76. The Mirador by Sarah Monette (Fantasy) 426 p.
Third in the series begun with Mélusine and continued in The Virtu. The Mirador begins a full two years after the conclusion of The Virtu. Felix, Mildmay, and Gideon are still sharing Felix’s suite in the Mirador, while Mehitabel Parr is a tragedienne and second female lead for the Empyrean Theatre in Pharaohlight. The Mirador, as ever, is full of scandals and plots, and all three become caught up in intrigues both old and new.
Usually I appreciate being able to read quickly, but there are times when I wish I could slow down, draw out the enjoyment of reading a throughly good book. This was one of those times—my only criticism of The Mirador is that I finished it much too quickly. The plot built up momentum slowly, with all the threads coming together only at the end. The structure of it really worked for me in this book, maybe because it felt more natural for things to happen that way.
Felix and Mildmay’s voices are as sharp and entertaining as ever, and this book adds a third narrator, Mehitabel Parr. I didn’t think I’d like that at first—I enjoy having Felix and Mildmay be the centre of the story, and although I came to like Mehitabel more over the course of The Virtu, I never warmed up to her entirely. I also wasn’t that keen on her section of the first chapter, which I read on Monette’s website. I should have trusted her—I love Mehitabel now, and her voice was perfect. It also allowed another, slightly more trustworthy perspective on Mildmay, about whom she has some amusing descriptions:
Mildmay did that horrible thing he did sometimes to conversational gambits: let it drop to the floor and lie there twitching. After a very long pause, he said, “That an order?” 1
Mildmay doesn’t seem to let his affection blind him to Felix’s worse nature, but Mehitabel’s observations about him were still acute and entertaining:
Felix—tall, beautiful Felix, as molly as de Fidelio’s dormouse—wasn’t as difficult to read as Mildmay, but I’d found his skew eyes made his face unpredictable. I even had a conceit, half fancy, half uneasiness, that his yellow eye and his blue eye governed different expressions.2
I didn’t mention it before, but I love the names in this series, especially the place names: Mélusine, Vusantine, Britomart, Pharaohlight, St. Millefleurs, Rosaura, Mutandis, Coeurterre, the Mirador, and so many others. None (or very few) of the names are Monette’s inventions, but she uses them in a way that just feels right. I’m such a sucker for the way words sound.
[spoilers]
I’ve always been impressed by the way Monette handles first-person narration, especially the realism in the way all three are mostly but not completely reliable. Even the most acute observer has blind spots, and although she doesn’t draw deliberate attention to them, it isn’t hard to see where they are. I particularly liked the dinner scene between Mehitabel and Stephen Teverius, when Mehitabel asks him if he loved his first wife:
He didn’t take offence, seeming to consider the question a perfectly reasonable one. “I don’t know. I don’t think so, really. I doted on her, and I enjoyed the role of protector—ha! Didn’t mean the pun. Sorry. I love her memory, but I’m not sure I’d love her now.” His mouth quirked. “Easy to love a memory.”
I thought, without at all wanting to, of Mildmay and the torch he was still carrying for Ginevra, and I was grateful that the manservant—butler or whatever he was—reappeared just then to announce dinner.3
I think it’s interesting that Mehitabel thinks immediately of Mildmay and Ginevra there, but not her relationship with Hallam. Not that I think she’s wrong about Mildmay, but I wonder if she’s missing something about herself.
I actually guessed who two of the villains were, but I think it’s a credit to Monette’s writing that it didn’t make the book one jot less enthralling. I was amused by the further mentions of incest in this book; I think in my review of The Virtu I brought up the way so many people seem to automatically assume that Felix and Mildmay are lovers (I would love to see how their relationship looks to the average outsider, rather than to someone like Mehitabel, who is very observant and knows them pretty well by the time we hear her point of view.) Now we know denizens of the Lower City were perfectly willing to believe that Mildmay and Kolkhis were brother and sister as well as lovers. When Mehitabel talks about, “. . . Cat and Toad, the two silent boys—lovers or brothers, I’d never been able to determine which . . .”, all I could think was, in Mélusine? Probably both . . . .
I loved the interaction between Felix and Mildmay, as usual, and even when Felix was being a hideous asshole, I still loved him (though not as much as Mildmay, of course!) I really hope that Summerdown will see them become closer and start to communicate more. I’d also like to believe that Mehitabel’s narration in The Mirador was partly a set-up to allow us to follow things in Mélusine in Summerdown, while Felix and Mildmay will, presumably, be in Tibernia. I’ve really grown to enjoy Mehitabel as a character over this last book, and I’d be sorry to lose her in the next book.
I was so happy to see that Shannon Teverius regretted his behaviour toward Felix, because I wanted to like him, and up until this book he’s given me so many reasons not to. I was very glad to see the back of Robert of Hermione—one down, only Thaddeus de Lalage to go! (Please, please, let something nasty happen to Thaddeus. If there was one fictional character whom I would be happy to see have his tongue cut out . . . it would actually be Robert, but Thaddeus would be a very close second.)
[/spoilers]
There are so many things I loved about The Mirador that I can’t even think of all of them, which is much the same way I felt about both Mélusine and The Virtu. This series is one of the best I’ve read in quite some time. I’m especially grateful to Sarah Monette after being disappointed by Laurell K. Hamilton and Lois McMaster Bujold’s latest offerings (not that I blame those authors for not delivering exactly what I wanted, but it’s always a letdown not to enjoy a long-anticipated book as much as you expected.) My copy of The Bone Key has been ordered and will be in the mail as soon as it’s released, and I look forward to reading it with pleasure.
Books read: 76/100 (76%)
Pages read: 22,886/25,000 (92%)
Tags: 50 Book Challenge 2007, Doctrine of Labyrinths, Sarah Monette
