The Familiar
Book Author: Leigh Bardugo
đź•‘ 4 minute read || Nov 22, 2024 || by Daniel Norther
5/10
Do you like romance fantasy with likable, realistic heroines and otherworldly hot guys? Want to learn a little bit of history? This might be your cup of tea.
I was expecting it to be very different from Leigh’s Grishaverse books, but it’s very similar. Romance and fantasy, along with social bigotry toward gifted people, etc. Bardugo has Jewish ancestry, so that explains why she would be fascinated by the fact that gifted, intelligent, and even normal people have been treated like dogshit by knaves who decide to hunt them for nonsense reasons.
If you love Bardugo’s books, then you’ll either like or love this one, but you won’t hate it. The characters are very good. The plot is inferior to, for example, “Six of Crows” in the Grishaverse series, but this is an above-average mainstream author book.
SPOILERS AHEAD, YOU’VE BEEN WARNED!
By the halfway point, it’s less about adventure and more about damage control. It stays that way until almost the end. I got bored after that. Pretty bummed out that the number of dead villains can be counted on one hand. Wanted a massive extermination of inquisitors, but at least a few bad guys got some just desserts.
The plot starts out as a maid’s tale, then becomes a tournament arc, then is abruptly turned into a brief outlaw arc, a prison arc, then an abrupt switch ending. A romance arc starts just before the tournament arc. Romance is the big draw, and I know for a fact that the current book cover should be turned into a more romance-themed cover. This romance is, by the way, far superior to Twilight. If Twilight had been more like this, then the movies might have been watchable.
Strongest part of the book is the characters. The characters are very well written, but I accuse Bardugo of neglecting to flesh out the child-future-seer girl. Aside from that, we get massive believable character developments from unexpected places. Even though we didn’t need to see Valentina change, we saw it, and this is the first time I’ve ever seen a character treated by the author in this way, where she went from total bitch to “she’s alright”. Luzia is an excellent protagonist. She thinks like a real person, acts like a real person, and is very much alive in our imagination. Luzia’s development is so real that she might be studied for ways in which an author can make a great character touchable and knowable.
The romance, the dynamic itself, is very well written, but it’s not the type that everyone will enjoy, since it’s weird. Sexy-weird, but weird nonetheless. Homely woman doing it with angelic immortal guy. That’s weird. He says so. He doesn’t mind though, and neither do most of us in the audience. If Twilight had real characters like this, then maybe it would have been appealing.
So what makes the romance “weird”? Not creepy, not evil, not bad, but weird. A car without doors looks weird, but not creepy, and it will still get us to the climax. The romance should have had a clearer goal. I’d give the romance 5/10, so above average but wanting. Watching the Familiar guy turn into a feeling human once again didn’t feel as it should have felt. I think he should have been developed by more choices, more actions. A dead, unfeeling sort of man becoming a warm and fuckable man requires a lot of heavy lifting, and all that lifting should happen as experiences for him, lessons that he learns from others, small acts of heroism that bring him forward as a person. Instead, we’re left with a story of a stone cold weirdo becoming whole again because he likes a woman. Okay. So he likes a woman. Is that it? Is he struck by her ability to be normal and real, even womanly, in times of crisis? Yes, but he is also enraptured by her “amazing ability to wow him because she is magical and special.” Good lord. He’s too simple. It’s odd that Luzia was written so damn well and the Familiar guy was written so mediocre.
The Familiar guy will often feel emotions like, “I’ve been alone and weird for a long time and I’ve lived a long life, and that makes me dead and weird and OH LOOK SHE’S AMAZING BECAUSE SHE’S AMAZING!” He does not feel real enough. That doesn’t mean he can’t be sexy, intriguing, and fun. But he’s not real. He’s candy that’s been sitting in the cold night air until he is warmed by the not-so-fair-but-surprisingly-sexy maid. Frankenstein’s monster and King Kong come to mind, when I think about other characters that slowly came toward feeling throughout their arcs. I will say, though, that the descriptions he gives of his lady-love are extremely well-written and give his emotions a layer of credibility that most other authors can’t write. But the ending was unsatisfying, because we didn’t get to see this character warmed up all the way. He was taken out of the sexy lady microwave too soon and we never got to see him at his peak for more than 60 seconds. As a straight man, I am trying to imagine how I’d feel if I was reading a romance fantasy about a sexy Familiar woman who is slowly finding life again through her friendship with an ordinary man. If that man was as kindhearted and sensible as Luzia, then I’d be cheering for him, but if the romance arc is just like this one, then I know I’d be disappointed by how the sexy Familiar lady feels too much like an ice cube. Still, I’d be happy for them both, and I wouldn’t lose my respect for the author, since the disappointment is all in what’s missing, not in what’s there. The flavor is good, but it’s too faint, but, at the same time, that’s still an ice cube I’d suck on.
The magic system is mysterious instead of scientific, and that works in the book’s favor. Some books are better when the magic is deliberate, scientific, measured. Other books, like this one, are great when they keep it sly, opaque, whimsical. This is much more mysterious than the Grishaverse magic system. It lets the protags do wild things, but never lets them be overpowered. There’s never a cheap moment with the magic. The audience is never cheated by the author, but I was cheated by my own expectations, since I was hoping for a much more horrific battle between good and evil magicians. Instead I got an even-keeled, realistic heroine doing her best. I was expecting a flamethrower but got a bottle of nice orange blossom perfume instead. This is fine.
