For those unacquainted with Catholic demonology, a familiar, or “familiar spirit,” as the phrase shows up in the Bible, is an otherworldly creature indentured to a master, usually whoever’s summoned it — a witch or necromancer or, in the case of Aladdin, a lucky rube who finds a bottle in need of a shine.
In Leigh Bardugo’s richly drawn novel of magic and eternal love “The Familiar,” the Aladdin of the story is Luzia, a scullion girl working for fallen nobility in 16th-century Spain. Spells and enchantments come to Luzia with ease, initially manifesting as small remedies to household gaffes: A burned loaf of bread is suddenly edible; a ripped seam repairs itself. She’s wildly gifted, but has little control of her abilities.
Enter Guillén Santángel, a familiar bound to serve Victor de Paredes, an ambitious tradesman known throughout Madrid for his astonishing luck. The de Paredes family has owned Santángel for three generations, employing him as an invaluable henchman, fixer and bringer of otherworldly good fortune. Known as El Alacrán, the scorpion, Santángel is an indomitable force with a voice like “ashes gone cold” who looks “at once beautiful and like he was dying, as if a sheet had been laid over a particularly handsome corpse.” When de Parades selects Luzia to compete as his “holy champion” in a torneo of magic at the luxurious La Casilla, a contest with life-or-death stakes, Santángel is enlisted to guide her. In the process, he becomes her protector, mentor and friend.
Luzia, described by one character as a wolf who has “taken the shape of a girl,” makes for an unlikely sorceress. She lacks formal education, and is as ignorant of her potential as she is of her origins. Luzia’s ancestors were, it turns out, conversos, Jews forced to convert to Catholicism but still considered “the embodiment of everything the Inquisition reviled.” Although her parents are dead, Luzia’s aunt has taught her the “precious, perilous scraps of language” that form the basis of her spells, a music she hears but doesn’t fully understand. At La Casilla, Luzia must hide her origins and her intelligence. She dresses with prim severity in a plain black dress and a white ruff like a Renaissance-era Coco Chanel, hoping to seem less threatening.
Luzia may disguise herself, but her talent shatters any hope that she will go unnoticed. She’s a sensation from the first, drawing the ire of ruthless competitors. Navigating the torneo’s Machiavellian politics is no easy feat, and it doesn’t help that she’s falling for Santángel. He’s pretty hard to resist. Equals in magic and subterfuge, they are both trapped in their own ways. He, too, is lonely; immortality has nearly killed him, leaving him to forget the “pleasure of warm skin, conversation, the glimmering of connection.” Their growing intimacy forms a bond that will save them both.
Bardugo, whose Gothic fiction includes “Ninth House” and the Y.A. novels “Shadow and Bone” and “Six of Crows,” is perfectly at home in the 16th century. Her prose mirrors the Baroque setting, her sentences lush and embroidered with pearls. Subplots proliferate, characters appear and retreat, and points of view shift from one person to the next, creating a panopticon around Luzia and Santángel. Reading Bardugo is an immersive, sensual experience: There are orange-blossom scented dreams, jewel-encrusted velvet dresses, fabrics dyed “with turmeric and berries from Persia more purple than a bruise,” a pomegranate’s “perfect glossy seeds, begging to be eaten.” One can’t help sinking into Luzia and Santángel’s world and wishing never to leave.
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