This book frequently gets described as Jane Austen if she had lived in a fantasy world where magic were real.
I suppose that’s a fair statement because the plot seems to be lifted straight out of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, down to the main character’s name and the younger sister’s misguided dalliance, the father’s practicality and the mother’s dramatic pretensions and political pandering.
The original part of this story is the use of glamour which is apparently some sort of manipulations of the electromagnetic spectrum only using the hands instead of lenses and other optics. Glamor is practiced mostly by women and artists who use it to make their houses look just a tad more beautiful or to breathe a little life into a painting or drawing.
Mary Robinnete Kowal is a brilliant writer and a master storyteller and it is very possible that anybody with less chameleon-like writing skills would have sounded like a cheap parody of Jane Austen. However Kowal has mastered the art of sounding like other writers and she employs it to good effect.
I still remember the first time I heard Mary Robinette Kowal speak. She was a guest on the Writing Excuses podcast and she talked about what she had learned about story telling from puppetry (she is a professional puppeteer). It was perhaps the most brilliant episode I had ever heard and the most useful writing advice I have ever heard to date. She was brilliant.
I have read many of her short works and each one blows me away. Few authors are capable of evoking emotions so strongly and in so few words. Kowal has perfected her ability to tell a story in a very short space and I can not speak too highly of her work.
This book is no exception. It lacks some of the depth of Austen but it flows much more quickly and never feels drawn out. Despite it’s predictable nature (if you have read a Jane Austen book you know how this one is going to turn out), it was a fun book to read and one I fully recommend.
An Infinite Number of Monkeys 