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A rare singleton from Tchaikovsky, and also a book with shockingly few bugs - I think the only bug content in the entire book is a couple giant dragonflies and a single dog-sized hairy spider that appears in exactly one scene.
In a vaguely Napoleonic time period, impoverished aristocrat Emily Marshwic lives with her two sisters, her younger brother, and her brother-in-law. Her biggest problems are her lack of money, her flighty younger sister's habit of running away every time she feels especially aggrieved, and the family feud with the mayor, Mr. Northway, whom they blame for their father's suicide after he lost all the family money.
Then war breaks out. All patriotic men of age volunteer... and mostly don't come back. A draft is instituted to scoop up the men of age who didn't volunteer. Emily's teenage brother volunteers and her brother-in-law is drafted. Then the draft is widened to encompass younger and older men. But it's still not enough. In the midst of privation and desperation, the draft is widened to include women. Rather than feeding a terrified young servant into that meatgrinder, Emily volunteers, and is sent to the swamp part of the front.
An excellent war novel and study of leadership in a horrendous war of attrition. The fantasy aspect of the book is comparatively minor--the king has a magical ability to create mages, and there are native people of the world who are not human--but it's primarily an alternate history of a war that might have been.
It's an extremely intense book, especially once you realize the reason why Emily is the main character. As more and more people get killed, she ends up in positions of increasingly high leadership because she's the only person of rank who's still alive.
Emily is an unreliable narrator of the variety who tells the absolute truth as she sees it, but who may believe things that aren't correct. You can tell early on that she probably doesn't have a full picture of exactly what went down and why regarding her father's suicide, and it becomes increasingly clear that she takes the party line about the reasons for the war at face value. Which leads to another interesting (very spoilery!) aspect of the book:
We've been following the "bad guys" all along. Contrary to what Emily believes, it was her country that was the aggressor.
I initially thought the king had a magical glamour, but I guess it was just the power of propaganda that made Emily think he was all that. Rarely has a death been more satisfying than when Emily shot the bastard withChekhov's her father's pistol.
A vivid, suspenseful, intense, dark yet ultimately hopeful novel.
Warning for attempted rape and standard war novel content.
In a vaguely Napoleonic time period, impoverished aristocrat Emily Marshwic lives with her two sisters, her younger brother, and her brother-in-law. Her biggest problems are her lack of money, her flighty younger sister's habit of running away every time she feels especially aggrieved, and the family feud with the mayor, Mr. Northway, whom they blame for their father's suicide after he lost all the family money.
Then war breaks out. All patriotic men of age volunteer... and mostly don't come back. A draft is instituted to scoop up the men of age who didn't volunteer. Emily's teenage brother volunteers and her brother-in-law is drafted. Then the draft is widened to encompass younger and older men. But it's still not enough. In the midst of privation and desperation, the draft is widened to include women. Rather than feeding a terrified young servant into that meatgrinder, Emily volunteers, and is sent to the swamp part of the front.
An excellent war novel and study of leadership in a horrendous war of attrition. The fantasy aspect of the book is comparatively minor--the king has a magical ability to create mages, and there are native people of the world who are not human--but it's primarily an alternate history of a war that might have been.
It's an extremely intense book, especially once you realize the reason why Emily is the main character. As more and more people get killed, she ends up in positions of increasingly high leadership because she's the only person of rank who's still alive.
Emily is an unreliable narrator of the variety who tells the absolute truth as she sees it, but who may believe things that aren't correct. You can tell early on that she probably doesn't have a full picture of exactly what went down and why regarding her father's suicide, and it becomes increasingly clear that she takes the party line about the reasons for the war at face value. Which leads to another interesting (very spoilery!) aspect of the book:
We've been following the "bad guys" all along. Contrary to what Emily believes, it was her country that was the aggressor.
I initially thought the king had a magical glamour, but I guess it was just the power of propaganda that made Emily think he was all that. Rarely has a death been more satisfying than when Emily shot the bastard with
A vivid, suspenseful, intense, dark yet ultimately hopeful novel.
Warning for attempted rape and standard war novel content.
