scripsi

My reading time is severely inconvenienced right now. Normally it takes me half an hour with train to get to my workplace, and I usually read during that time. But now my train-line is shut down until August for extensive repairs, which means I have to take the bus. Not only does it take longer time, but I also can’t read on buses. Most annoying.

The Oracle Glass by Judith Merkle Riley. Another of her historical novels with a sprinkling of the supernatural. This takes place in Paris during the 1670’s at the backdrop of the Affair of the Poisons. I’m pretty sure it will be the major plot of season 3 of Versailles. The heroine, Genevieve, is of good, but impoverished family. Her beautiful and shallow mother neglects her, because Genevieve isn’t pretty- she has scoliosis and a twisted foot. Her father makes sure she is educated, but she is not exactly raised properly. Her father dies when she is fifteen and she is forced to flee her home. She comes under the protection of the society witch La Voisin, who knows Genevieve's has the ability to predict the future in water. Under La Voisin’s tutelage, Genevieve is transformed into the beautiful and mysterious Marquis de MM, and starts a career as a seeress. But La Voisin is dangerous to know, and Genevieve sees things in her oracle glass she would do anything to stop.

This is probably the darkest of Merkle Riley’s books.Genevieve's mother and uncle are extremely abusive. Her beautiful sister is raised to be sold as a mistress to a rich man and Genevieve herself is raped, and develops an opium addiction. There are several murders, and the Affairs of the Poisons was a very dark story in itself, one that doesn’t need embellishment of the imagination to be scary. But it’s an interesting book nevertheless. Genevieve is smart and independent and the the proper love interest is sympathetic, even if he spends most of the books somewhere else than Paris.