Illuminations

From the review in my newsletter back when the book was first released, here's my take on T. Kingfisher's ILLUMINATIONS, reviewed by Karen last week. As she mentioned, this isn't a horror novel, like the books that made Kingfisher one of my new favorite authors, but an alternate-world fantasy for preteens (judging by the age of the protagonist, although readers of any age can enjoy it). It takes place in an alternate nineteenth-century Europe in which the French Revolution, or its local equivalent, seems to have succeeded better than in our history, for the whole continent uses the Revolutionary calendar with its renamed months and days. The heroine, Rosa, dwells in a city resembling Venice, with canals, a Dynast instead of a king, and mostly Italian-sounding names. An orphan, she lives with her eccentric but endearing extended family, one of the most distinguished lineages of illuminators. She’s practicing the art but so far hasn’t graduated to producing actual illuminations. Her favorite things to draw are radishes with fangs. Unfortunately, that image serves no useful purpose. There’s a massive reference tome listing all known illuminations, each of which must be drawn in precise, unvarying detail to be effective. Fanged radishes aren’t among them.

Against the background of a major civic project using illuminations to fix a long-term problem with the city’s sewage disposal, Rosa’s own trouble begins when she finds a mysterious box in the basement. She accidentally releases a creature imprisoned in the box, and a crow painted on the lid comes to life. His information about the history of the box and its connection to one of Rosa’s ancestors seems a bit shady, and he’s easily distracted by the urge to pilfer shiny objects. His insistence that she not tell the rest of the family about him gets her into trouble when the diminutive monster starts vandalizing their home workshop and the illuminations themselves. After the nuisance escalates into danger, though, the crow does come clean with the full truth at last. I don’t want to go into spoilery detail about the family’s fight against the malicious creature and its minions, so I’ll mention only that Rosa’s radishes play a surprising role. Meanwhile, the story nicely balances Rosa’s magical woes with her preteen-girl difficult relationship with her best friend, daughter of another important illuminator family, who’s just enough older than Rosa to start making real illuminations for clients. Like Kingfisher’s A WIZARD’S GUIDE TO DEFENSIVE BAKING, ILLUMINATIONS portrays a young heroine whose odd magical talent turns out to be of vital importance. As usual, Kingfisher writes the protagonist’s viewpoint in an irresistibly witty style.

Margaret L. Carter

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