Kowall's "Shades"

I have one gripe with Mary Robinette Kowall's debut novel, Shades of Milk and Honey.  The title does not make sense.  I might have missed something (I was flying through the pages pretty quick; I read it all in one day) but I can't remember any mention of milk in the whole book and one or two chapter titles probably included the word honey.  Maybe it's symbolic of something, like how Jane believes that her skin has the complexion of sour milk, but that's a stretch even for me.

Forget about that!  There is nothing wrong with the book itself.  In fact, in my never humble opinion, this is about as flawless a story as you could ask for.  I couldn't put it down till I was done.

Jane Ellsworth, the heroine, is a gorgeous character.  It's a rare thing when I identify with the lead in a story; all the doubts, how she handles relationships, her opinions of society, and how she feels and handles the rudeness of family and bystanders are all things I understand and have felt before.  Kowall is so talented that her characters breathe after one or two sentences.

I guessed correct on every secret in the book.  So what?  How the relationships worked out still surprised me at turns; I really didn't know who Jane would end up with until maybe thirty pages before the end.

While this is not the most important thing, she did a very good job with the magic.  I never considered magic, or glamour as Kowall calls it, as an art form.  Honestly, it becomes a society skill like painting or music, and how it weaves itself into the story is breathtaking.

Now, I have to do a little comparison here, because Kowall asked for it.  The story pays homage to Jane Austen and while there are some elements of Austen here, an Austen story this ain't.  Now, I'm just going by the two Austen books I have read (Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice) but I can't imagine that Austen changed how she worked much in her later novels.  Austen may have started her chapters with some setting and character description, but easily ninety percent of her stories are dialogue (usually, it felt like more.)  Kowall has some sizzling dialogue in her story but it doesn't even come close to making up half of the story.  Instead, she spends the majority of the time inside Jane's head, and far more attention to detail on setting than Austen would have.  And of course, Austen would never have written an action scene or have had anything to do with magic.

Still, it has all the familiar things that made Austen great: complex love triangles, misunderstandings, gorgeous prose, a society that is both beautiful and cruel, and (this is a hard thing to see happen in a love story) the making of heroes.  Oh, and romance.  There is a little bit of that sprinkled here and there.

She has a sequel coming out called Glamour in Glass.  I'd very much like to read that one.