The Vermilion Emporium by Jamie PactonMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
At first, after reading The Absinthe Underground, I didn't think I'd be able to find this earlier novel by Jamie Pacton at any of the local libraries. I guess I didn't look hard enough, because a few months later, after seeing The Vermilion Emporium on a Barnes & Noble shelf and checking the library website in Vancouver, I found it available to place on order, and so I did.
Just like Pacton's green fairy tale, this book is a very darkly romantic French-inflected YA fantasy, with more than a touch of Venetian Italian in the DNA as well - think Stephanie Garber, with a foot in the sci-fi realm, and a lot less reliant on the "Darkling-copycat prettyboy bad boy falling in love with a good girl who's naïve about her secret magic superpowers" tropes that Garber unfortunately tends to play to the hilt.
Pacton said that this book is heavily inspired by The Radium Girls and the tragic true stories of the dreadful poisoning these women incurred for their art, but it also reminds me a lot of Peter and the Starcatchers, where astral material has some unexpected effects reminiscent of radiation and potentially lethal in the wrong hands. Unfortunately, the book does feel a lot longer than it really is, in part due to erratic pacing - the romance aspect takes off pretty quickly, no slow burn here, but other aspects of the storyline take a hell of a lot longer to incubate. But for a standalone dark fantasy, Pacton again does a pretty serviceable job with high stakes and ever relevant historical inspiration.
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