Becoming Something Greater, a Review of Invisible Chains

Invisible Chains (2019)
Written by: Michelle Renee Lane
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 337 (ARC)
Publisher: Haverhill House Publishing

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for a fair review.

Premise:

Jacqueline is a young Creole slave in antebellum New Orleans. An unusual stranger who has haunted her dreams since childhood comes to stay as a guest in her master’s house. Soon after his arrival, members of the household die mysteriously, and Jacqueline is suspected of murder. Despite her fear of the stranger, Jacqueline befriends him and he helps her escape. While running from the slave catchers, they meet conjurers, a loup-garou, and a traveling circus of supernatural freaks. She relies on ancestral magic to guide her and finds strength to conquer her fears on her journey.

No spoilers

Discussion: I enjoyed the journey this book took me on. The fantasy part of it reminded me a lot of the parts that I really liked in Brown Girl in the Ring by Nalo Hopkinson, which we read for Book Club last February. It had the same Creole belief system fueling the magic wielded by the main character, Jacqueline, though this book added vampires, werewolves, and the antebellum south.

The setting was particularly poignant, and very much played into how Jacqueline’s family came into their powers. We first meet Jacqueline in slavery, on a plantation in Louisiana. She’s the daughter of her master and as she grows up draws the unwanted attention of his son, her half brother. When the master’s daughter, her half sister, marries a man from New Orleans, she’s given to her sister as a household slave, and must leave her mother and the plantation she’s grown up on.

This book particularly shines in the strength of Jacqueline and the struggles she overcomes on her own without a savior. She’s a strong character, forged by the truly awful circumstances of her life into something greater than she believed she could become.

I had some struggles with the modern language in the antebellum south. Jacqueline has a lot of modern thought processes, and I couldn’t tell if that was a deliberate choice on the part of the author or not. Additionally, I was reading an uncorrected proof and am not sure if the decision will be made, when the book goes to print, to put the telepathic conversations in italics or not, because they were pretty hard to distinguish from the surrounding prose at times.

Still, a strong showing in a genre that needs more representation from authors of color.

In conclusion: This book was painful to read at parts, but in the good way that painful things should be. Jacqueline is a character worth getting to know.