“Can you please behave like ordinary parents for just a short while?”
Lady Jane raised an eyebrow. “If you insist.” She cleared her throat. “Oh la! But Maelys, if you are devoured by an angry goddess, however will you find a husband?”
“That is not what I meant.” [p. 176]
Miss Maelys Mitchelmore finds her entry into the society of Regency Bath somewhat impeded by an irritating curse, which initially manifests as the slow unravelling of her dress at a ball. Later, the curse becomes more threatening, and Miss Mitchelmore -- aided and abetted by her friends Lizzie (Lysistrata) Bickle and John Caesar, and by the brooding and Byronic Duke of Annadale -- must take desperate measures to preserve her life and her reputation, and discover who has cursed her.
I should note that the so-called 'Duke' of Annadale is a woman (Lady Georgiana), who's widely believed to have murdered her father and brothers, probably via witchcraft, in order to inherit the duchy; that John Caesar's father is a freedman from Senegal; that the curse has been written on a lead tablet and deposited in the spring below the pump room, where Sulis Minerva can be invoked; and that the narrator of the tale is 'that knavish sprite that frights the maidens of the villagery': Puck, or Robin Goodfellow, formerly of Oberon's court and now inexplicably exiled to a damp flat in twenty-first century Putney.
This is a fantastical Regency romance with teeth: Miss Mitchelmore indulges in the usual pursuits (taking tea, picnicking, dancing, expeditions to sketch druidical remains) as well as finding herself increasingly drawn to the Duke of Annadale. Miss Mitchelmore's friend Lizzie is greatly in favour of this: 'There’s a perilous shortage of eligible gentlemen this season, and it would be awfully convenient if you were to take up with a lady instead.' Even Miss Mitchelmore's mother -- the excellent Lady Jane, who's something of a bluestocking -- seems to approve of her daughter's Sapphic tendencies. For this is not our Regency: there is much less homophobia.
The world of Mortal Follies is lightly sketched, but packed with intriguing ephemera: I want to know how the Indian Boy became the Ambassador from the Other Court; and more about Miss Tabitha, cultist of Cybele and old flame of John Caesar; and more about Miss Bickle, whose life is 'lemonade and silver linings', who has a penchant for Gothic romances and a habit of shipping characters from Jane Austen novels. Puck is a delightfully wicked narrator, heaping disdain upon mere mortals and calumny on 'that shit from Stratford': I'd like to know more, too, about the events that brought him from the Other Court to a damp flat in South London...
Mortal Follies was exactly what I needed when I read it: a witty, frothy 'romantasy'* with plenty of sexual tension, just enough metaphorical steaminess to satisfy (there's also plenty of literal steaminess down in Sulis Minerva's domain), a charismatic love interest with a mysterious past, and a frisson of mortal peril. This novel will probably irritate many readers, with its irreverent and discursive narration, but it cheered me immensely when I needed cheering.
*This is a horrid neologism and should not be used for marketing purposes.
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