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emtees's review
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
informative
reflective
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
The Glamourist Histories is a series that has continuously improved for me. I started out very lukewarm on its mix of Regency romance tropes and light magic, but with each book the world building got stronger and the characters more endearing. Of Noble Family is the first book in the series that I wouldn’t rate as better than its predecessor, but that is partially my personal dislike of certain plot lines that had nothing to do with how well they were written, and partially that the last book was so good.
Jane and Vincent, the Prince Regent’s glamourists, are at a lull in their careers, since the death of Princess Charlotte has caused a year of mourning to be decreed in England, meaning no work for artists like glamourists. So when they receive a letter telling them that Vincent’s father and oldest brother have died, they agree to sail to the family’s estate in Antigua and deal with legal matters there. It’s an emotionally fraught task, given the abuse Vincent suffered as a child at the hands of his father and his dramatic estrangement from the family after Lord Verbury tried to have him killed, but he and Jane believe that the worst of it is now behind them and what is left is simply tying up some loose ends. Instead, in Antigua, they find a very complicated situation involving the plantation’s overseer, the enslaved people working there, and the lies Lord Verbury was so good at telling. And if that wasn’t enough to deal with, Jane, who has a history of miscarriage, discovers that she is pregnant - far from home, and with no chance of returning to England before she gives birth.
So before I get into what I liked about this book, which was a lot, I’m just going to say up front that I don’t really like pregnancy storylines, so while I figured Jane and Vincent would eventually have a child - it’s been a lingering plot thread since book two - I wasn’t thrilled that we got to spend another whole book with Jane pregnant. That doesn’t mean that Kowal didn’t handle that storyline well, or that I don’t think that, especially right now, a story about a woman going through a difficult and dangerous pregnancy shouldn’t be told. Kowal has done her research and she is very upfront about what a situation like Jane’s in the early 19th century would mean for her health. But I can’t say I liked reading about any of it.
The other thing I was concerned about going into this book was the setting. The Glamourist Histories are historical fantasy, but other than the occasional world building element that the books don’t get very far into (it was mentioned back in book 2 that Faerie is part of the British Empire in this world and we still don’t know that that means!!), they take place in a world that is our own, but with magic. Previous books have tied closely to specific historical events and contexts, whether Napoleon’s wars or the Year Without a Summer of 1816 - and Kowal’s afterwords, where she talks about how she wove her story around the history of the times and places where it was set, are always great reading on their own. But I was nervous about seeing the books go to Antigua, and to a slave plantation there specifically. On thing that Kowal has always done - something I have both enjoyed and found frustrating at different points - is refuse to shy away from the prejudices her wealthy, white, British heroine of the 1810s would have, and I was worried about how that would play out in the context of slavery. I was equally concerned that we might be subject to a lot of racism from Jane, or that we wouldn’t and Kowal would go the route of giving her characters anachronistically modern attitudes.
I shouldn’t have worried. Kowal has done a great job of developing Jane’s character over the previous four books, and the Jane of book five is someone who still has her blinders on in some areas, but who has grown more open-minded. A decision Kowal makes early on, which I thought worked perfectly, was to frame Jane’s racial open mindedness as arrogance - she is from England, where slavery has been banned, and she knows plenty of Black people from her associations with the coldmongers there, and so she thinks of herself as above racism. And yet, in Antigua, she is confronted with her own prejudices, her own snobbery, and an awareness of how little England has actually done to erase the horrors of slavery when its wealthiest men can simply go on owning people in the colonies. There were two moments that I thought worked particularly well:one where Jane, working on a book about Western and African Glamour, is confronted by the fact that she was thoughtlessly planning to exploit the knowledge of the Black glamourists who were helping her and is rightfully called out by one of them, and another where Vincent is offered the chance to compare the scars he got during his time as a prisoner of war to those inflicted on the slaves of Antigua and refuses to do so, knowing that a brief time imprisoned for fighting for what he believed in is nowhere near the suffering of a life of enslavement. .
That said, this is still a book about two white people, on an island of mostly Black people, engaged in plots that may have personal significance for them but will effect the Black characters far more deeply. I think Kowal keeps the book from slipping into white savior territory by exploring the characters and complexities of the Black characters and allowing them their agency, but it might not work for everyone. It may not help that the cover art for this book (which in all previous cases has depicted either Jane alone or Jane and Vincent together) is of a Black woman, implying that this is a character who will play a large role in the story. I’m pretty sure I know who that character is meant to be, but her role, while important, is a lot less significant than putting her on the cover implies and I question whether that was the right choice. Regardless, Kowal once again does a fantastic job with the historical setting of 19th century Antigua and the specifics of how plantation life, slavery, and the existence of mixed-race people worked there, differently from the more commonly known American narrative. The level of detail is, as always, superb. There was one element I found slightly unrealistic only to discover through a little research that it was my expectations, not the book, that were wrong.
The emotions of the book are intense. Jane and Vincent have really grown into one of my favorite fictional couples, not so much as characters but as a unit. I love their supportive but imperfect marriage, the way they get each other through difficult times and learn to manage each other’s flaws and weaknesses. The handling of Vincent’s PTSD throughout this series has always been good but it is especially well-handled here, when he is put into a situation where he can’t get away from the lingering childhood trauma that triggers him, and has to confront what that means for his own future as a father. The fact that we have come to know these characters so well over five books means that even when the plot slipped a bit into melodrama at the end, I still felt that connection to where the characters were emotionally.
The plot is also really interesting, full of twists and turns, mysteries and suspense. The last section in particular had some really cool revelations that I wasn't expecting but that had in retrospect been set up very well. The ending is a bit neat, but since this is the final book in the series, I didn’t mind.
Jane and Vincent, the Prince Regent’s glamourists, are at a lull in their careers, since the death of Princess Charlotte has caused a year of mourning to be decreed in England, meaning no work for artists like glamourists. So when they receive a letter telling them that Vincent’s father and oldest brother have died, they agree to sail to the family’s estate in Antigua and deal with legal matters there. It’s an emotionally fraught task, given the abuse Vincent suffered as a child at the hands of his father and his dramatic estrangement from the family after Lord Verbury tried to have him killed, but he and Jane believe that the worst of it is now behind them and what is left is simply tying up some loose ends. Instead, in Antigua, they find a very complicated situation involving the plantation’s overseer, the enslaved people working there, and the lies Lord Verbury was so good at telling. And if that wasn’t enough to deal with, Jane, who has a history of miscarriage, discovers that she is pregnant - far from home, and with no chance of returning to England before she gives birth.
So before I get into what I liked about this book, which was a lot, I’m just going to say up front that I don’t really like pregnancy storylines, so while I figured Jane and Vincent would eventually have a child - it’s been a lingering plot thread since book two - I wasn’t thrilled that we got to spend another whole book with Jane pregnant. That doesn’t mean that Kowal didn’t handle that storyline well, or that I don’t think that, especially right now, a story about a woman going through a difficult and dangerous pregnancy shouldn’t be told. Kowal has done her research and she is very upfront about what a situation like Jane’s in the early 19th century would mean for her health. But I can’t say I liked reading about any of it.
The other thing I was concerned about going into this book was the setting. The Glamourist Histories are historical fantasy, but other than the occasional world building element that the books don’t get very far into (it was mentioned back in book 2 that Faerie is part of the British Empire in this world and we still don’t know that that means!!), they take place in a world that is our own, but with magic. Previous books have tied closely to specific historical events and contexts, whether Napoleon’s wars or the Year Without a Summer of 1816 - and Kowal’s afterwords, where she talks about how she wove her story around the history of the times and places where it was set, are always great reading on their own. But I was nervous about seeing the books go to Antigua, and to a slave plantation there specifically. On thing that Kowal has always done - something I have both enjoyed and found frustrating at different points - is refuse to shy away from the prejudices her wealthy, white, British heroine of the 1810s would have, and I was worried about how that would play out in the context of slavery. I was equally concerned that we might be subject to a lot of racism from Jane, or that we wouldn’t and Kowal would go the route of giving her characters anachronistically modern attitudes.
I shouldn’t have worried. Kowal has done a great job of developing Jane’s character over the previous four books, and the Jane of book five is someone who still has her blinders on in some areas, but who has grown more open-minded. A decision Kowal makes early on, which I thought worked perfectly, was to frame Jane’s racial open mindedness as arrogance - she is from England, where slavery has been banned, and she knows plenty of Black people from her associations with the coldmongers there, and so she thinks of herself as above racism. And yet, in Antigua, she is confronted with her own prejudices, her own snobbery, and an awareness of how little England has actually done to erase the horrors of slavery when its wealthiest men can simply go on owning people in the colonies. There were two moments that I thought worked particularly well:
That said, this is still a book about two white people, on an island of mostly Black people, engaged in plots that may have personal significance for them but will effect the Black characters far more deeply. I think Kowal keeps the book from slipping into white savior territory by exploring the characters and complexities of the Black characters and allowing them their agency, but it might not work for everyone. It may not help that the cover art for this book (which in all previous cases has depicted either Jane alone or Jane and Vincent together) is of a Black woman, implying that this is a character who will play a large role in the story. I’m pretty sure I know who that character is meant to be, but her role, while important, is a lot less significant than putting her on the cover implies and I question whether that was the right choice. Regardless, Kowal once again does a fantastic job with the historical setting of 19th century Antigua and the specifics of how plantation life, slavery, and the existence of mixed-race people worked there, differently from the more commonly known American narrative. The level of detail is, as always, superb. There was one element I found slightly unrealistic only to discover through a little research that it was my expectations, not the book, that were wrong.
The emotions of the book are intense. Jane and Vincent have really grown into one of my favorite fictional couples, not so much as characters but as a unit. I love their supportive but imperfect marriage, the way they get each other through difficult times and learn to manage each other’s flaws and weaknesses. The handling of Vincent’s PTSD throughout this series has always been good but it is especially well-handled here, when he is put into a situation where he can’t get away from the lingering childhood trauma that triggers him, and has to confront what that means for his own future as a father. The fact that we have come to know these characters so well over five books means that even when the plot slipped a bit into melodrama at the end, I still felt that connection to where the characters were emotionally.
The plot is also really interesting, full of twists and turns, mysteries and suspense. The last section in particular had some really cool revelations that I wasn't expecting but that had in retrospect been set up very well. The ending is a bit neat, but since this is the final book in the series, I didn’t mind.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death and Pregnancy
Moderate: Colonisation, Slavery, and Physical abuse
Several characters undergo difficult pregnancies and graphic childbirth. One character is almost killed in childbirth. Slavery is a major part of this story and is depicted realistically.
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