Anna Arden is a chimera. That’s why she’s a Barren – a
person unable to perform magic. Two souls inhabit her body and rather than
cooperate with magic, her souls tear it apart. So she’s uniquely positioned to
be the One to rip apart the Binding holding magic back from everyone but the
elites in the magical Europe imagined by Rosalyn Eves in “Blood Rose
Rebellion.”
Oh yeah. I should probably say: spoiler alert.
But I bring up this pivotal plot point not just to spoil the
book for readers, but also to discuss the book as a reader and critic.
With “Blood Rose Rebellion,” Eves has created a chimera
that’s part Jane Austen drama of manners and part alternative history such as Susanna
Clarke’s “Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.”
“Blood Rose Rebellion” starts out heavily on the Austen side,
with Anna Arden the embarrassment of her establishment family, chased by the
foppish Freddy Markson Worthing, who should have stuck to singing about the
lilacs on the street where she lives. She quickly injects the magic – thank
heaven – as Anna clumsily breaks her sister’s debut spell and recalls crippling
her younger brother with magic gone awry at an earlier ceremony of her own.
I’ll confess my interest in Austen’s novels extends only as
far as playing the Simpsons “Tapped Out” game on my Kindle while my wife
listens to whatever it is Colonel Brandon is talking about, so I was worried as
I read this book. But much like Homer hollering “Woo hoo!” whenever something
in the game goes his way, I soon found myself getting lost in this book, even
when it shifted from Clarke back to Austen and then back again. She relies just
enough on the Austen side to remind us she’s straddling two stratified
societies, and that Anna doesn’t fit into either one of them.
Eves nails the surface of the otherworldly, alternative
history vibe that makes such novels so appealing. It’s natural to assume that
had magic existed at the time of the Hapsburgs, there would be a political and
magical alliance as both wanted or needed each other to stay in power, and that
the egalitarian streak running through Hungary at the time would also sweep up
Luminates – and Barrens – tired of the old order.
Where the book goes awry lies in the muted message on the
good and evil that the Binding – a magic spell put in place by the Luminate,
who believe only those of certified blood lines should practice magic – hold at
bay. Maybe the hinting at menace is meant to heighten the tension, but oft
times the tension can’t be there if the hints are too subtle. Sometimes, the
reader has to see cards the characters can’t yet see. Especially calling one of
the evils Hunger – a personification that, if literal, makes no sense, unless
the implication is that hunger, with the lower case, is abolished via the
binding. Maybe I’m misinterpreting. But there’s a serious lack of menace on the
evils the Binding traps, and a serious lack of blessing on the good – one is
mentioned, briefly – also held in check. Some of that comes out in the story’s
climax, but there’s an awful lot of it missing, too.
Perhaps that’s why there’s a “Volume 1” printed on the
flyleaf of this book.
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