Sensible, practical Elinor Tregarth really did plan to be the model poor relation when she moved into Hathergill Hall. She certainly never meant to kidnap her awful cousin Penelope’s pet dragon. She never expected to fall in love with the shameless – but surprisingly sweet – fortune hunter who came to court Penelope. And she never dreamed that she would have to enter into an outrageous magical charade to save her younger sisters’ futures.
However, even the most brilliant scholars of 1817 England still haven’t ferreted out all the lurking secrets of rediscovered dragonkind…and even the most sensible of heroines can still make a reckless wish or two when she’s pushed. Now Elinor will have to find out just how rash and resourceful she can be when she sets aside all common sense. Maybe, just maybe, she’ll even be impractical enough to win her own true love and a happily ever after…with the unpredictable and dangerous “help” of the magical creature who has adopted her.
Hiu
Before we really get started,can I just say that it’s a mark of how enjoyable this book was that despite me totally losing the notes I’d written down for this review (I have genuinely no idea where they are… I hope the dog didn’t eat the paper), I still have a very clear picture of the story in my mind.
Scale and Sensibility is a rom-com style of fantasy that centers around a poorer, orphaned member of a rich, noble family. I will fully admit that I am woefully uneducated in what time period this book takes place in, and I don’t want to be an idiot and guess at “Regency” or “Victorian” when I honestly don’t know the difference. It’s… the one with the dresses and ballroom parties and young women preparing for their “debuts”? That’s as far as I know.
And on that note, I really appreciated that Scales didn’t make me feel like an idiot for not knowing all of the trappings and tropes that come with this time period. From its head to its toes, this book is very accessible. It has a charming, unpretentious style of writing, and moves along at a comfortable pace without ever feeling like it’s meandering or speeding along too fast (which is a criticism I sometimes have of romantic fantasy books in this sort of setting).
To tell a little more about the story… Our main character (Elinor) has spent a lot of her life attending to her cousin (Penelope), who is hilariously, almost-cartoonishly, over-the-top awful. Within the first few chapters, Elinor has had enough of her cousin’s shit. The straw that breaks the camel’s back in this instance is Penelope’s treatment of her pet dragon (which are the fashionable new accessory), who will not sit silent and stoically on her shoulder, but will instead literally shit down Penelope’s back whenever it gets too frightened. This is something that happens a lot, given how often Penelope screams and shouts and stamps her feet. In any case, Elinor storms away from her twat of a cousin (and her apathetic mother and dickhead father) in order to give the poor dragon some peace, and in the process kind of accidentally maybe-not-accidentally kidnaps him.
Some fantasy/romance novel hijinks later, and Elinor finds herself going back to the place she’s just run away from. With an accidentally-applied magical glamour that has her looking like one of the most recognisable and fashionable figures in the country (and also Penelope’s idol), and in the company of a very handsome, eligible young gentleman who (to her horror) is there to try and win her cousin’s hand in marriage. And of course, the dragon has to come back too.
From there, we’re in full romcom mode, and you can probably guess where a lot of the story goes. This isn’t really designed to be an “unpredictable” book, after all, and it’s a lot of fun despite the obvious signposting. The humour leans towards the farcical end of the comic spectrum, with a couple of the characters sometimes seeming a little caricature-ish. But the romance is sweet, gentle, and understanding. There are a couple of tiffs in there that maybe felt a little too manufactured for my tastes, but I can look beyond that in these cozier sort of books.
If I had to throw some criticism at Scales and Sensibility, it would be that when the house of cards inevitably comes crashing down for the book’s finale, I felt that the resolution was handled in a way that wobbled my sense of immersion a little bit. It took a very messy (funny) situation and resolved it in a manner that felt a bit too… neat. But honestly, I found that I didn’t mind that as much as I probably should have. Scales and Sensibility never sets itself up to be some serious tome that requires studious, critical reading. It’s fun. It’s escapist. It’s comforting. And it’s very good at being all of that. I guess it never really “wowed” me at any point, but I never once felt like I was having a bad time while I was reading it.
With all that said, it’s time to talk about the score I’m giving it for this year’s SPFBO…
One of the things I always find difficult about judging in competitions such as these is that allocating a score to one book always invites a comparison with the other competing books. Handling that is never easy, but it’s particularly difficult when there is no 1-to-1 comparison to be made. Some books, such as Scales and Sensibility in this instance, were never intended to be deep, contemplative explorations of society or the human condition hidden under layers of complex worldbuilding and metaphor. But other books in this competition will be exactly that. And so finding a common yardstick often feels near impossible.
I could bore you to death with all of the contradictory, conflicting thoughts I have on that. I might, one day. But for now, I’ll just say that the score I’m giving this book probably undervalues my actual feelings on it. Scales and Sensibility is very good at being exactly what it sets out to be. Whether it actually needs any additional layers of complexity is debatable. With them… It’d be an entirely different book. So if this review has interested you, please go and buy it. That’s what this competition is all about. This book deserves sales and it deserves eyeballs.
Perhaps unfairly though, for now, I’m “only” going to score this at the same level as our own finalist from last year — and that’s…
7.5/10
Jared
I agree with Hiu’s general equivocation about SPFBO scoring. In the best of situations (say, where you have a few judges with similar expectations, all working to carefully defined criteria), judging is difficult. In a situation where you have a dozen discrete panels and no criteria whatsoever, throwing an arbitrary number at a book is… wanton cruelty. But, hey, this is the internet. Wanton cruelty is what gets us eyeballs!
With apologies to said eyeballs: there’s no wanton cruelty to be found here. Neither in Scales & Sensibility nor in my review thereof. This is a pleasant, satisfying novel. Fans of more robust fantasy will be disappointed: the magic here is a shameless deus ex machina, and the Freaky Friday hijinks are more akin to a Disney special than Tolkien. (Ironically, Tolkien is the last non-Disney owned property, making that all the more telling!)
My most substantial quibble is that, despite the title and the opening line, this is not particularly Austenian. The humour is more situational (including physical comedy!), the writing is substantially pacier (sorry, Jane), and it draws on tropes that are, if anything, more likely to be found in Heyer. (As someone that happens to enjoy Heyer a great deal, that worked out for me.)
Scales is cute. I mean that in a non-patronising sense. The characters are likable and light, there’s no real sense of danger, and the romance is as PG as it is immediate. Everything very much works out as it should, and there was never any risk of it doing otherwise. It is cozy, fun, and occasionally even a little bit clever.
I’m not going to overthink the scoring like Hiu did, and just echo his 7.5.
7.5/10
The Fantasy Inn’s final score for Scales and Sensibility is:
