The Virtu is the second book in the Doctrine of Labyrinths series, and I don’t think it would make very much sense if you hadn’t read Melusine first. It’s very much the second half of a story. However, there is something I can say without spoilers, which is that a lot of fantasy series are about huge world-destroying issues, and this one isn’t. There is no dark lord, the world isn’t at stake, it’s all at personal scale or city-state against Empire scale, and it’s “unpleasant Empire” not “Evil Empire.” The politics—inter-country and court politicing—feel plausible and on the kind of level that actual people could affect. It’s one of the interesting things about it.
The Virtu is the story of a journey across country, the mending of a broken magic object, and the developing relationship between two people, neither of whom know how to deal with people being nice to them.
If you like Swordspoint, you may very well like these, but don’t start here.
Felix and Mildmay are still trying to figure out what it means to be brothers, and this is complicated by the obligation d’ame. It’s hard to see how Mildmay could have a worse feeling about not doing it than doing it, considering what happens. Mildmay’s feelings are usually textually supported, but... well. Felix was bound to abuse it, whenever he wanted something enough. It was inevitable.
The academic magic in this book is terrific. It’s interesting and it’s cool and it fits with the world and what we have learned about magic before and it feels like the way people do that kind of thing. The different schools of magic with their different metaphors are really cool. The way Felix manages to fix the Virtu feels just right. The dream of the gardens, which in Melusine is a plot-device, here becomes something more, an interesting magical construct in its own right. Everything fits and has logical consequences and second order implications. When Felix uses oneiromancy to trap Malkar at the end, conquering him as he has conquered the Sim, that’s very effective. This is a book—a diptych—that has earned its end.
The labyrinths underlying the series really come to the fore here—in Melusine we had the Trials, the maze in Hermione and the maze they make in Nera to free the ghosts. Here we have the book, the underground labyrinth in Klepsydra, the goddess of labyrinths (oh yes, and death), and the water maze under the Mirador.
Some people have said they have trouble liking Felix. Well, I don’t like him either, but I don’t need to like everyone in a novel. I like Mildmay a lot, inarticulate creature that he is, and that’s sufficient for me, considering how interesting the continuing hints of the world are. I have to admit I liked Felix better mad. Felix is an arrogant sod, and knowing how damaged he is underneath makes me understand him better but not like him any more.
Mildmay’s bad leg is another thing where Monette goes against genre conventions. People don’t tend to get permanently hurt in fantasy novels. Mildmay was cursed before the story began, and he’s been avoiding the curse. It catches up to him twice in Melusine, and at the beginning of The Virtu he accepts that he hasn’t really been healed, that he’s crippled. Even when he has to do things he isn’t physically up to, and he does it, she never lets us forget the difficulty, whether it’s going down stairs into a labyrinth or climbing out of a window:
I could do this. I’d been an assassin and a cat burglar, and I’d done harder things than get down a pillar with two arms, one leg, and a crippled hocus on my back. I was sure of it, even if I couldn’t right then think of none.
It’s never glossed over. And as someone with a bad leg myself, I’m qualified to say that Monette gets it pretty much right.
The Virtu has an excellent dramatic conclusion, and the series could have finished there leaving me wanting more but not unsatisfied—but I’m glad it didn’t.
VIEW ALL BY · Thursday May 21, 2009 06:30pm EDT
Friday May 22, 2009 03:16am EDT
I love these novels, The Doctrine of Labyrinths is among the most exciting fantasy series I have ever read, and I can't wait to find out what Sarah Monette is going to do next.
The world building is superb, vivid as well as inventive, the main characters and their interactions are more fully imagined and believable than any others in this genre I could think of (and I really don't get why people have such problems with Felix - sure, he is not a particularly nice person (and quite obviously not meant to be) but that does not make him any less fascinating to read about. I don't see why one has to like a protagonist to enjoy reading about them.). Sarah Monette writes beautifully, and I simply adore how she managed to give each of her narrators a distinctive voice of their own.
Another thing that struck me is the intelligence that informs these novels, something still rather rare in fantasy literature (though I do get the impression - about which I might be wrong, though - that the amount of works that actually invoke their reader's intelligence seems to have increased substantially over the last couple of years).
Friday May 22, 2009 08:50am EDT
The thing is, 'not liking Felix' is the best case among people I know who have read the books. At least one person I know hates him beyond measure.
The problem is not that he is unlikeable, it's that this is not examined. Why do we not like him? He's self-centered, angsty, mean, and not nearly as interesting as Mildmay... and because the story was built around him at first (I think Monette has said that Felix came first) it still centers on him uncritically. The story doesn't examine whether his tragic angsty past excuses his present actions.
I feel like he's a character no one likes but everyone is supposed to like. I'm fine with unlikeable characters presented as unlikeable by the story* (or at least presented as problematic) but it seemed to me that the story went to great lengths to justify Felix's actions, usually by invoking angsty past.
*you have what the character says, what the story says, what the author says. These are not always the same things.
VIEW ALL BY · Friday May 22, 2009 09:54am EDT
I didn't mean to sound superior, I actually do have to like somebody. What I was trying to say is that I don't have to like every single character. But if I don't like any of them, I don't enjoy the book.
I just like Mildmay enough to put up with Felix.
Are we supposed to like him? Very good question.
Friday May 22, 2009 02:53pm EDT
Which is precisely one of the things I like about those novels - there is no auctorial voice telling us what we have to think about this character or that event, but the narrative assumes that the reader is sufficiently mature and intelligent to come to their own conclusions about things.
I don't think we are supposed to like Felix, just as we are not supposed to dislike him - the story might explain his actions, but that is quite different from justifying them. I think the novel quite cleverly arranges things in a way to preclude any ready-made presuppositions, and instead allows the reader the liberty to gain their own judgments.
Sunday May 31, 2009 03:42am EDT
VIEW ALL BY · Friday June 26, 2009 03:04pm EDT
Which is one of the things I find fascinating about these books...the way Monette shows us how they see themselves, as well as how other people see them.