The Alchemist’s Daughter
Mary Lawrence
Review by Leslie Delisio
”However, did you give Jolyn anything to drink or eat?”
Bianca hesitated. Should she admit she had concocted a drink to soothe Jolyn’s flux? A sinking feeling settled in her guy. She knew where this question was leading. Ultimately, the onus would be on her to prove her innocence.
She would have to discover why Jolyn had died. She didn’t trust that these two men could (or would) figure it out. Constable Patch looked ready to lock her away, and the coroner seemed as though he’d lose interest as soon as he walked out the door. She opted to lie, if only to give herself more time. “No, I did not,” she said.
The coroner glanced at John, but John was practiced in deceit and knew when to keep his own counsel. He liked to think Bianca had learned her guile from him.
1543. London’s Southwark slums. Bianca Goddard, the titular Alchemist’s Daughter, is living on her own, selling salves and herbal remedies to heal London’s sick. When her friend Jolyn suddenly drops dead in her rent, Bianca must find the true murderer before the authorities hang her for the crime.
I had high hopes for this book. Strong, independent female protagonist! Mystery! Intrigue! 16th century London! Alas, I was disappointed.
The Alchemist’s Daughter suffers from what I like to call “Show, Don’t Tell Syndrome.” We are told that Bianca and Jolyn are “like sisters,” but Jolyn is not alive for enough of the book for the reader to actually see what their relationship is like. Additionally, Jolyn has never told Bianca the name of the man who is courting her. I can’t speak for anyone else, but that is definitely the type of thing I would tell my best friend.
I also found most of the characters to be somewhat one-dimensional. John, Bianca’s long-time friend and hopeful suitor, is whiny, petulant, and kind of a jerk. At the very beginning of the story he mixes up Cayenne (a type of pepper), and Ceylon (a kind of tea), and ends up making and drinking Cayenne tea. Having consumed both Ceylon and Cayenne in real life (not at the same time,) I can confirm that confusing one for the other would be pretty tough to do. If this story was set in the 21st Century, John would be a Nice Guy. He actually says at one point that he’s not sure if it would be more painful to see Bianca — the woman he supposedly loves — or hanged as a murderer, or if would be ultimately more painful for her to reject him. It took a while for my eye to stop twitching after I read that.
Bianca is a young woman living alone and making her own way in the world in 16th century London. I would think that she would be super independent and full of moxie, and she is… until she gets in big trouble and starts wishing that she had listened to John and just let him handle things. She becomes a Damsel in Distress, and I found that extremely disappointing. She is extremely stubborn and focused on her medicinal business almost to the exclusion of all else, until she’s not. I would like to have seen a different arc for her character, where she doesn’t end up kicking herself that she didn’t just let the man in her life take care of her. I also find her backstory somewhat hard to swallow. She is the daughter of an alchemist, obviously, and her mother taught her the herbalism she learned in “the old country.” Which country that is is never specified. Bianca’s father had been accused of plotting to poison King Henry VIII, and Bianca helped to get the charges dropped somehow. She learned alchemy by observing her father’s work as a child, and combined that knowledge with her mother’s herbalism to develop useful medicines. Her father didn’t actually teach her alchemy, mind you, since he never allowed her to ask questions during her observations. She is now mostly estranged from her father, due to the business with the poisoning charges. How she learned to read and write is never clearly explained.
The two most interesting characters in the book are Meddybemps, a street merchant who sells Bianca’s wares for her and has known her since she was a small child, and Banes, the man-servant at the former house of ill-repute where Jolyn lived. They both have more depth and personality than the other characters, as well as more believable backstories. However, Meddybemps is frequently described as “randy,” which is further evidence of “Show, Don’t Tell Syndrome.” I can tell he’s randy from his words and actions; I don’t need it pointed out every time he opens his mouth. There is an additional character called The Rat Man, who seems to be somewhat supernatural, and serves no purpose whatsoever in the plot. He’s just sort of… there. Observing. And eating rats. He witnesses a scene at the beginning of the book that seems to be setting up the mystery, but that scene never pays off and is never explained.
Speaking of rats, there’s a somewhat disturbing scene in which a large, healthy, awake man is eaten alive by a horde of rats. There are historical accounts of the ill or injured being eaten alive by rats, and of course they eat corpses, but I could find no evidence that this could realistically occur.
The dialog also had a tendency to bother me. A few of the secondary characters have different “Olde-Timey English” accents, whereas the main characters do not. It can be difficult to differentiate who is speaking when none of the characters in a conversation have an accent, because their speech patterns are all very similar.
In spite of the problems mentioned above, the plot did keep me engrossed enough that I managed to finish The Alchemist’s Daughter in about three days. It’s an entertaining read, with a somewhat unsatisfactory ending. This is supposedly the first of the series, and I am left wondering if Bianca Goddard is going to turn out to be some sort of 16th century Jessica Fletcher.
