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bookishchef's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Okay okay. I have some thoughts.
Let's talk about them.
The main thing I didn't like is the blatant paedophilia and grooming committed by Silvia the Duchessa. I feel like it's completely glossed over because she's a woman.
The story never addresses it, just mentions it all the time.
This middle aged woman has a school of people who steer her boats, and these people always have to be young, pretty boys. She picks them herself and is known to take the prettiest boys as her lovers. These boys are aged somewhere between 15 and 25, if I remember correctly. And it's so so so creepy.
One of our main characters, Lucien, a 15 year old boy, gets picked by the Duchessa and has to withstand her vaguely sexual advances the entire time he's in her presence. During this, he constantly remarks on how creepy and imposing Silvia is, and how uncomfortable he feels.
Then, he gets whisked away by Rudolfo, the Duchessa's more age-appropriate lover, and the plot truly gets going. Rudolfo basically saves Lucien from a life of sexual slavery? And it is never mentioned again. What. the. hell.
If the gender roles were reversed and Silvia was a middle aged man handpicking underage girls as lovers, people would definitely talk about this weird plot point more.
When I started the book and this came up, I thought the author was going for an intentional role reversal. Showing that a paedophilic female villain is still a villain and still just as creepy but NO.
The story later tries to get the reader to pity and understand Silvia for some of her other actions AND SHE'S NOT SUPPOSED TO BE THE VILLAIN.
Every time the author tried to get me to feel for her my brain would go "This woman is a paedophile. Whatever she had to suffer through or endure can't be as bad as what she does to those boys".
Lucien even does a full 180 on his opinion. Gone is the fear, the uncomfortableness and the awkwardness. When the plot needs him to suddenly forget about the sexual advances of this middle aged woman, he does.
I genuinely liked the rest of the story. Some plottwists happened without any foreshadowing, which I tend to dislike but besides that, I was intrigued throughout the entire book.
But what in the actual fuck was that paedophilia plotpoint??
Also also also by the end Lucien gets a fake identity in Bellezza and they want to have him identify as Arianna's brother, but because there's some romance between them that would be gross, so he takes on an identity as her cousin instead???? Like that's so much better????
Let's talk about them.
The main thing I didn't like is the blatant paedophilia and grooming committed by Silvia the Duchessa. I feel like it's completely glossed over because she's a woman.
The story never addresses it, just mentions it all the time.
This middle aged woman has a school of people who steer her boats, and these people always have to be young, pretty boys. She picks them herself and is known to take the prettiest boys as her lovers. These boys are aged somewhere between 15 and 25, if I remember correctly. And it's so so so creepy.
One of our main characters, Lucien, a 15 year old boy, gets picked by the Duchessa and has to withstand her vaguely sexual advances the entire time he's in her presence. During this, he constantly remarks on how creepy and imposing Silvia is, and how uncomfortable he feels.
Then, he gets whisked away by Rudolfo, the Duchessa's more age-appropriate lover, and the plot truly gets going. Rudolfo basically saves Lucien from a life of sexual slavery? And it is never mentioned again. What. the. hell.
If the gender roles were reversed and Silvia was a middle aged man handpicking underage girls as lovers, people would definitely talk about this weird plot point more.
When I started the book and this came up, I thought the author was going for an intentional role reversal. Showing that a paedophilic female villain is still a villain and still just as creepy but NO.
The story later tries to get the reader to pity and understand Silvia for some of her other actions AND SHE'S NOT SUPPOSED TO BE THE VILLAIN.
Every time the author tried to get me to feel for her my brain would go "This woman is a paedophile. Whatever she had to suffer through or endure can't be as bad as what she does to those boys".
Lucien even does a full 180 on his opinion. Gone is the fear, the uncomfortableness and the awkwardness. When the plot needs him to suddenly forget about the sexual advances of this middle aged woman, he does.
I genuinely liked the rest of the story. Some plottwists happened without any foreshadowing, which I tend to dislike but besides that, I was intrigued throughout the entire book.
But what in the actual fuck was that paedophilia plotpoint??
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Chronic illness, Death, and Terminal illness
Moderate: Confinement, Sexism, and Kidnapping
Minor: Adult/minor relationship, Infidelity, Pedophilia, Violence, and Grief
booksthatburn's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
Lucien (Luciano in Talia) finds himself transported in his sleep to an alternate version of Italy, displaced in time and details from the one of his 21st century world. He has cancer in his own time, and losing sleep to exploring Talia saps his energy even more in a way that exercise in a cancer-free body can’t completely make up for. Arianna is a child of the islands, dreaming of being a mandolier (a role denied to girls), when the sudden appearance of Luciano disrupts her carefully laid plans. Later on she is accused of a crime, and only a set of well-kept secrets surrounding her birth are able to enable her rescue and transform her life in a way she never dreamed possible.
Rodolfo is one of my favorite characters, and I wish he hadn’t been put through so much possibly unnecessary stress. He handles it with aplomb, but he shouldn’t have had to and I’m a bit mad at Silvia for some of it.
Some of the narrators are antagonists, but they're shown such that their motivations (however despicable) are at least understandable. It's a subtlety which I appreciate, and it means that even characters I despise make sense within the story and I can guess what they might try.
This is set in an alternate version of Italy, one so fundamentally different that even silver and gold behave differently, but close enough in its history that Venice can be mostly navigated by someone who has recently spent their nights exploring Bellezza. I like the detail that Lucien explores Bellezza first, which prompts a secondary interest in Venice. It makes Bellezza feel real, centering the place where the story is set, rather than making this wonderful setting feel like a pale imitation by too frequent comparison.
The plot centers on Luciano and his friendship with Arianna, Rodolfo’s tutorship of Luciano, and Silvia’s political troubles with the di Chemicis who are trying to take over Bellezza. Once assassins become involved and Luciano’s otherworldly nature is known to nefarious players, these plot threads become inextricably linked in a riveting series of twists and reveals which are telegraphed just enough to make sense without feeling inevitable. Something which colors many of Luciano’s moments is the reality of his cancer, causing confusion and stress when his coma-like state during his journeys to Talia are mistaken for additional cancer symptoms by his worried parents.
End of book spoilers in this paragraph:I don’t think the ending is a magical cure narrative but I wouldn’t try to argue with someone who feels strongly that it is. If this feels like a magical cure to you then it's probably not a series you'll like, as the whole thing is a kind of wish fulfillment with young people travelling and then figuring out how to solve some of their problems with what they learned or what they did. As far as Lucien’s parents are concerned, he dies when they pull the plug after a strange several-week coma that he appears unable to awaken from. As for Luciano, he was kidnapped and rendered unable to travel home, only to rather dramatically have it revealed that he’s now stuck in Talia and any possible trips to his former home will be brief and difficult. He has the makings of a new life, one he loves even if he didn’t get to choose it, which makes any feelings of a cure bittersweet at best and traumatic at worst.
Rodolfo is one of my favorite characters, and I wish he hadn’t been put through so much possibly unnecessary stress. He handles it with aplomb, but he shouldn’t have had to and I’m a bit mad at Silvia for some of it.
Some of the narrators are antagonists, but they're shown such that their motivations (however despicable) are at least understandable. It's a subtlety which I appreciate, and it means that even characters I despise make sense within the story and I can guess what they might try.
This is set in an alternate version of Italy, one so fundamentally different that even silver and gold behave differently, but close enough in its history that Venice can be mostly navigated by someone who has recently spent their nights exploring Bellezza. I like the detail that Lucien explores Bellezza first, which prompts a secondary interest in Venice. It makes Bellezza feel real, centering the place where the story is set, rather than making this wonderful setting feel like a pale imitation by too frequent comparison.
The plot centers on Luciano and his friendship with Arianna, Rodolfo’s tutorship of Luciano, and Silvia’s political troubles with the di Chemicis who are trying to take over Bellezza. Once assassins become involved and Luciano’s otherworldly nature is known to nefarious players, these plot threads become inextricably linked in a riveting series of twists and reveals which are telegraphed just enough to make sense without feeling inevitable. Something which colors many of Luciano’s moments is the reality of his cancer, causing confusion and stress when his coma-like state during his journeys to Talia are mistaken for additional cancer symptoms by his worried parents.
End of book spoilers in this paragraph:
Content Warnings
Graphic: Confinement and Grief
Moderate: Cancer, Child death, Death, Terminal illness, Violence, Blood, Medical content, Kidnapping, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, and Alcohol
Minor: Animal cruelty, Incest, Infidelity, and Torture