Colleen Mondor Reviews Gallant by V.E. Schwab

Gallant, V.E. Schwab (Greenwillow 978-0-06-283577-2, $18.99, 352pp, hc) March 2022. Cover by David Curtis.

Victoria Schwab’s Gallant is a dark confection, a tale that shares tropes with gothic classics (a curse, ghosts, a house of faded glamour that is shrouded in mystery) and pins its hope for a happy ending on a tortured heroine who is haunted by the secrets of a past she never knew. There is a terrible orphanage, “The Merilance School for Independent Girls,” which is, really, in the words of our heroine Olivia, ‘‘an asylum for the young and the feral and the fortuneless.’’ No one wants to be there, and they are all terrified of what will happen when they leave. To pass the time they tor­ment each other, and as a nonverbal girl obsessed with her long missing mother, Olivia seems to be an easy target. That she proves herself to be more terrifying then anything the other girls could dish out is to be expected, as she sees dead people and thus the living are hardly something that inspires fear. Even so, life is not all that great for our spooky Jane Eyre. Then she gets a letter from a long-lost family member and is on her way to adventure and happiness! Except this is a gothic novel and that curse is looming large and, well, remember how I described Gallant as a dark confection? There is a lot more dark on the horizon for Olivia.

Schwab takes Olivia from the proverbial frying pan into the fire when she arrives at Gallant, the home of her mother’s family. It is here that she learns who her mother was, and many of the questions raised in her mother’s diary, the only possession Olivia had from her family, are explained. There are the treasured fam­ily retainers who are odd but kind, her cousin who is disturbed and frightening, and the house itself, which is, as expected, the home to many scary things that are all too obvious to our ghost-sensitive protagonist. What happens next involves the curse, a doorway to another world/dimension, revelations about Olivia’s parenthood, and a great battle to save the house, the countryside, and possibly the world. (I’m really not sure.) Olivia gets the answers she has been looking for and readers get to know her a lot better. Whether there are enough answers for readers, however, is another issue, as despite the fact that Gallant is 350+ pages, just exactly where and when it takes place is never explained and the villain himself, and his motivations, are a bit hard to figure out.

For fans of happy endings, be aware that every page of Gallant, including the black and white illustra­tions by Manuel Šumberac, is tinged with an aura of bleakness that permeates the narrative. Of course, Jane Eyre is pretty darn bleak as well, so Olivia is following in a grand tradition of gothic heroines. On a certain dark and stormy autumn night, Gallant could very well be exactly the book of the moment. Just make sure you’re ready for it. Olivia, and her family’s curse, will be waiting.


Colleen Mondor, Contributing Editor, is a writer, historian, and reviewer who co-owns an aircraft leasing company with her husband. She is the author of “The Map of My Dead Pilots: The Dangerous Game of Flying in Alaska” and reviews regularly for the ALA’s Booklist. Currently at work on a book about the 1932 Mt. McKinley Cosmic Ray Expedition, she and her family reside in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska. More info can be found on her website: www.colleenmondor.com.


This review and more like it in the July 2022 issue of Locus.

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