Weaver's Lament

2.5 out of 5 stars – see this review and others at The Speculative Shelf.

Weaver's Lament, sequel to Brother's Ruin (2017), brings us back to protagonist Charlotte in Victorian-era England, where she attempts to infiltrate a suspicious mill and expose the poor working conditions and nefarious magic at play there. This series continues to be delightfully British — with tea, cakes, cravats, and magic, of course.

The “gaslamp fantasy” environment of Brother's Ruin was fascinating and rich for potential exploration, but there was never a satisfying level of sufficient worldbuilding. Weaver's Lament does even less with this world, sticking Charlotte in a stuffy mill for the majority of the book. The story gets bogged down with more tedious discussions of looms than I thought possible in a novel, much less a novella. Proceedings are much more compelling when Newman shifts to discussing Charlotte's personal conflicts and her interactions with the alluring Magus Hopkins. The ongoing chemistry between Charlotte and Hopkins is the best part of this series, so far.

I'm a bit unsure if each one of these novellas is a one-off adventure or if each subsequent novella is a continuation of a cohesive story, but Weaver's Lament does little to push the overall plot forward, much to my chagrin. If there's another novella in Charlotte's world, I'd hope for more worldbuilding, more magic, continued love triangle romances...and fewer looms.

I do like it when a series improves exponentially, and this is definitely the case with the Industrial Magic novellas. While Brother's Ruin was a fun-enough read, I thought the plot was a bit too thin and could have been longer. While Weaver's Lament doesn't feel much longer than its predecessor, it does feel a lot more substantial and self-contained. I attribute this to the themes: class and privilege and the way both contribute to inequality, oppression, and prejudice, using the treatment of cotton mill workers as a frame of sorts. The inhumanity of the mill workers' treatment as portrayed in the novella is real enough, but the added magical element and associated twist just really drive home how inhumane conditions were at the time for factory workers in general - and worse, can still be, even in these supposedly more enlightened contemporary times.

Other things that make me happy about this novella are the character development and the overall plot. Charlie grew a little in the previous novella, but this go-round really tested her as a character, and while it's clear she still has a lot of growing left to do, I'm now really looking forward to seeing how that happens. As for the plot, I think it's a lot more self-contained, and of just the right length. I'm now definitely looking forward to the next novella, and seeing where Charlie goes next, and what injustice she will attempt to take on.