‘The Magicians and Mrs. Quent’ a tribute to greater works

  If Jane Austen's cast of characters were permitted to mix freely with the creations of Charles Dickens and the denizens of Henry James' "The Turn of the Screw," you just might get something that begins to approach "The Magicians and Mrs. Quent."
  Author Galen Beckett, a pseudonym for Mark Anthony, creator of "The Last Rune" series, has produced a fantasy that's partly the story of three sisters fallen on hard times. It's also partly the story of a governess who watches her charges grow increasingly haunted by a ghostly apparition. There's also a brother willing to lower himself to clerk's work and things more unsavory to keep his sister safe.
  The magically charged drama for all these characters unfolds in Altania, a fictional land that bears a striking resemblance to 19th-century England, right down to its rigid class structure and steaming bowls of tavern punch.
  All is not well for Ivy Lockwell and her family, who teeter between genteel poverty and the real thing. Ivy's father, once a respected and powerful magician, has lost his mind and spends his days pursuing obscure experiments and scattering books about the house in a seemingly random way. Ivy's mother clings to the illusion of wealth and insists on keeping a large house that will be entailed away to an obnoxious lawyerly male relative upon her death. The mother believes that Ivy's marriage to Mr. Rafferdy, a wealthy aristocrat, will save the family. Starting to see Jane Austen's influence?
  Without giving away too much of the story, Ivy's relationship with Mr. Rafferdy is blocked by societal disapproval and the worst eventually does happen — Ivy's mother dies and the eldest daughter agrees to act as governess for an old family friend to keep a roof over her two younger sisters and her father. Her position takes her to rural Altania and it's there, near a primeval wood, that Ivy learns about her father's past and her part in saving the world from a secret society's attempt to unleash evil on Altania.
  The tone shifts abruptly from mannerly Jane Austen to gothic Charlotte Bronte as Ivy grows closer to her employer Mr. Quent, a stern, gruff man who eventually makes Ivy Mrs. Rochester, er, Mrs. Quent. In the course of their harrowing adventures, Ivy is brought back into the orbit of Mr. Rafferdy, who regrets the way they parted and is willing to develop his talents as a magician to aid the cause — and none too soon as the secret society springs a deadly trap.
  If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, than the spirits of several 19-century authors should be blushing mightily. I liked the book, in large part because I read it as a tribute to greater works I'm fond of myself. It's clear from the ending that this is the start of a new series, which I will gladly follow. I only hope that future stories scale down Beckett's homage to the oldies and plays up the author's own original story ideas.