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Content Warning: violence, death, homophobia, transphobia, animal death, animal cruelty, misogyny, murder, sexual assault/harassment.

It is 1814 and Maelys Mitchelmore, a young lady of good standing, has few worries. She attends balls, spends time with her cousin and her best friend, and considers marriage proposals. Then, one night at a ball, Maelys finds her dress slowly but surely unmaking itself in the midst of high society, and she barely escapes a scandal that could ruin not only her reputation, but her life as she knows it. But then, in a world where faeries, malevolent spirits, and old Gods reign supreme, what can one expect? As Maelys comes to the frightening realization that she is under a curse, she is pushed into pairing up with Lady Georgiana Landrake, a Byronic Duchess who is shunned in society as a witch -- and one who supposedly killed her own father and brothers for her inheritance. But as Georgiana and Maelys grow closer as they try to discover who has resorted to such means against Maelys, they discover that some things are more powerful than curses, and that some things are worse than having a bad reputation.

This has been on my list for a long time, published in June of last year. Having previously read Hall's Kate Kane series, I was pretty sure that this was going to be something I thoroughly enjoyed, particularly since it's a sort of fantasy, lesbian Bridgerton. Either my tastes have changed over the years, which is highly probable since I read those books as a teenager, or I'm simply missing something here that everyone else is getting, because I did not love Mortal Follies -- and to speak plainly, I didn't even really like it.

Humbly narrated by the hobgoblin Robin Goodfellow, of Shakespearean fame, the novel follows Maelys Mitchelmore and her romantic interest, Georgiana Landrake. I thought it was a clever device to use Robin as the narrator, but I'm afraid to say that it seemed to work much better in theory than in practice. Unfortunately, because none of the events are seen through the perspective of Maelys or Georgiana, it leaves the reader feeling distanced from the supposed connection taking place between the two. Maelys and Georgiana both suffer as characters, too: forced to describe them, I could only say that Maelys is strong and innocent, and Georgiana is dark and brooding. Beyond that, there's very little growth or development.

The side characters have a similar problem, never becoming much more than archetypes or comic relief. Miss Bickle, Maelys's best friend, is the best example of this -- she seems to serve no point beyond making zany comments and doing silly things, which left me not laughing, but rolling my eyes. This is a book obsessed with its own cleverness and witticisms, to the point of becoming exhausting. Page after page is filled with "witty" dialogue that seems to go on forever, pointlessly, without doing anything to progress the novel or help with its characterization. I truly cannot emphasize enough how bad Mortal Follies is in this regard, and how truly tiresome it is to read nearly 400 pages of forced humor.

The world-building is also lackluster. There's faeries, mythical creatures, and the "old Gods" -- Romano-British Gods and Goddesses, which makes sense because this is set in Bath. This is, again, a wonderful idea where execution simply fell short. There's no real cohesion to how the world works or how its deities and folklore interact, and so it ends up feeling like little more than window dressing.

I wish that I had more positive things to say, but I'm struggling to think of parts that I actually enjoyed. I did think that Robin Goodfellow was sometimes cute and a little charming, but even this grew wearisome by the conclusion. So much cleverness, so many big words, all with no point. Not to mention that the curse, which I assumed would be the main gist of the plot, is solved by the halfway point, and then we move immediately onto a sort of quasi-second plot that feels aimless. It's just a jumbled mess.

Before I finish this review, I also want to address some issues with Georgiana and Maelys's relationship. I'm not bothered by the age gap, like some other readers were -- Maelys being nineteen, Georgiana in her mid-twenties -- but instead, I found it very frustrating how Georgiana doesn't even seem to really like Maelys in any meaningful way. She's Byronic, she's brooding, we get it -- personally, this is something I love to see in female characters. But it was done in a very shoddy way, and truthfully, there seemed very little romance or interest between Maelys and Georgiana at all, besides the carnal, and even that feels inauthentic. There's no chemistry between them. I believe the author primarily writes romance between gay men, aside from the Kate Kane series, and I'm afraid that it rather shows itself here, particularly when it comes to the sex scenes.

I hate being so negative, but this is simply my honest experience with the book. Many other readers loved this, and so as always, it comes down merely to taste. Hall is undoubtedly a talented writer, but Mortal Follies was simply a little too infatuated with its own wittiness to win me over.

Book Review: Immortal Pleasures by V. Castro

 

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Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for allowing me to read this ARC!

Content Warning: racism, murder, death, colonialism, sexual assault/rape, misogyny,

Malinalli is known the world over as La Malinche: a traitor, the Nahua woman who helped Hernán Cortés colonize and, ultimately, destroy her own people. But what they don't know is that after Cortés was done with her usefulness, Malinalli was turned into an immortal blood drinker -- a vampire. Searching for purpose, Malinalli has made a name for herself by reclaiming the stolen artifacts and treasures of her people, carelessly observed in museums around the world, hoping to heal the broken heart that has plagued her century after century. What she longs for most is someone to understand her, to embrace both her human side and her dark, vampiric nature. When she arrives in Dublin, eager to retrieve two Aztec skulls that are tied intimately with her past, she meets a mortal who manages to capture her interest. But this mortal is not the only one who snakes his way into her life, and as Malinalli learns to embrace her desires and recuperate from the traumas of her human life, she will be pushed to the limits of what she understands of vampirism and the human will to overcome. 

Before I'd even finished reading Immortal Pleasures, I knew that this was going to be a difficult review to write. While this is certainly a unique experience, unlike anything I've read before, structurally and narratively speaking, it's simply not a very good book. It's hard to write that, as I try to be as fair as possible when writing these reviews -- as someone who writes myself, I know how painful the criticism can be. I'm not saying I didn't enjoy reading this, because I very much did, but man, is it corny and sometimes way, way too over the top.

Now, I don't mind some corniness in my vampire media, but this was to the point that it was taking all of my self-control not to cringe during certain passages. Sadly, the writing doesn't come off as very polished either, and although Malinalli is such a fascinating figure in history, rife with so much misunderstanding, I found that Castro never quite managed to make her feel believable, either as a human being or a creature of the night. Her character development is as equally cheesy as the rest of the story, and all of it somehow feels extremely juvenile, in spite of the very dark and sometimes disturbing content matter. Malinalli reads very much like a teenager, and although I could buy that this comes from her traumatic past starting at such a young age, it's been hundreds of years at this point, and I would expect at least some maturation in her character.

The rest of the characters suffer from similar problems, and I found both of her lovers, Colin and Alexander, to be a little laughable in their dialogue and characterization. In fact, all of the dialogue comes across as being wooden and stiff, as if they are in a Shakespearean play, reading off of a piece of paper. Much of it feels very much like telling us rather than showing us, and I was surprised by how little we actually get to experience of Malinalli's human life. I expected much more of it, since it's so rich for reimagining in a tale like this.

Onto the fun stuff, though: this is one hell of a ride, and I can't fault it for its constant breakneck pace, the way it relentlessly doles out blood and sex. I truly cannot describe to you how unintentionally hilarious the sex scenes are; there are many other reviews with quotes from the book, and I encourage you to read those if you're having a bad day. I'm not saying this to be cruel or mean, but man, some of those lines are truly hilarious zingers.

In the end, this simply wasn't the book for me. As I always say, I'm sure there will be plenty of people out there who enjoy Immortal Pleasures, but for me, this just didn't quite hit the mark.