Book Review
Aug. 16th, 2025 07:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kenjariA Great and Terrible Beauty
by Libba Bray
This gaslamp, mildly gothic fantasy novel is set in the 1890s, largely at a girls' boarding school outside of London. Gemma Doyle grew up in India, but after her mother's tragic and mysterious death, she and her devastated father return to England where her father descends into laudanum addiction and Gemma is sent to the Spence School. There she must navigate a rather catty social scene and come to terms with her nascent magical powers. Gemma can travel to the realms, a sort of faeland where she can do magic and potentially bring that magic back into the real world. Such power is also a dangerous temptation and Gemma and her friends find themselves in over their heads.
I very much enjoyed this book. The portrayal of adolescent girls was spot on, such that I both loved the characters and found myself exasperated with them from time to time. I really liked the way Gemma threads the needle between the popular mean girls and the outcast scholarship student and manages to bind them all into a cohesive friend group. I also really liked the exploration of how patriarchal societies seek to control and diminish girls just stepping into womanhood.
by Libba Bray
This gaslamp, mildly gothic fantasy novel is set in the 1890s, largely at a girls' boarding school outside of London. Gemma Doyle grew up in India, but after her mother's tragic and mysterious death, she and her devastated father return to England where her father descends into laudanum addiction and Gemma is sent to the Spence School. There she must navigate a rather catty social scene and come to terms with her nascent magical powers. Gemma can travel to the realms, a sort of faeland where she can do magic and potentially bring that magic back into the real world. Such power is also a dangerous temptation and Gemma and her friends find themselves in over their heads.
I very much enjoyed this book. The portrayal of adolescent girls was spot on, such that I both loved the characters and found myself exasperated with them from time to time. I really liked the way Gemma threads the needle between the popular mean girls and the outcast scholarship student and manages to bind them all into a cohesive friend group. I also really liked the exploration of how patriarchal societies seek to control and diminish girls just stepping into womanhood.
