New York Times bestselling YA author Libba Bray is apparently suffering from a severe case of Stephenie Meyer syndrome.   The symptoms of this affliction are lame heroines (passive protagonists who mope about, unwilling to take control of their lives), and writing in excess (dragging stories across 800 pages that could have been told in half as many).  To cure, find a good editor and apply liberally until weak-willed heroines and long-windedness have subsided.

Libba Bray’s Gemma Doyle trilogy (A Great and Terrible Beauty, Rebel Angels, and The Sweet Far Thing) starts out strong in its first two installments but really loses its focus in the overlong and meandering The Sweet Far Thing, which was more of a disappointment than a pleasure to read.  Unfortunately for readers who would like to skip out on book three altogether, there’s plenty left unresolved after the second book, and you’ll want to see where the series goes, even if the conclusion itself leaves much to be desired.  Your best options are to buck up and commit from start to finish or to read A Great and Terrible Beauty as a standalone and let those questions go unanswered.

In A Great and Terrible Beauty, we are introduced to Gemma Doyle, an unconventional British teen who lives in India in the late 19th century.  On Gemma’s 16th birthday while at a market with her mother in Bombay, Gemma’s mother is given a cryptic warning to beware of Circe. Gemma flees at her terrified mother’s request and shortly suffers a terrible vision of her mother dying at the hands of a demonic creature in Circe’s control.  While mourning her mother who died just as her vision foretold, Gemma is shipped to the Spence Academy for Young Ladies, a finishing school in England where she is to spend a year refining her etiquette before making her debut in uppercrust Victorian society.

At Spence Academy, Gemma continues to suffer uncontrollable visions, and she is warned by Kartik, a handsome Indian man (and member of a secret brethren), that she must control her visions or risk a terrible fate.  Although she is an outcast to most of Spence, Gemma bonds with three other girls – Felicity, Ann, and Pippa – when she discovers a 25 year old diary and the truths that tie her visions to a magical realm that was once ruled by an Order of powerful women.  With her friends at her side, Gemma uses her power to open a secret door into the Realms where they are liberated for the first time from the constraints of their oppressive society.  The girls covet the magic of the Realms and the power, beauty, love, and self-knowledge that is granted to them.

Soon, Gemma discovers that she is the only one strong enough to sustain the magic in the real world, and that her inner power was passed down from her mother who was both a member of the Order and a former student at Spence with a terrible and deadly secret.  The rest of the trilogy expands upon the mythology of the Realms, the fallout of Gemma’s mother’s past, Gemma’s burgeoning love with Kartik, and her capricious and fiercely loyal friendship with Felicity, Ann, and Pippa, who must come to terms with their gifts and personal failings.

There are a few things Libba Bray writes very well.  Her prose is solid, but not purple, and the Victorian setting is vividly imagined.  Even young readers unfamiliar with 19th century England will recognize how oppressive the era was for women as second class citizens with very few opportunities to make decisions or even to express their own opinions.  With such a restricting environment, it’s easy to understand what draws Gemma and her friends to the Realms as they struggle to free themselves from the expectations, societal pressures, and family obligations that burden them.

All four friends are sympathetic to some degree in the beginning, from head-strong Felicity to indecisive Gemma to cowardly Ann.   There is some decent character development for the clique and the secondary characters in the first two books, but The Sweet Far Thing is an uncomfortable mix of characters who have regressed or stagnated and characters who have veered wildly off their initial trajectories and who act out in ways that are strongly incompatible with their book one and book two personalities.

The mythology of the Realms is meh-ish.  There’s some lovely imagery but also a lot of unexplained inconsistencies, from the geography of the world to the way time works.  The world is populated with some intriguing magical creatures, most notably a warrior Gorgon who is confined to the prow of a boat and bound to speak only the truth, but most of the creatures are little more than passive bystanders, particularly in the third book.  They mostly stand around, whining about Gemma’s exclusive control of the magic and her broken promises, while Gemma mostly stands around, meekly refusing to make decisions and take charge, while the world crumbles slowly around her.

When the series whimpers to an exhausted, over-worded end, even the surprising self-sacrifice of a lead character can’t redeem the disappointing conclusion.  A Great and Terrible Beauty is mostly great while The Sweet Far Thing is mostly terrible, and that inconsistency does not bode well for readers wanting to take a chance on the writer’s later works.  Let’s just hope that Bray takes a sick day, fills her good editor prescription, and gets over that loathsome syndrome, once and for all.