🍂⭐️📚The Geomagician by Jennifer Mandula - 2.5 / 5 stars📚⭐️🍂
god this was INFURIATING. Because there is so much about this book I love but then there’s a few things that just had me so goddamn annoyed at it and the main character. But also I’m definitely going to read the sequel because I am invested in that Pterodactyl and I need to know that he has a happy ending.
Mary is a class traitor. She only works for her own advancement, not that of other women. The rules of the academic society she wants to get into say ‘men only’ and when she has the chance to change that so both women and men could be members she does not do that, instead she changes it so that it says ‘men only, and also Mary, no other women tho lol’. Are you kidding me. And yeah she realises that this was a big mistake by the end of the book but that doesn’t make her behaviour before that point any less infuriating.
Mary’s ‘friends’ let her wile away in poverty while they live in vast mansions in London. Also Buckland is ‘supporting’ her by buying her fossils, but he is also 100% exploiting her precarious situation for his own gain. Yes, he mentions her as the one who found the fossils, but that’s the barest minimum! He’s still made a name and a fortune off of her discoveries, while she wasn’t even able to get a full education, she was just as smart and brilliant as him, but he never even tried to change anything about the sexist and classist power structure that prevented her from getting her due accolades BECAUSE HE WAS PROFITING (monetarily and academically) OFF HER DISCRIMINATION. And he’s supposed to be one of the good guys???
Her only good friend is Lucy, who actually helps her and cares for her and Mary ends up treating her like trash. But also Lucy’s crusade against slickers is questionable and she doesn’t quite seem to get that just banning a legal, if morally reprehensible, way that the poor can earn money without doing something against the whole crippling poverty thing doesn’t actually end up helping ‘the poors’ all that much. Like, of course no one should have to sell their magic to survive, but if you just ban the selling of magic, it won’t stop the sale of magic. People will still sell their magic if it’s the only way to feed their families, it’s just that now they have to do it illegally, which makes them a lot more vulnerable to exploitation. Mary is still somehow miles better than every other ‘friend’ Mary has.
There’s some parts that really seemed like plot holes, but then at the very end of the book there’s a revelation that means it actually not a plot hole, but it still doesn’t explain why the main character didn’t ever question this ‘thing’. The main one is the fact that Henry ghosted her for years, during which he lived lavishly in London, while Mary barely managed to stay above water. And when Mary reconnects with Henry she never asks why he stopped writing and broke their engagement, and doesn’t even expect an apology from him? Like girl, have some standards ffs! And yes it is later revealed that Henry didn’t actually stop writing, but that Edgar intercepted both Henry’s letters to Mary and Mary’s letters to Henry, so that both would think the other hates them now or something like that. But neither Mary nor Henry knew that at the time! And yet they still asked 0 questions!
Also Edgar’s whole plan. What the fck was that about.
All of that christianity stuff. I honestly liked the way that the book interwove real religion and the magic seen in this alternate earth, because a lot of historical fiction and historical fantasy especially, just likes to forget about the religious landscape of the time it is set in. Which is fine, I don’t always wanna read about religiously motivated bigotry in my fiction, there’s enough of that irl. But the way this book used actual Christian theories and ideology that would’ve been widespread at the time and interwove it with the theories around magic and history was so good? I was a little weirded out at the beginning though, because initially it seems like the main character is using her fossil findings to support a creationist view of history, which is not what I expected going into this book. But it becomes clear pretty soon that the guys peddling creationism are obviously going to end up being in the wrong and Mary actually isn’t a believer in creationism either but kind of pretends to be to be accepted in her social circle. So yeah that was very unexpected but I ended up really loving that aspect. I grew up non-religious and thus luckily have 0 religious trauma baggage, but a lot of people aren’t as lucky, so I do find it a bit questionable that the religion-element of the story really isn’t mentioned at all in the book’s description.
Thank you to Del Rey for the ARC
