April 21, 2014
This lugubrious addition to the Eighty Days series (Eighty Days Yellow, etc.) moves between two stories that converge all too slowly. The secretive, centuries-old annual Ball is described in its hedonistic, magical, and hypnotic glory in chapters set in 1788 France, 1847 Venice, 1916 New Orleans, and 1964 Auckland. The second storyline follows 17-year-old Aurelia, orphaned as an infant and now living in England with her godparents. Soon after a mysterious man kisses her at a carnival, an anonymous benefactor arranges for her college education. Soon the man reappears for a night of dream-like sex so powerful that it permanently marks her body. Aurelia passively wanders through her life, discovering her destiny with the Ball through erotic adventures, and asserting herself only near the end of the book. The “Inking” that envelops her body as a result of her sexual experiences lends a magical air, but like the Ball’s origins and most of the rest of the story, it goes unexplained, leaving Aurelia and the reader in the dark.