Review: Rebel Angels by Libba Bray

* This review may contain spoilers for the previous book, A Great and Terrible Beauty. *

Rebel Angels (Gemma Doyle #2)
By Libba Bray
Publisher: Delacorte Press

To Sum It Up:

Gemma Doyle is getting ready to go home to spend Christmas with her family. The holidays promise to be a busy time filled with many social engagements, but balls and dinner parties aren’t all that await Gemma. The Rakshana want her to bind the magic that she set free in the realms, but not without giving them the control of it they believe they are entitled to. Gemma knows that her enemy, the power-hungry Circe, is also still looking for her. With the fate of the realms’ magic resting in her hands, Gemma is a target and cannot afford to trust the wrong person. She has to put her faith in someone, though, because it is the only way she’ll find the Temple, the source of the magic and where Gemma must journey in order to contain it once again.

Review:

After being wowed by A Great and Terrible Beauty, I couldn’t wait to dive into Rebel Angels. Libba Bray’s writing in the first Gemma Doyle book was fantastic, and I devoured the follow-up as fast as I could. I was all too happy to return to Gemma’s world, or should I say worlds, because once more, we’re transported back to Victorian England as well as to the magical realms, where anything you can imagine is possible.

In A Great and Terrible Beauty, Gemma destroyed the runes that bound the realms’ magic. Now that it’s free, it can be used by anyone for any purpose. Gemma’s nemesis, Circe, is still on the loose, desperate for a way into the realms so she can seize their magic for her own evil plans. The secret brotherhood of the Rakshana is all for binding the magic—in its own name.

Meanwhile, Gemma is preparing to go home for Christmas. Even after all she, Felicity, and Ann have been through together, including the loss of Pippa, it’s business as usual between the young ladies. This means petty jealousy, occasional cattiness, and plenty of scheming. There’s a lot going on in this book just on the non-supernatural front. Felicity concocts a sob story for Ann; she’s now descended from Russian royalty and the long-lost relative of a duke. Ann continues to be besotted with Gemma’s older brother, Tom, who takes much more notice of Ann once he hears about her “lineage.” We also find out the horrifying secret Felicity’s been hiding about her family life. Yes, all that happens in this little group can approach soap opera-level dramatics at times, but that’s a big part of the appeal of this series for me. I enjoy reading the minute details of these girls’ lives, even when they’re acting less than sensible. You don’t know how many times I wanted to tell Ann to shut up because she was burying herself alive with her big mouth. I was embarrassed on her behalf!

I do wish that the girls had shown a bit of character growth from the previous novel. Ann is still timid, Gemma still wavers between being snippy and letting her conscience get the better of her, and Felicity is still, well, Felicity. I was a little torn between this feeling of comfort that went with being back among familiar characters and this tiny, nagging sensation that they seemed all too familiar, like they hadn’t learned much from their prior experiences. This is particularly true for what went down in the realms in the last book.

The romance gets turned up in Rebel Angels, with Kartik from A Great and Terrible Beauty continuing to be a presence in Gemma’s life and the introduction of Simon Middleton, the son of a viscount. Gemma can’t help but be attracted to Simon; he’s handsome, wealthy, and has all the right social connections. Yet Gemma can’t quit thinking about Kartik, especially since he seems to be showing an interest in her, as well. I was surprised to see the novel head into love triangle territory after the romance was rather low-key in the first book. Fortunately, it doesn’t overtake the story, and no one mopes over heart-related matters.

Where Bray knocks this out of the ballpark is with the descriptions of the realms. The imagery! Although Gemma and company spent time there in the preceding book, the realms are explored at much greater length here. The unbound magic is changing them, blighting their beauty. The girls also meet some of the inhabitants: centaurs, water nymphs, and a gorgon who’s a living part of a boat. Most aren’t friendly, and the Poppy Warriors, these sort of demonic knights who feed on fear, scared the hell out of me. Why do I always wind up reading the most frightening parts of books late at night? Every time Azreal, their apparent leader, creepily addressed one of the girls as “poppet,” it was as chilling as Naughty John’s whistling in Bray’s The Diviners. I’ve gushed before about how brilliantly Bray makes the paranormal feel so real, and what she does here with the realms is exceptional.

Rebel Angels is longer than A Great and Terrible Beauty, but I didn’t find the additional pages to be an issue. I actually stayed up late one night to finish the 200 or so pages I had left because I needed to know what happened. While the book doesn’t end on one of those scream-inducing cliffhangers, I still have several questions that I’m eager to see answered. Looking at the size of the final book in the trilogy, The Sweet Far Thing, I’m hoping that I’ll find everything explained satisfactorily.

All in All:

The realms truly made this book for me. I enjoyed reading about Gemma’s London life, too, but I was completely mesmerized by the magic here, even when it gave me a severe case of the creeps.

Review: A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray

A Great and Terrible Beauty (Gemma Doyle #1)
By Libba Bray
Publisher: Delacorte Press

To Sum It Up:

Gemma Doyle longs to leave Bombay, India for England. She gets her wish, but it is under the most tragic of circumstances. Following her mother’s mysterious death, Gemma is packed off to Spence Academy, a London finishing school for young ladies. At Spence, Gemma must contend with being the newcomer as well as make sense of the visions that began when she foresaw what would happen to her mother. Gemma is not the only person who knows about her ability, though, and she is warned to put an end to the visions. It is not an easy task, and when Gemma learns that there were once others with a similar power who could enter a magical world called the realms, embracing her gift seems all the more enticing.

Review:

I think I’ve figured out what would have made Victorian novels like Jane Eyre a lot more appealing to me back when I was a teenager. If only Jane had gotten herself involved with a clique of mean girls at Lowood and possessed a paranormal ability that allowed her to transport her and her “friends” to a place where they could have anything they desired, I would have been totally hooked. This is only the second Libba Bray book that I’ve read (the other being The Diviners), but once again, I’ve been blown away by her talent for seamlessly blending historical fiction with the supernatural. From reading her novels, you’d think that the two naturally went hand in hand.

Set first in Bombay and then in London during the reign of Queen Victoria, A Great and Terrible Beauty centers around sixteen-year-old Gemma Doyle. My initial impression of her was that she was a brat with a me-centric attitude. Everything changes, though, when Gemma is seized by a terrifying vision of her mother dying that then comes true. Gemma is sent to Spence, an all-girls school in London. At this point my opinion of her began to change—for the better. Gemma proves to be a wry observer; her snarky commentary on everything and everyone really won me over. Upon her arrival at Spence, she immediately assesses the social hierarchy. She winds up with mousy Ann Bradshaw for a roommate, while snooty Felicity Worthington clearly has the run of the school. A game of one-upmanship that’s meant to show Gemma who rules Spence ensues between Gemma and Felicity and her entourage, which includes Felicity’s second-in-command, Pippa Cross.

I couldn’t help but find myself engrossed in the drama here. I hadn’t expected this mean girls aspect to the novel, but writing about situations that could easily be transplanted to modern times while completely maintaining the authenticity of the period the story is set in seems to be a specialty of Bray’s. It’s one that she excels at, too. I also liked how Bray didn’t have the girls go skipping off together as besties once they sort of reached a truce, brought about by that good old equalizer, blackmail. The pettiness and the competition to be Felicity’s favorite continue, though with some toning down. The friendship between Gemma, Ann, Felicity, and Pippa stands on tenuous ground, and this is made even more so by Gemma’s supernatural gift.

Gemma’s visions persist while at Spence, and they eventually lead her to the discovery of the Order, a secret society of sorceresses who could once access the realms, a world of powerful magic. Despite warnings from Kartik, a young man who’s followed Gemma from Bombay and who is a member of the Rakshana, another secret organization with its own agenda, Gemma finds her way into the realms. She brings the other girls, too, and they are all stunned to learn that whatever they dream is possible in this place. Ann sees herself with the beauty that she so desperately desires; Pippa literally has a knight in shining armor. On the surface, experiencing the magic of the realms brings the girls closer, but you have to ask: would they still be friends without this? Every time I thought that the hatchet had been buried, it would rear its head. I’m definitely not complaining about the seesaw-like quality to the friendship, though; it made for some absorbing reading.

The wish fulfillment of the realms ends up being a double-edged sword because it magnifies how constrained the girls’ lives are back in their own world. In the realms, they have the freedom that does not exist in reality. My heart really went out to Pippa, whose parents are forcing her to marry some old geezer whose sole attraction is his wealth. The importance of keeping up appearances is a recurring theme throughout the book, from Pippa having to marry for social status over love to the Doyle family covering up how Gemma’s mother really died. Seeing how much the girls yearn to have the power that’s at their disposal in the realms outside of them is quite heartbreaking.

If I were to go on about how thought-provoking and multi-faceted A Great and Terrible Beauty is, this review would be as long as the novel. Bray’s prose is outstanding, and I loved how she made Gemma realistically flawed. The finesse with which Bray writes paranormal, as though it assuredly exists, is why both this and The Diviners left me grasping for the right words to describe how incredible they are.

All in All:

Paranormal historical fiction doesn’t get much better than this. I loved the setting and how true Gemma’s narrative voice felt to her time. I don’t know how I managed not to read this book much sooner; it was absolutely my kind of read.