Glamour in Glass [Hardcover]

In 1815, newlyweds Jane and David Vincent travel to Blinche, Belgium on a working honeymoon paid for by a glamour commissioned by the Regent. The couple plans to compare magical glamour techniques with a colleague of David, M. Chastain and create a glass container to hold glamour inside.

However, their idyll collapses when David ignores his new wife and excludes her on a paying gig. At the same time Napoleon returns from Elba, trapping visitors in France and its neighbors like Belgium. Feeling isolated, Jane wants to go home alone, but soon finds herself in peril and David is locked away as agents of Bonaparte want to deploy the Vincents (and other adepts) magical skills in the pending battlefield.

The second Glamour regency fantasy (see Shades of Milk and Honey) is a charming espionage thriller starring an unconfident heroine who still thinks of herself as a plain-looking twenty-eight years old jealous of her beautiful sister Melody's looks; so she expects to lose her husband to a real glamorous woman. The exciting storyline continues to provide details to glamour application methodology, but less of the science and more of the practical. Combining an unsure female lead with Napoleon back in town, fans will be spellbound by Glamour mage Mary Robinette Kowal.

Harriet Klausner

I must admit that I find myself in a quandary over this novel regarding which star rating to assign. I read the first book in this series (Shades of Milk and Honey) and enjoyed it quite a lot. In fact, I enjoyed it so much that I went immediately and ordered the download for my Kindle to be delivered the day the book was released. I am a Jane Austen fan. I also love to read novels written now which mimic the Austen style or use the Austen stories and characters to present a different tale. That is exactly what I found in the first book. I cannot say that those Austenesque attributes continued in this book because it took off in such a different direction. That was ultimately the deciding factor in my three star rating. Not only did I not get the Austen feeling with this book, but I got much more technical "glamour" information than I liked.

The first novel had the manipulation of glamour (or magic) as a very important part of the story. In this second book it is almost the entire story, or that is how it struck me. What I had enjoyed in small doses in the first book because it intermingled so wonderfully with the characters and actions was not nearly so satisfying when delivered in large doses in this second installment. There is a large amount of attention devoted to explaining a fantasy science/magic. For me personally, those explanations went on much too long and went into much too much detail. I felt that character and relationship development suffered by spending so much time telling me how this new concept might, or could, or should work. I read this novel to see how the relationship between Jane and Vincent changed and grew since their marriage but I wasn't seeing those developments because the "glamour" kept taking center stage. Toward the last third of the novel there was a concentration on the plot and I did enjoy that much more. Did it overcome my impatience to leave off some of the glamour experimentation and move on to the plot? No, it didn't. Also, because this novel has moved location to Belgium, actively involves the war effort against Napoleon, and now features a married couple the associations with the novels of Jane Austen are no longer there.

If you read this novel strictly as a fantasy adventure which takes place in Europe in 1815, you will probably enjoy it much more than if you start out thinking it will remind you of the Austen novels. Evidently, because of the reaction I had to the book, I wanted and needed that Austen touch. I didn't get that here. The writing is quite good, but if you are wanting one thing and a novel delivers another, the chances of a reader being satisfied are probably not going to be high.

I'm a little in love with this book. It's not so much the story line (though that is surprisingly good, and that's coming from someone who is both irrepressibly drawn, yet sick to death of all the Jane Austen spawns and wannabes that are out there) as the individual bits and pieces that make up the book, and that Mary Robinette Kowal has passed on in her Author's Afterword, online blog, and in person. She's hit all my geeky and bookish markers, which auspicates a beautiful future.

So first off, a bit of personal history. I knew I'd be meeting the author at this year's JordanCon, and had not yet read any of her works. I was about to check out "Shades of Milk and Honey" at our wonderful local library, when I read that somehow, there had been a misprint in the first edition of her second book, Glamour in Glass and that first line of the novel is missing ([...]). That blog entry captivated me, and I immediately ordered the book. I won the book misprint lottery, and actually got a copy of the book that is sans intended first line, and decided to take MRK up on her suggestion to have the author, herself, write the line in my book when I met her.

Even missing that first line, I was enchanted with the sheer Austen-ness of the language of the book. Several times while reading, I would pause and declare to my ever patient husband, "She's really got it", which morphed into "she's channeling again" for the perfectness of language and sensibilities. Part of reasons behind this perfectness became clear when reading the afterward where MRK revealed the following, and won my heart forever:
Because I am something of a geek, I wanted to eliminate as much language as possible from the book that would have been an anachronism. To that end, I created a word list from the complete works of Jane Austen and used that as a spell-check dictionary. It flagged any word that she didn't use, which allowed me to look it up to see it it existed in 1815 or if the meaning had changed. I then either selected an alternate word, or in a few cases , opted to keep the word because it was clearer that the other options, and I am writing for a modern audience.

The characters in the book were quite well drawn, the magic in the world (the bit that makes this a fantasy novel -- "Jane Austen, with Magic!") is tastefully suited to the period as well. And combine the two into an alternate history of sorts, and you get a tale well told. I must also add that something Jane experiences near the end of the book (and I'm being careful not to add spoilers) was really well handled. Having been in a similar situation several times (minus the element of glamour) myself, I can verify that such times call up a well of emotions, some not entirely what might be expected, but all equally valid. Tastefully handled.

Now, if all that wasn't enough, the author showed up in Regency dress at a costume party, in a gown she made herself. Plus, I was fortunate enough to hear the author, a talented voice actor as well as a talented writer, read chapter two of this book (which is the chapter that initially won me over when reading). If you ever have a chance to meet this woman, run, don't walk, to do so. Which, curiously enough, is exactly what you should do in regards to getting your hands on a copy of her writing. Get moving! Great reading awaits.

(Rating for story is 4.5 but all the backstuff cranks it up to a 5 for me.)

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 8 reviews  4.2 out of 5 stars