2023 epistolary fantastic romance. Victor Beauchêne is disinherited
and cast out; Julien Moreau has come to Paris to paint. They will
meet, but everything will get terribly complicated…
I read this out of sequence, and that made it slightly slow going
at times: when reading volume 2, many of the events of this book were
referred to in passing, and I had fun (in my SF-reader mindset) workin
out what must have happened. But here it's all laid out with no
assembly of evidence needed, and so there are few surprises in the
bigger plot; it's not just a matter of knowing broadly what V and J
will end up doing, but a fair bit of how and why they will come to do
it. It's the same core idea: sometimes people produce magical items.
and powerful men collect them, especially the items that suborn
another's will.
If I'd read in order I wouldn't have had the fun of working things
out. But I might have enjoyed this one more without knowing the course
it was going to take.
There's a fair bit of sex, and neither of the principals is
conventionally gendered; magical transformation is also involved. If
that irks you, stay away.
I suspect whichever of these books one reads first will be more
enjoyable than the other, but even taking the slight disappointment
into account I did have a good time with this book and look forward to
getting hold of volume 3.