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3.5/5
Non-Fiction
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Rating: 4/5
Pages: 400
Started: 15 April 2024
Finished: 21 April 2024
Summary:
Luzia is no one--the servant to a poor aristocrat housewife in Golden Age Spain, where the Spanish Inquisition and national tensions both run rampant. But Luzia has two secrets: she is Jewish, and she can use magic. Mostly, her spells--Ladino refranes she sings into power--have only the most practical use. Things like un-burning bread or lightening the weight of a pail of water seem to be the most helpful things her magic can do. But when she accidentally reveals her skills to her employer, Luzia finds herself swept into the courtly intrigue of a magic competition. Backed by the wealthy and ambitious Víctor de Paredes and his pale, eerie, yet mesmerizing manservant and familiar Santángel, Luzia soon realizes that she's backed herself into a corner. With few options, and no good ones, all Luzia can do is try to win the competition, and hope her story lives longer than she does.
Thoughts:
Leigh Bardugo's writing is perpetually vibrant and stunning. The tone of her words never fails to immerse, and the fairytale-esque quality to her stories is one of my favorite things. Although this story could be summed up as a fairytale, starting with burnt bread and a wicked stepmother and ending with a ride off into the sunset, the richness of every scene makes this story so worth it. The historical accuracy adds another incredible element to the story; when I listened to her speak about the book, Leigh said she wants readers to never quite be sure of where the line between magic and history is, and she certainly succeeded. Every page felt so immersive and real, even the scenes of magic--which were very cool, and not so ostentacious that they became unbelievable. Unlike the hard magic system of the Grishaverse, this book very much uses a soft magic system that blends beautifully with the history-based plot.
As per usual, Leigh's scenes are startlingly easy to picture; they create such strong mental images that are really fun to experience. The scene of the third competition on the lake, with Luzia's giant wooden cross, and the scene Luzia's imprisonment both had the perfect amount of detail for me to be able to paint my own pictures and feel entirely immersed in them.
Surprisingly, the characters I liked the most in this book were the most unexpected, but also apparently Leigh's favorite to write. Doña Valentina was my absolute favorite in the book; I found her discovery of sympathy to be really touching. Also we love a good 1500s and-they-were-roommates. The protagonists in novel were slightly more difficult to connect with in my opinion; Luzia as a fairytale protagonist made a lot of sense was very cool, but didn't click with me, and it felt as though the sense of gravitas that Santángel should have had was missing slightly. Their romance was touching, but I think the lack of banter in the book as a whole, and the lack of exciting teamwork, made it difficult to emotionally connect to the characters in the giddy or gleeful way that brings me the most joy. However, all the characters were interesting and complex and beautifully written, and all fit perfectly into the historical fantasy fairytale, as they were meant to.
I read this book over a longer span of time, since I was very busy during the week I got it, so I may want to re-read this book sometime soon to try to connect even more with the characters. That being said, this was a beautiful book that I adored being immersed in.