"The Belles" Review
The Belles by Dhonielle Clayton is a beautiful YA fantasy set in a magic world called Orleans that reminds me personally of the culture of Louisiana. I'd best describe it as a far more opulent, much more magical Hunger Games from the point of a view of one of the privileged characters.
Before I go on to do this review, please know that there are major spoilers in it. Also, I am quite aware of the thing Dhonielle Clayton did recently. I already gave my opinion on that. However, I enjoyed this book, I read it before her whole fiasco and I think the art itself is worth reviewing.
With that said, let's get into the mythology of the world of The Belles. Apparently, there's a whole pantheon of gods and goddesses that the people of Orleans revere. There are a few mentions of gods such as the God of the Wind or the God of the Sea. But the major players in this mythology are the Goddess of Beauty and the God of the Sky. The Goddess of Beauty and the God of the Sky are consorts. The God of the Sky loved the Goddess of Beauty so much that he gave her a world full of humans as a token of his affection. But as the Goddess of Beauty started to lavish her affections onto her beloved children, the God of the Sky grew angry. In an act of revenge, he cursed the people of Orleans to become beings that are called gris. The gris are born with gray skin, straw-like hair and red eyes. Only six beings in the entire world are not born gris. Those are the eponymous Belles. Belles are essentially the daughters of the Goddess of Beauty. They are born with color and they have the power to manipulate a person's physical and behavioral features. These powers arise from their blood and it is called the arcana. The arcana allow the Belles to manipulate eye, hair and skin colors and textures, to refine the temperament and even to dress them up a bit.
What I liked the most about the worldbuilding in this story is that it's simultaneously simple, yet complex. It doesn't suffer from an overload of concepts in its magic system. Clayton simply picks a few ideas and makes them insanely abstract and mysterious. She adds to the mystery by not including a glossary in the back of the novel. That means that you have to read closely to understand what the arcana are what they can do.
The protagonist, Camellia Beauregard (Camille for short), is one of the Belles. Her sisters include her best friend Ambrosia (Amber for short), Edelweiss (Edel for short), Valeria (Valerie for short), Hana and Padma. I'd say that Camille is an intriguing, multifaceted character. (No shade, but that's a rare profile for most YA heroines.) She's bold, but she's not brash like Edel. She's dedicated to her craft, but she's not rigid or fearful of breaking the rules like Amber is. She's charming and refined, yet she doesn't fall prey to the charms of the novel's rake, Auguste Fabry.
I feel as if Edel was the common favorite among readers. She's artless, daring and she does whatever the hell she wants. As for me, my favorite character among the Belles is Amber. She's neat and tidy, she follows the rules and she is committed to doing her best. But she's far from being a Mary Sue of any sort. Amber makes some huge mistakes. She puts her position as the palace favorite above her beloved sister's feelings and she ends up killing someone while she's performing a beauty treatment because of her burgeoning ambition. So, she absolutely is a flawed character.
I've noticed that people tend to gravitate to gutsy, rebellious characters like Edel because they tend to be more realistic and imperfect enough to deserve admiration. Idealistic, perfectionist characters like Amber are unfortunately dismissed because many people believe that people realistically can't be like that. I, however, beg to differ. I like to do my best at all times. I like to follow rules and I become distressed when my work is compromised in any way. Characters like Amber inspire me to give my best work, to be sensible and to hold on to optimism. If anything, characters like Edel tend to vex me with their brusqueness.
As much as I loved Amber, my favorite character overall was Violetta. I never intended her to win my heart, since she was always part of Princess Sophia's pampered entourage. But perhaps that is why I find her to be so well-written. Despite the aloof, gluttonous, hedonistic front she puts on, Violetta is actually a deeply tormented character. I never would've guessed that she'd be humble enough to hold any sort of love or admiration for her servant. After finding out that Sophia was doing everything in her power to keep Violetta apart from beloved because she was from such a lowly caste, I couldn't help but have a soft spot for her. That soft spot was bruised and my personal secondhand torment was exacerbated when Sophia cruelly allowed Camille and Amber to toy with Violetta and to eventually kill her with their excessive beauty treatments.
Besides Violetta, one of my favorite characters was also Bree, Camille's servant. Her undying loyalty to Camille is admirable because it doesn't come from subjugation and fear. It comes from mutual respect. One of the things I greatly admired about Camille was the dignity with which she treated Bree. She'd speak to her kindly, look after her mental health and even do free beauty treatment touch-ups for her. (Mind you, beauty treatments in this fantasy world are incredibly expensive.) Bree is the perfect example of a person in a service job doing their best because they are appreciated. I found it immensely tragic to hear that she was sentenced to time in a starvation box (this world's main form of capital punishment), forcing me to do a wellness check on her in The Belles's sequel, The Everlasting Rose.
As for the characters I actually disliked or hated, I'd say that I disliked Edelweiss and hated Sophia's guts.
As I mentioned before, I'm not particularly impressed by brash characters like Edel. Even though many readers find her relatable because she's such a flawed, sassy firecracker, I'm not particularly impressed with that sort of characterization myself. (Even if those are the same characteristics I'm using for the male love interest in my debut novel and the heroine in my sophomore novel.) If anything, I just personally found Edel to be irritating and just plain mean at times.
But Edel could never compare to the vile and deplorable characterization of Princess Sophia. I find her to be a supremely well-written character. At first, she seems perfectly harmless; just a royal figurehead taking advantage of the privilege she has to do as many beauty treatments as she likes. As we get to know her, she just begins to grate the reader with her obviously saccharine falsehood and her need to control minor things. But with each passing chapter, the veneer cracks and peels, layer by layer. We begin to see rising degrees of cruelty from her, ultimately culminating in her seizing the throne upon her mother's death. As much as I liked the queen, I don't even find her death to be Sophia's moral event horizon. It was the trifecta of Violetta's death, forcing Camille to give one of her subjects a pig's snout and the consistent poisoning of her own sister that cemented her as a truly irredeemable, psychopathic monster. I'd compare her to Azula from Avatar: The Last Airbender or Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights. She's one of those characters that you love to hate and she becomes even more unhinged as she begins to gain more power. What makes her an especially brilliant villain is that she is underestimated not only by the reader, but even by her own subjects. The public probably only knows her as Sophia the spoiled brat princess. But they don't know the power-hungry, bloodthirsty tyrannical threat that she can actually be.
As for the love interests, I didn't find that either of them inspired a lot of passion. We have the philandering Auguste Fabry, whom we later learn is Sophia's suitor, and the dead serious Remy, who serves as a palace guard for Camille. I wasn't charmed by Auguste because I don't particularly like the cad trope. (Only if he has a tragic back story, as you'll learn from my debut novel. I'm a slut for the tragic back story.) As for Remy, I honestly found him a little boring. There was an attempt to make him likeable by allowing Camille to accidentally take a glimpse of him interacting with his little sisters. But as a writer myself, I feel like that aspect of his characterization was shoehorned in. I would've liked to have seen more of his own merits and his own attempts to be a more likeable love interest. Don't get me wrong, there were a few moments that he took a lighthearted tone with Camille. At the end, he even proved himself to be the ultimate dreamboat by giving up the thing he devoted his life to, the thing that he would've died for, which was his oath to protect and enforce the law of Orleans, all for the woman he loved. But unfortunately, I found that it all happened too late.
Unfortunately, this seems to be the same formula for the plot. All the important information isn't relayed until the very end. The reader isn't given a chance to understand the full tyranny that the people of Orleans live under. If it wasn't for the blurb, I would've assumed that the novel would be about how Camille rises to power as the favorite or even some kind of war between the people of Orleans and the God of the Sky. So much of the novel is devoted to worldbuilding, character-building and description that we go nearly three-fourths of the book without knowing what the threat and conflict is. Even though we are teased with hints of how unhinged Princess Sophia is, I somehow find it unrealistic that rumors of her cruelty wouldn't have leaked earlier. Judging by all the all gossip magazines that exist in the world of Orleans, it doesn't appear that there's a strict enforcement of censorship. (Despite it being a monarchy.) I would've liked Princess Sophia to start off with an antagonistic nature. Maybe she could've proposed some particularly inhumane laws or maybe she could have a nasty reputation for mistreating public servants wherever she goes. Even though it's an exciting journey to figure out what an evil bitch she is, it would've been easier to enjoy Clayton's lush prose and descriptions if we didn't have the looming threat hanging around in the back of our minds.
Nevertheless, I'm particularly impressed with Clayton's choice to make Amber the first palace favorite. (Although I must critique her choice to make Amber so gung ho on winning that position, even at the expense of her friendship with Camille, without explaining why later on in the novel. Maybe I'm bad at picking up subtle cues, maybe this is all explained in The Everlasting Rose. All I know is that I needed direct clarification on Amber's motive beyond her just being an anxious, perfectionist A-student.) Usually, writers tend to give an unrealistic amount of prowess to their main characters, allowing them to win major contests or gain major accolades early on in the story. I like that Camille was forced to deal with being a second banana for a short while. I like that she had the chance to immerse herself into the real position of a Belle, allowing her to have her perceptions of the position shattered before she was promoted as the palace favorite.
As I mentioned before, the prose is just delightful. Clayton maintains a sophisticated style that stands out from her contemporaries. Her descriptions are painstakingly detailed. She makes full use of every sense to bring the world Orleans to life in the reader's mind. She even takes advantage of the underutilized sense of taste to describe the many delectable treats in the world of Orleans. (Seriously, I suggest buying a decadent cake or éclair from Vons before cracking this book open.) But aside from being adept with descriptions, Clayton just writes smoothly. She balances how often she shows and tells and connects the events of the novel in an effortless arc.
I'd say that this novel is a contemporary of The Hunger Games, told from the perspective of the most privileged members of the Capitol. It's a world with the charm and elegance of that Marie Antoinette movie with Kirsten Dunst in it, with shades of grit and revolution.
Overall, I give it five out of five stars. I enjoyed reading it once and I can certainly envision picking it up again as a cozy read.
If you liked my review and would like to read more, feel free to like, comment on or share this post. Don't forget to follow me on my other social media sites, as well.
Facebook 👍🏼: Savannah K. Salazar
Before I go on to do this review, please know that there are major spoilers in it. Also, I am quite aware of the thing Dhonielle Clayton did recently. I already gave my opinion on that. However, I enjoyed this book, I read it before her whole fiasco and I think the art itself is worth reviewing.
With that said, let's get into the mythology of the world of The Belles. Apparently, there's a whole pantheon of gods and goddesses that the people of Orleans revere. There are a few mentions of gods such as the God of the Wind or the God of the Sea. But the major players in this mythology are the Goddess of Beauty and the God of the Sky. The Goddess of Beauty and the God of the Sky are consorts. The God of the Sky loved the Goddess of Beauty so much that he gave her a world full of humans as a token of his affection. But as the Goddess of Beauty started to lavish her affections onto her beloved children, the God of the Sky grew angry. In an act of revenge, he cursed the people of Orleans to become beings that are called gris. The gris are born with gray skin, straw-like hair and red eyes. Only six beings in the entire world are not born gris. Those are the eponymous Belles. Belles are essentially the daughters of the Goddess of Beauty. They are born with color and they have the power to manipulate a person's physical and behavioral features. These powers arise from their blood and it is called the arcana. The arcana allow the Belles to manipulate eye, hair and skin colors and textures, to refine the temperament and even to dress them up a bit.
What I liked the most about the worldbuilding in this story is that it's simultaneously simple, yet complex. It doesn't suffer from an overload of concepts in its magic system. Clayton simply picks a few ideas and makes them insanely abstract and mysterious. She adds to the mystery by not including a glossary in the back of the novel. That means that you have to read closely to understand what the arcana are what they can do.
The protagonist, Camellia Beauregard (Camille for short), is one of the Belles. Her sisters include her best friend Ambrosia (Amber for short), Edelweiss (Edel for short), Valeria (Valerie for short), Hana and Padma. I'd say that Camille is an intriguing, multifaceted character. (No shade, but that's a rare profile for most YA heroines.) She's bold, but she's not brash like Edel. She's dedicated to her craft, but she's not rigid or fearful of breaking the rules like Amber is. She's charming and refined, yet she doesn't fall prey to the charms of the novel's rake, Auguste Fabry.
I feel as if Edel was the common favorite among readers. She's artless, daring and she does whatever the hell she wants. As for me, my favorite character among the Belles is Amber. She's neat and tidy, she follows the rules and she is committed to doing her best. But she's far from being a Mary Sue of any sort. Amber makes some huge mistakes. She puts her position as the palace favorite above her beloved sister's feelings and she ends up killing someone while she's performing a beauty treatment because of her burgeoning ambition. So, she absolutely is a flawed character.
I've noticed that people tend to gravitate to gutsy, rebellious characters like Edel because they tend to be more realistic and imperfect enough to deserve admiration. Idealistic, perfectionist characters like Amber are unfortunately dismissed because many people believe that people realistically can't be like that. I, however, beg to differ. I like to do my best at all times. I like to follow rules and I become distressed when my work is compromised in any way. Characters like Amber inspire me to give my best work, to be sensible and to hold on to optimism. If anything, characters like Edel tend to vex me with their brusqueness.
As much as I loved Amber, my favorite character overall was Violetta. I never intended her to win my heart, since she was always part of Princess Sophia's pampered entourage. But perhaps that is why I find her to be so well-written. Despite the aloof, gluttonous, hedonistic front she puts on, Violetta is actually a deeply tormented character. I never would've guessed that she'd be humble enough to hold any sort of love or admiration for her servant. After finding out that Sophia was doing everything in her power to keep Violetta apart from beloved because she was from such a lowly caste, I couldn't help but have a soft spot for her. That soft spot was bruised and my personal secondhand torment was exacerbated when Sophia cruelly allowed Camille and Amber to toy with Violetta and to eventually kill her with their excessive beauty treatments.
Besides Violetta, one of my favorite characters was also Bree, Camille's servant. Her undying loyalty to Camille is admirable because it doesn't come from subjugation and fear. It comes from mutual respect. One of the things I greatly admired about Camille was the dignity with which she treated Bree. She'd speak to her kindly, look after her mental health and even do free beauty treatment touch-ups for her. (Mind you, beauty treatments in this fantasy world are incredibly expensive.) Bree is the perfect example of a person in a service job doing their best because they are appreciated. I found it immensely tragic to hear that she was sentenced to time in a starvation box (this world's main form of capital punishment), forcing me to do a wellness check on her in The Belles's sequel, The Everlasting Rose.
As for the characters I actually disliked or hated, I'd say that I disliked Edelweiss and hated Sophia's guts.
As I mentioned before, I'm not particularly impressed by brash characters like Edel. Even though many readers find her relatable because she's such a flawed, sassy firecracker, I'm not particularly impressed with that sort of characterization myself. (Even if those are the same characteristics I'm using for the male love interest in my debut novel and the heroine in my sophomore novel.) If anything, I just personally found Edel to be irritating and just plain mean at times.
But Edel could never compare to the vile and deplorable characterization of Princess Sophia. I find her to be a supremely well-written character. At first, she seems perfectly harmless; just a royal figurehead taking advantage of the privilege she has to do as many beauty treatments as she likes. As we get to know her, she just begins to grate the reader with her obviously saccharine falsehood and her need to control minor things. But with each passing chapter, the veneer cracks and peels, layer by layer. We begin to see rising degrees of cruelty from her, ultimately culminating in her seizing the throne upon her mother's death. As much as I liked the queen, I don't even find her death to be Sophia's moral event horizon. It was the trifecta of Violetta's death, forcing Camille to give one of her subjects a pig's snout and the consistent poisoning of her own sister that cemented her as a truly irredeemable, psychopathic monster. I'd compare her to Azula from Avatar: The Last Airbender or Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights. She's one of those characters that you love to hate and she becomes even more unhinged as she begins to gain more power. What makes her an especially brilliant villain is that she is underestimated not only by the reader, but even by her own subjects. The public probably only knows her as Sophia the spoiled brat princess. But they don't know the power-hungry, bloodthirsty tyrannical threat that she can actually be.
As for the love interests, I didn't find that either of them inspired a lot of passion. We have the philandering Auguste Fabry, whom we later learn is Sophia's suitor, and the dead serious Remy, who serves as a palace guard for Camille. I wasn't charmed by Auguste because I don't particularly like the cad trope. (Only if he has a tragic back story, as you'll learn from my debut novel. I'm a slut for the tragic back story.) As for Remy, I honestly found him a little boring. There was an attempt to make him likeable by allowing Camille to accidentally take a glimpse of him interacting with his little sisters. But as a writer myself, I feel like that aspect of his characterization was shoehorned in. I would've liked to have seen more of his own merits and his own attempts to be a more likeable love interest. Don't get me wrong, there were a few moments that he took a lighthearted tone with Camille. At the end, he even proved himself to be the ultimate dreamboat by giving up the thing he devoted his life to, the thing that he would've died for, which was his oath to protect and enforce the law of Orleans, all for the woman he loved. But unfortunately, I found that it all happened too late.
Unfortunately, this seems to be the same formula for the plot. All the important information isn't relayed until the very end. The reader isn't given a chance to understand the full tyranny that the people of Orleans live under. If it wasn't for the blurb, I would've assumed that the novel would be about how Camille rises to power as the favorite or even some kind of war between the people of Orleans and the God of the Sky. So much of the novel is devoted to worldbuilding, character-building and description that we go nearly three-fourths of the book without knowing what the threat and conflict is. Even though we are teased with hints of how unhinged Princess Sophia is, I somehow find it unrealistic that rumors of her cruelty wouldn't have leaked earlier. Judging by all the all gossip magazines that exist in the world of Orleans, it doesn't appear that there's a strict enforcement of censorship. (Despite it being a monarchy.) I would've liked Princess Sophia to start off with an antagonistic nature. Maybe she could've proposed some particularly inhumane laws or maybe she could have a nasty reputation for mistreating public servants wherever she goes. Even though it's an exciting journey to figure out what an evil bitch she is, it would've been easier to enjoy Clayton's lush prose and descriptions if we didn't have the looming threat hanging around in the back of our minds.
Nevertheless, I'm particularly impressed with Clayton's choice to make Amber the first palace favorite. (Although I must critique her choice to make Amber so gung ho on winning that position, even at the expense of her friendship with Camille, without explaining why later on in the novel. Maybe I'm bad at picking up subtle cues, maybe this is all explained in The Everlasting Rose. All I know is that I needed direct clarification on Amber's motive beyond her just being an anxious, perfectionist A-student.) Usually, writers tend to give an unrealistic amount of prowess to their main characters, allowing them to win major contests or gain major accolades early on in the story. I like that Camille was forced to deal with being a second banana for a short while. I like that she had the chance to immerse herself into the real position of a Belle, allowing her to have her perceptions of the position shattered before she was promoted as the palace favorite.
As I mentioned before, the prose is just delightful. Clayton maintains a sophisticated style that stands out from her contemporaries. Her descriptions are painstakingly detailed. She makes full use of every sense to bring the world Orleans to life in the reader's mind. She even takes advantage of the underutilized sense of taste to describe the many delectable treats in the world of Orleans. (Seriously, I suggest buying a decadent cake or éclair from Vons before cracking this book open.) But aside from being adept with descriptions, Clayton just writes smoothly. She balances how often she shows and tells and connects the events of the novel in an effortless arc.
I'd say that this novel is a contemporary of The Hunger Games, told from the perspective of the most privileged members of the Capitol. It's a world with the charm and elegance of that Marie Antoinette movie with Kirsten Dunst in it, with shades of grit and revolution.
Overall, I give it five out of five stars. I enjoyed reading it once and I can certainly envision picking it up again as a cozy read.
If you liked my review and would like to read more, feel free to like, comment on or share this post. Don't forget to follow me on my other social media sites, as well.
Facebook 👍🏼: Savannah K. Salazar
Twitter 🐦: @authorsksalazar
Instagram 📸: @s.k.Salazar
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