Melusine [Hardcover]

Sarah Monette's _Melusine_ is a fabulous debut fantasy novel, about a pair of unlikely heroes in a richly imagined world. Felix Harrowgate is a wizard of the Mirador, powerful and respected until a long-held secret is divulged which drives him back to his evil master, Malkar, and into insanity. Meanwhile, the thief Mildmay the Fox is drawn into intrigue when he meets Ginevra, a beautiful shopgirl who wants him to steal back some items from her former lover. Eventually, the separate stories of Felix and Mildmay combine into one, as they form an unlikely partnership.

The real triumph of _Melusine_ is in its language and voice. Monette tells the story in three separate voices -- Felix's haughty sanity, Felix's insane delirium, and Mildmay's slangy thieves' cant -- and she handles them brilliantly, never losing her grasp for an instant or letting the reader be confused about who's narrating. Along with the narrative voices, the language is simply lush and vivid, utterly suitable to the richness of the setting; the city of Melusine is particularly well described in Mildmay's sections of the narrative.

As far as the characters go, I preferred Mildmay's narrative to some extent, as he's the more immediately sympathetic character, with unsuspected depths of feeling. Felix falls into madness so quickly that it was a little difficult for me truly to enpathize with the change in his circumstances, as there had been so little time to get to know him before his fall. Still, the vivid, present-tense passages where he's delirious and mad are emotionally compelling, simply for the horror of what he endures.

I should say here that I think the publishers of _Melusine_ did the book a terrible disservice by failing to mention anywhere in the book (even on the last page) that it is the first of two books; there is an upcoming sequel, due out next summer, currently titled _The Virtu_. If I hadn't known before I started _Melusine_ that there would be another book, I would have been very disappointed in the lack of any real resolution to the plot. As it is, I was able to revel in the rich setting, languages, and characters, and now I can look forward to rereading _Melusine_ when _The Virtu_ is published.

I just finished reading "Melusine" and am in the process of tracking down its sequel, "The Virtu." It is very seriously one of the best books I've read in a long time. From world-building to language-use to characterization to plot, it displays a very high level of authorial skill and was an absolutely compelling read. I've read a number of the other reviews here and must admit to being mystified that so many people find the book so very confusing.

Yes, it begins in the middle of the story, which is a pretty common technique used by other authors for hundreds of years. Yes, it has its own slang and an intense inner knowledge of the world given out in little bits throughout the narrative and from two differently educated first-person POVs. Yes, the wizard character is pretty unlikable, but so what? So was Dostoyevsky's Underground Man and nobody denies "Notes From the Underground" was a good book.

This book respects the reader and expects the reader to be smart enough to put a grand vision of the world together from the clues they're given. It assumes you have some basic background knowledge of language, so that you'll be able to make the not very hard translation from words like "nelly" to "molly" or notice that many of the terms being thrown up have giant cluephone base words in them so you can clearly tell what the term means within the world of the book despite nobody handing you a travel dictionary.

If you want a book where you've seen everything before and everything is spelled out for you in very plain English and don't want to have to think about it, this isn't the book for you. But your expectations as a reader aren't the fault of the book or an indication of poor world-building, language use or confusing plotting as several of the reviewers have implied. "Melusine" requires the same sort of attention as Tolkein, though with far fewer characters, it's less confusing than that.

And, like in real life, some characters are important for a short time and then wander off to do their own thing or, as somebody said, "are discarded" by the author. So, do you still know every detail about every person you've ever met in your life? Or do some of them wander in and out of your life at different times? Why would an author who is giving us a first-person story follow minor characters beyond the knowledge of the POV characters? First-person POV is limited POV. It is the style of the narrative. A good author keeps the book knowlege limited to what characters could possibly know. A sloppy author tells the reader all kinds of information the POV character wouldn't have access to.

Clearly some reviewers here just wanted to be reading some other kind of book than the one they bought. Again, it's not the fault of the author nor does it indicate lack of skill or a new author's oversight.

I'm fairly shocked at several people remarking that they disliked Mildmay as well as Felix. Mildmay is one of the most compelling and likable characters I've seen in a novel in a good long time. He seems very real and very much a decent guy in a bad situation trying to make his best decision among not very promising options. Melusine is a dark world, and there's nobody in it that isn't marked by the darkness, but the mark of a character is what he chooses to do. And Mildmay's choices are very interesting. Even Felix, unlikable as he is, has an interesting story. Interesting things happen to him. You don't have to like a guy to find his story compelling.

If you want a shining hero on a white horse fighting guys in black hats, read a different book. If you want superior and challenging storytelling, this would be a great choice.

One of my problems with "Melusine" is that it seems that rape is used as shorthand. We know Malkar is bad because he rapes Felix, we know that Felix is kind of bad but not totally because he intends to rape a prostitute but doesn't. It stuck out especially as Monette is an incredibly strong writer, so shortcuts like this really brought me out of the moment of the book.

That aside, this is a fantastic book. Monette is ace at world building and mythology, at crafting religion and schools of magic, at setting up different ethnicities of people with different socio-political structures. We skim the surface of a fully realized world, never quite dipping all the way into it (God save me from ever having to figure out the calendrical system Mildmay uses. Yes, I can figure it out in the context of the book, but using it every single day? Man.), but catching glimpses of just how rich and real that world is.

Monette is also fabulous at capturing two very different voices. "Melusine" is told from the point of view of two extremely different characters, Mildmay and Felix. Mildmay is a Second Story Man, a "kept thief" as he puts it. He is ignorant, although not stupid, and fairly coarse. He is, to put it bluntly, common. He's also fairly kind and surprisingly compassionate, a gifted storyteller, and an all around cool guy. Felix, on the other hand, is clever and well educated, bitingly sarcastic, not very likeable, and very very fancy. He is selfish and egotistical and much more fragile than Mildmay. And it only takes a few sentences to convey this information about them.

"Melusine" is one of those books that are almost infinitely re-readable, and also one of those books that I loan out to people. "Melusine" (and its sequel, "The Virtu") is a fantastic, poetic read. It's extremely flavorful and highly recomended.