Marissa Meyer novels are hit-or-miss for me in the last few years. I absolutely adored her Lunar Chronicles series, but nothing else has ever been quite as good for me, though I still enjoy her lighthearted narrative voice. There have been a few of her offerings that I stopped listening to altogether. This was somewhere in between. The plot was so-so, but I also felt a little weird about the fact that it glorified witchcraft–and not in a completely fantastical Harry Potter type of way, more in what I understand the actual, real-world practice of witchcraft to be. It’s done in a whimsical way, but… I don’t know. I’m ambivalent.
The story follows Mallory and her sister Anaise (sp? I listened, rather than read), daughters of a famous witch who possess almost no magic themselves. Mallory gives tours of the mansion that once belonged to Count Saphir, who murdered several of his wives. Her one gift is that she can see ghosts, and particularly the ghosts of the murdered wives, one of which is an amusingly histrionic caricature. One night, Count Armand joins the tour, and Mallory learns that he is the descendant of Saphir–he comes in particular to seek her help in exorcising Saphir’s ghost from his home, believing that she is a real witch.
We later learn that Mallory was born with her mother’s gift, but lost it in an inadvertent bargain in her childhood. The story is as much the story of exorcizing the spirit and protecting future victims of Saphir as it is about Mallory’s journey of rediscovering her powers, with a little romance thrown in. It’s predictable, but entertaining on the whole.
My rating: ***1/2
Language: none
Sexual content: none
Violence: lots–fantasy only, though it’s pretty gory
Political content: minor. Marissa Meyer never used to have any. Now I feel like she’s consciously towing the line.
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