Review: Strands of Bronze and Gold by Jane Nickerson

Review: Strands of Bronze and Gold by Jane Nickerson
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Rating: I nearly DNFed in the first 100 pages because simply nothing happens. Page upon page of endless gorgeous, ornate description. A heroine who can be a bit of a twit, though I did enjoy the way she matures and strengthens. This book is so visually beautiful, but there simply wasn't enough to grab me. I so wanted to love this one, and I'm kind of heartbroken that I didn't.



The Bluebeard fairy tale retold. . . .

When seventeen-year-old Sophia Petheram’s beloved father dies, she receives an unexpected letter. An invitation—on fine ivory paper, in bold black handwriting—from the mysterious Monsieur Bernard de Cressac, her godfather. With no money and fewer options, Sophie accepts, leaving her humble childhood home for the astonishingly lavish Wyndriven Abbey, in the heart of Mississippi.

Sophie has always longed for a comfortable life, and she finds herself both attracted to and shocked by the charm and easy manners of her overgenerous guardian. But as she begins to piece together the mystery of his past, it’s as if, thread by thread, a silken net is tightening around her. And as she gathers stories and catches whispers of his former wives—all with hair as red as her own—in the forgotten corners of the abbey, Sophie knows she’s trapped in the passion and danger of de Cressac’s intoxicating world.

Glowing strands of romance, mystery, and suspense are woven into this breathtaking debut—a thrilling retelling of the “Bluebeard” fairy tale.


The cover: I LOVE this cover. Love, love, love. Her beautiful hair, her delicate profile, the swirly, embellished bits, the antique coloring, the abbey in the background... I mean, you get the whole mood of the book. This is serious cover lust here. I'm drooling.

The story: I adore fairy tales. I will pretty much pick up anything that's a fairy tale retelling, particularly one that appears to have a darker, more twisted viewpoint, even on a fairy tale already as dark and twisted as Bluebeard, a personal favorite of mine. Strands of Bronze and Gold has been on my radar for a while, and I was so excited for it, which is partly why I was so disappointed by it.



Don't get me wrong; this is not a bad book. Jane Nickerson seriously has a way with words. The mood, the setting, and even the concept were wonderful. But it took me weeks to read this book. Weeks. I never take that long to read things. I simply couldn't get into this one. I wanted to like Sophia, the main character, who claims to be dreamy and imaginative. But she never felt like a coherent character to me. She was dreamy when required, prudish when necessary, and so on. Sometimes she was naive to the point of eye-rolling. I don't require my heroines to be perfect, and I preferred her when her own imagination got the best of her, and she got caught up in her fairy tale surroundings, but I never felt connected to her emotions. In first person, this is particularly problematic. I mean, you're living in the main character's head. In Sophia's case, it was a pretty head, but it seriously got on my nerves.



The largest problem I had with SoBaG was the abysmal pacing. How many chapters can I be expected to handle that do nothing but describe jewels, gowns, fabrics, armchairs, wallpaper, ceilings, floor tiles, armoires, twelve course dinners, horse rides, and on and on and on? I was going stir-crazy, I swear. I was enchanted by the descriptions in the beginning. Nickerson has a way with evoking luxury and beauty and implanting a vision in your mind's eye. But seriously, I JUST COULDN'T TAKE IT any longer. There's setting the mood, and then there's drowning in it. I was like, "Can we get to the murdering and haunting and suffering, please? I do not need to know the color and fabric and cut and life story of all twenty-seven of her dresses. Thank you." I probably would have enjoyed this more if I hadn't known there was meant to be murderings afoot, but when you already know the secret but it's being revealed in not-so-steady drips... ACK.

 

Also, that amount of sheer over-the-top luxury hanging out in the middle of Chicataw, Mississippi in 1855 just strained my credulity. The level of luxury present in Wyndriven Abbey, which is itself a monastery transplanted in full all the way from England, was really kind of absurd. A lot of it I just straight up couldn't believe. And none of the luxury was disquieting enough. Even as Sophia is ooh-ing and ahh-ing over her (HORRENDOUSLY CREEPY) godfather and his ridiculous wealth, there should have been a few more foreboding details to let you know that all is not right. It felt like Nickerson was attempting that, but it didn't play that way to me. It was all too pretty, and Sophia was too enraptured by it all.

Speaking of too enraptured... dude. Bernard, you are so eggregiously inappropriate, I can't even. On the one hand, I loved it. I thought his character worked as a Bluebeard-esque villian, beguiling at first, but secretly Patrick Bateman on the inside. And so gross and touchy. How Sophia didn't clue into his less-than-honorable desires the very moment he cast a glance at her bosoms, or made her wear a belly dancer costume, or initiated a discussion about how he wished she weren't wearing undergarments, all in the first TWENTY-FOUR HOURS of their meeting, I will never  know. Don't get me wrong-- I loved how wrong that all was. It was supposed to be. He was giving me all the squicky shivers, just as he should have. But Sophia was all, "Oh, my, he's so enchanting! Perhaps I ought to Carpe Diem, as my dearest godfather, who is always so fond of touching me, always says! Why, I do believe I am in love with him, even though he's over forty, is my legal guardian, and has four dead wives all with my red hair. That's normal. It's all so magical!" No, Sophie, it's not. It's like sexual harassment, actually. Stab him with one of the twenty thousand  jewel-encrusted pins he gave you.



Things really picked up once the creep factor got turned up. Once Sophia started to clue in on the fact that things weren't right, that's when I started to get invested in her. If you promise me Bluebeard, you better deliver Bluebeard, because that dude was one crazy ass motherf*cker. I expected creepiness out of Bernard, so I watched him mega closely for the slightest signs of psychopathy. Which is why it is really frustrating when Sophia, an intelligent and articulate girl, doesn't see it at all. The thing is, we know right away that he's super shady, because we've read the back of the book and the fairy tale and he's got a hoop earring, for God's sake, and he for damn sure ain't no Jack Sparrow.

My apologies.

Mild spoilers for those not familiar with the original Bluebeard tale. Nickerson doesn't actually expand the tale so much as deepen it, really, providing no new twist on the story but a lot more information. It's still the straightforward serial killer and serial husband tale, only with an Antebellum setting, which I love, and a red hair fetish, which skeeved me the hell out in a good way. I'm a sucker for anything historical and anything Southern, so that aspect really worked for me.I think it's a perfect place to set a fairy tale, a place rich with history, atmosphere, and seeeecrets. A psycho obsessed with power and dominance and violence could have no better setting than as a master of a plantation in the deepest reaches of pre-Civil War Mississippi. There are tensions with the slaves, which I loved and which DEFINITELY could have been amped up, and did I mention the visuals? Because they're stellar. I could see every inch of the place, and could feel the humidity like it was there, dripping on the back of my neck.

(I'm not going to get into a long discussion about the treatment of characters of color in this book, since I actually felt Sophie had as modern a view as possible given her time period (except for the part where she feels bad for the field worker slaves because of their SHABBY CLOTHES, I kid you not, I had to put the book down and stare blankly in horror for like a minute). and it felt very historically accurate, though I wish a bit more depth had been given to them and there hadn't been quite as many stock characters. If you want to hear the Book Smugglers talk about it (and they actually object to the "shabby clothes" thing too), click here. If not, carry on.)

I found Bernard actually creepier in the beginning, when he was still playing the role of a fairy tale prince, than at the end, when his dark secrets came unraveled and sinister things were happening. It was chilling, but not as chilling as I'd hoped. He's creepier in the subtle ways, in the brainwashing and the false smiles. I know the original tale so well, and love the horrible way the ending came about, and wish Nickerson had preserved more of it.

Also, INSTA-LOVE ALERT. Major, major insta-love. I get why, because compared to horrid Bernard, any non-murderous, non-abusive, non-racist dude would be nice, but... ugh. You don't fall in love after three meetings. I don't care what era you're in. ALSO IS HER NAME SOPHIE OR SOPHIA THEY CALL HER BOTH THINGS IN THE BOOK AND IN THE SYNOPSIS AND I'M CONFUSED NOW.

This is one of those times where I'm actually encouraging you guys to check out a book that didn't work for me. Most people really loved this one. They did connect to Sophia, and they were enchanted by the beyond-beautiful imagery and Gothic, haunting mystery. I think I was just picking up this book at the wrong time, really. I was staring down at words I know I should have loved, but I just didn't. I was flat-out bored at times. This is definitely a book I will try again at another time, in the hopes that I finally feel that fairy tale love for it.