The Scarlet Ball
Nghi Vo
What if a storm fell in love with you?
I have a short list of authors that I call my “Take My Money” list. Nghi Vo is near the top of that list. Anything she publishes I will buy and take the time to read. She caught me in her web with The Empress of Salt and Fortune, and I have not been able to escape since. (Well, let’s be honest -- I haven’t tried. I like it in here.)
I’m not going to bother with a plot summary, because the publisher’s summary is unusually good, so read that first. The year is 1890; the hero is Judith Ban, a French-Annamese girl who grew up in Paris and escaped to New York City, where she scrapes along as an assistant to a large millinery, until one stormy night, when she attempts to make a delivery to one of New York’s wealthiest households, the Howards. Mrs Howard recruits Judith to wear the face of her absconded granddaughter Iphigenia and stand in for her at a series of society events in which the wealthy young women of New York attempt to enrapture demon lords. To enrapture without being eaten, that is. The demons are natural disasters in human shape. Mrs Howard’s husband, for instance, is a wildfire.
What Vo does with great skill is portray the tension of a girl dancing on a tightrope over a hungry pit of disaster. One feels at every moment that Judith will die if she missteps a millimeter. She keeps disaster at bay not through strength (although Judith does have her own kind of strength) but through a deft touch. Judith, it transpires, is exceptionally good at this.
Vo, too, is exceptionally good at this. I loved her small flights of imagination. For instance, here is her description of Judith’s gown for the Scarlet Ball,
It emerged like wickedness from Pandora’s box, dark and eager to ruin the world.
Read it!