CBR 18 BINGO: Clown
L.R. Lam took a page out of Samantha Shannon’s book (she noted Shannon set a precedent) and re-released Pantomime in 2025, with substantial revisions to the 2013 edition. I didn’t read the original, but I’m so glad I came across this update because I really enjoyed it.
Micah Grey is an intersex 17-year-old who runs away from home and joins the circus. He comes across the Phantom Damselfly there, an apparition of sorts who only seems to communicate with him, and she basically implies that he has important work to do. Interactions between the two of them pop up sporadically over the course of the novel.
Micah was raised as a girl and is presenting himself as a boy in the circus, though he values his body as a whole, which I really appreciated. One of my favorite lines is “This was my body. Strong, different, but beautiful.” Although worried about being discovered, especially because his wealthy family is actively looking for him, he is able to connect with the other circus members and begin to learn how to be an aerialist. He is a compelling character to read about, and I enjoyed the relationships he developed with the other circus members. There is also a romance, though it generally took a backseat to the rest of the story, which was fine by me.
The book seemed a bit slow in the beginning. Not necessarily too slow, but noticeably slow. The author alternates the present with scenes from the recent past that led to Micah running away, and we start to get a sense of the world. Although this is set in an entirely fictional world, it’s modeled after Victorian Scotland. I really liked that each chapter started with an epigraph, often about the history of the country, to help flesh out everything else I was reading.
This is the first book in a trilogy, and I have already gotten the second book from the library. I’m looking forward to diving right back in.
