Baba Yaga Reads's Reviews > The Familiar

The Familiar is a perfectly adequate book. The prose is serviceable. The character motivations make sense. The historical setting is carefully rendered. In fact, had it been a debut novel written by an up-and-coming author, I would have praised its well constructed—if a little predictable—plot and overlooked the simplicity with which the themes are presented.

But this wasn’t written by just any author. It was written by Leigh Bardugo, a literary powerhouse who could publish her shopping list and turn it into an instant bestseller. I’ve loved some of Bardugo’s past works and heavily disliked some others, but this is the first time I feel absolutely neutral about one of her books.
My feelings are probably due to the fact that nearly everything about The Familiar feels generic: the underdog female protagonist who looks plain and unremarkable, but is in fact extremely powerful; the shallow feminist message that the narrative beats you over the head with; and, of course, the shoehorned romance between a virginal young woman and a brooding immortal man. Groundbreaking.

I kept waiting for something to awaken my interest and set this story apart from the hundreds of romantasy novels that populate the shelves of book stores everywhere; but alas, that something never came. Even Bardugo’s writing style, which is usually one of her stronger assets, felt bland here. There was no trace of her signature irony and wit in the dialogue, no memorable line that stood out to me.

The characters read less like human beings and more like archetypes that the author employs to develop a plot point or drive home a certain message. Every single male character apart from the love interest is thoroughly unlikeable and misogynistic; the commentary on class and religious persecution feels very obvious and repetitive. Given that this author is known for writing layered and compelling villains, I was disappointed with how cartoonishly evil the antagonist acted right from the start.

Most of all, I was underwhelmed by the romance. The two leads seemed to have nothing in common apart from their magic, and I was puzzled by how quickly they went from barely knowing each other to being madly in love. Santangel in particular was utterly charmless and far from the twisted, dangerous demon that everyone in the book seemed to think he was.

With Ninth House, Bardugo proved that she was willing to experiment with her fiction; that she could write darker, grittier, more complex stories presenting thorny themes in a nuanced manner. None of that complexity made it to this book. This is a paint-by-numbers historical fantasy, virtually indistinguishable from the plethora of similar stories published in the past five years to chase the latest trends and appeal to the widest possible audience. I am frankly disappointed that this is all Bardugo could come up with when presented with an opportunity to write literally whatever she wanted.