Book #88 of 2024:
The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo
I know from her publicity materials for this standalone adult fantasy novel that it’s a very personal project for author Leigh Bardugo, drawing on her own family history for its tale of a sixteenth-century converso (a member of Spain’s Jewish population or their descendants, whose ethnoreligious identity was violently suppressed under forced conversion to Catholicism). The setting does feel well-drawn, especially near the end when the longstanding threat of the Inquisition finally crashes down upon the heroine and even her magic doesn’t seem like it’ll be able to save her and her loved ones.
And yet… I want so much more from this book. It’s disappointing but understandable that the protagonist is so out-of-touch with her heritage, and I could imagine a version of this story where that conflict is front and center, with her grasping after the pieces of her birthright that have been denied her. But we don’t get that sort of focus here. She’s justifiably worried that she could be targeted for the Judaism in her past, but not about its absence as a tangible feeling in her present. (And when she is seized by the authorities, it’s for basic political intrigue, her sexual impropriety, and her special powers, not anything to do with her status as a secret Jew. The sorcery doesn’t appear to be connected to that aspect of her either, although its strictures are so poorly-defined throughout the text that it’s hard to say for certain why she’s able to do the things that she can.)
The romantic subplot is also a letdown for me. This may be a matter of personal taste, but it’s 2024 and I am pretty over the trope of a virginal teenage girl catching the heart of a brooding centuries-old man (to say nothing of how she’s one of those characters who’s continually calling herself plain while the love interest raves about her striking beauty). Bardugo managed to take that general concept in a few interesting directions with her Darkling in the Grisha series, but his equivalent here is a far more standard illustration of the type. I don’t really see what either lover sees in the other, to be honest.
Set all that aside and we’re left with the loose plot of a magical tournament to earn the right to serve the Spanish king, which a hidden enemy is attempting to fatally sabotage instead of outperforming the other competitors as instructed. The intense immortal’s tragic backstory is eventually revealed, as is the extent of his cruel master’s villainy, and there are some isolated passages of figurative language that are rather lovely. It’s all fine enough, but nowhere near the quality level of this writer at her best.
[Content warning for sexual assault, domestic abuse, torture, and gore.]
★★★☆☆
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