|
What
I'm Currently Reading Return to Currently Reading Menu Note: Most links go to the book's page on Amazon.com. Peter and the Starcatchers, by Dave Barry, I enjoyed. Ann Halam's Siberia. Most adult writers who decide to try YA make a mistake (imo) in doing so, that is, the attitude that young adult writing is easy because it's simple-minded usually produces a predicable, flat story, usually with a hammer-head social message, and told in a condescending voice. (Notice how many kidzbooks by celebrities swiftly end on the remainder table, and then vanish.) Well, not this one. The voice is just right, the world intense, tense, scary, and then breath-taking with magical possibility as the heroine goes from a hut in Siberia to a creepy prison school and then . . . no, just treat yourself and read it. And then, if you like complex, beautifully written adult sf, try the books by Gwyneth Jones. I've been able to read the second two books in Naomi Novik's Temeraire series, the first one in this country called His Majesty's Dragon (soon out, if not now), followed by Throne of Jade next month, and Black Powder War the month after. Alas, the fourth book is yet to be written. When I briefly met Naomi Novik last June in New York I was told beforehand, "She's written this incredible series, it's like Patrick O'Brian--with dragons!" A great log line, I thought, but that combo could be either really great, or a mess, if the dragons are grafted onto period of history known so well, and so brilliantly written about not just by O'Brian but so many others. The first positive sign was when she said that her dragon was called Temeraire, which is the name of one of the ships at Trafalgar. That seemed a pretty good sign she'd done her historical homework, but what about the dragons? My two favorite dragon books are Hambly's Dragonsbane, and Jo Walton's Tooth and Claw which has no humans at all, but, mapped onto the so-called social set of Victorian England, is all about unquestioned savagery masquerading as order and civilization. Now I have three favorites, because Temeraire's roman fleuve joins those two above. How much to say, when the books are not even out yet? I guess I can talk about my experience of reading. When I began the first, I dinged against the familiar notion of bonding with an emerging dragon--in this case by the captain of an English frigate during Napoleon's war. I read on--and within maybe ten pages of Temeraire's emergence from the egg, I was caught. First, by Temeraire himself, who is anything but a cutesy dragon, or a horror-story savage one. Temeraire is romantic in the sense of the romantic age, rather than the Romance of pretty people with powers and dog-like devoted dragons whose lives are wrapped around human concerns. Temeraire began asking questions all those other dragons never asked. As for the world, Novik slips in subtle hints that this isn't this universe's Napoleonic War, it's the next one over. So our hero, Will Laurence, is forced to give up his captaincy. He is no Jack Aubrey clone--he now has to find a new life in the Dragon Corps, which is far more free and easy than His Majesty's navy. Think, oh, of the early air corps around World War One, which is not a bad model for so many reasons. We begin to meet dragons and their riders, and then get to see them in action during Napoleon's attempted Great Invasion. By the end we find a big surprise, which leads directly to the second book, and a trip to China which neither Temeraire or Laurence wish, but for military and diplomatic reasons they must do their duty. Ofr course there cannot be spoilers--this second book is a month away from publication. Let me just say that Novik's world becomes more fascinating, the characters more complex, the twists unexpected, the tragedies both sharp and real, but binding it all together like a thread of gold is the sense of honor and duty that Temeraire and Laurence both feel, yet have to keep defining. And it is increasingly less easy to define. Deeply troubled by questions of history, diplomacy, social useage--and finally the relationship between dragon and human (yay! Why did no one previous ever think this one out?)--Laurence and Temeraire and their adventures kept the pages turning while I left piles of work undone. The third book, Black Powder War, begins with them traveling to the Ottoman Empire, thence to Europe. Those who know their history, let me just mention the battle of Jena, and nothing more; Novik does a superb job of presenting that battle from the POV of one universe over. Each book ended with enough resolution to be satisfying, but with enough open questions to leave me yearning hard for more. Ellen Kushner'sThis book is new so no spoilers here. I will observe that readers who have not encountered the previous books set in Kushner's Riverside could read this one first with no confusion or diminishment of pleasure. One doesn't need to know the characters' back (or forward) history; as Katherine encounters them, we do too, through her descriptions both trenchant and humane. (Though it must be said certain lines and situations inevitably will resonate more with readers familiar with the previous Riverside stories.) Kushner begins with sixteen year old Katherine, whose uncle, the Mad Duke Tremontaine, offers, out of nowhere, to cancel all debts and even to help the family out of poverty if Katherine consents to live with him for six months and train with the sword. Of course she's going to take the offer--despite the fact that young ladies do not have anything to do with swords. Here are a couple of lines from the opening graf, and what swashbuckler among us can resist? . . .This was before I had ever been to the city. i had never been in a duel, or held a sword myself. I had never kissed anyone, or had anyone try to kill me, or worn a velvet cloak. And then, for the readers who know the story, that graf finishes: I had certainly never met my uncle the Mad Duke. Once I met him, much was explained. [pause for guffaw from those who know what that means] Katherine does indeed learn to handle a sword. But you absolutely cannot predict what is going to happen while she goes about it. Meanwhile Katherine's first-person storyline interweaves with other points of view to make a delightful whole that covers a surprising spectrum of situations and emotions. There just isn't a note wrong anywhere, the characters are vivid, the humor a splash of light amid plenty of tense moments, introspective ones, sad ones, and some with exquisite poignance. Two observations of things that particularly impressed me: one, the true-to-life 'secret' lives of school girls who are mostly shut away from the world for their own good. These girls read and reread romantic novels in order to decode the world--novels chosen in hopes that the glorious landscape, passionate heroes (especially heroic villains) and noble emotions found there will indeed prove to be what the girls encounter when at last given the chance to take their place in the world. Their language is a private language, the characters in the romances so well known, so endlessly discussed, they prance alongside the realtime story as dream shades. This so resonated with my own teen experience, when encountering others who adored Man from U.N.C.L.E and Lord of the Rings and Georgette Heyer and Star Trek; what's more, this phenomenon resonates right back through literary letters and fiction clear to Charlotte Lennox who, in the 1750s, gave us The Female Quixote about a girl who raised herself on romance. As well as Jane Austen's far more fun iteration of the same plot in Northanger Abbey. The second thing that impressed me was how, as the young people encountered the worst aspects of the world--and indeed did not always escape them--they could observe, comprehend, and still retain their own integrity. How very refreshing--and how rare, unfortunately, in far too much fiction. Katherine has in a single day's reading become one of my favorite heroines. Three excellent YA reads:
The Shadow Thieves
. This is billed as the first in the Cronus Chronicles,
but the story is complete in itself. We begin with red-haired Charlotte Mielswetski, a girl who tends
to use judicious lies to get out of work at school and out of being questioned exhaustively by her
child psychologist mom. Charlotte is creative (she wants to be a heroine, and keeps starting
stories inside her head, which never get past the opening) and a bit lazy, but every day.
She finds out her cousin Zachary (called Zee) is coming to spend a year with her family,
for what turn out to be mysterious reasons. Zee is great--almost too great--he's instantly popular,
good at everything, and super polite, but before serious conflict between the cousins can develop,
the kids at school began getting sick. So many of them take to their beds the school is closed for
a week, and Zee is afraid it's his fault. A delightful encounter with a kitten and some creepy
encounters with tall weird men wearing tuxedoes convince Charlotte that Zee's weird story is true
. . . and by the way, so is the Greek version of the Underworld. Which the two kids are going
to have to go to. It's lucky Char always liked Greek mythology.
That story was made lively and readable by the voice. Ursu has a narrator right
on stage, whose asides are entertaining and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny.
The ending once or twice descended into silly (and the prose seemed a tad hasty)
but it was an engrossing read, one I highly recommend for fourth graders on up.
And I have become addicted to the YA works of Charles Butler**
I gobbled down two of them recently, first
Death of a Ghost and right after it
The Fetch of Mardy Watt. Now
I want them all. Butler writes a darker sort of fantasy; these two have to do with ghosts and the underworld.
just as did the Ursu. Taht's their similarity, but in execution the books could not be more different.
In Death of a Ghost, Ossian is returning to Lychfont House with his painter dad, after a time in
Philadelphia, USA, where Ossian fell in love with another teen, Lizzy. His father is driving carelessly and fast,
they seem on the verge of a crash--we shift to an alternate dimension with a sullen goddess, Sulis, who
is angry that her soon-to-be spouse, Ossian, is missing. We shift back to Lychfont, where Ossian
and his dad have arrived, and while the adults are chatting wittily in the background, Ossian
pickes up the threads of his childhood life with Colin and his half-sister Sue. Ghosts walk,
dimensions shift, magic is everyday, as we unravel the mystery: what's going on with Ossian?
It's an engrossing premise, though I have to admit I didn't like this story as much as I loved
the second one, The Fetch of Mardy Watt. Ossian's already being in love with someone we
don't see, we're just told about, didn't engage me as deeply, and I have to admit to a personal
flaw here: any character who, in childhood, sacrificed small animals is just not going to win
me very easily to his plight. It's definitely a teen read--involving various types of love,
complicated with the shifting dimensions to the world, and threaded by the stylish (and sometimes heartless) talk of artists. And the prose is glorious.
The second book is aimed at a readership maybe a half step down from Ossian's
story, in that there is no romance. The quests here, besides the magical, are
about friendship, being, family. Mardy is a plain plump Irish schoolgirl who used
to be popular at her elementary school, but now that she's in a new school with the big kids,
she's just there. Neither popular nor unpopular. She walks to school with Hal, another leftover
from her old school; the school is more dreary than not, especially with spycams being set up
all over. And then there's this weird girl named Rachel who glares at Mardy from the back room
in French, and with a clever pun launches group teasing against Mardy that lasts a day or so,
until Mardy can return fire. Mardy is emotionally spiky not just because of these everyday schoolkid
issues but also because her older brother, the clever, elegant Alan, has been lying in
a coma for months, for no reason the doctors can figure. Then, after a strange encounter
with music and an engraved stone, Mardy finds herself thinning--not in the diet sense, but her substance is gradually fading away.
Neither of these books is predictable. The surprises
are not just random twists and turns, but are like trapdoors that
cause you to fall deeper into the story--and deeper into the
strangeness of the world. But what really shines is Butler's exquisite prose.
Frequently I'd have to stop and go back just to reread lines and grafs.
Here's from Mardy's first moment of magic:
She dawdled, going home. As she reached the park she heard again the strange plucked instrument
she had noticed on the way to school that morning. It was this, as much as a wish to drag out the
time, that led her through the wrought-iron gates and up one of three forking paths, to a circle
of flowerbeds and asphalt . . .Steps led up all around the cross, and on the side visible
to Mardy a bunch of winter roses had been laid. Lest we forget. She began to read
a dizzying list of names, each belonging to a dead soldier. [names] Once she had begun,
in fact, she found she had to carry on. The music, which was very close now--just on the
far side of the cross--seemed to insist upon it. Lest we forget. She could not move
further until she had dutifully read and remembered the name of each Burgess, Butterell,
Chandler and Crisp; and so to the next side of the cross, and the next, until John Zipes had at last been
laid to rest. And still there was no sign of where the music was coming from, or who was playing it.
Even now she could not move away. Mardy had heard that just before death a person's life flashed past--all in a moment.
What happened to her now was like that, but much slower. She was unwillingly engaged in a laborious act
of memory, unwinding each moment of her past like thread from a bobbin. She felt as if she had to or be turned to stone herself.
Finally--finally--the many-stringed instrument (a harp, was it, or a mandolin?) began drawing
its threads of sound together. The tangle of arpeggios became more dense and knotted.
Harmonies and discords vied dangerously, and at last a vast, enmeshed chord threw a net
of closely-wovem sound over her head. It billowed out and settled, dissolved at its edges
and tightened at its center, and bound her hand and foot.
These are intelligent books--I can see the smart sixth grader on up loving them
passionately, and going back to them again and again to consider different scenes and passages. I'm going to read them again.
**(Go ahead, explore his site. Be sure to visit his ancestors' page and listen to the snip from his father about inspiration,
and then go all the way down Butler's photos of his ancestors.)
7 July 2006 Twilight
by Stephenie Meyer is that rare thing, a truly YA vampire novel.
What's more, it manages to maintain an innate decency while
still being about vampires. I don't know that I'm completely
convinced by the ending, about which I will not say more, I
will wait and read the next--but the fact that I really want
to read her next indicates the ambivalence doesn't reach far.
Sun-loving Bella chooses to move to Parks, Washington, which
she hates because it always rains there. But she feels responsible
for her flighty mom, whose new relationship has some troubles,
and so she goes to live with her dad, who's a cop, and a really
nifty guy. Her first day at high school, she sees some odd people--oddly
beautiful--at lunch . . . and soon gets involved with the best
looking of them, and the strangest, a guy named Edward. The
book begins very slowly as Bella relays every detail of their
meeting and interactions, and their many, many conversations--
like teens do when totally absorbed in attraction, yet retaining
enough rationality to go slowly for whatever reason. The pace
accelerates toward a very tense climax--one forgets she's writing
first person, the tension is so high. The story does have Mary
Sue aspects: Bella seems to be beautiful to everybody despite
her clumsiness, her first day of high school she is the cynosure
of all eyes (but don't the rest of us who weren't enjoy experiencing
that through a character as we never did in life?), though I
think that works in a romantic vampire novel. There has to be
the sweep of romance to keep horror at bay. I just finished a middle grade novel by Janni Lee Simner, called
Secret
of the Three Treasures. I really wish the author had been
permitted by her editors to keep her original title, which was
Tiernay West, Professional Adventurer. (Sidenote, I test-drove
both titles on a group of fourth and fifth graders, and in both
cases, every single hand shot sky high when I gave them the
second choice. About the first choice, one boy muttered, "It
better be real treasures, and not some book about three things
you have to learn." Well, young man, I can promise you
there really are three treasures in that book!) Tiernay is the
heroine--she prefers her dad's last name, West, because he travels
all over the world writing adventure stories about a cool heroine.
Tiernay indulges in Walter-Mitty-like internal adventures while
practicing at adventure until she can get into a real one, but
unlike Mitty, who was too afraid to stand up for himself, Tiernay
has the courage of her convictions. And so she does her very
best to become an adventurer, despite her mom really wanting
her to settle down and be a practical schoolgirl. Like when
Mom takes Tiernay out to dinner with her friend Greg and his
son Kevin, Tiernay orders squid and snails, because she figures
an adventurer has to get used to eating anything. Her reaction
to the food, and what happens at that dinner, would please any
reader from a smart seven on up. Tiernay soon gets her tip-off
to adventure, and she is no slouch about seeking more clues
and doing her detective work in spite of snippy school-girls
with their secret clubs, neighborhood bullies, and her exasperated,
practical mom. An adult might be able to figure out how the
story is going to go, but I really believe will enjoy it anyway
because the voice is superlatively delightful. I frequently
was laughing out loud, and when asked "What's so funny"
read bits to my son and spouse, and they laughed as well. Tiernay,
like Harriet
the Spy many years ago, is true to herself: what she is
inside, she is outside. Thre's no pretence, but no posturing,
either. Her reactions, her grit, and how her tale is narrated,
make this one a must for any school library shelf, I think,
as well as great reading at home. And I really, really hope
that Tiernay West, Professional Adventurer, will soon be launching
into her next case because I definitely want to read it. Jo Walton's
Farthing. Walton has a knack for taking a
specific story (such as the utterly splendid Tooth and Claw
that uses Trollope's Framley Parsonage and crosses it with dragons, getting a sum greater than both parts) or a storyline (like Arthuriana) and
crossing it orthogonally so that both are transformed into something altogether different. And yet one can see traces of each source. Being a visual being, I
can only compare it to the color prism we used as kids, when we laid the yellow glass circle over the edge of the blue to make green--with the edges of the yellow and
blue still showing. Better, perhaps, a palimpsest: one sees traces of old underlying the new, so you get a third effect. Anyway, she takes the form of the
English country house murder mystery, with all its emphasis on rank and manners, and crosses it with an Alternate History. So we open with all the implied
tensions between the genteel manners of people of privilege--their emphasis on being civilized--with a body lying in a bedroom, one of their own done to death
by violence. Meanwhile we discover that this England's WW II never really happened, because in 1941 the government, currently led by political conservatives
nicknamed the Farthing Set, made peace with
Hitler. The chapters alternate between twoPOVs. There is the first person account of Lucy Kahn, daughter of the ultra-conservative Farthing Set (named after their country
house) who dared to marry a Jew. So she's a born insider who chose to become an outsider, because one of the issues, of course, in making peace with Hitler is
accepting what he's doing over on the continent. The alternate chapters are third person from the POV of Inspector Carmichael of Scotland Yard, sent down to
investigate the murder. He's frustrated because he senses that not everyone is telling the truth, but he has to parse the body language and tones of people whose
upbringing is so different from his--he's an outsider in various ways forced inside to complete his investigation. Meanwhile, Lucy, who knows the people, how they move and think, is looking at the mystery from another angle--because her
husband is the chief suspect. The alternating storyline builds with inexorable (and inescapable) tension as the stakes grow exponentially. Does the mystery
get solved? Oh yes, but I can guarantee you are not prepared for the double-echo sonic boom of the ending. I mean it left me gasping--and I had to go right
back and start rereading the book again. I'm still stunned when I think about it a week later.
Way at the other end of the spectrum is Scott Lynch's
The Lies of Locke Lamorra. This is a pungently
Rabelaisian picaresque novel beginning with an orphan, Locke Lamorra, being sold by the Thieftaker to the "Priest of Thieves, Thief of Priests." This priest,
Father Chains, brings Locke into his trained group of scammers called the Gentleman Bastards. The story unfolds moving back and forth from the present (Locke's
latest and biggest scam) to the past (how he grew up and took over the Bastards)--until he comes up against a new and very dangerous opponent, the Gray King.
Rabelais used popular, earthy humor in his adventurous farces, and Lynch does the same. This story is not for the delicate of sensibilities; it is funny, scary at times,
as the stakes rise. No one is who they seem, everyone wears at least two layers of identiry as they move about the complicated and layered ancient island city of Comorra.
The glimpses of an alien past, the promises about real identity, are not neatly solved in this story, setting readers up for further adventures.
My third good read of August was Terry Pratchett's
The Truth. This one came out in 2001, so it's
only new to me--I have been portioning out Pratchetts over time. (I doan't know why, as I love rereading them.) In this one, a hapless hero of the type
Pratchett does so well, William de Worde, blunders into discovering the newspaper, with typically cock-eyed results in the city of Ankh-Morpork. In this one,
the enigmatic and all-powerful Patrician is threatened by a plot, inbetween the progression of journalism. As always, Pratchett shafts his comic light down
into deeper questions about our "true" assumptions, and even uncomfortable ones, like: whose truth is true? Is the pen mightier than the sword? What about when people choose to get their news
from flagrantly unreliable sources because it's more interesting? There are sidetrips into a lot of contemporary questions, but Pratchett never steps over into
ranting, or telling the reader what to think. You keep laughing right through the story . . . and when you put it down and the laughter dies away, the ideas are
still there, waiting to be pondered. I have been a fan of Charles de Lint's books for a long time. They range so much from romance to horror to action. What I've loved most is the gradual
building of the community of Newford, especially its circles of artists and musicians who step in and out of the realms of the fey, and of North American
mythological beings. Magic can happen at any time in Newford, and it's never predictable. My absolute favorites of de Lint's many fantastical creatures have
been the Crow Girls, who dance and chatter and flit through the stories, loosely connected to Raven who made the world. In
Widdershins de Lint features two characters,
Jilly Coppercorn, and Georgie Liddel, an artist and a fiddler, who have served as wise figures through so many of his stories, short and long. This, at last,
is their story. Wise, sometimes scary, often funny, sweet, poignant, it's a tale not just for the young and passionate--but for the older and passionate,
those aware of the press of time. Not to say that the young are overlooked, no. There's the wonderful Lizzie, who kicks serious bad guy butt--and there's Rabedy,
a bogan who think's he's weak because no one has ever spoken the word 'compassion' around him . . . oh, I don't dare say much more. There are many POVs in this
story, and that works splendidly because de Lint keeps a sure rein on where and when everyone is. What a pleasure to read--a wonderful book. The satisfying conclusion to Lynn Flewing's trilogy that began with
The Bone Doll's Twin
and Hidden Warrior is
The Oracle's Queen. In the first novel, terrible magic is done to hide the girl twin in what would have been the body of her brother. The brother becomes a ghost to haunt
Tobin as she/he grows in the court of King Erius, who is killing females in order to circumvent a prophesy. The book gripped a wide readership, including
fantasy connoisseurs like George R. R. Martin. What makes Flewelling so good is that she pays attention to the realistic details of how people act ordinary
circumstances so that her extraordinary circumstances are both compelling and convincing. In the second novel, Tobin becomes Tamir--while events force
her to battle. The prince, Korin, trained to be a leader, hasn't what it takes--and Tobin/Tamir does. Not by wishing, nor by a magic dingus, but by virtue
of grit, determination, and hard drill. Then comes the cost of leadership. The third novel delves deeply into the psychological effects of razzle-dazzle magic, thrones, swords, and the rest, and makes for a terrific read.
Tamír isn't gorgeous--she's ordinary--and she has to come to terms with the physical aspects of being a girl. So do her friends. And the mages.
And the people of high and low degree.
Everyone in this book has believable motivations--including the evil Niryn, whose road to evil is explained early on.
And keep your eye on the supposedly helpless Nalia, princess in the tower. Meanwhile,
Tamír has to face the Oracle, bringing her full circle with the magic that put her in her current place, and that's not easy.
She has to deal with events that are inexorable forcing her toward battle with Korin--and that includes facing with steel many former friends.
And, she has to deal with the emotional fallout of turning into a girl just about the time she and her best friend, Ki, have hit their mid teens,
and their feelings were already in turmoil. Finally, it's not Eeeevil guys versus plucky heroes facing one another at the end, but deeply conflicted
people, some of whom have been friends and companions . . . A very compelling read. Sept:
I am certainly no expert in the Eddas or the Northern tales, but I know enough to recognize the good stuff when I see it. For example, Douglas "Dag"
Rossman's The Northern Path.
The subtitle is Norse Myths and Legends Retold . . . and What they Reveal. That only partly describes what you get in this book. Rossman does
indeed tell the stories in clear, vivid prose with a generous dollop of humor. There's a strong sense of the story-teller's rhythm in Rossman's version of
these tales--
they beg to be read aloud at the fireside--which is exactly right for Norse myths. Rossman gives a brief description of the Eddas and of the scene of
the old Viking homestead and hall--the skald at the hearth, earning his living as a storyteller. The tales follow, and then afterward there is a wealth
of wonderful extras: a discussion of myth, the place of myth, sources of the myths--runestones, dragons, the Light Elves. He gives a table of the
Elder Futhark, with Runic Meanings and commentary. And at the end is an excellent bibliography. This book is ideal for a newcomer to the Norse material, for
kids who are curious, and for the person who, like me, is somewhat familiar with the tales--enough to particularly enjoy Rossman's take on them. "You must form your own fashions in a way which demonstrates that you flout the standards from knowledge, not from ignorance," Dame Brachet tells Faris at the beginning of Caroline Stevermer's A College of Magics. This rubric serves to describe what Wrede and Stevermer are doing in this, the third adventure in the alternate England inhabited by Kate and Cecelia. They know their history well, they know the visible and invisible social rules of the time, they know how to form a secondary universe--they know pacing, and tone, and above all, character. The time is no longer the English Regency. The Mislaid Magician is set in the late 1820s, when it is apparent that there is no direct heir to the throne. George III's many sons haven't managed to produce a legitimate male heir. Steam engines have been making a cautious appearance between town and country, to the distress of horses, dogs, and people living within range of the vast clouds of smoke. Things have been relatively quiet . . . until a foreign magician goes missing. The Duke of Wellington sends James and to Leeds to investigate. He and Cecelia send their children to stay with Kate and Thomas in order to speed along what promises to be a dull assignment, just to find themselves inveigled into a thoroughly unpleasant house party by an enterprising brother and sister, and the mystery is off and running. Sorcery and Cecelia was published in 1988, after the authors, just for fun, took a semblance of Georgette Heyer's Regency England (already a distinctive subcreation) and added magic. They each took a young society girl as a character and wrote letters to one another; the plot racketed along at a breakneck pace as the girls discovered magic, romance, and Evil Relatives in great houses. The result, Sorcery and Cecelia, has sustained its popularity for years--it's as delightful to read as it must have been to write. The Grand Tour, the sequel, came out in 2004, taking place a couple of years after Waterloo. In this novel, the focus is less on the young ladies--who are now married women on their honeymoons--than on history; instead of letters we have a deposition and a diary providing the story. The authors were broadening not only their world, but the consequences of magic in that world. In this third tale, we are back to letters, not only between Kate and Cecelia, but between their husbands as they all get involved in a mystery that touches on very high places in the government. The magic has kingdom-wide importance, and its intricacies are wonderfully inventive. The story is tremendous fun; the authors manage a light yet tight balance between history, the effects of magic, and the inner lives of their characters. One could argue that they could take the magical effects and the changes that would be rung a level or two deeper (there's a reference to "the stews" making me wonder briefly why, given the existence of magic, wouldn't one of the first goals be to get rid of such places as "the stews"?) but the reference is fast, posed as a threat and not an issue and then the pace wings promptly away. The novel is aimed at the younger reader who doesn't know much history as well as at the older reader who knows her history but is looking for comedy of manners and not the grim realism of "hard fantasy". So when a character is suddenly transformed into a dog, and later back again, it's irrelevant whether or not clothing vanished and then conveniently reappeared. In a hard fantasy, we would have all the details of chilled flesh, shame, the scramble for the decency of clothing. Here, decency is a given, and our eyes are on the battle of wits between magicians, and not on the victim's sorry shanks. The focus is on the characters, well supported by the sheer fun of the plot. Wrede and Stevermer are both superlative character writers. Poised in the middle of frenetic magical action is a letter describing a domestic scene--the deft conveying of character, the vivid details of the schoolroom evoke Keats's pleasure in describing his immediate surroundings in his letters, and Agnes Porter's crystalline snaps of domestic coziness. Though the authors borrowed happily from Heyer's universe in their first book, this world of theirs, in spite of all the dukes and duchesses and references to the Ton, is by no means mere Heyer pastiche. Masterly as a storyteller as Heyer was, one senses the iron keel shaping her particular boat was the conviction that "Blood will always tell." The Wrede/Stevermer flagship is shaped by grace, a clear appreciation for wit--regardless of gender or class--as well as for work. I really hope the authors are busy with a fourth. There is much to explore in this world they've made, and the characters' gain in years and experience adds to their interest. Most of all, I really want to see what happens when the offspring first set out on their own . . . I've mentioned earlier that my top favorite YA historical novels published in recent years have been L.A. Meyer's Bloody Jack stories. I've gotten girls squeeing over these books--girls who like adventure, humor, history, and rollicking tales. They've been winning awards right and left, and deservedly so. The latest one is now out, In the Belly of the Bloodhound:Being an Account of a Particularly Peculiar Adventure in the Life of Jacky Faber. Those who've read the previous books will need no encouragement to dive right in--even though it does get off to an oddly stuttering stop, with some back-and-forths between the time when Jacky steps back on shore in Boston, then back when she left the Battle of Trafalgar, then up to the present again, except earlier when she was in New York, then back to her journey to New York. This juddering back and forth really was unnecessary, but it doesn't go on long, so persist. As soon as Jacky gets back to the Lawson Peabody School for Young Girls, the usual Jacky Faber rip-snorting gallop starts up, and doesn't let you down until the very last line...and ooooooh, talk about almighty cliff-hangers! Yet Meyer even drops hints preparing for that, so altogether the book left me absolutely panting for the next one. In this sement of jacky's amazing adventures, she is going to try hard to be a proper Bostonian young lady again . . .except for trips out on her boat. And to play her fiddle at the Pig & Whistle. Oh, and except for the fact that back in London she's still got a price on her head for piracy, But her good intentions are foiled by a heinous plot by a slaver to capture all the young ladies and take them to the Levant to sell them for fantastic sums as slaves to rich sultans. But the slavers don't count on Jacky--or the mean, nasty Clarissa Worthington Howe, Jacky's nemesis during her previous adventure in Boston. What happens next is riveting as thirty-one gently nurtured girls (well, thirty and Jacky...and then there are some surprises) are pitted against a gang of tough slaver sailors. No more hints--the read is sheer adventure, with not just wit and laughter, but moments of great poignance, never overdone. In case you haven't read these nifty adventures, here are the first three, with Amazon links:
Dec: First is a kids' book called Calypso Dreaming. Charles Butler is somewhat new on the kidzbook scene; at least I believe this was his first book, and it only came out a couple of years ago. I wanted to read it because his next book, The Fetch of Mardy Watt, was--and still is--one of my absolute favorite reads of this year, and I have read many enjoyable YA books (most of which have gotten a lot of attention so I haven't gone on about them here, repeating what everyone else is saying). I talked about Mardy before--it hit all my childhood reading buttons, and they still work: takes place in Ireland, which has always had magical connotations for me. It concerns a girl who can see things others can't . . . including a shadow of herself. A shadow with its own mind? It was beautifully written. No, I have to say the writing is so good there were parts that stunned me, and I had to go back and reread them for sheer pleasure after I finished the story. Well, that same splendid writing is evident in all three of Butler's books. (There is also Death of a Ghost, which was quite good though a tad dark for me. I'd say it's for an older reader--in fact a great read for a boy maybe ninth grade and up). Back to Calypso. She's got these eerie eyes, and webs between her fingers. She's very strange, and when she dreams . . . well, let's just say that the veil of reality around Sweetholm, a little island somewhere in the UK, is very, very thin. All unknown to Tansy, who is coming over with her parents to house sit. Her parents are tense because their marriage is in trouble, and they are trying to work things out. Tansy is tense because she and her best friend have been playing around with magic--not very kind magic, and it has, maybe, possibly, worked. Tansy's friend Kate is okay with doing horrible things to a pet and maybe even to people, but Tansy is not, and she's relieved to get away from Kate, and magic. But then she meets Calypso . . . And there I will stop. Charles Butler writes so well, his imagination is so amazingly subtle and his stories so different I'm surprised he hasn't been discovered by the mainstream, but I think that's only a matter of time. So faboo a writer is bound to become popular, and that is why I am not letting his books outside my house. The big book I've begun is Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn: The Final Empire. His first book, Elantris , I talked about here--a first novel that showed a ton of talent, imagination, and promise, even if it had a few bumps. Sanderson is a new author on the scene, and gives every evidence of becoming a master storyteller. I have only gotten into the first third or so of Mistborn--and would love to have a full day to sit and sink into it. So far, it reminds me somewhat of Scott Lynch's The Lies of Locke Lamora in that the main characters are thieves and rejects under the thumb of nobles, the action takes place in the slums and crumbling houses of an ancient capital city, there is much elaborate scamming involved with political repercussions, and the leader of the thieves is a brilliant man. But that's as far as comparison goes. Sanderson's world is lit by a dim red sun, there is constant ashfall, the present government has been in place for a thousand years and is called The Final Empire. The Emperor is presented as a deity who cannot be defeated--especially by the enormous underclass of slaves and downtrodden workers called skaa. What divides the upper classes from the skaa is Allomancy, the magical use of ingested metals. Kelsier, the leader, finds Vin, a little thief girl who is scrabbling perilously for existence in a horrible thief gang because being outside the gang would be even worse. He shows her that what she thinks of as her "luck" is actually allomancy, and changes her life. That's as far as I've gotten. Now, what drew me to this novel, besides wanting to read Sanderson's next, was this statement he made, which you can find on the book jacket: What if the prophesied hero failed to defeat the dark lord?. I love most of the famtasy tropes. They became tropes, after all, because they work. But to see them twisted and looked at afresh is so much fun. I also like Sanderson's voice. Though his prose isn't as whipsharp with trenchant wit as Scott Lynch's, he has a wonderful touch with humor. Lynch is also rather more unflinching with amorality and senseless violence, though it would be a mistake to say he does not write about emotion and connection between characters--one of the themes of his book is the bond of brotherhood when everything else in the universe is either indifferent to you or actively against you. But there is a sense of order and even a moral justice that I sense in Sanderson's book--nothing heavy-handed, no sermonizing, but it's there, like the sun in an eclipse: you see tiny glimmers of light along the edges of leaves, a glint in the glass, with the promise of light to come. |
