Serine lives in a run-down manor with her family, including several younger brothers. She wants to learn to read, but her tutor is more interested in teaching her how to behave as a member of society. (Of course she refuses to learn these lessons.) When her mother wants to send her to a monastery, she instead asks to go to the palace to become a lady-in-waiting for the Queen. Her mother refuses, but that doesn’t stop her from going anyway.
There, she’s mistaken for a servant before finally taking a place in the Queen’s service. When she is expected to give the Queen a compliment, her quick thinking puts her in the Queen’s good graces. But the other ladies set her up to fail, and then she has to fend off the Queen’s secretary as well. It’s soon clear she has made too many enemies, one of whom even tries to kill her. But she survives and returns as a masked jester, helping and entertaining the King while doing a lot of good for the kingdom, too.
I’m a huge fan of Kerascöet’s graphic novels (Beauty, Miss Don’t Touch Me, Beautiful Darkness), and even met them at Seattle’s Short Run comics fest a few years ago. Their illustration style (they’re a married couple who work together) adds a lightness to even the darkest of subjects; as a child, my daughter loved Beautiful Darkness, which is set in and around a dead girl’s body in the woods. In The Court Charade the torturer and his apprentice get this treatment; they’re more than humane, and even those in their “care” seem to treat their confinement as time in a clubhouse of sorts. Kerascöet makes it all work.
While this is a light story with lots of acrobatic antics and humor, it’s not really a kid-friendly book in all ways. After you get a copy for your library, shelve it in your adult collection.
