Blog Tour Review - The Notorious Virtues by Alwyn Hamilton

 Blog Tour Review - The Notorious Virtues by Alwyn Hamilton

A glamorous media darling, a surprise heiress, and the magical competition of a lifetime.

At sixteen, Honora “Nora” Holtzfall is the daughter of the most powerful heiress in all of Walstad. Her family controls all the money–and all the magic–in the entire country. But despite being the center of attention, Nora has always felt like an outsider. When her mother is found dead in an alley, the family throne and fortune are suddenly up for grabs, and Nora will be pitted against her cousins in the Veritaz, the ultimate magical competition for power that determines the one family heir.

But there’s a surprise contestant this time: Lotte, the illegitimate daughter of Nora’s aunt. When Lotte’s absent mother retrieves her from the rural convent she’d abandoned her to, Lotte goes from being an orphan to surrounded by family. Unfortunately, most of them want her dead.

And soon, Nora discovers that her mother’s death wasn’t random–it was murder. And the only person she can trust to uncover the truth of what happened is a rakish young reporter who despises everything Nora and her family stand for.

With everyone against her, Lotte’s last hope is hunting for the identity of her father. But the dangerous competition–and her feelings for Theo, one of the Holtzfalls’ sworn protectors–turns her world upside down.

Incredible tests, impossible choices and deadly odds await both girls. But there can only be one winner.

I loved, and was surprised by, The Notorious Virtues. Not surprised at loving it, I should emphasise. I've read Alwyn Hamilton's earlier work, Rebel of the Sands, so I was expecting an exciting and interesting story full of well-realised characters and I certainly got that. No, what was surprising was the focus of the story and how brilliantly that resonates.

See, I was expecting a story about a competition, a series of trials to win an inheritance. And I've have been fine with that. That kind of story works really well in YA. I'm currently reading The Hunger Games to my partner (the original book, for the first time. Yes, I'm that late to the party!) I adore the Inheritance Games series of books by Jennifer Lynn Barnes. I was all ready to settle down to a thrilling adventure story about a group of rich girls competing for an inheritance.

There is, of course, an element of that here. It's well done too. There are trials over a series of days testing the virtues of the competitors. Those who pass a trial earn a wooden ring that allows them entry into the woods for the second part of the trial. The one who goes into the woods and claims the ancestral wood-cutting axe becomes head of the family, gets all of the power and control and wins the magic of the losing competitors. The delightful twist here is that they don't know when they're going to face a trial, what form the trial will take, which virtue it will test or how it is won. It may be an obvious attack to test their bravery or a simple test of selflessness while they're out shopping. I loved that concept, that they need to remain vigilant for the whole period or risk losing a trial, or to essentially behave virtuously for the whole trial period. 

But what was surprising is what a small part of the novel these trials take up. The main focus is elsewhere, and honestly that's the great strength of The Notorious Virtues. Mixed in with this story about a magical competition is a story all about wealth and privilege. Most of the main characters in this magical city are the wealthiest of the wealthy, with breath-taking levels of generational wealth and all of the power and control that comes with it. They're the ones who decide who the governor is and tell him what he'll do. They're the ones the laws don't apply to, the ones who can break curfew without a thought, who'll just get waved through by the police. They're also the ones the media hound, following them everywhere and putting their pictures on the front cover of every paper and magazine. And because they've had this power since the founding of the city, it's inbuilt. It's systemic. There are elections, sure, but elections where voting power is proportional to wealth. They have a whole troupe of sworn knights guarding them through their own ancestral oaths. 

What we get is a story about how that level of privilege influences things, both on a personal and a city-wide level. We see how power corrupts, how influence is wielded for self-advancement at the cost of others, how the systems ensure that the rich get richer and the poor poorer, and how the whole machinery of the state can be used to ensure that this state of affairs continues. It's brutal and a times ugly, but it is also incredibly timely and powerfully told. There's hope there too, as we start to see hints of how power, money and influence can be used to enact change for the better. That with great privilege, there might also come responsibility. 

The world building is wonderful. The charmed city is a fantastical blend of magic and mech, the two blending together seamlessly to give us a world where people drive around to parties in automobiles, using charmed rings to keep their champagne chilled. There's a cocktail age feel to much of it, infused with charm magic that is often subtle but occasionally erupts in a real show of power.

The Notorious Virtues is a murder mystery too, with a dead heiress, plucky reporter, shadowy crime boss, rabble-rousing demagogues, corrupt officials and a beautiful dame. It is soaked in crime-noir tropes that fit the feel of the world and the story so wonderfully. 

Finally there's the folklore. Running throughout the book is a fairy tale origin to all of the Holtzall dynasty that worked perfectly setting things up and showing the magical foundations to their power.

The Notorious Virtues sets itself a big challenge, giving us a heroine who is so utterly privileged and asking us to root for her, often against the very people her family is oppressing. Somehow it manages to achieve this incredibly effectively, while never shying away from the damaging effects of that level of privilege and power. I'm excited to see how it holds up this standard in the sequel.

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The Notorious Virtues by Alwyn Hamilton is out now, published by Faber & Faber.

I received a review copy in exchange for an honest review and participation in this The Write Reads Ultimate Blog Tour.

Please check out the rest of the tour