In Georgia Summers's debut novel, The City of Stardust, Violet Everly is the kind of fantasy protagonist who lives up to genre standards while also managing to push the boundaries. She captivates readers with her yearning and charms them with her wildness--and occasional blundering.
The story sees Violet mature: "Much against her wishes, Violet grows up, rocketing from a short, half-feral child to a taller, half-feral teenager." She begins with many of the beloved fantasy foundations: a bookish, dreamy girl whose mother has disappeared; a family curse; and a magical world of scholars just out of her reach. But as she seeks answers to why her family loses a member once every generation, the tropes in play evolve into thoughtful complexity. Mothers are often an afterthought in fairy tales, but Summers makes her absence a centerpiece in a way that explores the tradition of mothers being quickly nudged out of the way. She gives Violet's mother depth even in absentia, sketching a portrait of a talented and headstrong woman who made her own way through life.
The world of magic is a mix of fairy tales and the intellectual, reminiscent of His Dark Materials--the kind of world readers can disappear into and somehow find that they've read into the early hours of the morning. The writing is gorgeous, with vivid and poetic descriptions, beautiful settings, and the immediacy that present tense brings.
The City of Stardust is a transporting fairy tale that transcends the genre with a surprising, contemplative ending that reconsiders the tropes with which it began. --Carol Caley, writer