2019
The Missing of Clairdelune is the second book in Christelle Dabos's Mirror Visitor quartet, following A Winter's Promise, which I read earlier in the year. I preferred reading this one right before bed to accentuate its dreamlike qualities. The combination of familiar names and tropes remixed in unexpected ways, the omnipresence of magic, and the nightmarish quality to the various tasks and deadlines the characters are given all contribute to a sense that this story emerges from the sleeping unconscious.
In the first book, Ophelia, who can learn the history of an object by touching it, and can travel by passing between mirrors, was put into an arranged engagement with Thorn, the austere young treasurer of a foreign land that resembles Tsarist Russia. Neither of the pair feels romantically interested in the other. Ophelia spent a lot of the last book wearing an illusion to disguise her as a mute servant, to hide her from courtly intrigue until the official announcement of the engagement. (And, if I recall, the simultaneous announcement that Thorn's aunt, Berenilde, was pregnant with a royal baby.)
The world in these books is broken - each country is an Ark, a walled off bit of land floating in space where the Earth used to be. Each Ark is ruled by a Family Spirit, and all the nobles are descended from their Family Spirit, and have inherited some of their magic. Thorn is from the Pole, where the spirit is Farouk, a giant with alabaster features and almost no memory.
So, at the start of this book, Berenilde is Farouk's favored consort, and Ophelia is the subject of intense gossip and curiosity. The illusionist child who had a crush on Berenilde, and killed her and Thorn's entire family out of spite, has been arrested. And Thorn wants to try to have a slightly less mutually-hostile relationship with Ophelia. So things are going ... okay?
But then! People start mysteriously disappearing. Ophelia is made a Storyteller to entertain Lord Farouk, but almost immediately angers him with her story. Ophelia learns that she and Thorn will gain each others' magic powers after marriage, and that Thorn arranged to marry her just so he could gain her power and use it to 'read' the history of Farouk's magic Book and win favor in the court, which angers her. And, like 20 of Ophelia's family members are visiting the Pole, and plan to stay for the month leading up to the wedding! In fact, Thorn invited them, and plans to send Ophelia home with them forever as soon as he has her power.
We decamp to a seaside resort, the warmest place in the Pole, where in the summer, it's only a little colder than the winters Ophelia's family is used to. More people disappear, including Achibald, who always flirts with Ophelia, and has a reputation as the guy women go to to cheat on their husbands with, but who is also sort of her friend. With only a couple days before the wedding, Ophelia is given a one-day deadline to solve the mystery and find the missing people, or else Archibald will be cut off from his family's psychic connection, which might kill him. (Farouk wants the other psychics in top form, not drowsy because captive Archibald is magically asleep.) The urgency feels like the dream where you're rushing to take a test in a class you never attended.
The disappearances are obviously magic, but what kind? And why? Without giving too much away, let me say that in rapid succession, Ophelia solves the mystery, Thorn saves Ophelia from the kidnapper, Berenilde gives birth, Thorn and Ophelia get married, Farouk's special book gets 'read' and he doesn't like what he learns, Thorn is forced to become a fugitive, and Ophelia goes back home with her family. Except none of it happens in quite the way (or the order) you'd expect, and we are drawn into a deeper mystery - who is the 'God' who blew up the world and created the Family Spirits to run what's left of it, what is 'God's' plan for everything, and who is the mysterious 'Other' that Ophelia supposedly freed the first time she traveled between mirrors as a child?
I'm really drawn in to this series at this point, and eager to keep going. Early on, I thought there might be a simply YA-style love triangle between Thorn, Ophelia, and Archibald, but whatever happens, nothing about Ophelia's marriage or love life will be simple. Thorn is missing, Archibald is humbled, and Ophelia officially Knows Too Much about the secret history of the world. Next book, I think, we'll be headed back to Anima, Ophelia's home Ark, and home to Athena, Farouk's childhood friend / sister? / first crush.
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