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divineauthor 's review for:
The Familiar
by Leigh Bardugo
dark
emotional
medium-paced
“Aboltar cazal, aboltar mazal […] A change of scene. A change of fortune.” —Luzia Cotado
as a bardugo fan and avid reader, THE FAMILIAR has been a long time coming. she’s been circling around the metaphor of magic as jewishness for almost all of her books, so i’m not surprised it took this long to finally write that historical fantasy where jewishness and magic are one in the same. the relationship between luzia and santángel was so delicious, and i so do enjoy a narrative hell bent (ha!) on its characters changing their fates, breaking free of the cages they were born in. you add that luzia is a jewish woman hiding her own jewishness / magic . . . well, it sure paints a story, doesn’t it? how does an author write an era tainted in tragedy? how do you minimize the suffering that was caused? how do you give back agency to your own history? crazy things bardugo’s touching on!
my main qualm is that—and i think most people will not agree with me because i don’t think the bardugo’s general audience consumes historical fiction—i actually wish this book was like maybe 200 pages longer to really steep into the rich history of sephardic jews in inquisition-run spain alongside the varieties of magic she lays out. she’s so so so good at creating interesting power dynamics and setting the atmosphere right, but i would’ve loved to see things take time to settle. especially with historical fantasy, your typical (high) fantasy takes maybe about 100 pages to get the swing of things, and with this novel, there’s just not enough leeway to grand the characters enough breathing room to account for the exposition and setting drop.
regardless, i deeply, deeply enjoyed this. sorry it took me so long to write a review, but i just finished annotating it (months later)! all right, guys. love n light