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Published Feb 2024
304 pages
Genre: Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Publication Information
This lavish and decedent LGBTQ+ fantasy romance will leave fans of Divine Rivals and Emily Wilde's Encyclopedia of Faeries utterly enchanted!
After running away from home, Sybil Clarion is eager to embrace all the freedom the Belle Époque city of Severon has to offer. Instead, she's traded high-society soirées for empty pockets. At least she has Esme, the girl who offered Sybil a home, and if either of them dared, something more.
Ever since Esme Rimbaud brought Sybil back to her flat, the girls have been everything to each other—best friends, found family, and secret crushes. While Esme would rather spend the night tinkering with her clocks and snuggling her cats, Sybil craves excitement and needs money. She plans to get both by stealing the rare posters that crop up around town. With rent due, Esme agrees to accompany—and more importantly protect—Sybil.
When they're caught selling a poster by none other than its subject, Maeve, the glamorous girl invites Sybil and Esme to The Absinthe Underground, the exclusive club she co-owns, and reveals herself to be a Green Faerie, trapped in this world. She wants to hire thieves for a daring heist in Fae that would set her free, and is willing to pay enough that Sybil and Esme never have to worry about rent again. It's too good of an offer to pass up, even if Maeve's tragic story doesn't quite add up, and the secrets could jeopardize everything the girls have so carefully built.
Jamie Pacton, author of The Vermilion Emporium, dazzles in this whimsical and daring romantic fantasy. Fans of Fae lore, slow-burn sapphic pining, and decadently magical worlds will find The Absinthe Underground as ensorcelling as a fairy delight.
"In this haunting tale, set in the world of Vermilion Emporium, Pacton weaves a romantic and thrilling story of ambition, magic, and peril. Sybil and Esme's chemistry is palpable, and Pacton's lush portrayal of Severon as a city filled with art and beauty reminiscent of fin de siècle Paris adds additional layers of enchantment and appeal to the setting." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"A delightful, magical tale that's as comforting as a hot cup of tea." —Kirkus Reviews
"[A] sweetly enchanting 'romantasy' for fans of quasi-historical fiction." —Booklist
"A sweetly undemanding, cozy sapphic romance sprinkled with magic and adventure." —The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books
"Behold: the queer Belle Époque fantasy of my dreams, brimming with yearning and adventure and written by a true master of whimsy! From cats in cozy clock towers to schemes in the glittering world of Fae, Pacton spins a tale that enchants like a glass of absinthe." —Allison Saft, New York Times bestselling author of A Far Wilder Magic
"An enchanting romantasy brimming with glittering, intoxicating prose and wild Fae magic. These quick-handed thieves will steal your heart from your first meeting, and their escapades will keep it racing until the last page." —Elizabeth Kilcoyne, Wake the Bones, William Morris Award finalist
"Thrilling and romantic, The Absinthe Underground is an intricately woven tale filled with sapphic yearning, daring thieves, and glittering fae magic. I loved every word of it." —Alicia Jasinska, author of The Midnight Girls
This information about The Absinthe Underground was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Jamie Pacton is an award-nominated young adult and middle grade author, who writes swoony, funny, magical books across genres. When she's not writing, she's teaching college English, obsessively reading obscure history, hiking, baking, or playing video games .Her books include The Vermilion Emporium, Lucky Girl, and The Life and (Medieval) Times of Kit Sweetly.
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