Customer Reviews

The Innamorati

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It's rare to discover a fantasy novel that breaks new ground in the genre, and a delight to be able to forgo comparisons with Tolkien. The Innamorati, by Midori Snyder, is such a novel.

It is said that to enter the great maze at the center of the city of Labirinto, one can lose any curse that might haunt them. Thus begins the story of The Innamorati, and from the first page the reader will find himself engrossed in Ms. Snyder's story and unwilling to stop turning the pages.

The Innamorati, set against the backdrop of Renaissance Italy, centers on no single protagonist, but instead chronicles the bęte noirs that haunt a number of co-protagonists. Ms. Snyder has deftly taken the concept often used in television today - several sub-plots within a single episode, each mini-story tied to an appropriate character - and adapted it for The Innamorati. Among the co-protagonists: a mask-maker from Venice who can no longer make masks; a swordsman from Milan who wishes to give up the sword that rules his life; a would-be actor who speaks with a stutter; and a siren condemned to a silent exile far from the sea and her native island. There is also a poet, who at one time wrote the most beautiful sonnets, who loses his "voice" upon discovering his wife's infidelity. While Ms. Snyder places far too great a burden on this poet for his wife's infidelity, claiming he failed to provide for her wants (one could argue the wife's inability or unwillingness to accept what her husband was able to provide her - magnificent sonnets written to her and about her - as the impetus for her action), it is a subject best saved for debate and certainly not a flaw.

Ms. Snyder writes with a combination of clarity, wisdom and a playfulness that is rare today. Her narrative is evocative; her characters are real, and the reader will be easily drawn to them and able to relate to them on a very personal level. Best of all, The Innamorati is about personal identity - how we perceive ourselves beneath the masks we present to others, and how others perceive us. Readers may find themselves wondering whether they are who they are as a result of how others perceive them. While The Innamorati may not appeal to the purists of the fantasy genre (those who read Robert Jordan or Orson Scott Card), those whose appetite is for something more avant-garde will not be disappointed.

Everyone knows the power to remove curses that the Great Maze in the center of Labrinto can perform. People visit the Great Maze from just about any location in a hope that the force will free them. The only problems with the Greta Maze are entering, facing one's worse nightmares while wandering, and exiting.

Several pilgrims are struggling to enter the Great Maze. Once inside these four pilgrims begin to journey to the center in search of an "elixir". Instead, the once great mask maker, the fencer, the exiled siren, and the stuttering actor with their ensembles begin to interact. Sometimes they are in each other's way, but several begin to team up for that seems to be the most effective way to attain the center and its power. However, if they make their goal will they truly want what they find?

THE INNAMORATI is a powerful allegory that will leave the audience in awe of the talent of author Midori Snyder. The story line consists of several subplots that at first read more like vignettes, but cleverly tie together into a cohesive, well-written novel. Renaissance Italy never felt better or captured as well as this fantasy tale accomplishes it.

Instantly - I'm there.

"The morning sun rose above the edge of a quiet green sea. Bright rays of light speared the waters of the laguna and transformed the canals of Venice into ribbons of flame. Burnished water splashed over the mossy walls of the canals, scattering droplets the size of sequins..."

This kind of writing gets me everytime, and Midori Snyder has got it. She tantalizes the reader with each word, with every lush phrase, she seduces and entangles into the fantasy world of her labyrinth, and she engrosses mercilessly, leaving the world outside of her written page pale and distant for the time it takes to disentangle oneself from her story and close the book again.

Snyder's fantasy is one of many players, all varied in lifestyle and enchantment, but all alike in that they are somehow cursed. The young actor stutters and cannot speak his lines clearly, though his words ring out when he is feeling unthreatened by other males who remind him of an abusive father figure. The mask-maker suffers torments of thorns inside her belly that tear also at her heart with regret, keeping her masks from taking on their usual aura of life. A swordsman wins battle upon battle, grown calloused to the act of killing, yet finally longs to be free of such a destiny. A siren is cursed to leave the sea and live ten years on the dry earth in utter silence, covered with a leathery skin of ugliness. The poet fails to win the love and loyalty of his philandering wife with his verses and finally loses her. The priest repeatedly falls into a gluttony of sexual pleasures forbidden to him, unable to abstain from such temptation. And there are more. The fantasy is peopled with rich characters, each one more colorful than the next. All travel to Labirinto to enter the magical maze to be freed - somehow, they do not know how - of their curses.

Curses are not always what we think they are. In some cases, it is indeed "be careful what you wish for, you just might get it..." In others, freeing oneself of a curse is perhaps not so much wrapped in a magical spell as facing a fear and confronting it. In many, they find wisdom when they understand the reason for their own emptiness. In most, going beyond the superficial and delving into the depths of the human soul and its nature is the maze leading to a deeper love.

"A true hero is the one who knows that often as not the dragon is in the damsel and not the other way around," says one character. "Could you love your damsel, even if she showed you her fangs? Could you embrace what is terrifying in her as well as what is lovely? True love, Signore, must be willing to lift the mask and kiss whatever hides beneath."

Indeed, the characters find, each in their own way, that many of their curses, if not in fact all, are lifted by the "magic" of a freeing love, whether for one self, for one another, or for one's art. Even the poet who could not hold on to his wife's heart by mere verse alone at last understood that a woman does not so much wish to be loved through the lofty words of high poetry... as she wishes to be loved for the flesh and blood and spirit of woman, good and bad, found beneath the lifting of that mask, her lover being willing to kiss whatever hides beneath. She might be pleased and flattered by the pretty words, but she needs the man behind the words to be a real husband. The siren, too, finds her own return to the waters of her home even as she leads her love, a man from the land, to a heart freed to love fully only when he is able to remove himself from his past, his earthly miseries and worries and concerns. To gain love, he must let go, and he must risk.

"You must follow me as empty of experience as a newborn infant," says the siren to her lover. "Leave behind all memory, all thoughts of anger, of jealousy, of desire and longing. Leave behind, too, the fear of death. These are stones that will plunge you below the waves. Forget them, forget yourself, and surrender to my voice. That is how you will lose your curse and be reborn... it's up to you."

The journey to the center of Labirinto is a magical one, but no more magical than everyday life and our own everyday curses. Only Snyder transforms them, us, into willing travelers along the path her words lead us along for a literary adventure we are reluctant to leave. Curses. Because, but for several annoying typos missed by editors, "Innamorati" is a masterpiece of imagination and literary skill.

The Innamorati is a wonderful journey into the world of 16th century Italian commedia dell'arte, told within a great story with as many laughs and surprises as the theatre which inspired it. It has quickly worked its way to the top of my "most loaned out" list, and has had considerable influence upon my troupe's performances.

Set in a vision of Renaissance Italy that brings to life the classic mythology of the area, the story focuses on the "curses" so often brought upon progtagonists by their own actions and biases. It is supposedly only through traversing the Maze featured in the story they can be cured -- except that none of the pilgrims who have entered in the many years since the Maze first appeared have ever emerged from it again. The plots and subplots are as labyrinthine as the Maze itself -- no simple tale of sword and sorcery here. In Chaucerian style, each character of the story appears to represent one of the archetypes from traditions of the Commedia del'Arte, and each must overcome their own passions to grow into the role they are meant to play.

This is the first novel by this author that I have read, though I'd heard many good things about her. I most certainly enjoyed it and would definitely recommend it to those who want a good read that's complex and challenging and full of substance.

The setting : Renaissance Italy, various real and fictional cities.

The cast: (and here's the Chaucerian part): A mask-maker artist,
a priest, an actor, a merchant, a thief, a prostitute, a warrior,
a Siren (well.. that's not so Chaucerian). They come from all
walks of life, but all beset by some 'curse'. Thus they
pilgramage to a fictional city with a magical maze to cure
their woes.

The story starts off with very seperate tales.. almost too hard
to follow as Snyder jumps from character to character to follow
their own individual tales. But slowly, they come together
as the routes of a maze come to the center. The story is
enchantingly different from the classical fantasy genre. Magic is
as viewed by old world Italians is amazingly real and quite
different from the magic in our present day stories. It's magic
that is out of our control, that cuts and mends in surprising
unpredictable ways, that is guided and quirky according to the
personality, the moral ground, the intents of the character
involved.

This book is well worth reading... it won the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award!!

This superb fantasy is the best thing I've read all year--and there are lots of good books out. Snyder's Renaissance Italy is impeccably presented, with all the humor, beauty, anguish, ugliness, and magic that one finds in reading writers of the time. The characters are well realized, the story told with wisdom and compassion, and there is--oh joy!--none of the tiresome nineties determinism that seems so requisite in the current Cool Writers. After listening to me read bits aloud, my spouse (a professor) and my daughter (teenage) are fighting to see who gets it next.

In the tradition of Vonda McIntyre's THE MOON & THE SUN and Jack Dann's MEMORY CATHEDRAL, Midori Snyder has created a fascinating historic fantasy filled with myriad characters, a rich atmosphere of Renaissance Italy and metaphors within metaphors. The theme of Masks -- both those that hide and those that reveal -- is subtley woven through a labarynth of individual struggles and stories of brilliant depth, and subtle humor. A truly wonderful book.

Join a group of artists, performers, lovers and thieves to the maze in Labirinto. Along the way try on elaborate masks and find one that reveals your deepest desires. The characters burst with color and charisma. The food is mouthwatering and the scenery dazzling. You won't put the Innamorati down until you reach the center of the maze. Midori Snyder touches all emotions and leaves you hungering for more.

Entertaining allegory about the masks we wear [for good or for ill], and the curses that we carry with us. The writing is uneven, but the awkwardnesses [for example, I wish the editor had taken a red pen to all those frequent and irrelevant descriptions of food] are far outweighed by the extraordinary and touching moments.