last night in the heat of emotions i was unable to form any sort of like, collected coherent thoughts, but now i have SLEPT and AWOKEN and i’m ready to talk (even more) shit about ACoM.
What is ACoM, you ask? A Court of Miracles, first of a trilogy by Kester Grant, a “retelling” of Les Mis and the Jungle Book with a focus on Eponine, Marius doesn’t exist, it’s kind-of-fantasy-Paris-but-there’s-no-actual-magic-to-speak-of.
That sounds bad, you say. I sigh wearily and think of the hours I spent reading it. Oh, I say. It is.
the good things: it would be ungenerous of me not to admit these. The (1) Hugolian device that Grant uses is “pretending this character, who is clearly Valjean, is not Valjean” which might have been intentional given she claims to have read the book, but given everything else I also kinda doubt that claim, so maybe it happened by accident. Secondly, I was admittedly hooked, mostly because I wanted to see where the trainwreck would go next. There was genuinely no way of predicting where the story would end. The game of thrones writers wish they had what Grant has.
literally everything else:
The choice of content is, of course, bad, but it’s worth noting that the writing isn’t particularly good, the pacing is all over the place and weird time-skips happen without clarification of how long exactly has passed. And, as many of the Goodreads reviewers have pointed out, we never see Eponine learning how to be a thief or acquiring her skills, she just suddenly tells us that she’s an expert and we roll with it
The politics is so incredibly vague, as we’re told the French Revolution was unsuccessful but, like, not at which point it suddenly deviated from our history. So Robespierre et al were significant enough that it matters that Enjolras “St. Juste” is Saint-Just’s nephew
Eponine ‘Nina’ ‘Y/N’ Thenardier has not one, not two, but three love interests: Enjolras (who goes by St. Juste for nearly all of the book) Montparnasse, who starts off as the most in-character Les Mis figure but almost immediately becomes too loyal and noble, and the dauphin of France
Valjean and Javert’s storyline is kind of happening in the background (and sometimes, quite literally, in a different room to our main protags) except Javert is a (blue eyed, redheaded ??) woman, who also seems to be a mashup with Fantine given that she was ~ betrayed by a man ~ who is very heavily implied to be Valjean. Fantinevert and Tholojean? ?? to make heterosexual valvert ?? this is the worst timeline
out of the Amis, only Enjolras, Grantaire, Feuilly and Joly appear. It’s like Grant played the “which four Amis do you want” except she also seemingly combined Feuilly and Combeferre, as the character known as Feuilly just sounds like Combeferre. Enter Combefeuille, my new favourite Ami.
There are occasional, jarring, quotes from the musical, especially during the barricade sequence.
In a bizarre mashup of canon events, Nina is with St. Juste and Gavroche at a deserted barricade. The flag has fallen, which St. Juste is upset about, so Gavroche goes to try and restore it. St Juste hurries after him to save him and is shot in Gavroche’s place. Apparently dying in Nina’s arms, St. Juste begins to sing “A Little Fall of Rain” only for her to slap him. JVJ shows up and carries St. Juste off (A Marjolras done the OTHER way round?) and Feuilly and Joly prepare to perform some kitchen table surgery.
Nina, who’s trying to get them to leave because they’ve been betrayed, throws water over St Juste to wake him out of his injured doze, then threatens him with a gun. She then goes off to wreak her revenge and gets all the Amis + Valjean arrested to protect them (it’s unclear if St. Juste has HAD the tabletop surgery ?? his injury is kind of forgotten about) only to get her other allies to free them
this is seriously, like, the tip of the goddamn iceberg, i’m not even going into how the “court of miracles” criminal underworld thing works, only that it’s Entirely Separate from the normal people (The Ones Who Walk By Day, i’m not kidding, that’s what they’re called)
It's very "feminism means women hitting things" with a side of "eyebrow waggling to convey flirtation". Nina isn't like other girls, she tells us repeatedly that she's not pretty, and constantly recites "I am the Black Cat of the Thieves Guild" as a personal mantra that seems purposefully designed to drive me up the fucking wall. It was supposedly written quickly, which makes sense given the bad pacing and absolute absence of Any research, but I'm astounded that it got published and by Knopf.
but, you know, kudos to Grant, because I absolutely cannot wait for the next two books in this clusterfuck of a series.
