Review: The Gemma Doyle Trilogy by Libba Bray

The Gemma Doyle Trilogy by Libba Bray: 

A Great and Terrible Beauty

Rebel Angels

The Sweet Far Thing

Sometime over the summer, during some webby wandering, I came across a list of books to read post-Twilight.  It was something like this one, though there are many floating around.   

Full-disclosure on my opinions of the Twilight series — I read the first two books in the Stephenie Meyer series at an astonishing pace (for me), swallowing them up in a couple of days.  I think The Yummy Mummy called them crack, once upon a time.  If I’d been able to put my hands on the last two right away, I’d have swallowed them too.  Something—life probably—intervened.  During the time when I could not procure the last two books, I woke from a daze and realized that I didn’t like them (I know, shoot me now, aim low so I can still knit).  I still have no clear explanation for what sucked me in.  I do recall that there were some really rather hot NOT-SEX scenes.  Anyway, the books left me empty and hoping for something better.  

Back to the what-to-read-after-Twilight list.  I skimmed down said list, and checked a few titles for availability at my library.  I jotted down a list on the back of a plumber’s business card (is that significant?).  This list said,

     F Bray

     JF Klause

     F Gray

I tucked this note into my wallet beside my library card.  (Note, I’ve since added, ‘F Jin,’ but that’s another story).  

I picked up Blood and Chocolate by Annette Curtis Klause, but couldn’t get into it.  So I tried Bray’s A Great and Terrible Beauty next.  I was nearly turned off by the corseted cover, but the author’s blurb suggested a woman with a brain and a wry wit, so I brought it home.  

The story begins with a teenage girl—our heroine, sixteen-year-old Gemma Doyle—thrust into a bewildering and horrifying situation, her life turned upside down. Gemma and her British family live in Victorian India, but the mysterious and controversial death of her mother sends Gemma back to England and then off to Spence Academy, a girls’ finishing school.  But I’ve left out the best parts: the otherworld creatures, the visions, and the discovery of magic.  And, of course, there’s the increasingly delicious Kartik, of the dark eyes and full lips.  

In Gemma, Bray has created a character on the edge of many things.  She is a young woman teetering in the liminal spaces between childhood and debut as an adult, wealthy but not noble, British but having grown up in India.  The time is also liminal, a period in which women’s roles are as constrained as ever (literally, don’t forget those corsets) but about to burst out into new directions (think job opportunities outside the family, voting, choices that didn’t have to involve men).  Spence Academy also provides a setting on the edge of the mundane world and the supernatural.  Spence is to Gemma what the Hellmouth is to Buffy.  Indeed Gemma’s circle of friends is poised on the edge of hope for something outside the roles traditionally stamped out for them, and Bray bravely walks right through questions of class, race, gender, and sexuality that feels refreshingly honest in a period adventure.

There is a joy of surprise and discovery and suspense in these books that I don’t want to betray, so I won’t give too much detail here.  But here are the things I liked best about this group of stories.

—A Great and Terrible Beauty is a great first-in-a-trilogy book in that it is both a great story all by itself, even if you don’t read the others, and a great opening for the rest of Gemma’s epic.   

—Gemma is a teenage girl with power.  Honest-to-goodness, it’s hers for better or worse.  She is a character who feels like a genuine teenager.  Bray delivers a young woman who is complicated, hopeful to please, but rebellious, wanting to be loved by father and others, but also wanting to be her own person, not controlled.  She is foolish and wise and petty and serious, curious and afraid.  Bray honestly portrays the alienation of the approach of maturity and of the first major decisions of a young adult life.  Gemma’s choices ring true with or without magic.  Likewise, there is honesty in the fractured emotion and confused reactions and choices in the face of extreme stress and grief.  

—Bray has created a young adult fiction that does not condescend, that has frightening moments (Will I fall on my butt when I curtsy before the queen?  Will that monster GET me?), hilarious moments (more than one proud girl falls into the lake), titillating moments that might make you wish the book took a dive into trashy romance (but don’t), joyful moments (not giving those away), and heart-aching moments (you’ll have to find those too).

—But best of all, Bray creates strong female characters.  Gemma does not sit idly, waiting to be filled up by someone else.  Gemma makes her own choices right to the end, a character who is able to rely upon her friends and allies and to draw power (magical and non-magical) and strength from those connections, but is no damsel in distress.  Bella can’t even compare.  Gemma’s friends don’t disappoint either. 

I’m just not sure Gemma, Felicity, and Ann could do all that running in corsets.  

I strongly recommend this trilogy for both teens and adults.  Bray’s next novel goes off in a wildly different direction—one that I heartily look forward to following.