I feared this was the best of times; I hoped it could not get any worse.
Let’s synopsize: Sydney Carton was stolen as a child and forced to serve the Faery Realm. Charles Darnay is his changeling; Lucie Manette is the changeling of Ivy, Sydney’s childhood friend. Sydney wants revenge on the fae and Darnay for how his life has turned out. The French Revolution happens. This is a homage to A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.
Spoiler Alert: I discuss plot points of this book in the review, so if you have a problem with that, do not read. But then again, they are all plot details from A Tale of Two Cities; and if you haven’t read that, why are you reading this book? Read the original, it’s better. Or if you want “not the original, still overblown and dramatic (and ridiculous), but slightly better, read Cassandra Clare’s The Infernal Devices trilogy.
You have been warned.
I didn’t hate it, but I can’t honestly say I was 100% captivated by it. To be frank, to a large extent the Faerie element seemed shoehorned in to explain why Charles and Sydney looked alike, and to have something different from Dickens’s original text. I am so glad that everyone seems to just roll with the punches about Faeries and Changelings; the fae are supposed to be very secretive and this is supposed to be a time of heightened paranoia in France, but sure: finding out people are stealing children and replacing them with fae copies will cause no uproar whatsoever. Why would it? But why do all of the Changelings have blue eyes? Does Parry think that blue eyes have the ability to look both the most normal and the most otherworldly of all the eye colors? And is there some magic that causes people not to notice that their children’s eye color changes overnight, never mind potentially not match anyone else in the family’s? So what are you to believe: Sydney did what he did because he was a good man, because he was in love with Ivy (or Lucie, or both), or for a last, ultimate fuck-you to Shadow, his main fae handler nemesis? Because this book was probably even more about revenge than Dickens’s was. Selling Ivy off like that really does not put Dr. Mannette in a good light. Notice there was no mention of Madame DeFarge’s compatriots in knitting, nor the great delight she herself took in the executions. (I mean yes, I know in Dickens’s book as well her main was personal vengeance, but you have to admit that she also really liked seeing people’s heads getting cut off.) And why wasn’t Sydney even in the slightest bit worried that she would be there and uncover the whole plan? Or is the insinuation that she knows, is there (because that is one plot point from the original that does not seem to be carried over), and doesn’t care because the real Evermonde is being guillotined, and she just figures she can pick everyone else off at a later date?
I am glad Parry got away from calling the child “Little Lucie” though; I always disliked that. Glad also that she insinuates the Darnays all appreciate Sydney’s sacrifice (in fact Lucie tries to stop him); Dickens basically had that Little Lucie was the only one who ever gave him a second though after they left France, which I always thought was a dick move.
Which is all a long way to say that other than a fae subplot (which to be honest is not that exciting), this is for the most part a direct retelling of A Tale of Two Cities. Basically, if you liked the original, and you’ve ever wanted to read a supernatural take on the similarity between Sydney Carton and Charles Darnay, read this. But if you;re fine with it just being “everyone has a twin somewhere in the world”, I can’t say there’s a whole lot to recommend this book.
Looking at the titles of the author’s other works, does she just go through life writing Fantasy variations of previously published works? (I haven’t read any of the plot descriptions; I’m going off the titles only.)
