"That's what hocuses are like, and that's why, if you live in the Lower City of Mélusine, you keep one eye on the Mirador all the time, same way you would with a swamp adder. It's just common sense."

Mildmay is a thief, a successful cat-burglar in the city of Mélusine. All his life, he's tried to keep clear of magic and its practitioners, but it seems every job he's come across lately has a hocus behind it.

Felix is a wizard, dashing and powerful, but with a twisted past of pain and poverty he thought he had escaped. When dark magic uses him to destroy the powerful artifact that has protected Mélusine from its enemies, Felix is nearly broken.

Drawn together by a past neither wish to remember, Mildmay and Felix must escape forces who want nothing more than revenge to search for the key to saving the city -- and themselves.

Sarah Monette's Mélusine is a lush and evocative fantasy novel. Ms. Monette's debut novel, Mélusine begins a trilogy that continues with The Virtue and Mirador.

The strength of this novel is in the voice. Even beyond Ms. Monette's beautiful prose, she has created such unique voices for Felix and Mildmay that the language itself helps create the setting. The world of Mélusine has it's own vocabulary, and the book doesn't slow down to explain things to you, but the world is so immersive the street slang and noble titles alike quickly sound natural.

The story is told in the first person, with alternating viewpoints between Felix and Mildmay. This unique approach works very well to put us in touch with these two very different main characters. Even without the headings at the start of each section to tell you who is narrating, there would be no way to confuse Mildmay's rough, but sincere, street-dialect with Felix's sometimes mad, sometimes achingly tragic ramblings. While Mildmay the more sympathetic character, Felix's sections are hypnotic and intense, leaving the reader off balance.

If the book has a weakness, it comes in the pacing. Primarily in Felix's narrative, in the beginning, several huge things happened with disconcerting speed, and then nothing seemed to happen for quite a long while. Fortunately, Ms. Monette's prose is so strong, you only notice the pacing problems after you've put the book down. In the midst of reading, your mind is consumed by the narrative. Her writing carries you through, even as you start to realize most of the meat of the plot doesn't get resolved until the second book.

Despite these flaws, Mélusine remains a brilliant debut novel. If you love beautiful words and exquisitely crafted characters, Mélusine is a must-have addition to your bookshelf.