Monette, Sarah - The Virtu

[oyceter]

Despite a rather inauspicious beginning with Melusine, I ended up liking it enough to read The Virtu, which I madly adore and possibly read within 24 hours.

I suspect I would have liked it much less if I hadn't been warned that Felix was a total ass and Mildmay gets put through the wringer even more, but as it was, I had plenty of forewarning and enough time to realize that really, this hits a lot of the same buttons for me that manga does.

It makes sense! No, really!

It reminded me of rachelmanija's essay for Project Blue Rose, which has something about manga being written from the heart. She writes, "The manga I love the most isn't ashamed to wear its heart on its sleeve. It doesn't present the passions and pains that are respectable and hide the rest, or feign ignorance of unfashionable kinks and disreputable desires." And then I thought, wow, Mildmay is Tsuzuki. He suffers beautifully. Then he angsts, but unobtrusively. Then he suffers more. Beautifully.

I suspect Felix is some cross between your standard romance alpha bastard and Lymond.

I mean, I seriously doubt that Monette was thinking of this while she wrote it, but once I figured that the book was going to read like my favorite crack manga for me, it was much, much easier and much, much more fun to read.

On a more serious note, everyone who said Melusine and The Virtu should be read as one book is right. Much of Melusine fell flat for me or didn't quite coalesce into a coherent whole largely because I don't think it was intended to. The many random scenes in it, including the seemingly too long beginning in which Mildmay has nearly nothing to do with the plot (all the Ginevra bits, which, while I do like, rather confused me plotwise), make much more sense after reading The Virtu, as that's where all the payoff comes in.

Spoilers for The Virtu and Melusine

I particularly love that the prologue, which is good and draws you into the world, isn't just meant to give the reader a sample of Mildmay's voice and a taste of the worldbuilding, but that it also foreshadows the obligation d'ame later on. And how assorted individual adventures, like Felix in Nera, or Mildmay meeting Vey Coruscant the first time, or the Kalliphorne, all play into the climax of The Virtu. I was very impressed by how all the ends tied together.

And while Melusine is Mildmay's book, The Virtu feels like Felix's to me. It's about his redemption, as such, about his slow morph into someone who is still a right bastard and an ass, but slightly less so, about his view of his relationship with Mildmay. And it makes sense, since Felix gets very little growth in Melusine that we can make sense of, given the whole being mad bit and all. We already know a lot about Mildmay from the first book, but Felix doesn't, and this is more about his discovery.

It was also interesting seeing Mildmay from an outsider's point of view; so much of Melusine is from Mildmay's POV (ok, also, I skimmed a lot of the Felix chapters) that it was a bit of a shock to see everyone else's reactions to him. I know full well that he isn't stupid, and while you know that people react badly to him from his own comments, it hurts more when you see it from Felix's POV.

I am now even more impressed by Monette's command of voice, especially since now Felix's is more clear, and it's easier to compare his and Mildmay's.

And now, I am going to stop being rational at all because omgwtf apparently I madly ship Felix/Mildmay wtf?!

Of course, as mentioned before, it all makes so much more sense if you think about it as manga! That's probably why the faintly incest-foreshadowing scenes in the first book squicked me like mad and these didn't. I don't even have to mention that this is Yuki Kaori's fault, do I?

And there's the fact that I have a sibling button like whoa and that it gets repeatedly pushed in this book, and the fact that Mildmay and Felix remind me of Simon and River from Firefly. On a slightly less visceral level, it also works for me because it's the one chink in Felix's nearly impenetrable armor, the one way he's really vulnerable to Mildmay. I mean, he confronts a lot of fears in the book, but most of them are his own personal fears. This is the one thing that slightly pushes back the power imbalance in their incredibly fucked up relationship.

I'm really not sure why I don't hate Felix -- I should. And while I wanted to rip his heart out when he makes Mildmay kill Vey Coruscant, I still don't hate him, though I don't like him either. I was thinking about this, and maybe it's because he knows he's a pretty horrible excuse for a human being. My own personal button is people who are horrible excuses for human being but lie to themselves and others and make it look like they are all sunshine and roses, because dude. I can deal with straight-out assholes as long as they don't try to make it out like they aren't being assholes. Also, Mildmay loves Felix, and I love Mildmay, and the sibling bond tends to make me overlook a lot of brattiness. Hey, I have a little sister (who by the way is not at all bratty).

Though I have to say, I was getting rather irritated near the end of the book, when Felix earns most people's forgiveness or has assorted people telling him that there wasn't anything he could do (Thamuris, the rescued hocuses, etc.), because wow do I want Felix to suffer in the next book for that.

Oh, just in case you can't tell, I adore Mildmay and want to strangle everyone who thinks he's stupid and tells him so, including himself at times. Sometimes Mildmay's complete lack of self-esteen is a little over the top, particularly in the sex scene with Mehitabel, but it is in character, and as I said, Mildmay = Tsuzuki. Well, if Tsuzuki were a kept-thief. And swore all the time.

But mostly, I found myself rather amazed by how hard this book hit nearly all of my fannish buttons (which are actually different from my book-squee buttons), because I want to feed Mildmay and pet him and call him woobie and you don't even want to know how many times I went "Awwwwww!" when Mildmay made completely awkward attempts at asking for emotional support and you really won't believe all the allcaps internetspeak going through my brain whenever Mildmay was threatened, especially those last moments, and possibly I reread all the slashy Felix/Mildmay moments several times already despite having started and finished this yesterday and really if Monette could give me back my brain, that would be highly welcome.

Also, Mehitabel is awesome, and I am particularly glad to have a non-dead female character in this very male-dominated book. Even more points to having a female character who has sex with men she isn't in love with and doesn't suffer for it, and for having a female character who clearly enjoys having sex. I'm very fond of her friendship with Mildmay.

Oh! Good lord! In all the incoherency, I completely forgot to note the really cool labyrinth stuff!

For the record, if anyone cares, my favorite Mildmay expressions are: "Fuck me sideways 'til I cry" and "Fuck this for the emperor's snotrag."

I'm now faintly baffled by the fact that I have incredible amounts of book-squee for the manga 20th Century Boys and incredible amounts of fannish-squee for this book, as it's usually the opposite for me.

Links:
- rachelmanija's review (possibly spoilery?)
- rilina's review (possibly spoilery)
- mistful's review (spoilery)

Comments

[oyceter]

Squee indeed!! I am dying for the next one too.