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sophia_sol) wrote2014-07-13 08:29 pm
sophia_sol) wrote2014-07-13 08:29 pm
The Grand Tour!
The Grand Tour, by Patricia C Wrede & Caroline Stevermer
The Grand Tour is a sequel to Sorcery & Cecelia, taking place directly after the double wedding of the two main characters and their love interests. This book isn't quite as effervescent in its charm as the first one, but I still like it a great deal. Its strengths are somewhat different.
I'll always be particularly fond of it for introducing me to this series - I got The Grand Tour out of the library once as a teenager without realizing it was a sequel, and read it on its own as a stand-alone. Me being me, it worked perfectly well like that and I greatly enjoyed it. I lent it to Essie directly after (we being at summer camp at the time) and I recall her being rather less impressed and feeling it really needed to have one read the first novel for this one to be followed.
Anyways! What I particularly like about this one is the nerdery over magic and history and the intersection of the two. I also find the two couples adorable - the characters are so clearly in love with each other. It's too bad though that there's a lot less about the friendship between Kate and Cecy in this one. I mean, they're still friends, but given the nature of the documents that make this up (Cecy's public deposition, and Kate's commonplace book) there's understandably a lot less about the two of them and their feelings about one another.
It's another book with lots of strong female characters, which I entirely appreciate. It is again largely the women who save the day at the end, though with some help from the dudes. And it turns out that the main villains of the book are two women as well - the Contess instead of the Conte, and Mountjoy is largely ineffectual, and Eve-Marie plays rather a larger role than anyone expected.
Also I liked the acknowledgement of the way using your choice of how to present your appearance can have a big effect, especially as a woman. And that you can totally be into things like fashion and opera and still be a super awesome Getting Things Done kind of person.
Also Lady Sylvia continues to be the bamfiest and I kind of want to be her when I grow up.
I must mention two things I noticed on this read-through that I didn't previously. Firstly: this book is a minor crossover with The Scarlet Pimpernel! AHAHAHAHA. Secondly: thank you Les Mis fandom for teaching me about the word "farouche" so that I can correctly interpret the sentence "No one minds a touch of the farouche in a new bride." (althoughhhhh upon googling it looks like in modern English usage it doesn't quite mean what it meant when Hugo was using it? SIGH.)
The Grand Tour is a sequel to Sorcery & Cecelia, taking place directly after the double wedding of the two main characters and their love interests. This book isn't quite as effervescent in its charm as the first one, but I still like it a great deal. Its strengths are somewhat different.
I'll always be particularly fond of it for introducing me to this series - I got The Grand Tour out of the library once as a teenager without realizing it was a sequel, and read it on its own as a stand-alone. Me being me, it worked perfectly well like that and I greatly enjoyed it. I lent it to Essie directly after (we being at summer camp at the time) and I recall her being rather less impressed and feeling it really needed to have one read the first novel for this one to be followed.
Anyways! What I particularly like about this one is the nerdery over magic and history and the intersection of the two. I also find the two couples adorable - the characters are so clearly in love with each other. It's too bad though that there's a lot less about the friendship between Kate and Cecy in this one. I mean, they're still friends, but given the nature of the documents that make this up (Cecy's public deposition, and Kate's commonplace book) there's understandably a lot less about the two of them and their feelings about one another.
It's another book with lots of strong female characters, which I entirely appreciate. It is again largely the women who save the day at the end, though with some help from the dudes. And it turns out that the main villains of the book are two women as well - the Contess instead of the Conte, and Mountjoy is largely ineffectual, and Eve-Marie plays rather a larger role than anyone expected.
Also I liked the acknowledgement of the way using your choice of how to present your appearance can have a big effect, especially as a woman. And that you can totally be into things like fashion and opera and still be a super awesome Getting Things Done kind of person.
Also Lady Sylvia continues to be the bamfiest and I kind of want to be her when I grow up.
I must mention two things I noticed on this read-through that I didn't previously. Firstly: this book is a minor crossover with The Scarlet Pimpernel! AHAHAHAHA. Secondly: thank you Les Mis fandom for teaching me about the word "farouche" so that I can correctly interpret the sentence "No one minds a touch of the farouche in a new bride." (althoughhhhh upon googling it looks like in modern English usage it doesn't quite mean what it meant when Hugo was using it? SIGH.)
no subject
I remember liking it less than Sorcery and Cecelia and the third book whose title I'm forgetting, mostly because of the epistolary conceit; I found the chatty detailed letters full of carefully recounted conversations plausible, but had to hang onto my suspension of disbelief rather harder to read a chatty detailed public deposition full of carefully recounted conversations. Possibly I'd mind that less on the reread. But I don't remember a thing about the plot, and I certainly don't remember having difficulties with it -- and the characters and their relationships are consistently great, of course.
no subject
The third book is The Mislaid Magician and I also recall not liking it as much; in fact, I don't remember a single thing about it. Maybe I should give that one a second chance.