There is a magic about Venice.  So many visitors over the centuries have discovered something very special in the city of canals.

Mary Hoffman’s brilliant new teen fantasy novel, Stravaganza, goes a few steps further, blurring the boundaries between magic and science, between dream and reality, in another Venice that is almost ours, but so, so different.

Lucien is a teenager seriously ill with cancer.  Somehow, when sleeping, he finds himself in the Renaissance city of Belleza, caught up in the intrigues and deadly politics of the Duchessa and her rivals.  Belleza, the almost-Venice, is a fiercely independent state in Talia (almost-Italy) desperately resisting control by the Chimici family (almost-Medicis).

Assassinations, spies, kidnappings, and danger abound and Lucien, as a Stravaganti, a traveller in time and place, soon becomes a key player in it. 

And this is where Hoffman has created a brilliant fantasy world.  It is not the differences between Lucien’s two worlds that are the key (dying-healthy, modern-historical) but the similarities.  He travels back and forth between the two, growing stronger at home from the excitement of Belleza and bringing a different perspective to dealing with the plots of the Talians.  He goes to Venice with his parents and finds echoes all around him. 

However, though the two worlds seem to run parallel, eventually the contradictions and the dangers must force him into one or the other.

The story is fast and gripping and the ending startling, but it is the characters that are the book’s real strength.  Lucien’s joy at his reprieve from dying contrasts with his parents’ silent grief as they watch him swing in and out of remission.  The Duchessa is caught between love for her city and its people, and the ruthlessness she must use to help them survive.  None of them are the usual fantasy heroes.  They are everyday people with fears and hopes.

This is an audacious story that offers its readers new possibilities, both in this world and in the almost-here of Talia.  Like Lucien on his journey of discovery, we keep finding details that jog the memory and make us wonder.

Stravaganza also has a website at http://www.stravaganza.co.uk that explains many of the details and differences of Belleza and Venice. 

Other books in this series:
Stravaganza: City of Stars (Bloomsbury, 2003)

Review by David Beagley

© 2002 David Beagley