The Magpie Lord has everything I could possibly want from a m/m romance. It has a historical Victorian setting, it involves magic, one of the two heroes is short, skinny, and booksmart, and above all the main characters are presented as real, multi-layered people in a real relationship.

The story launches right into a grisly scene in which a guy who is wallowing in guilt and self-loathing tries to kill himself. I assumed I was in for a story about angst, but actually, the guy, whose name is Lucien, is generally pretty angst free. His family was abusive and awful, but he’s come to terms with their awfulness and now that his father is dead he’s pretty much rid of them.

Lucien is gay, but he feels no shame or self-loathing about this. His father exiled him to China where he lived for twenty years, and where, according to the author, sexual relationships between men were not considered terribly unusual or vile during that time period. So Lucien figures he’ll hang out in England long enough to tidy some family affairs now that all his shitty relatives are dead and then he can always go back to China if England proves inhospitable.

The reason Lucien keeps trying to kill himself is that he is under a magical compulsion to do so. He hires a magician, Stephen, to find out what’s going on and to put a stop to it. Stephen quickly figures out that the curse is linked to Lucien’s ancestral home and to the many horrid things the family did (really, they were pure scum) and to the many enemies the family made. In the course of events Stephen and Lucien fall in love, but they have the following obstacles:

1. Lucien’s father destroyed Stephen’s family and Stephen is really put out about this. He doesn’t hold Lucien responsible but he definitely feels that the entire set up is a little weird and uncomfortable (he’s right).

2. Stephen is much more cautious than Lucien about being outed as gay. Lucien had twenty years of freedom and Stephen had none, and Rich Guy Lucien figures he can always bail himself out and go to China if he’s arrested for sodomy whereas Stephan can’t even afford a new shirt.

3. Whoever is launching magical attacks against Lucien has a great work ethic. The attacks come with stunning frequency. Really, Stephen is awfully busy just trying to keep Lucien from dying.

 

I would have adored this book even without the romance. It reminded me a bit of Jonathon Strange and Mister Norell, only with a fast pace (Strange and Norell is a great book that I highly recommend, but it is also 782 pages long in the original hardcover version). While the atmosphere is pure Gothic, complete with a mansion that is always dark and cold, Lucien has a totally matter-of-fact sensibility and dry wit. The contrast is delightful and keeps the story from being too oppressive despite a considerable amount of pure horror. The imagery is stunning, and the plot brings in many different aspects of responsibility versus innocence, and the ways in which various levels of society can screw each other up or bolster one another.

I loved the romance angle because Lucian and Stephen are such a great team. They balance each other well – Stephen, who is very intense, needs some of Lucien’s humor and Lucien needs Stephen’s skills and his perspectives on the world. Also, it’s quite delightful to have a romantic hero who isn’t a paragon of manly physical perfection. Lucien is a typical hero – lean yet broad shouldered, etc. Stephen is a short, slight man who is almost skeletal as a result of drawing on too much of his own energy recently. Stephen is also barely five feet tall, although events demonstrate that he can still kick an astonishing amount of ass. The way Lucien keeps thinking that Stephen is unattractive while clearly being madly attracted to him (he has great eyes) is adorable.

The one aspect of the romance I disliked was Lucien’s insistence on being dominant when it comes to sex. I don’t know if this is a coincidence, or a major trend in m/m, but almost every m/m romance I’ve read has this thing where one of the guys has to be the boss in the sack. These aren’t BDSM romances but one guy is always saying, “I’m in charge” etc. Surely there are real-life gay romances in which dominance is not a major theme in the bedroom, so to come across this as a trend is unsettling to me. In this particular romance, I disliked the dominance angle because Lucien is well aware of his status and physical power and the rapey history of his family, and he’s aware that some of Stephen’s family members have been raped (by Lucien’s relatives, at least, it’s implied that this is the case). It seemed out of place to make Lucien aggressive and domineering given that he knows Stephen’s history. Having said that, there’s a moment in which Lucien is being very aggressive and controlling and he makes quick eye contact with Stephen, to see if Stephen is really OK with all this. It’s a quick check in that establishes consent and an underlying tenderness. It’s a truly sweet and sexy moment. When they aren’t having sex, they interact very much as equals.

Lucien’s time in China has an interesting effect on the book. We never see his life there, but it clearly pervades every part of his attitudes in the present. I’m always eager to see more ethnic diversity and that is lacking in the sense that every main character in the story is Caucasian. However, because Lucien and his manservant Merrick lived abroad for so long, they are constantly reminding Stephen (and the reader) that Victorian England is NOT the only game in town, and that there are other world powers and other ways of living, both positive and negative. It may not qualify as a truly multicultural perspective, but at least it’s a global perspective. Lucien is not a champion of imperialism. He seems to have taken the Chinese people he met as individuals and he is not prejudiced towards them as a group. He is unashamedly opportunistic, but not exploitative. I appreciated his perspective throughout the story.

This book is fine as a stand-alone. It has a nicely wrapped up ending. However, there are several sequels in both novella and novel form (the series is called “A Charm of Magpies”). The other two novels do a nice job of developing the romance. For instance, the second novel, A Case of Possession, talks a little bit more about the whys and wherefores of their sex lives, and addresses the fact that Lucien is rather naive about the effect that their love affair could have on Stephen given that Stephen does not have Lucien’s resources and that homosexuality is illegal in England during the time period of the books. The third book talks about the difficulty the men have committing to each other and the difficulty they have getting their lives to match (Stephen has a deadly and physically and emotionally overwhelming job, and Lucien is often at loose ends). Be warned that while all the books contain body horror, the third is incredibly disturbing.  Great series, great romance, great horror, and great Victorian ambiance – what’s not to love?