Riley Judith Merkle : Oracle Glass

The decadence and splendor of the Sun King's court in seventeenth-century France provide the backdrop for a historically authentic tale of a fifteen-year-old girl who joins a sorcerous subculture that toys with the lives of the rich and powerful. 35,000 first printing. $35,000 ad/promo.

YA-Genevieve Pasquier is an educated, skinny, crooked-backed 15-year-old when her beloved father dies. After her uncle rapes her, she runs away, desiring only to end her pain by drowning herself. Instead, she is taken in by La Voisin, a wealthy fortune-teller, abortionist, and chemist who rules the seamier side of 17th-century Paris. La Voisin sets her up in her own business disguised as "Madame de Morville," an 150-year-old seeress who interprets images that appear in an oracle glass. This profitable venture throws young Genevieve into a world of court intrigue, political back-stabbing, demonology, and revenge, and she discovers that she enjoys the independence denied to most women of the time. When she is invited to the palace to read the waters for Louis XIV, she slides from favor and is suspected of participating in a poisoning ring. In a desperate race against time, she must rely on her own wits and on a man she loves to save herself. Mature YAs will relish her development from a weak and naive child to a witty and powerful woman who manipulates degenerate, superstitious Parisian society to her own advantage.
Susan R. Farber, Chappaqua Library, NY
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From the author of In Pursuit of the Green Lion comes a novel set in 17th-century Paris and Versailles, tinged with the occult and a feminist sensibility. The younger daughter of a loveless marriage between a scholar and a woman of high breeding, Genevieve Pasquier appears to have few prospects, since she was born with a deformed leg. Taught Latin by her father, however, she has a keen intelligence that stands her in good stead when, after leaving home as a teenager, she is adopted by a wealthy fortune-teller as her protegee. Genevieve has the gift of seeing the future in water, a talent that Catherine Montvoison, a real-life figure who was both a seer and an undercover abortionist to the aristocracy, quickly exploits. Played out against the background of Louis XIV's court, the narrative offers ample glances into the lives of the nobility, as well as intrigue and a love triangle involving Genevieve, an outlaw and a society playwright. Unfortunately, the author's impressive knowledge of the time is offset by wooden characterization and predictable plotting, and her story never quite breaks the bounds of competent genre fiction. Toward the climax, scenes of torture, witch-hunts and executions will satisfy those who like their historical fiction laced with a touch of horror; for readers who enjoy an exotic setting with a celebrity slant, the novel offers an intriguing vacation read.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Riley (In Pursuit of the Green Lion, 1990) continues, in her congenially gossipy fashion, to elbow a bright, appealing heroine through some of history's more unlovely byways--here, a scramble of 17th-century French aristocrats, some of whom (including a royal mistress or two) patronized a flourishing consortium of fortunetellers, poisoners, abortionists, and stagers of black masses. Within this dangerous milieu, a young girl finds notoriety, wealth, love...and an exit. ``This wicked world of ours needs its witches,'' says ``La Voisin'' (like several other characters, a real personage), czarina of a network of occult practitioners, who at one point ``held the entire kingdom of France in her hands.'' It was La Voisin, recognizing promising material in the grieving, crippled, raging 16-year-old daughter of a noble house of cruelty (and, as it turned out, murder), who snatched Genevieve Pasquier from suicide and groomed her for a fortunetelling career. So the ``Marquise de Morville,'' 150 years old, dressed in antique style with white face-paint, is created and is a smashing success. She'll read for the stupid queen as well as for King Louis XIV and his reigning mistress, both sleekly ferocious as adders. Genevieve is under contract to La Voisin, who rules the curious domesticity of her rue Beauregard house, home of mysterious cabinets, little bottles, a lovely garden with a smoking chimney, and a busy kitchen where cheerful women boil down...well, never mind. In the meantime, the ``Marquise'' dotes on one man and finds another, learns of murders close to home, and, with police closing in and the house at rue Beauregard about to fall, achieves a very narrow escape. Not quite as murkily scary as Anne Rice's grue-fests, but chilly, witty, and completely engrossing. With a cheerful skewering (historically grounded) of the sheer, cretinous awfulness of the Sun King's satellites, plenty of skittery action, and a wisp of the supernatural (the heroine does ``see'' the future). Great good fun. (Book-of-the-Month Club selection) -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Once again Riley (Vision of Light, LJ 10/ 15/90; In Pursuit of the Green Lion, LJ 1/ 89) has written an outstanding historical novel of 17th-century France, permeated by a feminist consciousness that enlivens her work without dominating it. Genevieve Pasquier, the ugly, scholarly daughter of a financier who fell along with Nicholas Fouquet, is beloved by her father but no one else; when he dies she is imprisoned by selfish relatives convinced that she has access to a secret fortune. Escaping, she is saved from suicide by a notorious occultist and her secret organization. They transform her into the Marquise de Morville, whose mystery and fortune-telling gifts capture the attention of members of the Sun King's court. Based on a real-life scandal known as the "Affaire des Poisons," this tale is riveting from start to finish. [Literary Guild selection.]-Cynthia Johnson, Cary Memorial Lib., Lexington, Mass.
--Cynthia Johnson, Cary Memorial Lib., Lexington, Mass.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.