Review: That Inevitable Victorian Thing

That Inevitable Victorian Thing by E.K. Johnston
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

(Am I the only one who's not really feeling that title, though? It just feels a little too much like a working title than an official one, you get it?)

As Johnston herself puts it, "That Inevitable Victorian Thing is a smallish story that takes place in a very big world." So true. While I felt that this book's main story was a little lacking, and a little thin, it boasted some very interesting romantic spins and more than lovable characters to keep those spins coming.

It was the bigger world-building that really boosted the book, though - nuggets of information at a time about this alternate world where the British Empire never fell, and yet it became a hell of a lot more progressive a hell of a lot quicker than the real world did. Between the original Queen Victoria's suggestion that her descendants marry interracially, thus normalizing a great degree of ethnic mixing by the time this book takes place some 150-200 years later, and the idea that this very normalization kept the Empire alive while America fractured, almost certainly due to racism (and ultimately became a Mexican-run Southwest, a Deep South now run by the descendants of former slaves, and an all-but-broken North)...yeah, I see what you did there, Johnston. Terrific ideas, and much better alternate-history world-building than in The Story of Owen and Prairie Fire.

The genetic-matching aspect of this culture, however, creeped me out more than a bit. Not only because of the eerie similarities to one of the teaser clips for the upcoming season of Black Mirror - "Hang the DJ," I believe - but because some cynical part of my mind kept me thinking, what if this genetic stuff is done to ensure that interracial pairings happen in certain predetermined quotas or something?

But no. In addition to the positivity of racial and gender and sexual inclusion, one of this book's primary themes is the promotion of free will, embodied not only in the life and times of Victoria I, but also in her descendants and those who mix and mingle with them.

I'm actually kinda hoping that there'll be a sequel to this one, though if not, that's cool too.

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