Customer Reviews

The Twelfth Enchantment: A Novel

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I've been hooked on David Liss since I read the first page of "A Conspiracy of Paper" a couple of years ago. His novels are funny and intricately constructed. I pre-ordered this on the strength of past experience. I was sorely disappointed.

It's not that it's fantasy about the occult: I can suspend disbelief to read about Sookie Stackhouse and am fanatic about Harry Potter. But this book was just plain silly. And not in a good way. I can only believe that Mr. Liss decided to try his hand at occult/fantasy just for a lark.

Lucy Derrick is straight out of Jane Austen, or maybe Dickens, which is fine. But the situations and characters are simultaneously preposterous and predictable. Our heroine, an impoverished young woman of undeserved questionable repute, is for some reason beset by all manner nefarious ill-wishers, living and undead. She lives with a distant uncle who wants to marry her off to a banal mill owner troubled by Luddites. There's no clear motivation for any of the characters to act or react the way they do, except for the fact that they're being controlled by (potential SPOILER) an evil fairy(!) who is Lucy's nemesis, unbeknownst to Lucy. She seems to have some friends, but perhaps they have been bewitched, perhaps not. None of it makes any sense.

Lord Byron (seriously!) is a major player, as is William Blake. In Mr. Liss's other fiction, historical characters make appearances that, while fictional, are not impossible to accept. For example, Alexander Hamilton appears in "The Whiskey Rebels" in a capacity that is reasonable. For the politically-driven plot to advance, Hamilton had to make an appearance. Historical fiction in general uses real people in imagined stories. In "The Twelfth Enchantment", there's no reason why the bewitched potential hero has to be a fictionalized Lord Byron, or why a fictionalized William Blake has to show up. Instead of driving the plot, they bring the reader up short. The reader has to actively disassociate everything he or she knows about Byron or Blake to get back into the story.

"The Twelfth Enchantment" has made me reconsider pre-ordering David Liss's books on the strength of his authorship. Next time I'll wait and see what other reviewers say, and hope that he's back to his usual form.

Perhaps I should recuse myself from reviewing this book, for as a child I found the Hobbit impenetrable. I am indifferent to the world of Harry Potter. The popular vampire books couldn't possibly interest me less.

But I am a very big fan of David Liss's works.

THE TWELFTH ENCHANTMENT starts out with great promise. It's 1812, England. Lucy Derrick is a strong heroine--sort of Jane Austen's next door neighbor, if you will. She's been orphaned, living in penury with a dreadful dreadful uncle and an evil caretaker and is about to be married off to a colorless dolt of a mill owner.

Then Lord Byron (yes, THE Lord Byron) appears at her door. He's apparently suffering under some kind of curse (vomiting pins, no less).

What follows is a very strange adventure into the world of magic, fairies, changelings, immortals, ghosts, zombies and lord knows what else.

It's readable, mainly due to the wonderful historical details that are the hallmark of Liss's books. Lucy Derrick, as I said, is a very strong heroine. The writing itself is gorgeous in places.

However, in the final analysis, magic isn't my bag. I got through it but it was a chore at times.

I am a huge fan of David Liss' books starting from the wonderful "A Conspiracy of Paper". He has departed significantly from his previous historical fiction in this book, which blends period detail with romance and the supernatural. The heroine in this work has a gift for magic, which drives the remainder of the story. Fairies, witches, and even a Golum appear and Liss' prior use of historical period characters in a story here employs Lord Byron as someone who is intertwined with the occult and is eventually reincarnated as a fairy, and William Blake as a feeble communicator with ghosts. While I love his writing skills, I found this book to require too much suspension of disbelief to be credible, and Liss' foray into popular occult disappointing and beneath him. I do not doubt he will sell many copies, based on our culture's fascination with all things supernatural. However, it is a poor trick. Liss has in the past proved himself able to create far deeper and believable characters than a 19th century Sookie Stackhouse and to write with far greater depth than demonstrated here or by Charlaine Harris. I can only conjecture that our poor economy is driving his writing. I hope he is able to recapture and return to the art that made him a great writer.

Rather than, as I had hoped, a return to the form of his first three vibrant and gripping novels, David Liss's seventh book, "The Twelfth Enchantment," is, as I had feared, further evidence of the steady and apparently irreversible deterioration of his skills as a writer of historical fiction. I will not belabor the weaknesses of the book, which have already been set forth at some length in other reviews. Suffice it to say that this is a dreadful, silly book filled with overwrought prose and none of the freshness and excitement of his earlier works. I have purchased his last four books reflexively, on the strength of his first three. I am sorry to say, but that has come to an end. Perhaps the extended saga of the first three were the only story he really had to tell, which is too bad. It is also sad that there are so few Harper Lees in the world.

I must say David Liss is one of my favorite current authors. I have been a fan since The Conspiracy of Paper and find his entertaining, talented and immensely readable. I was SO looking forward to his next book, the Whiskey Rebels was fabulous entertainment. I am left scratching my head to wonder where he has gone. I only hope this was an attempt at honing his skills in telling a story from a woman's point of view, in my opinion the only weakness of the Whiskey Rebels was that the woman's story was not as well told.

The characters are predictable and uninteresting. The introduction of historical characters Lord Byron and William Blake are unfocused, silly and don't make sense. Lord Byron is introduced with effect, but by the end of the book I was wondering why he was in the story. The lead character, Lucy Derrick is your typical penniless young lady, with a bad reputation (undeserved) living with an uncaring uncle who wants to marry her off to a mill owner who is having labor problems with Luddites. Lucy discovers that she has "powers" and can see things others can't. There are scores of characters live, dead and undead, most poorly developed. Just when you thought there was going to be some interesting historical connections all goes up in smoke and enchantments. The action is ludicrous, characters are left hanging with no real reason for being and I was left dreaming fondly of the Whiskey Rebels and the Conspiracy of Paper.

Skip this one, and instead look up Liss' previous offerings if you have not already, and hope for a return to sanity in the next book.

I'm willing to stretch my imagination and accept magic and fairies as a "real" scenario, but this was the driest, biggest stretch of a novel. The characters were annoying and the main premise of the book - saving the world from industrialization - was SO ridiculous as a motivation for all of the action; it was given rather superficial treatment for such a driving force. I found myself constantly asking myself, "Why?" Things seemed so random: Lord Byron made no sense, coincidences right and left. It was a chore to read and disappointing from an author such as Liss.

I really liked all of the other books I have read by David Liss. What I have always enjoyed about his novels was the originality. The characters were interesting and their situations unique. This novel and it's characters, however, are a real disappointment. The whole "magic" thing was just forced and didn't work and writing in a style that I think was meant to imitate Jane Austin, just gave it a silly, pretentious tone. Sorry, but a bad story told in a high handed manner is still a bad story. The main character was dull and predictable, even with the magical something extra. Her love interest was sadly one dimensional and like her, predictable. Their romantic plight a bit like a Harliquin Romance which would make it...yes...predictable. Even the parts that were supposed to be adding an exciting twist to a "same old, same old" romance had a "been there, done that" quality about them. And what was that thing with Lord Byron??? How wierd and pointless was that?

I have to agree with one of the other reviewers who suggested that this book was intended to make quick cash by pandering to the currant fad market of vampires and teen aged magicians. If the authors intention was to somehow elevate that genre, he failed. "The Twelfth Enchantment" was just bad. Very. Bad. To give you idea of how bad, I just finished it about a week ago and I seriously cannot remember the names of any of the characters except Lord Byron and that's only because I just found that entire angle of the story so stupid. My biggest regret here is that I got this in the Kindle edition which means I can't even resale the book and recoup some of my cash.

I've read and enjoyed all of David Liss' books, and _The Twelfth Enchantment_ is the best so far, in my opinion - for its careful plotting, witty dialog, and truly superb character development. Yes, it presents a world of fairies and magic and talismans, which is not normally my cup of tea, but I chose to understand magic in this book as simply another historical system, the likes of which Liss has always done a fabulous job of building upon, extrapolating, and breathing life into. It was great to see Liss move away from the somewhat formulaic structures his previous works had seemed to be falling into, and I was struck by how successfully he crafted the interior life of his female protagonist. Bravo!

I could definitely read more about these characters or this world. None of the characters were too tiresome. I picked this one up because I'd heard it contained some faerie. Neither aggravated nor enthralled with the "revenants" take on faerie. It was a fast, easy read. I'll be sure to sample more of this writer's books.

In this charming paranormal Regency, an seemingly unexceptional young girl, Lucy Derrick, finds herself central to a battle which is being waged to determine the fate of England itself: a war between industrial and pastoral, mechanical and magical, progress and tradition, Queen Mab and King Ludd. The featherweight plot relies a bit too heavily on characters being unnecessarily cryptic - "Why is everyone so opaque and vague and maddening?" Lucy wonders at one point - but the book careens along at a headstrong pace with romance, magic, horror and humor racing to a satisfying conclusion. Historical characters such as Byron and William Blake are major characters, and some Jane Austen characters make appearances, also. Liss leaves the door open for a series or at least a sequel; I hope he visits Regency England again!