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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.
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