Schoolgirls Form Clique, Discover Other Realms

I continue my quest to make a dent in my TBR pile, often with the assistance of the Chicago Public Library's extensive collection of e-books.  I've had A Great and Terrible Beauty on my shelf since 2006.  As often happens when it takes you more than six years to read a book, I don't think this is one that I would pick up nowadays.

It's a young adult book about four teenagers in a Victorian era finishing school who find that they can do magic.  The main character is Gemma, who I guess is fine, though "not handsome enough to tempt me" into wanting to read two more books about her life.  In fact, I decided to read this book mostly so that I could get it off my shelf as I had a feeling I wouldn't be continuing with the series.  This has been confirmed.

Gemma, then.  She feels a lot of guilt over the death of her mother, has a priggish older brother, and feels very awkward and out of place in boarding school because she grew up in India (a country she despised while she was there).  But then she finds other girls who also have Heavy Weights to bear (even though they aren't very nice) and they discover magic together and things seem to improve.

So, I admit that this book set up my back from the very first because of just how ridiculous the portrayal of India and Indians was.  The very first page starts like this:

"Please tell me that's not going to be part of my birthday dinner this evening."

I am staring into the hissing face of a cobra.  A surprisingly pink tongue slithers in and out of a cruel mouth while an Indian man whose eyes are the blue of blindness inclines his head toward my mother and explains in Hindi that cobras make very good eating.

SERIOUSLY?!  Yes, because Indians eat cobras all the time and obviously, when you encounter a man with a snake on the street, you assume that he is offering to sell it to you for a meal.  I am surprised she didn't first describe him as charming it with a flute.  I am not even five sentences into the book and already I am thoroughly offended.

 And quite honestly, Libba Bray could have been outstanding from that point onward and I would probably still not forgive her.  But I don't think this book was for me.  The characters seemed very one-dimensional.  Gemma's brother is a supremely stereotypical Victorian male who thinks women shouldn't do anything but be ornaments.  Her roommate is a poor orphan who also happens to be ugly and have a stutter.  There's the cruel, beautiful girl that, for some reason, everyone wants to be friends with, and that Gemma stands up to when no one else will.  And all the girls spend a lot of time bemoaning their futures as Victorian women.  Which I get, as they always revolved around marriage and not making a fool of yourself and making sure your corset was tied tightly.  But also, I don't think that many teenagers would spend so much time thinking about how unfair it was.  I don't remember spending much time thinking about feminism when I was in high school, but perhaps I am an anomaly.

I think what originally appealed to me most about this book was that it was fantasy set in the Victorian era.  While this genre has recently exploded and we're filled to the gills with steampunk and other novels of the sort, I do think Libba Bray was one of the earlier authors to write in this vein.  So thanks to her for that!  But I just couldn't get over those first scenes in India, and the rest of the book didn't draw me in enough to make me want to continue with the series.  Perhaps if I had read this book right when I got it, I would have been swept away and pulled into the magic of it, but six years later, it wasn't for me.