soph (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sophia_sol) wrote2023-02-28 08:55 pm
sophia_sol) wrote2023-02-28 08:55 pm
A Restless Truth, by Freya Marske
Sequel to last year's A Marvellous Light, a book I enjoyed but felt rather like it wasn't focusing on the story I wanted it to focus on. This one.... unfortunately continues the trend, though in a slightly different way.
Maud and Violet are two young women on a trans-atlantic ship voyage, who get caught up in a mystery surrounding a murder and a missing magical object. Together, they work to solve the mystery, accomplish their various goals, and navigate their growing relationship with each other.
There are many things to like about this, and honestly it is executed very well. There's good stuff between Maud and Violet, and the amount of trust and vulnerability they're a) interested in sharing with each other or b) capable of; and there's a fun cast of secondary characters in the restricted environment of a ship at sea. Some of the food descriptions really stuck with me, and I don't usually notice food in books! And we get to find out more about the Forsythia Club, the group of old lady magicians who had fascinated me so much in the last book.
But the story being told here is really a lot more hijinks-heavy a story than I usually prefer, featuring two main characters who are both hijinks-generators in their own ways, so I just wasn't really into the vibe for the first, like.... at least half the book.
And then I was teased with an AMAZING idea that then didn't go anywhere near what I was hoping and expecting for such an idea!
The dead Mrs Navenby possesses Maud!!! But she ends up mostly just being a helpful source of information, and a tool that Maud and Violet and their co-conspirators can use. I wanted to see more of Mrs Navenby being a complicated person in her own right, and to see the sharing of Maud's body/mind/mouth and the resulting loss of control be something that Maud had to actually struggle with. But Mrs Navenby seemed to me more like a plot device than anything else. Which just seems to me like a waste of a ghost possession!
At any rate, highly recommended for anyone more into hijinks than me. I really did like the characters and their relationship!
And the next book is going to feature my favourite secondary character from this book, apparently: Ross, the class-conscious pornography-smuggling reporter. I'll be interested to see where that goes! And I hope there'll be more of Mrs Vaughn in the next book.
Maud and Violet are two young women on a trans-atlantic ship voyage, who get caught up in a mystery surrounding a murder and a missing magical object. Together, they work to solve the mystery, accomplish their various goals, and navigate their growing relationship with each other.
There are many things to like about this, and honestly it is executed very well. There's good stuff between Maud and Violet, and the amount of trust and vulnerability they're a) interested in sharing with each other or b) capable of; and there's a fun cast of secondary characters in the restricted environment of a ship at sea. Some of the food descriptions really stuck with me, and I don't usually notice food in books! And we get to find out more about the Forsythia Club, the group of old lady magicians who had fascinated me so much in the last book.
But the story being told here is really a lot more hijinks-heavy a story than I usually prefer, featuring two main characters who are both hijinks-generators in their own ways, so I just wasn't really into the vibe for the first, like.... at least half the book.
And then I was teased with an AMAZING idea that then didn't go anywhere near what I was hoping and expecting for such an idea!
The dead Mrs Navenby possesses Maud!!! But she ends up mostly just being a helpful source of information, and a tool that Maud and Violet and their co-conspirators can use. I wanted to see more of Mrs Navenby being a complicated person in her own right, and to see the sharing of Maud's body/mind/mouth and the resulting loss of control be something that Maud had to actually struggle with. But Mrs Navenby seemed to me more like a plot device than anything else. Which just seems to me like a waste of a ghost possession!
At any rate, highly recommended for anyone more into hijinks than me. I really did like the characters and their relationship!
And the next book is going to feature my favourite secondary character from this book, apparently: Ross, the class-conscious pornography-smuggling reporter. I'll be interested to see where that goes! And I hope there'll be more of Mrs Vaughn in the next book.
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But I did also like Ross and his suitcase of porn :)
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