The Familiar
Leigh Bardugo
From the New York Times bestselling author of Ninth House, Hell Bent, and creator of the Grishaverse series comes a highly anticipated historical fantasy set during the Spanish Golden Age 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 better the family's social position. What begins as simple amusement for the bored 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 line between magic, science, and fraud is 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 Santangel, an embittered immortal familiar whose own secrets could prove deadly for them both.
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I got to go to see Leigh Bardugo talk about this book (she’s so cool) and that was 10/10. She mentioned she wanted it to be like a fairly tale and I definitely see that vision. There was a sense of inevitability that was created from the start that matches well with folklore type stories. You know with every decision that we’re hurtling toward a disastrous climax but there is no way around it. (A disaster for the characters not for the reader ha)
The POV switches were excellent. I really like the 3rd person limited focus, and enjoyed Santángel’s and Valentina’s perspectives the most. Tbh tho, I kinda found Luzia a bit boring as a character… and I feel bad for saying that, but it is what it is. Valentina has the best character arc which REALLY surprised me.
I did love the ending. There is something very Addie LaRue about this whole story I can’t quite put my finger on. Víctor had a satisfyingly depressing conclusion and good bc he deserved it.
The hardcover of this book is SO PRETTY, the end papers especially.
2The Familiar had all of the ingredients of a book I would absolutely eat tf up - illusions, magical realism, historical setting, the thread of a love story, gothic atmosphere. As a Ninth House stan, this was one of my most anticipated books of the year but unfortunately it fell SO flat for the first 3/4ths. I've struggled through this book for 3 months but thank g I'm allergic to DNFing because everything really ramped up in the last act. I found myself actually enjoying the last 100 or so pages, but my god the first 280 were a slog. For the life of me I couldn't keep track of who was who - all the characters had very similar sounding names, and each was referenced in 3 different ways (de Paredes, Victor, Victor de Paredes, Don Victor, Don de Paredes, then you have PEREZ and all his variations !!!) it was too much. On top of that, the characters were all evil in the same ways so I found myself completely lost on who was who and what their motivations were. Overall: positives for being occult and gothic, having a good ending, and being a Bardugo creation (also, killer cover). cons for being confusing af and slow the first 280 pages
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