The Gemma Doyle Trilogy
A Great and Terrible Beauty, Rebel Angels, The Sweet Far Thing
by Libba Bray
A Victorian girl’s life usually consists of dresses, dances, gossip, and learning how to be a proper lady. Instead, Gemma has spent the first sixteen years of her life in India, dreaming of going to England and seeing the land her grandmother has told her about in letters.
But when she finally gets the opportunity to go, it is under less than ideal circumstances. Her mother is dead, and Gemma is having strange visions, which a rather annoying Indian boy is telling her to ignore. Whats more, she’s been placed in Spence Academy, a school where young ladies are made into perfect wives and mothers of England.
Yet all is not lost, for Gemma’s mother appears in her dreams and leads her to a place where magic is real and your wildest fantasies – and worst nightmares – can come true: the Realms.
The trilogy follows Gemma and her friends as they work to defeat the darkness and restore balance to the Realms. It also shows them fighting the battles of London society and finding their place in the world.
It’s not all about pretty girls in corsets fighting monsters of darkness though. They deal with homosexuality and child abuse, and the Victorian era’s attitudes and opinions on these things.
The story itself is amazing, though it drags on at times, Gemma, the protagonist, can seem a bit slow, but she is completely genuine, along with all her friends, and the author never tries to apologize for their flaws. After the usual pace of the books, the ending seemed rushed and overloaded with meaning, but it wrapped up the story wonderfully.
