To make matters worse, a rather bombastic figure with the delightful name of the Duke of the Navel of the Seas shows up from Fairyland threatening to kill all the English magicians and sack the country, in an effort to reclaim a talisman called the Virtu, which he says has been stolen from the Fairy Queen. Prunella and her husband Zachariah, whose adventures were the focus of that novel, are mostly secondary characters here, as Muna seeks not only to find the source of her curse, but to find a way of rescuing her sister from the Unseen Realm, which she is repeatedly told is pretty unlikely, given the tense relations between England and the Fairy Court. Muna ends up in England, at the academy of the Sorceress Royal, Prunella Wythe, who gained the position back in Sorcerer to the Crown.
Following the instructions from the old witch, the sisters set out, taking a shortcut to England through the Unseen Realm – fairyland itself – but, in good fairytale form, Sakti decides to disobey one of the instructions and suddenly disappears. The situation is somewhat urgent, since Sakti, who has some magical powers of her own, seems in danger of disappearing (there’s a growing, see-through hole in her middle). They make their way to Mak Genggang, the powerful but kindly witch who we met in the first novel, who suspects they are victims of a curse which may have originated in England (Malaysia was at the time occupied by the British). Such a curse is what sets off the plot of this enjoyable but somewhat less acerbic sequel, which begins on the Malaysian island of Janda Baik, where two young women awaken on the beach after a massive storm, barely remembering their names and not much else, but concluding they must be sisters named Muna and Sakti. But apart from nomenclature, it seems to be the same place, and a magical curse seems to work just fine across cultural barriers. In The True Queen, we learn that the command central of the spirit realm is called the Fairy Court by the Malaysian characters and the Palace of the Unseen by the British, presided over by either the Queen of the Djinns or the Fairy Queen.
Willow Wilson offers some insightful contrasts between Islamic and Christian legend, Zen Cho, in her follow-up novel to Sorcerer to the Crown, does something a bit similar with Malaysian vs.
0 kommentar(er)
