Reviews and Comments

Probably my third re-read? This book goes so much better when you can remember who the characters are. It's funnier and also sadder than I remember.

This isn't a witty good cheer slice of life romance like a lot of Stevenson's work: the synopsis promises something frothy but it's kind of a downer about tragic mistakes and an ugly divorce with an unusually generous helping of imperialism and classism and so on. If you're looking for another Miss Buncle's Book, probably skip this. If you want an angsty romance with a lot of horsey people in it, go for it.

I enjoyed this the whole time I was reading it, but it didn't quite resolve anything to my satisfaction, whether by preserving the terror of the mystery or by demystifying the horror. Unlike the author's novel Waking the Moon, which was legitimately scary, this was more atmospheric than frightening (and I'm a big weenie about horror, easily kept up at night by very mild scares).

However I fully appreciated the characters, the 70s chaotic band dynamics, the folk song geekery and the spooky house, so it wasn't a wasted read for me at all. It could have been much longer and I would still have been engaged.

I hadn't read this since childhood and it hasn't aged very well.

Anne of Green Gables, which was published a few years later, rips off the plot and even some of the scenes and descriptions fairly shamelessly. But L.M. Montgomery made much better use of the material, from the fuller characterization, to the added humor and pathos, and even to the nature descriptions. Rebecca feels much more like a period piece at this point.

Especially the much older male benefactor lovingly watching over her development till the "womanly" age of 17, ugh.

I probably would give this a 4.5 if possible, just because the ending trailed off a bit, but it is so much better than most historical novels, especially ones that are based on real historical characters and events. There is court intrigue and fashion, but the emphasis is on the gritty reality of women, in high and low life, trying to control their own destiny under patriarchy. Both the atmosphere and the characters are convincing and immersive: they're not modern people with interesting clothes, they're people who have fully internalized the place they're struggling with and their attempted solutions aren't modern ones either.

It brought to mind the movie The Favorite, and Emma Donoghue's historical novels.

This is probably four stars from the perspective of the rest of Emma Donoghue's work, which means amazing by anyone else's standards. It is quite graphic on the subject of birth. Think Call the Midwife ++ (things that can go wrong will, also pandemic), so very satisfying and very focused on women, but also horrifying in spots, gynecologically and socioeconomically.

I wasn't 100% convinced by the central relationships--this feels a bit slight compared to her other books despite the grim subject matter--but the characters were enjoyable and interesting.

I rarely love a book with prose that's more acrobatic than lucid, but I loved this one. The time travel mechanics are peripheral: it's at least as much romance as SF. Funny and brainy and overstuffed with allusions and wordplay and yes, thrillingly romantic.

What everyone else said about the interchangeability of the characters, but also even though one character's personality is "the one who drinks too much," everyone in this book appears to associate the joy of their college days with getting puking drunk. They spend their whole 20s feeling whiny about jobs and men and gossiping about each other, and they get hangovers every singe time they go out. They apparently don't have any interests. Depressing.

Ursula Le Guin was a genius, and this novel isn't anywhere near the top of her game. It has some clunky bits, and a point of view on humans and conformity that comes off cliché and isn't the best expression of one of her recurring themes: the relationships between exceptional people and the societies they have to live in, which inevitably include a lot of people on a different wavelength.

That said, this is a beautiful, immersive story that I loved as a teenager and still love now. It's very eloquent about the way great ideas and music and literature can strike the teenage mind with titanic force, and about how lost you can be as a young person trying to grow, until you find your people and find yourself. Set in rainy Portland where I live now.

I suppose someone might have found this touching, and the writing was lulling and mildly comic, but it reads a bit like warmed-over Wes Anderson. Unlikeable rich characters behaving quirkily. Not my thing.

I think people are picking this up and expecting something it isn't. The magical school is more like Harriet Vane's Oxford than Hogwarts, and in any case is incidental to the political intrigue that takes up most of the book. I found it a very fine balance between coming of age, comedy of manners, Ruritanian palace intrigue, and magicks. And the writing's very good. More for adults than Stevermer's later books. There's a lot of literary allusion and conversations that imply rather than explain, so you have to piece things together. Lacks the tedious overexplanation of which most fantasy is now guilty, which apparently some people love!