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18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"blood-red wine in a crystal goblet", August 8, 2007
This review is from: Maledicte (Paperback)
There have been several reviews of this book that make comparisons to Jacqueline Carey. One of them says _Maledicte_ is a cheap imitation, and the other that _Maledicte_ is far too good to be compared with Carey's work. I'm not enough of a literary critic to tell you who is the better writer, Carey or Robins, but I will say that I'm not surprised the comparisons are cropping up. I'm a big fan of Carey and I'm always looking for beautiful, lush, sensual dark fantasy that scratches the same literary "itch." I rarely find it. Here, I've found it.
(Though I can also see the resonances with _Swordspoint_.)
_Maledicte_ tells the story of a young woman from the slums, Miranda, whose sweetheart is stolen away by his noble father. Miranda swears revenge upon the nobleman and disguises herself as a man in order to move more freely through the country's aristocracy.
As Miranda, now Maledicte, pursues retribution, Lane Robins does a great job of showing how Maledicte's quest begins to grow in complexity. Her moral and ethical qualms surface just as her aims begin to require more blood and as her choices become more irrevocable. Meanwhile, her love life also grows tangled; her lover Janus is not quite as she remembers him, and her friend and servant, Gilly (who believes her to be a man) falls for her. Also excellent is the way Maledicte always holds our sympathy, nearly losing it from time to time but always keeping it in the end, despite her violent acts.
This is a lush fever-dream of a novel and I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys the intermarriage of arch, beautiful prose and visceral themes.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Worthy addition to the genre, October 13, 2007
This review is from: Maledicte (Paperback)
"I was what I was: a whore's unwanted get." Pretty early on it becomes clear that Robins' "Maledicte" could have easily been inspired by the Kushiel series. Thankfully, Robins did not outright mimic Carey's work. Though both take place in historically based fantasy worlds, while Phedre's story was one of mystery and court intrigue, Maledicte's tale is one of pure vengeance.
What works:
The plot of the book, as a whole, is well thought out and intriguing. Robins has created a number of multifaceted characters, some whose capacity for evil is only rivaled by their capacity for love. Miranda a young thief finds her closest friend and lover Janus kidnapped from the slum in which they live and whisked away by an agent of Janus' estranged father the earl of Last. Swearing vengeance on Last, Miranda takes up the guise of a young male courtier named Maledicte in order to infiltrate the court and get close to her target. Maledicte and Janus are both complex characters and exhibit the psychology of children forced to raise themselves in a violent environment. A score of well written secondary characters, including Maledicte's lecherous mentor Vornatti, his steadfast friend Gilly, and the enigmatic King Aris, also add depth to the story. Furthermore, Robins has developed an interesting country in Antyre and the city of Murne including the recent history of the realm and its gods.
What doesn't work:
Throughout the novel I had the sense of being alienated from the main characters. At first I attributed this to a lack of first person writing as seen in the Kushiel series. However, it was more than the third person writing, it was also Robins' failure to write more of the story in the pov of our main character Maledicte. Maledicte spends the majority of the book god-touched or half possessed by Ani the god of vengeance. Such a state drives Mal to acts of gruesome and remorseless aggression. Viewed from inside Mal's mind, even in 3rd person, this behavior would have been understandable and the inner turmoil of one possessed by a god would make for great reading. Unfortunately, more often than not the chapters are written from Gilly's pov, an important character but still on the outside looking in. As a result, behavior that might have added to Mal's complexity just ends up coming across as impulsive, heedless violence or nonsensical sulkiness. Mal's dealings with Ani are outside the realm of normal human experience and fuel the whole story line and yet are poorly covered. It's almost as if Robins was creative enough to write Mal from a distance but couldn't tackle the challenge of writing more from inside his head. Beyond this flaw of execution, the ending also felt rather abrupt, though there is a potential opening for further books in this story line as there were numerous potential plot lines left dangling.
Despite the book's few failings it is ultimately a gripping and engaging story that keeps the reader turning pages. If while reading Maledicte you are tempted to compare it to other stories in the genre I suggest reminding yourself that the ultimate motivators fueling this novel are somewhat different than those seen elsewhere and if the book seems to lack detail in comparison to the first Kushiel novel it is also only half as long.
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7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Promising basis, delicate plot, and flawed characters make it a decadent, enjoyable dark fatasy. Very highly recommended, October 24, 2007
This review is from: Maledicte (Paperback)
In the Relics, the slums of the courtly city Antyre, a young boy is kidnapped and a young girl is left beaten and alone. Four years later, a new nobleman enters the court: Maledicte, a beautiful, sharp-tongued, and dangerous youth with a mysterious background. He attracts the attention of the court, but Maledicte has intentions of his own--beneath his coats and padded corsets, he is really Miranda, a Relics streetrat, who has come to reclaim Janus and to revenge those that kidnapped him years ago. But Maledicte has made a dangerous pact with Black-Winged Ani, goddess of love and revenge, and must deal with the machinations of the court, Ani's growing power, and Janus's own ambitions. Mixing aspects and styles that have appeared in other books--magic, political intrigue, gender issues, decadence, decay--more skillfully than any other in the genre, Maledicte is a delicately plotted book peopled with realistically faulted characters, and it is an exceptionally decadent read. I greatly enjoyed it, highly recommend it, and plan to purchase it and read it again.
Maledicte is in the line of other fantasy novels that combined political intrigue, gender/sexuality, and magic--such as Bishop's The Black Jewels Trilogy or Cary's Kushiel's books, for example. However, Maledicte excels where these other attempts falter, using these elements to serve the story, rather than allowing them to run rampant over it, and combining them with strong storytelling, plot, and characters. The world of the book is completely of the author's creation, but convoluted politics and exposition do not overwhelm the text. Instead, Robins constrains both politics and worldbuilding to roles that precisely suit the story: they create plot and setting, but overwhelm neither. Miranda-cum-Madelicte's gender and sexuality is handled with skill and great respect: gender defines Maledicte's identity, and it complicates his various relationships, but Robins treats it with matter-of-fact respect and distance. As she does with other aspects, Robins constrains the issue of gender to its purpose as a character builder, and leaves the rest of the theorizing and contemplating to the reader. Finally, the book's magical elements manage to be both realistically grounded and truly fantastical without digressing into magical rule-making--or worse, faulty magical rule-making. From the delicate art of poison to Ani's ability to possess or heal her followers, magic sets the book in a world entirely unlike our own, but one with sensical structure and consequences. As Ani gains power, her threat is immediate and great, but without exaggeration or plot holes. In other, fewer words: Maledicte combines promising and successful concepts that appear in other dark fantasy books, and does so in a way that succeeds brilliantly where these other books fail.
Running alongside these promising and brilliantly-handled aspects is a delicate plot and a cast of realistic characters that make Maledicte a true, decadent delight of a book. As expected in a book of political intrigue, there are any number of plot twists and unexpected revelations, but Robins measures and times them well. Without cheap cliffhangers, and with few predictable twists, the book is still many-layered and slowly revealed, creating a plot that is compulsively readable without being overdrawn. The climax is satisfying, both in action and in revelation, and the ending is bittersweet, complete (but not simple) and entirely realistic. Throughout the book, all of the characters are faulted but few of them are unlikable. Some are hasty, some are conniving, some are lusty, and all of them have a flexible moral sense; they clash, love, argue, and kill each other, and they are all realistic and almost all of them are sympathetic, despite and even in the midst of their faults and their sins. While not a simple or a happy book, the combination of detailed plot and realistic characters make it a dark text that is violent, politically and personally, and truly engrossing to read.
My (probably singular) complaint about this book is the rapid changes in point of view. Although the narrative remains a limited third person and more-or-less consistently follows Maledicte's storyline, the narrative focus changes between the various figures that Maledicte interacts with, from his servant to the King and sometimes (but rarely) Maledicte himself. The result is a slightly distanced narration (simplifying gender issues) that still constrains its interest to Maledicte's story, making him a realistic and sympathetic character. However, the constantly shifting narration can be a bit unsettling and sometimes hastens the pace of the story. On the whole, however, I found this an entirely enjoyable book with remarkably few faults. It contained many promising plot elements, done with more skill and greater success than I have seen in any other book, and both the plot and characters were dark, realistic, sympathetic, and a pure joy to read. For me, reading Maledicte was like eating dark chocolate--every piece was decadent, worth consuming slowly and savoring in detail. This book far exceeded my expectations and I very highly recommend it to all readers, particularly to fans of dark fantasy. You will not be disappointed.
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