Glamour in Glass (edition 2012)

When Tor sent me Shades of Honey and Milk back in 2010 for review, I couldn’t help but rave about this author and her debut. Glamour in Glass returns to the world of glamour and our heroine, Jane, who is now married to Vincent. Jane is a glamourist which is a form of illusion that comes from the Ether. With Glamour, it can be used to create objects, artwork, and it can even be used upon people. Jane is very accomplished, but now she’s learning more about glamour after marrying Vincent, whom she met and fell in love with in the first book.

Jane and Vincent have not been married for very long, and Jane believes they’re going on a Honeymoon to Belgium. But things are not what they seem when Vincent becomes very distant and secretive with Jane. And things become very dicey when Napoleon escapes, and Jane and Vincent are stuck in a foreign and now hostile country where not only are their lives in danger, but so is their marriage.

I enjoyed Glamour in Glass, but I had some issues with the book that brought down the grade for me. Firstly, I love it when a series centers around a married couple and explores their journey and relationship. It’s a favourite setting of mine, so I was incredibly happy to see that this is a series that follows Jane and Vincent. So whilst I was happy to see Jane and Vincent again, I had problems with the pace of the plot and the emotions from the characters. I enjoyed seeing another facade of Vincent that hadn’t been shown before when he meets his mentor and friend in Belgium, another incredibly talented glamourist. We learn more about Vincent’s past with his family, and how his Father hated him for being accomplished in what he thought was a ‘woman’s art’ which explains why Vincent is incredibly tight lipped about his past and emotions.

Jane…I have to admit, I wasn’t that enamoured of her in this book. Sometimes I felt that her responses to Vincent came off a tad immature, and the tension between them felt too forced. I can’t say what the big reveal is as it’s a major spoiler, but when it’s revealed why Vincent is so secretive, I found it to be a letdown. It felt like too much of a ploy for Jane and Vincent to be apart. Another issue I have is once again, the Ether is not explained in much detail. It’s just…there, and in that aspect there was the same problem that I had in the first place.

The pace of the story is quite slow, then suddenly towards the end it picks up speed and I admit, I didn’t like the ending at all.

Jane finds out she is pregnant midway through the book, and because using Glamour can harm the baby, Jane can’t practise glamour which upsets her greatly. I empathized with Jane when she found out she was pregnant so quickly, yet it shouldn’t have come as a surprise because hello, no contraception in those days. But what really bothered me was the plot device towards the end where Jane loses the baby, either through a miscarriage or it might have been through using the Glamour to save Vincent.


I thought it was a rush job done in the last chapter, that the emotion of what Jane and Vincent lost felt incredibly superficial. That Jane felt relief that she could do Glamour again just came off as odd. It seemed she got over it so quickly, and I couldn’t understand why bring this into the plot into the first place if it’s not going to be something that is dealt with in a lot of emotion. I was also hoping to see more of Melody, Jane’s sister after the events of the last book, we saw one glance of her in the beginning and that was it.

All in all, I enjoyed reading Glamour in Glass but it had nowhere near the impact the first book had. The pacing was off, and the emotions were lacking towards the end which disappointed me.

I give Glamour in Glass a C.

( )

Well done. I had difficulty picking this book up, despite enjoying the previous installment so very much. The setting and period was perfect; the move away from familial dynamics to more domestic also fine (although the feel of the language and attachment to Austen is lost a bit in this novel); the spy-game portion moved slowly and first built up to an appropriate tenor but was lost a tad at the end (I always seem to feel that the follow-through is lacking in books I read but I tend to prefer build-up to the actual explosion anyway).

What irked me was the cover. Really. We have a heroine that is strong and resilient and by all description plain (albeit clever, brave and intelligence) yet we have little miss hot-tits on the cover. Why? I don't get it. The cover of the first novel really portrayed the topic and tone of the material well. This one just was gloss.

So. To sum up. Loved it less than the first but still on board for a continuing series (excited, even). Wonderful magical realism encapsulated in a fold of Austen that nurtures but doesn't smother (for smothering see "Death Comes to Pemberley" by P.D. James). Irked at the cover photo and design. ( )

Well, I got the expanded scope that I wanted, and I'm reasonably satisfied with it. I am probably not the perfect audience for these books, in that I would have preferred the proportions of domesticity to spying be completely reversed, but both parts worked well enough to suit me, and the characters and setting continue to charm me despite myself. ( )

I enjoyed the first book in this series, but this one was definitely better. I think maybe the pace was a bit faster. ( )

While I enjoyed the Heyer-esque Regency fluff of the first in this series, the Austen-with-magic world bumps up against my suspension of disbelief a little too often in this, the second installment. In this book, our (literally) plain Jane heroine is living the life of a newlywed, creating magical art alongside her gruff yet tender husband. Political machinations are afoot, however, and the pair are soon caught up in Napoleonic problems.

As sophomore efforts go, this isn't bad -- the characters, details, and historical contexts are all interesting enough and there is a fair bit of intrigue to the plot, which adds pleasant momentum -- but neither is it as good as it could have been. While I still like the engaging differences -- such as the main character not needing to be the most beautiful woman in the room -- my main frustration here is that the rules of magic in this particular world simply don't make that much sense. In the first book, we could look past that, distracted by the newness of it all, but this time the constraints of wielding "glamour" are front and center, essential to the various plots (I shan't spoil them), and it all ends up feeling a bit forced.

I am, however, curious to see where the series goes, not just with story, but also with the extent of magic in the modified history that Kowal has built. I hope that all of these rules and limits that now feel so affected will eventually coalesce into a coherent plan. Even if they don't, however, the series is jolly enough as an innocuous romance to keep reading. This is one of those books, however, that you will wish was just a bit more than it is, because its premise is so promising and so unfulfilled. ( )