Book Review: Domus Inter, by Sarah Carter

            You know, if I ever found myself living in the universe where all YA novels take place, I think I’d start a support group: Parents of Protagonists United. These poor men and women pour their time, energy, and love into their children until they reach age sixteen, at which point they’re killed, kidnapped, and tortured while their child disappears, off on some grand adventure, and comes home with a romance interest who’s dangerous, defiant, and so not the nice doctor or lawyer you hoped your kid would marry. There’s a much more interesting novel in that than in any teen romance ever written.

Hey! I own a necklace that looks just like that!

            This weeks’ review is Domus Inter, the first novel by author Sarah Carter. Ironically, it reminded me very much of my first ever stab at writing—a little monstrosity called The Star, in which a young girl also inherits a mysterious property somewhere in the British Isles. My property was a bit cooler, but Carter’s romantic lead is a great deal sexier, so I’ll call it a tie.

            Domus Inter—which anyone forced to sit through an SAT prep class filled with Latin roots would know means House Between—is a mysterious old mansion in the English countryside. When the last of the Lloyd family, the house’s mysterious owners, dies in a speedboat accident, the family of Harriet Lawson inherits it, despite none of them knowing the Lloyds very well at all. Harriet, who’s always felt like a ‘caged tiger, raised in captivity and taught tricks, but still dreaming an ancestral dream of the jungle’, hopes she won’t be ‘doomed to the normal, stereotypical life of someone of my generation and culture’. Saying that you think a normal life is a kind of ‘doom’ seemed a bit pretentious to me, but it’s also consistent with Harriet’s personality.

            When she arrives at Domus Inter with her parents, older sister Leona, and younger sister Rachel, Harriet becomes caught up with a criminal conspiracy involving the estate solicitor and a young man named Mord, who’s not afraid to get his hands a little dirty to achieve his goals. He needs Harriet to help him cast a magic spell that will transport him to his homeworld of Phaliana. However, when he takes her sisters hostage to force Harriet to cast the spell, Harriet and her two sisters are whisked off to Phaliana with him.

            It’s here that Harriet discovers a mysterious prophecy hidden in Arthurian legend—and the deliciously sexy Jack, whose careless attitude and bossiness is quite attractive. With the help of a magical amulet known as the True Heart, Harriet sets out after an ‘evil’ witch named Morgan—although if one takes a look at all the crimes attributed to her throughout the book (murder, child abandonment, destruction of property), she actually hasn’t done much worse things than anyone else in the land of Phaliana.

            It’s refreshing to see a YA fantasy with morally ambiguous characters. Harriet’s no saint—she has an enormous superiority complex and is capable of being quite ruthless when she thinks the greater good depends on it. She wouldn’t be out of place in the Game of Thrones universe, at least as far as morality is concerned. But she has a strong sense of duty and doesn’t whine, which are always refreshing virtues in a YA protagonist.

            Part of my trouble with Harriet’s character comes from her treatment of her older sister, Leona, who she describes as incredibly fake and shallow. At the same time, we know that Leona also is attending nursing school—an extremely selfless, important profession—and is the only member of the family who actually has a job. The relationship between the two sisters is caustic on both sides, but Harriet’s treatment of her sister feels overly ruthless.

           

            So maybe Domus Inter isn’t full of sympathetic characters—but they’re sure interesting. First novels are always tricky beasts, and often it’s difficult for the author to distance themselves from the work and look at it with a critical eye. The Last Judges, a book I reviewed a few months ago, is also a first novel (which I was shocked to discover after I’d read it), but I think the author’s collaborative effort helped keep it good.

            Highs: Moral dissonance. It’s good to have a little muddying of the waters sometimes. The love triangle. It isn’t very traditional, which is a good thing.

            Lows: Paragraph structure. Every paragraph was roughly the same length, which can lull the reader into skipping over parts. Names. ‘Phaliana’, the magical land consisting of Avalon and the other country with no real effect on the plot. It just sounds . . . fake. And phallic. Lampshade hanging. Over and over and over, we’re told this is not a fairy tale, that this isn’t the kind of thing you’d read about in books. Except we live in an age where very few books actually tell the traditional fairy tales. You won’t convince anyone your book is different just by saying it is.  

            My rating? As YA fantasy, I’ll give it three and a half stars. As a novel, three.

You can download Domus Inter here