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Jo Graham: A Blackened Mirror (Book Review)
A thoroughly delightful Renaissance adventure from one of my favourite authors. Our heroine is Giulia Farnese, and the story starts three years before Rodrigo Borgia will become Pope. The Farnese are somewhat impoverished nobility at this point, and so when the head of one of the most important Roman familiies, the Orsini, proposes a match between Giulia and one of his nephews, there's no question about it. But then the groom is unwilling to consumate the marriage, his uncle has decidedly sinister things in mind (no, not those), and Giulia becomes ever more intrigued by the the Vice Chancellor of the church, Cardinal Borgia, whose young daughter Lucrezia is curerntly living with Giulia's new mother-in-law...
Now I'm familiar with a great many fictional takes on all things Borgia, including at least two interesting and compelling Giiulia Farneses who are completely different from each other (both from tv shows, one from The Borgias and one from Borgia). I dare say this take on Giulia, who is different yet again, comes closest to how I imagine the woman from the biographies - starting out young and powerless, yes, but due to wit, charm and very definite ideas of what she doesn't want her life to be quite capable to navigate herself through a dangerous world to go from pawn to player. What charms me as well is how embedded in her context this Giulila is. For example: Jo Graham gives her a love for books (which, since books are still relatively expensive, is something she only starts being able to pursue post marriage, and the books Giulia reads and responds to are books available at the time, and it's a trait that consists through the novel, as opposed to being mentioned once and then we never hear her talk about books again. The descriptions of Renaissance Rome, from the reappropriated Pantheon - a church at the time - to the statues Rodrigo Borgia collects to the alley once used for murder in ancient Rome and still not a good place ot be - make you feel you're seeing it with your own eyes. And the various relationships are all show, not tell, like Giulia's closeness to her brother Alessandro, her befriending Lucrezia, and of course the growing flirtation with Rodrigo, which I found to be the most convincing case of electric mutual attraction in a Graham novel since Mtich and Stasi in the Order of the Air books.
Evidently readers like yours truly who know the history know where some of this is going, but by no means all, not least because of the particular dastardly scheme our villain du jour (for a change in Borgia novels not Guiliano della Rovere, who is still off stage in this book, but Virginio Orsini) is hatching. There's also a character who I tihnk is an OC, Dr. Treschi, whose loyalties neither Giulia nor the reader can be certain of. And speaking of the good doctor, there's a short dialogue between him and Giulia which I felt to be a very apropos comment on the present, when Treschi says it doesn't really matter who becomes the next Pope, the Cardinals are all the same, and Giulia retorts that yes, it does matter, naming a few very unabstract and immediate examples where who is Pope and has the power to decide is indeed crucial.
In conclusion, the book is promising to be the first of a new saga, which I am very much looking forward to, but it also has a self contained narrative arc which is satisfyingly wrapped up in this particular volume. Very much reccommended.
Now I'm familiar with a great many fictional takes on all things Borgia, including at least two interesting and compelling Giiulia Farneses who are completely different from each other (both from tv shows, one from The Borgias and one from Borgia). I dare say this take on Giulia, who is different yet again, comes closest to how I imagine the woman from the biographies - starting out young and powerless, yes, but due to wit, charm and very definite ideas of what she doesn't want her life to be quite capable to navigate herself through a dangerous world to go from pawn to player. What charms me as well is how embedded in her context this Giulila is. For example: Jo Graham gives her a love for books (which, since books are still relatively expensive, is something she only starts being able to pursue post marriage, and the books Giulia reads and responds to are books available at the time, and it's a trait that consists through the novel, as opposed to being mentioned once and then we never hear her talk about books again. The descriptions of Renaissance Rome, from the reappropriated Pantheon - a church at the time - to the statues Rodrigo Borgia collects to the alley once used for murder in ancient Rome and still not a good place ot be - make you feel you're seeing it with your own eyes. And the various relationships are all show, not tell, like Giulia's closeness to her brother Alessandro, her befriending Lucrezia, and of course the growing flirtation with Rodrigo, which I found to be the most convincing case of electric mutual attraction in a Graham novel since Mtich and Stasi in the Order of the Air books.
Evidently readers like yours truly who know the history know where some of this is going, but by no means all, not least because of the particular dastardly scheme our villain du jour (for a change in Borgia novels not Guiliano della Rovere, who is still off stage in this book, but Virginio Orsini) is hatching. There's also a character who I tihnk is an OC, Dr. Treschi, whose loyalties neither Giulia nor the reader can be certain of. And speaking of the good doctor, there's a short dialogue between him and Giulia which I felt to be a very apropos comment on the present, when Treschi says it doesn't really matter who becomes the next Pope, the Cardinals are all the same, and Giulia retorts that yes, it does matter, naming a few very unabstract and immediate examples where who is Pope and has the power to decide is indeed crucial.
In conclusion, the book is promising to be the first of a new saga, which I am very much looking forward to, but it also has a self contained narrative arc which is satisfyingly wrapped up in this particular volume. Very much reccommended.
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