Synopsis:
The Palace of Illusions brings readers to a Paris breathless with excitement at the dawn of the twentieth century, where for a select few there is a second, secret Paris where the magic of the City of Light is very real in this enchanting and atmospheric fantasy from the author of The Fairy Bargains of Prospect Hill.
In the run up to the 1900s World’s Fair Paris is abuzz with creative energy and innovation. Audiences are spellbound by the Lumiere brothers’ moving pictures and Loie Fuller’s serpentine dance fusing art and technology. But for Clara Ironwood, a talented and pragmatic clockworker, nothing compares to the magic of her godfather’s mechanical creations, and she’d rather spend her days working on the Palace of Illusions, an intricate hall of mirrors that is one of the centerpieces of the world’s fair.
When her godfather sends Clara a hideous nutcracker for Christmas, she is puzzled until she finds a hidden compartment that unlocks a mirror-world Paris where the Seine is musical, fountains spout lemonade, and mechanical ballerinas move with human grace. The magic of her godfather’s toys was real.
As Clara explores this other Paris and begins to imbue her own creations with its magic, she soon discovers a darker side to innovation. Suspicious men begin to approach her outside of work, and she could swear a shadow is following her. There’s no ignoring the danger she’s in, but Clara doesn’t know who to trust. The magic of the two Parises are colliding and Clara must find the strength within herself to save them both.
Review:
When I started on The Palace of Illusions by Rowenna Miller, I was really intrigued by the world I found myself in. I really love the decades surrounding the turn of the century and all the World’s Fairs and Expositions from the Crystal Palace in London in 1851 to the 1889 Fair in Paris which saw the building of the Eiffel Tower and the Columbian Exhibition in Chicago in 1893 celebrating the 400th anniversary of the “discovery” of the New World. In Miller’s newest novel, Clara finds herself in Paris just ahead of the 1900 Fair, a grand celebration which combines so many of the fantastical elements of previous fairs.
That history was fascinating to me and I overall enjoyed the novel, but the story seemed to get bogged down a little bit in the details from the story that inspired The Palace of Illusions. So, what’s the inspiration? The Nutcracker, the 1892 ballet by Tchaikovsky.
I’ll confess I haven’t seen The Nutcracker since I was a child, but I can recall the broad strokes of the story. I remember mice and the sugar plum fairy and a lot of colorful dancers. The story was a little hard to follow as a fourth grader watching it on a school field trip back in the day. Frankly, I didn’t even know about the connection between The Palace of Illusions and The Nutcracker before I started on the book. Since I wasn’t a huge fan of the ballet, it didn’t really add to my enjoyment of the book, but I can imagine that for some fans, it might push the book over the edge from liking to loving.
So what did I love? As I said, the setting is great, especially if you love historical fiction. You have the Paris of 1900, but there is a bit of an international flavor since its setting up the World’s Fair. The set-up for the story worked really well with Clara slowly discovering an alternate world — an inheritance from her godfather — where beauty comes from creativity and imagination. There were some wonderful themes set up early on about the value of creation and where the spark of life actually comes from.
Once I got about a third of the way into the book, Clara was pulled in multiple different directions and for a good chunk it seemed like she didn’t have a lot of agency of her own. Many of her decisions were reactionary and seemed to swing her from one emotion to the next like a pendulum and it took a while before she was able to settle in and really get her head around the core mystery of the novel.
I had a good time with The Palace of Illusions, but I just didn’t quite vibe with it as much as I wanted to. It’s very creative and if you are up for a story heavily influenced by The Nutcracker, I would recommend checking out Rowenna Miller’s latest work.
Thank you to Redhook for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
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