Valour and Vanity
Mary Robinette Kowal's Valour in Vanity is a Regency version of a heist movie with a healthy dose of magic sprinkled in.After Melody's wedding, the Ellsworths and Vincents accompany the young couple on the their tour of the continent. Jane and Vincent plan to separate from the party and travel to...
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Mary Robinette Kowal's Valour in Vanity is a Regency version of a heist movie with a healthy dose of magic sprinkled in.After Melody's wedding, the Ellsworths and Vincents accompany the young couple on the their tour of the continent. Jane and Vincent plan to separate from the party and travel to Murano to study with glassblowers there, but their ship is set upon by Barbary corsairs while en route. It is their good fortune that they are not enslaved, but they lose everything to the pirates and arrive in Murano destitute.Fortunately, one of the gentlemen from the ship is a local banker and arranges for a line of credit and a place to live. Relieved, the Vincents begin the work for which they have come to Italy.All is proceeding apace until a solicitor arrives at their house and charges them with illegal trespass. Jane and Vincent produce letters from their banking friend, but they are all forgeries, and worse, he has used their forged letters to clean out their funds in England. Now, Jane and Vincent owe money to a number of people in town and are forbidden from travel. They manage to find some small work, but it is obvious to both of them that this path will not maintain them for long.Instead, Vincent hatches a reckless plan to get their money back. The ensuing adventure is a glorious envisioning of all the best parts of heist narratives, but in a Regency setting with magic.
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Format: hardcover
ISBN:
9780765334169 (076533416X)
ASIN: 076533416X
Pages no: 320
Edition language: English
Series: Glamourist Histories (#4)
The Glamourist Histories start with an extremely well-done Jane Austen sort of Regency romance with magic as an art form. Then with each subsequent book Kowal makes great leaps in the development of the art, development of the characters within their marriage, the opportunity to take her couple pla...
Once again, Kowal has shifted the type of novel she is writing with the fourth book in her award winning series. If the first was an Austen Regency Romance, the second Austen crossed with Bernard Cornwall and the third a more purely historical novel filled with politics and family, then this fourth ...
(not Eleven, Twelve--the one where they rob an Italian museum of a Faberge egg and leave a replica in its place).So, if you've read the other Glamourist History books, you know what to expect re: Regency language, mores, manners, etc. But what this one adds are large streaks of humor and hijinks. It...
(Description nicked from B&N.com.) “After Melody's wedding, the Ellsworths and Vincents accompany the young couple on their tour of the continent. Jane and Vincent plan to separate from the party and travel to Murano to study with glassblowers there, but their ship is set upon by Barbary corsairs ...
Big publishers (like Tor, who published this book) have an annoying custom to let their marketing departments dictate their titles. Sometimes it works, but other times, it doesn’t. It didn’t work for this novel. The title the marketers came up with – Valour and Vanity – is too generic, while the nov...