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I picked this book up basically entirely because I was drawn in by the title and the beautiful cover design. And I think I'm glad I read it? It was pretty fun. But I have some major frustrations.
The basic premise is that things went differently in the Victorian era and so the British Empire a) stayed a major Thing into the modern era but b) like, a relatively multicultural and non-patriarchal Thing, at least as colonial empires go. Also there is a genetics-reading computer system that is next-door to God in terms of its power and influence on the Empire.
I enjoyed the worldbuilding for the most part, though I also have questions about aspects of it. I appreciated that the author wasn't trying to make this alternate world a utopia, just a world that is mildly better than ours in certain ways though also perhaps worse in others. But it also just kind of all felt like an excuse to get people dressing up in fancy Victorian-era dresses and going to balls in the modern era. Which I understand the appeal of, but also I don't think that that aspect makes sense given the worldbuilding. Why would the alterations to how the British Empire works make fashion and culture so much more stagnant??
The near deification of the genetics-computer doesn't make any sense either, there's no effort made to explain how this perspective might have come into being in this alternate world, and it bugs me.
Anyways our main characters are:
- Helena, a Canadian girl who's on the poorer side of the aristocracy and is about to have her debut
- Margaret, the crown princess of the Empire, who is pretending to be a random unimportant aristocrat so she can have some freedom and experience of the world on summer vacation in Canada
- August, lifetime best friend of Helena, heir to a Great Lakes shipping company, plans to propose to Helena after Helena's debut (Helena expects and wants this proposal)
( Read more... )
The basic premise is that things went differently in the Victorian era and so the British Empire a) stayed a major Thing into the modern era but b) like, a relatively multicultural and non-patriarchal Thing, at least as colonial empires go. Also there is a genetics-reading computer system that is next-door to God in terms of its power and influence on the Empire.
I enjoyed the worldbuilding for the most part, though I also have questions about aspects of it. I appreciated that the author wasn't trying to make this alternate world a utopia, just a world that is mildly better than ours in certain ways though also perhaps worse in others. But it also just kind of all felt like an excuse to get people dressing up in fancy Victorian-era dresses and going to balls in the modern era. Which I understand the appeal of, but also I don't think that that aspect makes sense given the worldbuilding. Why would the alterations to how the British Empire works make fashion and culture so much more stagnant??
The near deification of the genetics-computer doesn't make any sense either, there's no effort made to explain how this perspective might have come into being in this alternate world, and it bugs me.
Anyways our main characters are:
- Helena, a Canadian girl who's on the poorer side of the aristocracy and is about to have her debut
- Margaret, the crown princess of the Empire, who is pretending to be a random unimportant aristocrat so she can have some freedom and experience of the world on summer vacation in Canada
- August, lifetime best friend of Helena, heir to a Great Lakes shipping company, plans to propose to Helena after Helena's debut (Helena expects and wants this proposal)
( Read more... )
