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Overall I was expecting more from this book. In terms of plot regarding the grand jeu there's not much going on since everything is abstract and we see that the characters are occupied with it, but in the end we don't really know what they are actually doing. It was a bit frustrating for me and I didn't really enjoy it. All this vagueness creates a sense of detachment between the reader and the characters. I found it impossible to care about Léo and Claire when there was so much ambiguity surrounding everything else. The focus is mostly on their relationship but there’s nothing compelling about it seeing as neither of them are particularly likeable.
The Betrayals, I think, did a marvelous job portraying a country that was sliding into fascism while its people looked the other way, bathing in the glory of their national identity and accomplishments – symbolized here by the grand jeu. The magic system in The Betrayals is utterly believable without ever being fully revealed to the reader. Bridget Collins has a way of throwing readers into the deep end when it comes to world building. She leaves her readers to piece things together for themselves, and it’s a sink-or-swim approach that really works for me. Somehow, having to figure things out and fill in the gaps in my knowledge with a combination of guesswork and blind faith makes the world feel far more tangible to me than it would if everything had been neatly explained.I wanted to read The Betrayals based on my love of The Binding. This too promised a historical fantasy with a slow Out of the four POV’s, only one seemed to keep my interest fully with the other three almost seemingly unnecessary to keep the story moving along. Unless their purpose was to keep the reader from ever feeling like they could fully grasp the true concept of the story, but overall I felt as though each character was competing to explain how they’re involved in The Grand Jeu (which is an inexplicable and mindboggling game that I’m still confused about) to the point where it was almost as if the completion of their tasks to create the game was more important than what was actually going on with each character’s journey, as a person. An example would be Claire (The Magister Ludi) and Léo’s romance within the book where in first half of the novel, their relationship grows and the development of it is wonderfully presented, but as it went on, it almost seemed irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.
And I’m actually rather proud of myself for suspecting that Carfax and Claire were one and the same person pretty much from the get-go! There was just way too much familiarity and tension from Claire towards Léo to be explained away by her simply having heard of him. So we have a school that teaches its students how to play some kind of game, we have two characters at the school… and honestly that’s about as clear as it gets. Everything in this book is so vague it feels like a sketch rather than a novel. We never find out exactly what the grand jeu is – and seeing that this is a major part of the story this seems like a mind-boggling decision. I know it's really farfetched, and I also know there's no chance of it being true, but I just wanted to share it because it occurred to me :)So I turned out to be kinda right with Carfax and Dryden being the same in a way, but I had some mad theories. Dizzyingly wonderful . . . a perfectly constructed work of fiction, with audacious twists . . . Collins plays her own game here with perfect skill.” — The Times (UK)
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Amazingly, it sounds like you loved this book even more than I did! Now let me tell you how difficult it was for me not to say something when you revealed that you had figured out the plot twist but had your doubts!! It was immensely impressed so you should definitely be proud of yourself. My own vague theory was that he/she was transgender, but nothing more specific than that. Like you, I was looking for anything that could prove that Carfax wasn’t dead. And when it was revealed I wanted to hit myself because yes there had been clues! Or so I thought at first, anyway. The more we learnt about Aimé and Claire’s past, the more unsure I became. Was I just seeing things? Did I just not want Carfax, who was by far my favorite character in the book, to be dead? I hit my all-time low when Claire talked about Aimé coming home from Montverre in more dejected spirits than she had anticipated or them celebrating his and Léo’s seventy in absolute glee. Why would Claire be talking about herself in the third person? This entire novel was an evocative infusion of gothic atmosphere and dark academia vibes. I adored the exploration of this mysterious setting and only wished the reader was able to garner more of an understanding of the academy and the games its students were tasked with creating.
And while I was a bit mad that the grand jeu is never explained explicitly, it does add to the whole mystery of this. Same with a lot of other aspects; the not knowing, and slow uncovering of details and plot lines, inevitably leading a really satisfactory 'Aha! I should have known all along' moments was really the most enjoyable part of this.At the end of the novel, Bridget Collins notes that the story, and particularly her Grand Jeu, was influenced by Hermann Hesse's The Glass Bead Game. Now if I'd remembered my university reading of that book, this one would have made a hell of a lot more sense. My Latin did, finally, come in handy when deciphering 'Magister Ludi' (Master/Teacher of the Game), but that's where my sense of accomplishment ended. The 'grand game' is a complex mix of music and math, philosophy, religion, and life itself, understood by the reader only in the abstract. Unlike us, the students and teachers at Montverre feel the power of the game, working to create the most intricate or clever version in competition with each other. So central is this process of creation that the game becomes more important than any character in the novel. So why am I giving it 3 stars? Because there's one thing that I was hoping it was going to happen since the very beginning and it actually did happen! There were moments where I was about to lose hope and I was thinking that maybe my crazy theories had gotten the better of me, so I was so happy to read that I was right to believe in this theory. Léo: was called ‘Arrogant, unkind, self absorbed’ by another character which is nicer than what I would have written. Initially thought the woman called him Theo then realised it’s Leo. Still can’t draw up any sympathy for him. Don’t like the narrator’s accent for Léo - doesn’t fit what a Minister for Culture would sound like to me. Couldn’t even cooperate with his class mate who is top ranked for a grand jeu game - so immature and somewhat emotionally bullies the other. No redeeming qualities that I’ve discovered
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