Court of Fives | Review

Court of Fives started out so, so wonderfully.  For the first third of the book, I was totally and completely enraptured.  So, understandably I think, I was a little miffed when the book took a turn for the worse right before its halfway point.  What Court of Fives did well, it did well.  Which made its mistakes that much more disappointing.

So, what it's about... It's not a close enough interpretation of Little Women to be a retelling, but Court of Fives is definitely inspired by Louisa May Alcott's classic.  Both books feature families with four daughters and a military-enlisted father.  Elliott's daughters have names that correspond closely with Alcott's famous Mary, Beth, Jo, and Amy. The "Jo" character has a passionate hobby. However, that's where the salutation ends.  The connection is a touch random and amounts to nothing but a startling revelation if you went into reading not knowing about it.  Personally, I think the story could have stood up just fine without the matchy-matchy names.

Court of Fives is set in an empire that's a little Egyptian, a little Persian, a touch Venetian, etc.  There is some mechanical fantasy thrown in as well, akin to steampunk, most prominently in the form of the Fives, a competitive obstacle course. Our protagonist, Jo, I mean Jes, secretly trains for the Fives when she can escape from her large family.  Speaking of her family... draaaaama.  Jes and her sisters are racial mixes.  Their father is a lowborn, yet high achieving, son of the empire. The girls' mother is their father's concubine, incapable of being being his wife because her heritage is that of the empire's conquered people.

The whole situation is a tense, awkward mess and it was an utter pleasure to read about.  I'd say the family dynamics were, hands down, the best part of Court of Fives.  I was on the edge of my seat to find out what would happen next with the faux-Marches, especially when the seediness of having a live-in concubine and a mess of illegitimate daughters gets in the way of the father's burgeoning military career.  I'm getting shivers just thinking about it.

As for our protagonist, Jes, I'm going to get real for a second.  Unlike everyone else on planet Earth, Amy is my favorite March sister.  I loathe self-appeciative Jo.  Elliott's Jes is similar enough in personality to Alcott's Jo that my distaste crossed over.  I could tolerate Jes and her spunkiness tolerably well until the character made, in my opinion, a terrible decision that careened the story away from the direction I wanted it to go in.  Depending on whether or not you agree with Jes's decision can make or break Court of Fives for you, I think.

All in all, there were some highly successful elements to Court of Fives that make it worth reading.  However, I'll be curious to see if other readers object as strongly as myself concerning Jes's decisions.