigot who accepts injustices unthinkingly? Of course not! But all the same, the seams of her process showed a bit more obviously in these bits than they did in the swashbuckling action, the descriptions of the world of the Unseen, the parry and thrust of the villains and heroes, the negotiations with the daevas. The bits that felt smooth and natural and engrossing and enchanting were all in the second half. The bits that felt laboured and slow were all in the first half. The half without magic.

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Highlights

Nerd coefficient: 7/10, an enjoyable experience, but not without its flaws

• Pirates
  

• Medieval Arab world
  

• Daevas

• Modern worldviews in medieval minds

References:  

Chakraborty, Shannon. The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi [Harper Voyager, 2023].

CLARA COHEN lives in Scotland in a creaky old building with pipes for gas lighting still lurking under her floorboards. She is an experimental linguist by profession, and calligrapher and Islamic geometric artist by vocation. During figure skating season she does blather on a bit about figure skating. She is on Mastodon at wandering.shop/@ergative.