An Alchemy of Masques and Mirrors is Curtis Craddock’s delightful and engrossing fantasy debut featuring a genius heroine and her guardian, a royal musketeer, which Brandon Sanderson calls, “A great read!” Born with a physical disability, no magical talent, and a precocious intellect, Princess Isabelle des Zephyrs has lived her life being underestimated by her family and her kingdom. The only … her kingdom. The only person who appreciates her true self is Jean-Claude, the fatherly musketeer who had guarded her since birth.
All shall change, however, when an unlikely marriage proposal is offered, to the second son of a dying king in an empire collapsing into civil war.
But the last two women betrothed to this prince were murdered, and a sorcerer-assassin is bent on making Isabelle the third. Isabelle and Jean-Claude plunge into a great maze of prophecy, intrigue, and betrayal, where everyone wears masks of glamour and lies. Step by dangerous step, Isabelle must unravel the lies of her enemies and discovers a truth more perilous than any deception.
“A setting fabulous and strange, heroes to cheer for, villains to detest, a twisty, tricky plot — I love this novel!” —Lawrence Watt Evans
“A thrilling adventure full of palace intrigue, mysterious ancient mechanisms, and aerial sailing ships!” —David D. Levine
At the Publisher’s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
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Wow, what a wild ride!
I’m amazed that this is Craddock’s first book. The writing is so tight, so witty, so rich with image that I was drawn in from the start, even though I’m wary of any more special-girl-in-repressive-patriarchal-settings SF/F. Craddock makes it work anyway, because the characters are so vivid, rather than the stock characters you meet in that situation. And the sure grace of the narrative voice, avoiding the too-often encountered awkward lumps of sentence fragments and chains of overused simile, was a pleasure to read.
He also makes the worldbuilding work, though again, I’m not fond of plopping undigested wodges of earth-cultures into another world, in this case seventeenth/eighteenth century France and Spain. If you’re going to posit musketeers in sky ships, you pretty much have to borrow the France of Dumas.
But to this Craddock adds 17th and 18th century philosophical thinking and terms, while spinning a wild tale of weird inherited magic, a Leibnizian clockwork religion (which is not easily hand waved off by postmodern heroes, hurray!), and well-designed sky ships on floating continents.
Jean-Claude is our single musketeer (oh, to meet the rest of them!), appointed guardian over Isabelle, the disabled daughter of a really heinous comte and his equally nasty family. He guards her and guides her as she grows to become a mathematician and a strategist, before she is propelled into high politics through an arranged marriage, at age twenty-four. Watching her figure out solutions to impossible situations was sheer bliss. The narrative voice doesn’t tell us she’s bright, it shows us in endlessly creative ways.
There was never a slow page, and the ending built to a breakneck climax that almost tipped over the edge into too fast. I was left with some questions (view spoiler) but overall it came to such an enjoyable resolution, while avoiding the too-easy and too-often seen series stretcher in which everyone conveniently turns stupid long enough for the big bad to escape, in order to come back with a bigger and badder threat in book two.
There is such scope for exploration in this setting, and Craddock resolved things in such a way that I don’t expect book two to be the same story, only with artificially ratcheted stakes.
This is one of my favorite reads of 2017.
There’s a feeling of Dumas France – if the Musketeers were able to rip people to shreds with their blood shadows rather than rapiers, whereas the grandees of this alternate worlds Spanish Grandees are able to travel through mirrors from place to place. Our heroine has none of the gifts that mark the aristocracy from the clayborn despite her father being the Comte des Zephyr a truly cruel example of a Sanguinaire.
Isabelle’s adventures are woven into our exploration of this ingenious world. She learns as we do of the perils and possibilities that life on this planet where people live on various cratons suspended in mid air over the endless gloom, travel via airship, witness a variety of magic without really understanding the origins or history of what they see- believing in the good faith of “The Builder” while waiting for “The Savior” to come.
It’s a great read, full of adventure and friendship and fun ideas. I couldn’t wait to finish the series and find out what the ultimate fate of these characters would be.