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A review by emtees
Without a Summer by Mary Robinette Kowal
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Okay, this is the first book in this series that I’ve really liked a lot.
Without a Summer picks up with Jane and Vincent back in England after their adventures in France. They take a job in London, designing a ballroom for the Baron of Stratton, and bring Jane’s younger sister, Melody, with them, hoping that being in London will allow Melody to meet new people and hopefully find a husband. But very quickly, they get caught up in intrigue. Vincent’s father, Lord Verbury, appears, and though Vincent has always presented their relationship as hostile, he now seems to want to fix it. Jane and Vincent, however, don’t trust him. Meanwhile, Jane comes to believe that Alastar O’Brien, the Irish Catholic son of their employer, is involved in a political plot against the Crown, which is complicated by Melody having developed feelings for him. And the city itself is full of unrest - 1816 is the infamous “year without a summer,” and in this alternate history, people are quick to blame the coldmongers, glamourists who specialize in manipulating cold, for the change in the weather.
This book has a lot of the strengths of the previous ones. The magic system continues to be intriguing, as Jane and Vincent expand their use of glamour for increasingly less-superficial purposes. The plotline around the coldmongers was really good. These are glamourists, but while Jane and Vincent are considered artists and their work is praised and valued, the coldmongers do what is essentially manually labor in the glamourist world, and they suffer for it, with many of them dying young. With the change in the weather, there is less work for them, and Kowal seamlessly works their story into the real-world history of the Year without a Summer and the economic and political troubles of the period. The alternate history aspect of the series comes to the fore in this book and is well handled.
But the best part of the book for me was Jane’s character development and the handling of her relationship with Vincent. After being lukewarm on them in the previous book, I came to really like Jane and Vincent as a couple, and Vincent as a character, in this one. We see how they’ve grown to understand each other in subtle ways throughout this book, and they come across as a strong, supportive partnership. I appreciated seeing more of Vincent’s backstory and the way his childhood trauma has shaped him, and how supportive Jane is when he’s faced with confronting his family. And then there is Jane herself. I didn’t like her very much in the first two books because she seemed to so unquestioningly accept the rules and prejudices of her society, except in the very specific ways they impacted her (such as her wanting to have a career), but here it seems that there was a purpose to the way her character was written. In this book, Jane finds herself in the much more diverse world of London, surrounded by people of different races and faiths, and while for the most part she wants to be kind and accepting, she is forced to face that she has some ignorance to overcome. In one plotline, her false conclusions about another character’s motives, driven in part by her ignorance and prejudice, come back to bite her and cause major problems that aren’t easily brushed aside. By the end of the book, it felt like Jane had really grown and learned her lesson in a lot of areas, which was gratifying. (It was also just in general nice to see Kowal acknowledge that 19th century London was a much more diverse and complex place that history tends to remember.)
The other strength in this book for me was Melody. In the first book, she was a bit of a stereotype, flighty and pretty and given to drama compared to practical, solid Jane. But Melody is a great character in this book, and it’s even implied that some of the way she was characterized before was due to Jane making assumptions based on Melody’s looks and personality. Here we learn that she is smart, curious, compassionate and much more open-minded than her sister. I really liked the confrontation between them, when we see that as much as they love each other, they haven’t always understood each other as well as we, and they, assumed. My biggest disappointment with the book was that Melody turned out to be having an interesting storyline of her own in the background and I wish we could have broken free of Jane’s POV to follow it. I wouldn’t mind a spin-off focused on Melody.
Without a Summer picks up with Jane and Vincent back in England after their adventures in France. They take a job in London, designing a ballroom for the Baron of Stratton, and bring Jane’s younger sister, Melody, with them, hoping that being in London will allow Melody to meet new people and hopefully find a husband. But very quickly, they get caught up in intrigue. Vincent’s father, Lord Verbury, appears, and though Vincent has always presented their relationship as hostile, he now seems to want to fix it. Jane and Vincent, however, don’t trust him. Meanwhile, Jane comes to believe that Alastar O’Brien, the Irish Catholic son of their employer, is involved in a political plot against the Crown, which is complicated by Melody having developed feelings for him. And the city itself is full of unrest - 1816 is the infamous “year without a summer,” and in this alternate history, people are quick to blame the coldmongers, glamourists who specialize in manipulating cold, for the change in the weather.
This book has a lot of the strengths of the previous ones. The magic system continues to be intriguing, as Jane and Vincent expand their use of glamour for increasingly less-superficial purposes. The plotline around the coldmongers was really good. These are glamourists, but while Jane and Vincent are considered artists and their work is praised and valued, the coldmongers do what is essentially manually labor in the glamourist world, and they suffer for it, with many of them dying young. With the change in the weather, there is less work for them, and Kowal seamlessly works their story into the real-world history of the Year without a Summer and the economic and political troubles of the period. The alternate history aspect of the series comes to the fore in this book and is well handled.
But the best part of the book for me was Jane’s character development and the handling of her relationship with Vincent. After being lukewarm on them in the previous book, I came to really like Jane and Vincent as a couple, and Vincent as a character, in this one. We see how they’ve grown to understand each other in subtle ways throughout this book, and they come across as a strong, supportive partnership. I appreciated seeing more of Vincent’s backstory and the way his childhood trauma has shaped him, and how supportive Jane is when he’s faced with confronting his family. And then there is Jane herself. I didn’t like her very much in the first two books because she seemed to so unquestioningly accept the rules and prejudices of her society, except in the very specific ways they impacted her (such as her wanting to have a career), but here it seems that there was a purpose to the way her character was written. In this book, Jane finds herself in the much more diverse world of London, surrounded by people of different races and faiths, and while for the most part she wants to be kind and accepting, she is forced to face that she has some ignorance to overcome. In one plotline, her false conclusions about another character’s motives, driven in part by her ignorance and prejudice, come back to bite her and cause major problems that aren’t easily brushed aside. By the end of the book, it felt like Jane had really grown and learned her lesson in a lot of areas, which was gratifying. (It was also just in general nice to see Kowal acknowledge that 19th century London was a much more diverse and complex place that history tends to remember.)
The other strength in this book for me was Melody. In the first book, she was a bit of a stereotype, flighty and pretty and given to drama compared to practical, solid Jane. But Melody is a great character in this book, and it’s even implied that some of the way she was characterized before was due to Jane making assumptions based on Melody’s looks and personality. Here we learn that she is smart, curious, compassionate and much more open-minded than her sister. I really liked the confrontation between them, when we see that as much as they love each other, they haven’t always understood each other as well as we, and they, assumed. My biggest disappointment with the book was that Melody turned out to be having an interesting storyline of her own in the background and I wish we could have broken free of Jane’s POV to follow it. I wouldn’t mind a spin-off focused on Melody.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Child abuse and Racism
Minor: Miscarriage and Torture
Period typical racism and ignorance, including from main characters. Child abuse in the backstory of a main character is central to the plot. Minor mentions of torture and miscarriage in the backstories of major characters.