【 THE FAMILIAR 】

DNF at 50%

Genre: Fantasy (low fantasy) / Historical Fiction
Audience: Adult
Author: Leigh Bardugo
Published: April 2024
Publisher: Viking
Pages: 385 (paperback)

I’m devastated to be DNFing a Leigh Bardugo book. But wowweeeee – this was very boring.

The long short of it is that this just didn’t go anywhere. I was halfway through the book and I didn’t care for any of the characters (none are likeable) and the plot hadn’t fully fledged. The only fantastical/magical bits were also very undercooked, surprisingly.

Having read Bardugo’s Shadow and Bone series and the Six of Crows duology, I know she can sometimes be a slow burn to an epic finish, but this just took it too far (if that is the case).

There was way too much pointless dialogue and fluff padding out the story and completely detracting from the more exciting elements. I thought the Torneo would bring something epic, but there’s next to no build up (or training??) and so it became hard to be invested in anyway.

So in the end, I decided to part ways from this book, as I don’t think it will get much more exciting in the second half, considering how little ‘progress’ the plot had made by the halfway point.

Title: The Familiar
Author: Leigh Bardugo
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In a shabby house, on a shabby street, in the new capital of Madrid, Luzia Cotado uses scraps of magic to get through her days of endless toil as a scullion. But when her scheming mistress discovers the lump of a servant cowering in the kitchen is actually hiding a talent for little miracles, she demands Luzia use those gifts to better the family’s social position.

What begins as simple amusement for the bored nobility takes a perilous turn when Luzia garners the notice of Antonio Pérez, the disgraced secretary to Spain’s king. Still reeling from the defeat of his armada, the king is desperate for any advantage in the war against England’s heretic queen—and Pérez will stop at nothing to regain the king’s favor.

Determined to seize this one chance to better her fortunes, Luzia plunges into a world of seers and alchemists, holy men and hucksters, where the line between magic, science, and fraud is never certain. But as her notoriety grows, so does the danger that her Jewish blood will doom her to the Inquisition’s wrath. She will have to use every bit of her wit and will to survive—even if that means enlisting the help of Guillén Santangel, an embittered immortal familiar whose own secrets could prove deadly for them both.