Name: The Innamorati
ISBN: 9780312861971

Midori Snyder

Four eccentric, lovelorn companions journey across a fantastic version of Renaissance Italy to a legendary maze that is rumored to dispel the curses of all unfortunates who enter it, in a baroquely comic fantasy adventure.

The Innamorati

Aleena Korell

What is a curse? she asked herself. An utterly worthless form of revenge. No, a curse was a gob of spit launched into the wind that returned to strike the spitter in the face.

What a strange, clever little book.

The Innamorati introduces a broad cast of characters with unique stories and afflictions, all equal players in one overarching narrative about a maze that can cure the curses of anyone who enters it. Against a background of Renaissance Italy, it combines Roman mythology and Commedia dell'Arte to interweave the individual stories. It's clever, ambitious, magical, sometimes profound, and often quite crude (rather excessively, in my opinion). It's a testament to Snyder's vision and skill to intertwine ten different characters' stories and make them all almost equally sympathetic (For whatever reason, I was never partial to Anna). 

Unfortunately, it took me about 100 pages to finally find them all sympathetic, and for all the characters to even be introduced. My main dissatisfaction with The Innamorati is the slow beginning-- we come to appreciate the backstories of each character later, but I struggled through the first third. I think I'm settling on a 3 1/2 star rating, because of the clever characters and fascinating premise, the way the characters were creatively paired off once they reached the maze (I'm a sucker for unlikely allies), and the way everyone's stories were connected in the end.

The Innamorati uses masks and character archetypes to speak profoundly about identity, about self-imposed curses, about our expectations for ourselves and the ones we love-- and the reality beneath those expectations.

Could you love your damsel, even if she showed you her fangs? Could you embrace what is terrifying in her as well as what is lovely? ...True love, Signore, must be willing to lift the mask and kiss whatever hides beneath.