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rubeusbeaky 's review for:
Hotel Magnifique
by Emily J. Taylor
This book wanted to be a more representational Caraval or Night Circus and it just... wasn't. There was none of the tone and ambience, no use of metaphor or playing on fairytale structure to set the mood. The magic is Wonderlandian and overly convenient, but is described in endless lists - Jani saw this silly thing, she saw this, she saw that - so that the magic, despite its scope, never FEELS magical. The representation is token, even insulting. For example, the protagonist and her sister - Jani and Zosa - are brown-skinned, yey for PoC heroes, right?... Yeah, except those PoC's get hired as a maid and the entertainment, and one of them gets turned into a bird with little to no agency/page time for the whole book... :/. There is a very tepid attempt at saying something about classism, how all should be welcomed and worldly and given opportunities... But there WAS a story RIGHT THERE about cultural appropriation, that the author just shied away from. This book could have been elevated, and instead it just... was.
So okay, face value magic system, face value protagonist and antagonist, yada yada yada... If this were a middle grade book instead of YA, and the watering down was to reach a younger audience, would this book hold up? Well, no. XD I found Jani to be an incredibly boring and moronic heroine. At least Harry Potter, once he learned what the Sorcerer's Stone was, had the decency to say, "Oh yeah, I can see why Voldemort wants that." Jani is handed a cheat sheet of all the magical items in the world, and what they do - and the villain SPECFICALLY POINTS OUT which one he wants the most - and she still mulls it over for days, "But WHY does he want it?" Girl, it says on the paper! Plus, obvious villain reason is obvious! It's not that deep, Jani! Or, she's told repeatedly, "Don't cross the lobby, don't go in the Salon, don't go in the Aviary, don't go in the Freezer, etc etc, bad things will happen." But she's also told, "The hotel shifts to accommodate people's needs." She does everything she's not supposed to do, gets all her friends hurt, is spared punishment herself by necklace ex machina, and NEVER ONCE just reaches out to the hotel to MAGIC her out of a situation. This is another failed opportunity to elevate: This could have been a story about self-empowerment, girl power, power of love, SOMETHING! But no, Jani never hones HER skills in any meaningful way. Jani outsources heroing to a man with ice-bomb powers and he blows up her problems for her. Sorry, spoiler, not sorry :P. #JaniDon'tNeedNoMan
Lastly, and this is a literary, nitpicky thing, but... The Hotel can go anywhere in the world, that's its grand selling point. Jani and Bel, the deuteragonist love interests, both have magical cartography skills, and love the idea of sharing the hidden wonders of the world with each other. They are both hunting down magical objects across the globe, and later are liberating magical people around the world... This is one of those fantasy books that would have benefitted from a MAP!!!!! A FREAKING MAP!!!!! HOW is there no map on the inside cover?!?! The other big theme in this book is the wonders of ink and paper: Storybooks come to life, origami forests full of enchanted animals and imprisoned sorcerers, magical contracts - the wonders of this hotel are literally bound in writing! I am disappointed that the story doesn't play more with known fairytale figures to drive this point home. But I am even more disappointed that the PHYSICAL BOOK doesn't play with the romanticizing of literature! The paper could have been those ragged, uneven, thick pages. The chapter headings could have used calligraphy. Heck, whole sections of the book could have been written sideways, or in corkscrews, to symbolize the occurrence of magic, like how the bouncing text in Illuminae simulated space-walking, or the increasingly off-kilter text of House of Leaves symbolized the shifting of the haunted house and the protagonist's descent into madness. Hotel Magnifique wrote an homage to writing without having any style!
Which is the bottom line: For a story about endless spectacle and intrigue, this book is anything but.
So okay, face value magic system, face value protagonist and antagonist, yada yada yada... If this were a middle grade book instead of YA, and the watering down was to reach a younger audience, would this book hold up? Well, no. XD I found Jani to be an incredibly boring and moronic heroine. At least Harry Potter, once he learned what the Sorcerer's Stone was, had the decency to say, "Oh yeah, I can see why Voldemort wants that." Jani is handed a cheat sheet of all the magical items in the world, and what they do - and the villain SPECFICALLY POINTS OUT which one he wants the most - and she still mulls it over for days, "But WHY does he want it?" Girl, it says on the paper! Plus, obvious villain reason is obvious! It's not that deep, Jani! Or, she's told repeatedly, "Don't cross the lobby, don't go in the Salon, don't go in the Aviary, don't go in the Freezer, etc etc, bad things will happen." But she's also told, "The hotel shifts to accommodate people's needs." She does everything she's not supposed to do, gets all her friends hurt, is spared punishment herself by necklace ex machina, and NEVER ONCE just reaches out to the hotel to MAGIC her out of a situation. This is another failed opportunity to elevate: This could have been a story about self-empowerment, girl power, power of love, SOMETHING! But no, Jani never hones HER skills in any meaningful way. Jani outsources heroing to a man with ice-bomb powers and he blows up her problems for her. Sorry, spoiler, not sorry :P. #JaniDon'tNeedNoMan
Lastly, and this is a literary, nitpicky thing, but... The Hotel can go anywhere in the world, that's its grand selling point. Jani and Bel, the deuteragonist love interests, both have magical cartography skills, and love the idea of sharing the hidden wonders of the world with each other. They are both hunting down magical objects across the globe, and later are liberating magical people around the world... This is one of those fantasy books that would have benefitted from a MAP!!!!! A FREAKING MAP!!!!! HOW is there no map on the inside cover?!?! The other big theme in this book is the wonders of ink and paper: Storybooks come to life, origami forests full of enchanted animals and imprisoned sorcerers, magical contracts - the wonders of this hotel are literally bound in writing! I am disappointed that the story doesn't play more with known fairytale figures to drive this point home. But I am even more disappointed that the PHYSICAL BOOK doesn't play with the romanticizing of literature! The paper could have been those ragged, uneven, thick pages. The chapter headings could have used calligraphy. Heck, whole sections of the book could have been written sideways, or in corkscrews, to symbolize the occurrence of magic, like how the bouncing text in Illuminae simulated space-walking, or the increasingly off-kilter text of House of Leaves symbolized the shifting of the haunted house and the protagonist's descent into madness. Hotel Magnifique wrote an homage to writing without having any style!
Which is the bottom line: For a story about endless spectacle and intrigue, this book is anything but.