Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent Work!, November 9, 1999
This is a very strong, unique novel, with some wonderful characters and a realistic setting, ending, and feel throughout the story. The medieval/Renaissance aspect to the novel is perfectly, professionally done. It took me a while to like the heroine of the tale, William/Elinor, but when her frosty, standoffish attitude finally faded into a likeable, strong protagonist, I really began to enjoy and like her character. The young King of the tale is a gem, who starts out as a headstrong, almost ignorant young monarch and blossoms into a truly wonderful, amiable, sympathetic and attractive character. His multidimensional character glows throughout the book. Margaret is the most tragic character of this story, and while she is definitely the villain of the tale, I couldn't help but hope she'd make it out all right. The reader really does feel for her, and sympathises with her (for lack of a better word) plight. This is a wonderful novel with the most unique flavor, and the people who move through the tale, from protagonists to antagonists to supporting players, are all excellently crafted. The queer/gay/transgender slant to this novel is splashed all over the back cover blurbs and Publisher's Notes and Introduction, but reading the book, I didn't once think of it as a queer/gay/transgender work. It's just an excellent story whose emphasis is on the plot and the characters, and to pigeon-hole the thing into a queer work is a shame. The book is a great deal more than just that. All in all, highly recommended!
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Compelling mixture of history and magic in the ballad frame, August 10, 1999
I can't really find anything bad to say about this book! The ballad that provides its story-line has always been a favorite of mine, and has all the elements you'd expect from such a thing -- tragedy, perseverance, mystery, magic, revenge, love... and Delia Sherman makes use of all of these, sometimes in unexpected ways. The historical details are flawless (as you would expect when the author has a PhD in Renaissance Studies), and even the magic has the feeling of alchemy and medieval grimoires and herbals, rather than the overly simplified or overly cutesey styles so prevalent in the fantasy genre. And I appreciated the author's courage in devising an ending that was not the conventional happily-ever-after scenario.My only complaint is about the introduction to the Circlet Press edition. Don't get me wrong -- I am all for queer-themed fantasy and SF, and in fact the description in the introduction was one of the things that led me to buy the book -- but it telegraphed a bit too much about the story! I think I would have liked the introduction to be a little more vague so that I wouldn't have had the expectations about the king, and made some premature assumptions that diminished the impact of what should have been a dramatic revelation. Other than that, I have no complaints, and I plan on loaning this book to four or five friends, by which time someone will have kept it and I'll need to buy another copy. So please, Circlet, keep it in print!
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A bittersweet gem of fantasy, August 12, 2002
This is the sort of book that deserves a wider audience than it's gotten so far. The author is a lesbian, and the book contains a gay character. Since mainstream publishers are still a little squeamish about such things, this book gets the label "Queer Fantasy" slapped on it, gets published by a small press, and the upshot of it is that most straight readers have never heard of the darn thing. And that's a shame. This isn't just a good "gay book", it's a good book._Through a Brazen Mirror_ fleshes out the ballad "The Famous Flower of Serving-Men". It is compelling from the first few pages, wherein a young man stumbles into the King's kitchens during a rainstorm. He announces he's looking for a job, proclaims his robust health, and promptly faints. But the young man, William Flower, is more than he seems; his quiet diligence causes him to rise quickly through the ranks of the castle servants, until eventually he comes to the attention of the handsome young King, who is questioning his sexuality. Meanwhile, in a mysterious tower in the woods, a sorceress has foreseen that her daughter will cause her death. Since the rules of magic forbid killing one's own blood, the sorceress instead tries to destroy everything around her daughter, releasing plagues and storms upon the land. I'll warn you right now, don't expect a "fairy-tale" happy ending; Sherman's ending is sadder but much truer to life than the ballad's original ending. But she leaves one major plot point open to imagination, softening the tragedy a bit. And everyone is a little wiser at the end. Delia Sherman writes in a lovely style of prose, atmospheric and somewhat archaic, reminding me of the early books of Patricia McKillip, before her work became more abstract. The magic in Sherman's world is not cheesy D-and-D stuff; it's the very sort of magic that medieval people actually believed in. And through it all, even though it's a sad story, Sherman weaves a delightful ribbon of dry humor. I very much enjoyed this book.
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