Leigh Bardugo’s The Familiar is a dreamy, complex, well-structured story of miracles and magic, ambition and love, set in 16th-century Madrid during the Spanish Inquisition. Equal parts fantasy, romance, and historical fiction, this book was a delight to the senses and one to truly savor.
A synopsis:
In a shabby house, on a shabby street, in the new capital of Madrid, Luzia Cotado uses scraps of magic to get through her days of endless toil as a scullion. But when her scheming mistress discovers the lump of a servant cowering in the kitchen is actually hiding a talent for little miracles, she demands Luzia use those gifts to improve the family’s social position.
What begins as simple amusement for the nobility takes a perilous turn when Luzia garners the notice of Antonio Pérez, the disgraced secretary to Spain’s king. Still reeling from the defeat of his armada, the king is desperate for any advantage in the war against England’s heretic queen―and Pérez will stop at nothing to regain the king’s favor.
Determined to seize this one chance to better her fortunes, Luzia plunges into a world of seers and alchemists, holy men and hucksters, where the lines between magic, science, and fraud are never certain. But as her notoriety grows, so does the danger that her Jewish blood will doom her to the Inquisition’s wrath. She will have to use every bit of her wit and will to survive―even if that means enlisting the help of Guillén Santángel, an embittered immortal familiar whose own secrets could prove deadly for them both.
In The Familiar, Bardugo achieves an impressive balance of a carefully plotted story with a decidedly fluid feel. The book reads like a 3-act play, but POVs change seamlessly mid-chapter, minor characters have moments as a major focus, and the heady scent of an imagined orange grove wafts through scenes rooted in reality. It should feel disorienting, but it just feels delicious.
Every character is drawn clearly, and I was surprised at how much I grew to care about many of them. There is a slow, quiet, serious feel to the book. Although there’s a lot of passion, it also felt very cerebral. With so much depending on historical context, I felt like I missed some things by not being familiar with the political and cultural background, but Bardugo does a good job of incorporating just enough exposition to stay in the story.
The Familiar is a stand-alone book, and I wondered many times how it would all resolve. I was surprised, charmed, and pleased by each character’s situation at the end and closed the book feeling totally satisfied.
BOOK:30 