Title: The Familiar
Author: Leigh Bardugo
Genre: Historical Fantasy
Publisher: 
Publication Date: 
Format: Hardcover
Length:  pages

Read if you like: historical fantasy, the Spanish golden age, folklore-feeling magic, unlikeable characters, lyrical writing, political scheming, magic competitions

Rating: 

I’ve proudly read nearly everything Leigh Bardugo has written and loved every book, so when I learned about The Familiar, I knew it was an automatic must-read even before I knew anything about it. That said, I wasn’t expecting just how far of a departure this novel would be from her other fantasy works, and it took me a bit of time to adjust my expectations.

The Familiar was a slow burn of brilliance. It presents extremely historical, reading much more like a historical account than a fantasy, with some light magical elements, until all of a sudden the magic becomes much more thrilling and grandiose and, combined with the history, the story picks up some traction. The pacing is generally slow, and the characters unfold very gradually, but when things started to fall into place, I found myself falling very much in love with the story.

This book is not remotely like anything I’ve read from Bardugo so far and speaks well to the range she’s capable of. It took me a minute before I was sold on this one, but once I was invested, there was no going back.

The Book Synopsis: The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo 

In a shabby house, on a shabby street, in the new capital of Madrid, Luzia Cotado uses scraps of magic to get through her days of endless toil as a scullion. But when her scheming mistress discovers the lump of a servant cowering in the kitchen is actually hiding a talent for little miracles, she demands Luzia use those gifts to better the family’s social position.

What begins as simple amusement for the bored nobility takes a perilous turn when Luzia garners the notice of Antonio Pérez, the disgraced secretary to Spain’s king. Still reeling from the defeat of his armada, the king is desperate for any advantage in the war against England’s heretic queen—and Pérez will stop at nothing to regain the king’s favor.

Determined to seize this one chance to better her fortunes, Luzia plunges into a world of seers and alchemists, holy men and hucksters, where the line between magic, science, and fraud is never certain. But as her notoriety grows, so does the danger that her Jewish blood will doom her to the Inquisition’s wrath. She will have to use every bit of her wit and will to survive—even if that means enlisting the help of Guillén Santangel, an embittered immortal familiar whose own secrets could prove deadly for them both. 

The Review 

As I mentioned above, I probably shouldn’t have gone into this book completely blind, and if you’re picking it up because you’re a die-hard Bardugo fan like I am, I would recommend not making the same mistake. 

The Familiar was a marked departure from Bardugo’s other works. It presented extremely historical, and while there were supernatural/magical elements, it was the setting, the history, and the characters that took the overwhelming majority of the focus. 

In terms of setting and history, the Spanish Golden Age is an area rife with detail to explore. Bardugo does a superb job of building a world of magic and intrigue that fits perfectly into the familiar atmosphere that surrounded the Spanish inquisitions, making you feel like the persecution of the time could very well have gone hand in hand with the type of light magic that you’re witnessing through the characters. The line between religion and the occult blurs and intermingles in fascinating ways with the reigning monarchy and noble structures, and seeing the power and inequity it causes simultaneously for those without wealth or privilege is a core theme throughout the book that I thought was explored beautifully.

In terms of characters, they’re all varying degrees of unlikeable, particularly in the beginning. While Luzia is a victim of circumstance in many ways, it takes a long time for her to gain the confidence and cunning to own her abilities and begin to steer her future. She’s very meek initially, quite by intention. Still, her arc is a fascinating one, particularly as her confidence eventually grows into her downfall, as it so often did for women of the age. 

I also felt like Santangel was uniquely unlikeable from the very start, and his evolution is even stranger and more fascinating than Luzia’s. He’s not a particularly noble saviour throughout most of the book, and even when he is, it’s narrow and typically reserved specifically for Luzia alone. 

I think the piece that solidified this book for me was the ending, which I won’t go into detail on since I don’t want to spoil anything. That said, it was brilliant—I loved the twists, and I loved that the conclusion almost felt like a folklore story rather than an actual resolution. It was a gorgeous and fitting finish for a desperate situation.

This book was so far outside of what I was expecting, and while I did find the pacing to be slow, the plot and the characters eventually hooked me in. By the end, I couldn’t put this down and was thoroughly impressed with how well the whole thing was executed. It’s definitely a different vibe from other Bardugo works, but it was a true demonstration of her range and still a big hit for me.