druv's review against another edition
4.0
To begin with, it had some curious parallels to [b:Silver on the Road|20748097|Silver on the Road (The Devil's West, #1)|Laura Anne Gilman|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1426361800s/20748097.jpg|40079410], despite being very different books.
As in the earlier books, I like all of these characters, and the core of their struggles rings true - even apart from the overarching story, they all have their personal conflicts and motivations that keep making them strong characters you want to read more about. And this book certainly provided that in spades. Just like [b:The Mystic Marriage|22859852|The Mystic Marriage (Alpennia, #2)|Heather Rose Jones|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1463304263s/22859852.jpg|42427733], this one took a side character introduced in the last book and gave her more-or-less centre stage, and just like in that book, I think there was a good balance between including her and the other new character in the existing group while respecting the social barriers that exist in Alpennia.
The one negative thing I have to say is that it felt like the book tried to do to much. Sure, I want to hear about and get the perspectives of Margerit, Barbara, Jeanne, Antuniet, as well as the new characters, but they all had very significant events going on in their lives above and beyond the core narrative, and so it feels like I was missing out in some of the more severe time skips, which was a real pity.
I continue to thoroughly enjoy this series, and this will probably get me to re-read [b:Daughter of Mystery|18167557|Daughter of Mystery (Alpennia, #1)|Heather Rose Jones|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1387770689s/18167557.jpg|25533901] quite soon.
As in the earlier books, I like all of these characters, and the core of their struggles rings true - even apart from the overarching story, they all have their personal conflicts and motivations that keep making them strong characters you want to read more about. And this book certainly provided that in spades. Just like [b:The Mystic Marriage|22859852|The Mystic Marriage (Alpennia, #2)|Heather Rose Jones|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1463304263s/22859852.jpg|42427733], this one took a side character introduced in the last book and gave her more-or-less centre stage, and just like in that book, I think there was a good balance between including her and the other new character in the existing group while respecting the social barriers that exist in Alpennia.
The one negative thing I have to say is that it felt like the book tried to do to much. Sure, I want to hear about and get the perspectives of Margerit, Barbara, Jeanne, Antuniet, as well as the new characters, but they all had very significant events going on in their lives above and beyond the core narrative, and so it feels like I was missing out in some of the more severe time skips, which was a real pity.
I continue to thoroughly enjoy this series, and this will probably get me to re-read [b:Daughter of Mystery|18167557|Daughter of Mystery (Alpennia, #1)|Heather Rose Jones|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1387770689s/18167557.jpg|25533901] quite soon.
storytimed's review against another edition
5.0
This is Alpennia really coming into its own as a fantasy series, with a more complex magic system and fascinating worldbuilding, though Serafina really does need a better gf.
spiderwitch's review
adventurous
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.25
8amtrain's review against another edition
5.0
i am so impressed with heather rose jones’ historical understanding of lesbianism in early modern europe and it really shows in the quality of her writing... this series is very well plotted and i am enjoying all her distinct characterizations and more subtle romantic arcs and dynamics than one would traditionally find in the historical romance genre. anyway hasn’t every girl always dreamed of being an unmarried eccentric in a large mid-european city studying alchemy and magic along the minds of other great women loving women??? i am really looking forward to future books and especially to whenever anna gets her central story :-)
jesshale's review against another edition
2.0
This book missed the mark for me in so many ways. It just SPRAWLS - it picks up threads from the last two books and runs with them, while also introducing more and not giving a sense of closure to anything.
Really, there are three books in here (and it's long enough for it) - Margerit and Barbara, Antuniet and Jeanne, and Serafina and Luzie. I would rather have read a focussed novella for each to give the plot line justice.
- The "main" couple of this book are Serafina and Luzie. I could almost forgive the fact that their romance was a side plot and they eventually decided to go their separate ways - IF each arc of character development had closure. I applauded Luzie's success as a composer and Serafina finding ways to express control over magic through Luzie's music, buuuuut. What of Serafina's confrontation with her husband and life back in Rome? What of Luzie's sons? Is she the "Mother" of Souls in the title? What place does Serafina have going forward in Alpennian society?
- Margerit and Barbara - this just felt messy. I liked that Iulie's book (a plot thread I was frustrated by in the last book) was picked up, but there are so many people and things going on for this couple, and no sense of where it's all going. Margerit is protrayed as a bit narrowly-focussed and high-handed when it comes to her academy, and Barbara - well, I was enjoying a character who is so gleeful and competent about politics but I started to feel that she doesn't know as much as she thinks she does, especially in her new...friendship(?) with Kaiser and not knowing about international politics. She seems to be manipulated and naieve. Plus I want to see how she ends up dealing with her feelings about Tanit. What's happening with Iulie?
- Antuniet and Jeanne - this could have worked so well as a novella, as their plotline (baby!) is quite self-contained, but it really needed more focus.
Overall, I've lost faith in this series. The things that I so enjoyed about the first book - the "us against the world" vibe, the slow passage of time with attention to detail - has turned into a sprawling meander through Alpennia, hopping forward in time with important events brought up and forgotten (e.g. Serafina's oil breaking - I would have LOVED to see her going to the Strangers Market but then it's mentioned in passing). The scope of the stories (personal, city politics, international politics) is expanding but I don't have faith that the author actually know where it's all going.
Really, there are three books in here (and it's long enough for it) - Margerit and Barbara, Antuniet and Jeanne, and Serafina and Luzie. I would rather have read a focussed novella for each to give the plot line justice.
- The "main" couple of this book are Serafina and Luzie. I could almost forgive the fact that their romance was a side plot and they eventually decided to go their separate ways - IF each arc of character development had closure. I applauded Luzie's success as a composer and Serafina finding ways to express control over magic through Luzie's music, buuuuut. What of Serafina's confrontation with her husband and life back in Rome? What of Luzie's sons? Is she the "Mother" of Souls in the title? What place does Serafina have going forward in Alpennian society?
- Margerit and Barbara - this just felt messy. I liked that Iulie's book (a plot thread I was frustrated by in the last book) was picked up, but there are so many people and things going on for this couple, and no sense of where it's all going. Margerit is protrayed as a bit narrowly-focussed and high-handed when it comes to her academy, and Barbara - well, I was enjoying a character who is so gleeful and competent about politics but I started to feel that she doesn't know as much as she thinks she does, especially in her new...friendship(?) with Kaiser and not knowing about international politics. She seems to be manipulated and naieve. Plus I want to see how she ends up dealing with her feelings about Tanit. What's happening with Iulie?
- Antuniet and Jeanne - this could have worked so well as a novella, as their plotline (baby!) is quite self-contained, but it really needed more focus.
Overall, I've lost faith in this series. The things that I so enjoyed about the first book - the "us against the world" vibe, the slow passage of time with attention to detail - has turned into a sprawling meander through Alpennia, hopping forward in time with important events brought up and forgotten (e.g. Serafina's oil breaking - I would have LOVED to see her going to the Strangers Market but then it's mentioned in passing). The scope of the stories (personal, city politics, international politics) is expanding but I don't have faith that the author actually know where it's all going.
coolcurrybooks's review against another edition
4.0
I am not going to write an actual review for this one, but I did enjoy it.
vortacist's review
adventurous
challenging
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Lots of characters to keep track of.
natalielorelei's review against another edition
4.0
I've been putting off writing this review, because I have SO MANY THOUGHTS.
First, the good! I absolutely loved the focus on opera and mystery in this one, and I really enjoyed Barbara's, Margerit's, Antuniet's, and Jeanne's plotlines! I enjoyed the quiet pace and the slow spooling out of the plot (even though it was occasionally jarring to have so many major events happen offstage)! Of the secondary characters, I particularly loved Anna and Iuli! And I loved that a trans secondary character was introduced, that even when other characters occasionally fucked up and said something uncool that the text did not let them off the hook for that, that his identity was presented in a way that felt period-accurate but still respectful, and that his plotline was not centered around his being trans.
However, I did not love this one as much as I loved the first two books because aspects of Serafina's and Luzie's characterizations really bothered me.
While I was really excited to see a protagonist of color, I don't think Serafina's dual identity as Ethiopian and Roman or her feelings of being an outsider were handled well at all (which was particularly disappointing after the well-written trans character). It felt to me like Jones was trying to imagine the experience of being a person of color without decentering whiteness from Serafina's identity...and thus falling into a lot of gross White Feminist traps. All of her angst about being black felt really internal in the way that stories about closeted queer people written by straight people often feel to me.
Basically nothing about Serafina's family life made any logical sense to me. How is she both so isolated from Romans in general and Roman women in particular that she has no confidence in her ability to read social cues and so ignorant of her family's culture and language? Why isn't her family hooked into any kind of immigrant community in Rome when the text keeps emphasizing how cosmopolitan Rome is, and why is Serafina so convinced that no one will marry her because she is black if she lives in such a cosmopolitan city? Where do her father's weird respectability politics come from? How did Serafina and her mother learn to speak Romanesco if they were so isolated and her father was at work all day? Where did Serafina's sense of belonging and joy with her mother come from, since Serafina seems to have very few memories of her and zero cultural associations? WTF was up with that whole "Serafina's mother is culturally steamrolled by a girl her daughter's age and just shrivels up about it" thing, and why did no one catch how racist it was before the book was published? WHY DID NO ONE EVER TELL HEATHER ROSE JONES THAT IF YOU ARE A WHITE AUTHOR, IT IS GENERALLY A TERRIBLE IDEA TO WRITE A BOOK ABOUT A POC CHARACTER THAT IS ABOUT THEIR POC IDENTITY?
My problems with Luzie were more minor--I just did not buy her as a bicurious straight woman, at all. I generally appreciate that these books have so little coming out angst, but it made no sense to me that Luzie would experience zero confusion while trying out a relationship with another woman and then realizing that she did not have romantic feelings. It made her seem cold and oblivious-to-the-point-of-cruelty, it made Serafina seem naïve and tragic, and it really didn't seem to serve the story at all, except to make Serafina even more of a TRAGIC OUTSIDER. (Actually, the whole development of their not!relationship seemed really weird--even leaving aside Luzie's confusion, I constantly felt like we were missing pieces of it!)
In conclusion: I enjoyed this one, but it did not quite live up to the expectations the first two books set for me. I'm still excited to read the next book, and I'm cautiously optimistic that it sounds like Celeste will have a larger role to play there--fingers crossed that Jones fixes the identity politics stuff with her.
First, the good! I absolutely loved the focus on opera and mystery in this one, and I really enjoyed Barbara's, Margerit's, Antuniet's, and Jeanne's plotlines! I enjoyed the quiet pace and the slow spooling out of the plot (even though it was occasionally jarring to have so many major events happen offstage)! Of the secondary characters, I particularly loved Anna and Iuli! And I loved that a trans secondary character was introduced, that even when other characters occasionally fucked up and said something uncool that the text did not let them off the hook for that, that his identity was presented in a way that felt period-accurate but still respectful, and that his plotline was not centered around his being trans.
However, I did not love this one as much as I loved the first two books because aspects of Serafina's and Luzie's characterizations really bothered me.
While I was really excited to see a protagonist of color, I don't think Serafina's dual identity as Ethiopian and Roman or her feelings of being an outsider were handled well at all (which was particularly disappointing after the well-written trans character). It felt to me like Jones was trying to imagine the experience of being a person of color without decentering whiteness from Serafina's identity...and thus falling into a lot of gross White Feminist traps. All of her angst about being black felt really internal in the way that stories about closeted queer people written by straight people often feel to me.
Basically nothing about Serafina's family life made any logical sense to me. How is she both so isolated from Romans in general and Roman women in particular that she has no confidence in her ability to read social cues and so ignorant of her family's culture and language? Why isn't her family hooked into any kind of immigrant community in Rome when the text keeps emphasizing how cosmopolitan Rome is, and why is Serafina so convinced that no one will marry her because she is black if she lives in such a cosmopolitan city? Where do her father's weird respectability politics come from? How did Serafina and her mother learn to speak Romanesco if they were so isolated and her father was at work all day? Where did Serafina's sense of belonging and joy with her mother come from, since Serafina seems to have very few memories of her and zero cultural associations? WTF was up with that whole "Serafina's mother is culturally steamrolled by a girl her daughter's age and just shrivels up about it" thing, and why did no one catch how racist it was before the book was published? WHY DID NO ONE EVER TELL HEATHER ROSE JONES THAT IF YOU ARE A WHITE AUTHOR, IT IS GENERALLY A TERRIBLE IDEA TO WRITE A BOOK ABOUT A POC CHARACTER THAT IS ABOUT THEIR POC IDENTITY?
My problems with Luzie were more minor--I just did not buy her as a bicurious straight woman, at all. I generally appreciate that these books have so little coming out angst, but it made no sense to me that Luzie would experience zero confusion while trying out a relationship with another woman and then realizing that she did not have romantic feelings. It made her seem cold and oblivious-to-the-point-of-cruelty, it made Serafina seem naïve and tragic, and it really didn't seem to serve the story at all, except to make Serafina even more of a TRAGIC OUTSIDER. (Actually, the whole development of their not!relationship seemed really weird--even leaving aside Luzie's confusion, I constantly felt like we were missing pieces of it!)
In conclusion: I enjoyed this one, but it did not quite live up to the expectations the first two books set for me. I'm still excited to read the next book, and I'm cautiously optimistic that it sounds like Celeste will have a larger role to play there--fingers crossed that Jones fixes the identity politics stuff with her.