A Great And Terrible Beauty

It's 1895 and, after the death of her mother, 16-year-old Gemma Doyle is shipped off from the life she knows in India to Spence, a proper boarding school in England.  Lonely, guilt-ridden, and prone to visions of the future that have an uncomfortable habit of coming true, Gemma finds her reception a chilly one.  She's not completely alone, though...she's being followed by a mysterious young man, sent to warn her to close her mind against the visions.

It's at Spence that Gemma's powers to attract the supernatural unfolds, as she becomes entangled with the school's most powerful girls and discovers her mother's connection to a shadowy, timeless group called The Order.  Her destiny awaits...if only Gemma can believe it.

I'll admit that I expected more from Libba Bray, perhaps a little too much.  I loved her most recent book, The Diviners, because it had a sense of place, and this was down to Bray's inclusion of many a minor detail of the period in which her book was set.  Although A Great and Terrible Beauty revolves around a Victorian boarding school in England, I couldn't find much that signalled this and thus never felt fully immersed in the story. 

While the plot was okay, it was nothing surprising or different.  This goes for Bray's characters, too.  Generic personalities from cookie cutter boarding school fiction are all here: The uptight headmistress, the queen bee who's family neglects her, her beautiful sidekick and the plain orphan outcast.  Gemma is about the only one who momentarily breaks her cliché of new-girl outcast narrator, often with some astute observations of what it was to be a girl in Victorian times. 

Overall, it's not that there isn't potential for the series to grow and change into something better, it's just A Great and Terrible Beauty doesn't exactly entice me to read the next book in the trilogy.  The best way I can recommend this book is as light holiday read. 

You sound like you're from landan!

Lots of travel happened again, hence lack of updates as I never prepare posts in time.  Over the weekend I was in Jersey (which all the adverts say is the hottest place in the British Isles.  I have yet to see any evidence of this, and have therefore deduced it is all lies. Lies I tell you, lies!) and then on Tuesday I went on a trip to London with Matt. 

We had a round about idea of what we were doing for the day.  I wanted to go to the Forbidden Planet megastore, as I had missed out going the last time I was in London, and on the way we finally found Denmark Street.  Bear in mind that Matt loves guitars and that this road is basically just guitar shops.  Expensive guitar shops.  He was in heaven.  Luckily for non-musical me there was a Foyles bookshop across the road.  I was basically like a kid in a candy shop, that place was HUGE!  Not to mention the vast selection, including books that I haven't been able to find anywhere else in the U.K, bar online.  I knew it was a sign, and who cares if I have plenty on my TBR list already, how could I pass up the chance to own/read Libba Bray's Beauty Queens and the Zombies VS. Unicorns anthology?   

Moving on, or after Matt dragged me away from the books and the Doctor Who merchandise, we found Forbidden Planet, after bypassing a massive tool shop, had a look round and I managed not to buy anything...just.  We then went to Fopp, to peruse their vinyl selection, before heading to lunch and then having a break in Hyde Park.  Or should I say Matt had a nap while I continued reading Mira Grant's Feed.  It was a lovely afternoon, but we weren't done yet.

The main reason for the trip was that last week I had won tickets from SFX to go to the Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter event at the IET, where they would be discussing their new book, The Long War. 

 

It was a really good event, even if answers to questions sometimes took such an indirect route that I was often left wondering what the original question was!  However, if you know me, that's my kind of answer!  Pratchett was full of wit, quantum bollocks is a rather good phrase, Baxter highlighted the process of how a single book by two authors whose styles are rather different, and Terry's assistant Rob was a great mediator.  Shame we never got to use the microphones for a group sing-a-long! 

 

I had a fantastic day, I'm more enthusiastic about reading The Long War and I really can't wait to go to another book event.  I just wish there were more local ones with authors whose books I have read so I'm not completely clueless as to what they are on about!

The Diviners

Evie O'Neill has been exiled from her boring old hometown and shipped off to the bustling streets of New York City - and she is pos-i-tute-ly ecstatic.  It's 1926, and New York is filled with speakeasies, Ziegfeld girls and rakish pickpockets.  The only catch is that she has to live with her uncle Will - and his unhealthy obsession with the occult.
Evie worries he'll discover her darkest secrets: a supernatural power that has only brought he trouble so far.  But when the police find a murdered girl branded with a cryptic symbol and Will is called to the scene, Evie realizes her gift could help catch a serial killer.
As Evie jumps headlong into a dance with a murderer, other stories unfold in the city that never sleeps.  A young man named Memphis is caught between two worlds.  A chorus girl named Theta is running from her past.  A student named Jericho hides a shocking secret.
And unknown to all, something dark and evil has awakened.

 

 

I had seen The Diviners being review on many other blogs and had read relatively good things about this supernatural tale set in the 1920's.  Even though I have a self-imposed ordering from the library ban on at the moment in order to get all my reading done by the holidays, I had to make an exception for this intriguing book.

 

Firstly, this is definitely not a quick read.  My edition was a hardback and at 500+ pages long and my poor arms were aching after about 10mins of reading but I had to persevere.  The Diviners page count is not the only reason it will never be a quick read; Bray's attention to detail - both about the setting and her character backgrounds - is awe worthy and her extensive research translates well into the text without dragging the story to a halt.  While it may put some off, I think the story benefits from Bray's inclusion of many small details, giving the story the air of needing to be savoured and re-read.  Yes, certain things could be cut, but would I have had the same understanding of the characters or enjoyment of the book as a whole? 

 

My main reason for wanting to read this book so desperately was that it was set in Manhattan in the 1920's.  I've had a streak of reading paranormal books set in either alternative our time or far flung in the future that I found talks of flappers and prohibition refreshing, making me imagine the city in a  completely different way. 

 

The Diviners has a huge cast of characters, and this is normally the downfall for a lot of books.  Amazingly they each get their allotted page space, even if they are to become victims of Naughty John, and have rich, detailed histories that transform them from stereotypes and into real people. Speaking of which, the Naughty John segments (especially the early ones) were adeptly pulled off, and read like they had come from the pages of an adult crime/thriller novel. 

 

My only disappointment with The Diviners was that I felt towards the end the last few pages were too occupied with setting up plot threads for the next book.  However, I am intrigued to see where Libba Bray will take her cast next. 

 

I also have to mention the great website for The Diviners!  Click here for character profiles, etc..