Review: The Gemma Doyle Trilogy, by Libba Bray

The Gemma Doyle Trilogy: A Great and Terrible Beauty, Rebel Angels, and The Sweet Far Thing, Libba Bray

So these books are good. I can’t really deny that. They’re basically the Harry Potter books, except with an almost-all-female cast, and set at an English boarding school in the 1890s. Plus, Bray throws in some young-adult-novel staples, like eating disorders, questions of sexual orientation, and cutting. (No, I’m not kidding – believe it or not, though, it’s not annoying.) You love all of the characters and want to be their best friends forever. There’s magic and friendship and romance and danger and corsets and conspiracy and patriarchy-fighting. The world Bray creates is detailed and involving, if not especially original. These books will suck you in and adamantly refuse to let you go. I literally could not read anything else while I was reading this trilogy, and these books are long – the last one is something like 850 pages. This trilogy is some glorious combination of Harry Potter, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Princess Diaries, Wizard’s Hall, and every Jane Austen novel. It’s great. It is fun, well-written, smart, and feminist.

But don’t get me wrong: I wish I’d never started reading them. Why, you ask? You wrote such a glowing review! Here’s why: because I felt really betrayed by certain events in the third book. (I don’t want to spoil things, you know, but if you want to know I’ll tell you. Or you can Google it.) I am not going to go into a lot of detail, for obvious reasons, but the last time I felt this betrayed by a novel was, well, when I read Invincible. I finished this generally uplifting and empowering book feeling absolutely terrible and sobbing my eyes out. Even thinking about it now makes me angry. So, you know. That’s the caveat.

In short: Read at your own peril. Sure, they’re great for the first two-thousand pages, but the fall is devastating. Brace yourself.

Read it if you like: Masochism