yuletide | Fandom Promo 2023!

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Title: Mortal Follies - Alexis Hall

Media: A stand-alone novel. (Well, I’m seeing hints that there may be a series, but I suspect it will not feature the same characters, apart from the narrator/framing device.) Available in print, ebook, and audiobook formats.

Approx length: 400-416 pages, depending on edition; the audiobook is 11 hours and 49 minutes.

Where to find it: Bookstores, libraries, libro.fm, audible, etc

Summary: Sapphic nineteenth-century fantasy romance, framed as a novel published in the present day by Puck/Robin Goodfellow, who has been exiled to a human/mortal existence. Puck interjects commentary in the story, but doesn’t actually interact with the other characters much, playing mostly the observer/narrator.

Miss Maelys Mitchelmore is a young society lady in Bath (at least for the season). In spite of a somewhat quirky and unconventional family background, she is perfectly respectable until she’s hit by a mysterious curse which seems designed to humiliate and possibly physically harm her. Curses aren’t unknown in her world, where magic, fairies and “the old gods” and such are acknowledged parts of life, but what could poor Miss Mitchelmore have done to deserve this?

She finds herself repeatedly thrown together with Lady Georgiana Landrake, referred to--none too kindly--as “the Duke of Annadale.” Lady Georgiana is an infamous figure, suspected of witchcraft and murder because of the rapid and sudden deaths of her father and brothers, leaving her the sole surviving member of her family. She’s also a few years older than Maelys, and a compelling combination of flirtatious and coldly aloof. However, Lady Georgiana may be the only one who can help her … and Maelys finds herself (unwillingly, at first) enthralled.

What do you love about it? The dynamic between Maelys and Georgiana, and the tropes employed through most of the novel, go STRAIGHT to my id, dear lord. Georgiana ticks a lot of classic boxes: she is noble, experienced, and emotionally unavailable, apparently unimpressed by societal censure, surrounded by a cloud of dark rumors and suspicions, and of course, awfully toppy. Maelys is an ingenue, but not without some resources (friends, opinions) of her own, and of course, she’s also determined to break through the icy boundaries Georgiana sets to form a real relationship and insist on reciprocal respect and investment. There’s plenty of seduction, power struggle, and caring-while-pretending-not-to, and it’s delicious. The fantasy elements are a fun dressing (and make various ahistorical elements feel more natural; this clearly isn’t your great-great-great-grandmother’s late Georgian era), and the peril ranges from goofy (oh noes, her dress is literally unmaking itself in the middle of a ball!) to considerably more serious in a way that ups the ante nicely.

Well, for the first two-thirds or so, anyway. I am very frustrated by the third act, where relationship/character development get badly trampled by additional supernatural danger that ought to be enhancing/contributing to it. (Georgiana’s “dark secret” and its consequences, and the way the pair overcome them to be together … as far as I’m concerned, it’s disappointingly phoned-in, thin stuff.) I’m not going to put any spoilers here, but I will in my letter.

What sort of things are you likely to request for it? Straight-up smut or even non-explicit kinkfic, for certain, if my writer is up for either of those; also possibly fix-it/improvements for the point in the novel where I feel like it goes off the rails.

Are there sections of canon (rather than the whole canon) that can be consumed by themselves to fulfill your requests, or that showcase particular characters and relationships?: You could stop after Chapter 30; that’s where the portion I find frustrating starts, and it’s probably only necessary to read on if you’re interested in digging into that. I’m here for it if so, but I’d be just as happy with iddy fun that ignores the third act altogether.

Content warnings: Kidnapping, threats of sexual assault and coercion, violence, murder/manslaughter, problematic kink practice

Edited 2023-09-19 14:31 (UTC)