Scan barcode
A review by esseastri
Arabella of Mars by David D. Levine
5.0
If I could give this book a star for everything it has in it that's My Favorite, it would have, like...thirty stars.
At least.
It has interplanetary travel, (air)ships with sails, cannon-firing drills, a naval battle with full guns but in space. It has a plucky lady protagonist who ignores the accepted mores of her Regency/Victorian times and is intelligent and rebellious, but does all the socially unacceptable things to save her family. It has a distant but warm captain who is poised and collected in any and every situation except when he's trying to protect his beloved in which case he's poised and collected but with a strain in his jaw muscles. It has a girl cutting off her hair with a pocket knife and dressing up as a boy to join the crew of a ship, a long-held desperate dream of mine. It has mutiny! Aliens! Zero-gravity shenanigans! Mars! Rough sailors calculating and tying knots! A clockwork robot! who navigates with charts! Mars! A castle under siege! Catapults! Diplomacy! Fancy awkward dinners where the men are reprimanded for trying to spare a lady's pure and delicate sensibilities from their Gruff and Important sailing chatter! Attempted murder! A beautifully crafted and delightfully understated mutually pining romance! Mars! French privateers! People nursing people they care very much about back to health! Important sibling relationships! Illogical space travel described so matter-of-factly you forget to question the illogic of it! Mars! Fantastic syntax that makes it read like it really is from the 1800s! Long buff jackets! Crewmates bonding through fistfights! Midshipmen! Casual references to Sir Isaac Newton! Asteroids with names! Clever and dangerous navigational maneuvers! Did I mention Mars?
Seriously, the second I saw the cover of this book on the shelf, I was shocked I had somehow missed it when it first came out. I knew I would love every page of it as soon as I read the flap summary, and I was not wrong. I was not let down. Everything about Arabella and her dear Captain Singh made my heart sing from page one and I could not get enough of it.
The pacing is perfect, the characters strong and their motivations clear, the plot is tight and simple, but the journey to get through the plot is complex and full of obstacles for Arabella to overcome. And overcome them she does. She is one of the most active heroines I've had the pleasure of reading, with more agency than the ladies in the last four or five books I've read put together. She's deliciously rebellious of her early-1800s setting, but manages to toe the line and maintain her place in society with poise and grace. The men around her learn to respect her, not just as a woman but as a competent, strong, intelligent woman who knows what she's doing, has brilliant ideas, and helps implement them herself.
The ship, the beautiful Diana, was a marvelous cross between all the Age of Sail ships I adore for their strength and grace and wood-and-canvas beauty and the wonderfully ridiculous airships of fantasy sci-fi that you know could never work but somehow do anyway. Like S. Thomas Russell's Themis or Patrick O'Brien's Surprise crossed with the Legacy from Treasure Planet, Diana is a perfect example of what exactly makes this book so brilliant: old, classic things fused with sci-fi to make something not-quite steampunk, but just as much fun. It's a perfect melding of the early 1800s with the far future. And it's delightful.
I keep using that word, but to be honest, it's the most applicable word I can think of. Everything about this book is delightful. I'm strongly considering buying the sequel in hardcover even though I bought this one in paperback, just so I can get more of this story, this world, this brilliant, marvelous fusion of all my favorite things, of everything I love rolled into one. That's how you can really tell that I'm completely smitten by this book. Mismatching the series is the ultimate compliment I can give. I really don't know how better to express how very much I love this book. Thanks, Mr. Levine, for writing, quite possible, my new absolute favorite book ever.
At least.
It has interplanetary travel, (air)ships with sails, cannon-firing drills, a naval battle with full guns but in space. It has a plucky lady protagonist who ignores the accepted mores of her Regency/Victorian times and is intelligent and rebellious, but does all the socially unacceptable things to save her family. It has a distant but warm captain who is poised and collected in any and every situation except when he's trying to protect his beloved in which case he's poised and collected but with a strain in his jaw muscles. It has a girl cutting off her hair with a pocket knife and dressing up as a boy to join the crew of a ship, a long-held desperate dream of mine. It has mutiny! Aliens! Zero-gravity shenanigans! Mars! Rough sailors calculating and tying knots! A clockwork robot! who navigates with charts! Mars! A castle under siege! Catapults! Diplomacy! Fancy awkward dinners where the men are reprimanded for trying to spare a lady's pure and delicate sensibilities from their Gruff and Important sailing chatter! Attempted murder! A beautifully crafted and delightfully understated mutually pining romance! Mars! French privateers! People nursing people they care very much about back to health! Important sibling relationships! Illogical space travel described so matter-of-factly you forget to question the illogic of it! Mars! Fantastic syntax that makes it read like it really is from the 1800s! Long buff jackets! Crewmates bonding through fistfights! Midshipmen! Casual references to Sir Isaac Newton! Asteroids with names! Clever and dangerous navigational maneuvers! Did I mention Mars?
Seriously, the second I saw the cover of this book on the shelf, I was shocked I had somehow missed it when it first came out. I knew I would love every page of it as soon as I read the flap summary, and I was not wrong. I was not let down. Everything about Arabella and her dear Captain Singh made my heart sing from page one and I could not get enough of it.
The pacing is perfect, the characters strong and their motivations clear, the plot is tight and simple, but the journey to get through the plot is complex and full of obstacles for Arabella to overcome. And overcome them she does. She is one of the most active heroines I've had the pleasure of reading, with more agency than the ladies in the last four or five books I've read put together. She's deliciously rebellious of her early-1800s setting, but manages to toe the line and maintain her place in society with poise and grace. The men around her learn to respect her, not just as a woman but as a competent, strong, intelligent woman who knows what she's doing, has brilliant ideas, and helps implement them herself.
Spoiler
And it was delightfully refreshing to meet a girl who got to save the day herself, who was not robbed of her spotlight at the climax of the plot, and who worked WITH her dudes instead of being overshadowed by them.The ship, the beautiful Diana, was a marvelous cross between all the Age of Sail ships I adore for their strength and grace and wood-and-canvas beauty and the wonderfully ridiculous airships of fantasy sci-fi that you know could never work but somehow do anyway. Like S. Thomas Russell's Themis or Patrick O'Brien's Surprise crossed with the Legacy from Treasure Planet, Diana is a perfect example of what exactly makes this book so brilliant: old, classic things fused with sci-fi to make something not-quite steampunk, but just as much fun. It's a perfect melding of the early 1800s with the far future. And it's delightful.
I keep using that word, but to be honest, it's the most applicable word I can think of. Everything about this book is delightful. I'm strongly considering buying the sequel in hardcover even though I bought this one in paperback, just so I can get more of this story, this world, this brilliant, marvelous fusion of all my favorite things, of everything I love rolled into one. That's how you can really tell that I'm completely smitten by this book. Mismatching the series is the ultimate compliment I can give. I really don't know how better to express how very much I love this book. Thanks, Mr. Levine, for writing, quite possible, my new absolute favorite book ever.