A Great and Terrible Beauty
 |
|
| Author | Libba Bray |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | Gemma Doyle Trilogy |
| Genre | Fantasy novel |
| Published | 2003 (Random House) |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
| Pages | 403 pp |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 52312403 |
| LC Class | PZ7.B7386 Gr 2003 |
| Followed by | Rebel Angels |
| A Great and Terrible Beauty | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Charles Sturridge |
| Produced by |
Icon Productions Gotham Group Firstsight Films |
| Written by |
Libba Bray (novel) Charles Sturridge |
| Language | English |
A Great and Terrible Beauty is the first novel in the Gemma Doyle Trilogy by Libba Bray. It is told from the perspective of Gemma Doyle, a girl in the year 1895.
Gemma leaves her home in India to go to a boarding school in England after her mother dies. Once there, she is plagued by clairvoyant visions as she looks into the magical secrets of the school with her three friends Felicity Worthington, Pippa Cross and Ann Bradshaw.
Gemma Doyle, the series' protagonist, is forced to leave India after the death of her mother to attend a private boarding school in London.
On her sixteenth birthday, Gemma and her mother are walking through the Bombay market when they encounter a man and his younger brother. The man relays an unknown message to Gemma’s mother about a woman named Circe, and Gemma's mother panics and demands that Gemma return home. Becoming angry at her mother’s secrecy, Gemma runs away, and has a vision of her mother committing suicide while searching for her, which she later learns is true. Gemma becomes haunted with the images of her mother’s death.
With her mother dead and her father’s growing addiction to laudanum, Gemma is shipped off to a finishing school near London, Spence Academy for Young Ladies. At first, Gemma is an outcast at the school; however, she soon finds the most popular and influential girl in school, Felicity, in a compromising situation that would ruin Felicity’s life. Gemma agrees not to tell Felicity’s secret and the girls soon form a strong friendship, along with Gemma’s roommate Ann, and Felicity’s best friend, Pippa. But Gemma is still tormented with her visions and is warned by the young man she had met in the market, Kartik, a member of an ancient group of men known as the Rakshana, dating all the way back to Charlemagne, that she must close her mind to these visions or something horrible will happen.
During one of her visions, Gemma is led into the caves that border the school grounds. There, she finds a diary written 25 years earlier by a 16-year-old girl named Mary Dowd who also attended Spence Academy and seemed to suffer from the same visions as Gemma, along with her friend, Sarah Rees-Toome. Through this diary, Gemma learns of an ancient group of powerful women called the Order and becomes convinced that her visions are linked to it. Members of the Order could open a door between the human world and other realms, help spirits cross over into the afterlife, and also possessed the powers of prophecy, clairvoyance, and what was considered the greatest force of all, the ability to weave illusions. Gemma, Felicity, Pippa, and Ann decide to create their own Order in the caves to escape from the monotonous lives that they are expected to lead.
...
Wikipedia