Book Review: The Notorious Virtues by Alwyn Hamilton
Honora ‘Nora’ Holtzfall is the daughter of the most powerful heiress in Gammanix. Her family controls all the money and all the magic in the entire country. But when her mother is found murdered in an alley and the indomitable knight sworn to protect her vanishes, suddenly the family throne and fortune are up for grabs. Nora had always believed she would be the next heiress but now she must compete against her cousins in the Veritaz trials – a deadly game of judgement that will determine who is the rightful and most virtuous inheritor.
As the trials begin, there’s a surprise rival in the form of Lotte, the illegitimate daughter of Nora’s aunt, who was raised at a convent under the cruel and watchful eye of the strict nuns. Thrown into a cunning family who don’t want her and a ruthless contest she doesn’t fully understand, Lotte must rely on her secret magic to show her who can be trusted and who can’t. But with the Holtzfalls busy battling for power, something sinister is sweeping the streets of the city; a revolution that threatens to not only disrupt the trials but topple the entire Holtzfall empire. Along with a loyal knight and an inquisitive journalist, Nora and Lotte must work together to figure out who killed Nora’s mother and who is trying to bring their family to its knees.
Tonight, Mercy Holtzfall would give the ax to the immortal Huldrekall and ask him the same question Honor Holtzfall had asked a thousand years ago: Who is most worthy to inherit this powerful gift?”
Backstabbing dynasties and deadly competitions are popular themes in YA fantasy, so it’s always refreshing when a novel comes along that puts a new spin on tired tropes. Alwyn Hamilton’s The Notorious Virtues takes the obscene wealth and familial power struggles of The Inheritance Games and fuses it with the ruthlessness of The Hunger Games. Add in a gilded roaring twenties setting that jumps off the page like a reimagined New York city, and an evocative origin story that reads like its straight out of a Brothers Grimm fairytale, and the end result is a novel that’s bursting with magic and money and Gatsby-esque glamour.
On the surface, this is a book centred around a deep family rivalry and the terrible lengths that family will go to in order to maintain their power. Yet that’s only scratching the surface of what the story is really about. Hamilton packs an awful lot into the novel’s almost 500 pages – themes of poverty and rebellion, of family and duty, of love and loyalty. The trials – whilst a crucial part of the overarching plot and the Holtzfall family’s long history – form more of a backbone to the more personal mysteries that Nora and Lotte must unravel. You might even be forgiven for forgetting the trials actually exist for large chunks of the novel. Nora is more preoccupied with her mother’s murder, whilst Lotte is concerned with who her father is and how she can fit into a family who only see her as a threat.
Whilst the detail given to the jazz age setting and the filthy rich atmosphere is flawless, the book’s pacing is a little uneven and not every character is as fully-fledged as Nora and Lotte. The two other POVs in the story – Theo, a knight pledged to the Holtzfalls who’s faced with the quandary of betraying his oath, and August, a journalist helping Nora in her search for the truth – serve as the romantic interests for the two potential heiresses. But of the two, only August’s perspective actually adds something to the story. Take out Theo’s chapters and you really wouldn’t lose much. It’s actually a relief that this isn’t a standalone, as it means there’s still time for his character to develop and his perspective to become essential.
Pacing issues in books are always much easier to forgive when an author has crafted their world with as much love and inventiveness as Hamilton has here. The Notorious Virtues immerses readers in a dazzling setting with rich world-building, palpable emotion and central characters you want to not only survive to the end but thrive once they get there. Whether Nora and Lotte will both manage to do that will have to wait until the next book but with so much still hanging in the air, it’s a sequel that readers won’t be able to resist picking up.
★★★★
The Notorious Virtues was published by Faber & Faber on 27 March 2025
