Review - All the Stars and Teeth by Adalyn Grace

All the Stars and Teeth

Adalyn Grace

Titan Books, 4 August 2020

Available as: PB, 416pp, e

Read as: PB advance review copy

ISBN: 9781789094060

Snap verdict: Sure to be popular

I'm grateful to Titan for an advance copy of All the Stars and Teeth. I don't think I've had an ARC before that came with its own stars, as this one did, and necklace - after reading the book I'm concerned though at what curses or other magic might lie on that necklace. I will be very careful with it...

Adalyn Grace's debut novel is, at one level, a fairly traditional coming-of-age story. At the age of eighteen, Princess Amora Montana, heir to the kingdom of Visidia, is about to undergo the testing that will prove her worth to take the throne as High Animancer - wielder of the magic of souls. But on the brink of success, she gets things terribly, terribly wrong and her life is placed in danger. To survive, and to stand a chance of coming into her own, she must flee and explore her future kingdom, working to prevent a catastrophe ass well as to save her own life. Starting as a rather spoiled and ignorant girl, she grows up and begins to questions her place in things and the direction of her life.

At another level, though, Grace seems to me to be casting a rather cool eye over a familiar template and introducing some challenges to it. Yes, Amora begins rather self-satisfied and knows little of the world around her but it soon becomes clear that's because her father kept her that way - and in part he wasn't being protective, given the kingdom is nowhere near the good and harmonious place he makes out. The spotlight is soon on his failings and on the things that have been omitted from Amora's education. 

Oh, and that education... well, it involved using her magic to execute prisoners. That's the essence of the test that she fails, creating a real sense of horror right at the start of this book which I felt was heightened by the contrast with the preceding party-and-food heavy scenes. 

Behind Amora's growing doubts about the kingdom and her place in it is a growing sense of struggle and injustice and a feeling that the system she expected to inherit may not be the wise and just edifice she'd assumed. There is a real moral complexity in the eventual encounter with the forces that threaten the kingdom, a mixing of the personal and the political that includes Amora, her father, the cryptic, swashbuckling, pirate Bastian and a feminist mermaid ('I've a collection of men who I intend to repay for how generous they were to me... Dismemberment for anyone who ever tried to touch me. The tongue flayed from those with wicked mouths. And the heart eaten from any man who's ever told me to smile.') This book recognises that it isn't all about finding the True King (or Queen) - there must be justice beyond that. It leaves Amara, after much loss, looking to establish that, based on what she's learned on her journeys and I'm sure that in future books we'll see the difficulty of carrying this through.

In style, this book is often direct, with things seen from Amara's point of view and reflecting her limited experience (so it's appropriate, for example, that the parts set at sea aren't salted with nautical terms she wouldn't know, or that in an episode where villagers are trying to repair their homes after a storm - without help from the King - we get her perspective mainly as people hammering at wood). Grace reveals the Kingdom gradually, giving us, one after another, encounters with the various islands that make it up, each occupied by people with a different magical bent. The differences between these settings and their people are well realised, supporting the complex picture that Amora is gradually putting together of her world and of her family's place in it.

With its blend of magic, fantasy, romance and  politics, I think this book is bound to be popular and to lead many readers to enjoy the world and peoples of Visidia.

For more information about the book, see the publisher's website here.

Review - Bookish and the Beast by Ashley Poston

Art by Peter Greenwood 
Design by Elissa Flanigan

Bookish and the Beast (Once Upon a Con, 3)

Ashley Poston

Quirk Books, 4 August 

Available as: PB,283pp

Source: Advance reading copy kindly supplied by the publisher

ISBN: 9781683691938

I'm grateful to Quirk Books for an advance copy of Bookish and the Beast. 

I am loving the Once Upon a Con series. Drawing upon fairytales - but allowing the protagonists to be bothy conscious of the fact and, at times, critical of the tropes and outcomes possibly involved - they're creating their own universe, in which geeky teenagers get to have their say, to delineate their own world and celebrate their heroes. Each book adds richness and some critique of the previous books and characters. And it's all, of course, entwined with the hit SF TV series and film, Starfield. (Poston gives us tantalising little glimpses of Starfield. I need more!)

Bookish and the Beast is, of course, modelled on Beauty and the Beast though the author cheerfully admits that's she's chosen the elements she likes from that story (which is of course what you do with fairy stories). The Beast is Vance Reigns,  bad-boy (well, bad-17 year old) actor and star of the Starfield films (he plays villainous Ambrose Sond) who's become embroiled in a scandal and sent off to a no-name town where he will be out of the gossip columns. Beauty is Rosie Thorne, still mourning the death of her mother and keen to get out of the no-name town and hit the big city. Rosie's backed up by staunch friends Annie and Quinn. Quinn's running for Homecoming Overlod (not King or Quinn as they're non binary).

Poston gives us alternate chapters from Rosie's and vance points of view, allowing a rounded picture of the misunderstandings between them - Vance's brooding sulkiness and Rosie's defensive pain tend to produce sparks as they have to work together to catalogue a library of rare Starfield books. It's possibly a simpler, more straightforward romance than the first two books with some predictable barriers to happiness and it takes place in Rosie's home town and school rather than around a con. (I didn't find that lessened the atmosphere or geekiness of the story - Rosie, Quinn and Annie supply plenty of that and we also see appearances by some characters from the earlier books, with a hint that their lives continue to have ups and downs). 

There are some shrewdly drawn relationships - Rosie's with her dad, generally referred to as "Star Dad" for reasons that become clear is very touching, and he is also a man with some surprises for us. Tropes like "wicked stepparent" are avoided and it's all grounded in a solid presentation of the emotional stuff that the two teenagers are going through - Vance has been hurt by so-called "friends" who just want to sell him out to the tabloids, Rosie by the loss of her mother and the impact the cost of her treatment has had on the family finances (thank goodness for the UK's National Health service). She's, to a degree, stumped for what to do next, blocked in writing the essay she needs to apply to the university of her choice, and being targeted by the most popular boy in school - attentions she DOESN'T want but fear she may, out of politeness, accept.

It's a very enjoyable read and fleshes out what I hope will be a continuing wider universe.

For more information about Bookish and the Beast see the Quirk website here.

Review - The Princess and the Fangirl by Ashley Poston

Cover by Amy DeVoogd and Andie Reed

The Princess and the Fangirl (Once Upon a Con, 2)
Ashley Poston
Quirk Books, 2 April
PB, 316pp

I'm grateful to Quirk Books and the incomparable Jamie Lee Nardone for an advance copy of The Princess and the Fangirl.

Taking place in the same continuity as Geekerella (as we're in Geekland, I'll speak the language) and indeed making references to it (Elle Wittimer makes a brief appearance) The Princess and the Fangirl is a take on The Prince and the Pauper, with the role-swapping being between Starfield actor Jessica Stone - whose character Princess Amara was killed off in the last film - and fangirl Imogen Weatherby, who's the driving force behind the #SaveAmara campaign (50,000 signatures and counting).

When the two get mistaken for one another at ExcelsiCon, trouble is bound to ensue as Imogen ("Mo", "Monster") accidentally ends up on one of Jess's panels. But when Jess runs into trouble, and needs to go below the radar, a switch with Imogen seems the obvious answer...

I really enjoyed Geekerella, and was delighted to see another story in the same world. And I think The Prince and the Pauper (gender swapped of course) is a natural fit for a con - a setting where every second person is cosplaying as someone or something else, where exploring identities and affiliations (joining in fandoms and factions) is the whole point. The alternating points of view let us see things from both Jess's and Imogen's perspectives and to understand why they might both be willing to swap (despite pretty much loathing one another).

Poston can't, of course, give us all that at once and for the first two thirds or so of this story we get, I think, greater insight into Jess than Imogen. Geekerella had already told us a bit about her, and we also saw there how trapped Darien, her leading man in Starfield, felt, so it's a natural development to see how a young woman who had achieved some critical success might resent a "popcorn" role and the fandom and hoopla that comes with it. There is a real edge, though, to the depictions of trolling, mysogyny, and fan entitlement - which of course in a sense Imogen represents because Jess doesn't, desperately doesn't, want to #SaveAmara.

In contrast, for a fair bit of this book, Imogen felt slightly flat. In a sense her motives are simpler - she thinks she's been given and opportunity to further her campaign - but in another they're less clear - why has she thrown herself so much, heart and should, into that campaign to begin with? Poston, rightly, only unravels that slowly and in a sense it's something both Imogen and Jess discover together over the three days of the con. So I won't blurt out the reasons now!

Poston depicts fan culture warts and all, I've mentioned the trolling and misogyny but even beyond that there are some pretty cynical, scheming creeps here to be taken on and exposed. That, too requires trust and friendship, as well as the ability to think quickly and bend the rules where necessary.

It is in the end a very satisfying study of the two women, their (eventual) solidarity and mutual support founded on living each others' lives (albeit, in the outhouse atmosphere of the con). That makes for a satisfying and, for me, more natural ending to this book than Geekerella. After all, Geekerella had to parallel the magic of Cinderella with something con-related: here the con is more of a setting than a player, the resolution coming very much from Jess and Imogen and founded, in the end, on their trust in one another and in their friends - some of them very new friends.

I'd recommend. If you loved Geekerella you will I think enjoy this, perhaps even more, but you don't need to have read the earlier book first (though I think you'll want to read both).

Review - In An Absent Dream by Seanan McGuire

In An Absent Dream (Wayward Children, 4)
Seanan McGuire
Tor.com, 1 February 2019
HB, 208pp

I reviewed In An Absent Dream as an audiobook (even though I've cited the availability of the hardback version above, probably because I fetishise the physical object or something, don't get me started).

The fourth volume in the Wayward Children series is actually a prequel, the events taking place a few decades before the other books. We enter the world of (Katharine) Lundy, an intense, studious girl who has no friends. It's the 1960s, and teachers can easily get away with saying things like, girls need more help with maths. Because her father is the Principal of her middle American elementary school, no-one wants to know her. It's all not fair, and Katharine longs for a world where things are fair and there are rules that everyone follows.

In the manner of the Wayward Children books, of course, she finds just that: a doorway leads her to the Goblin Market where everyone must always give "fair value". (To fail to do so would lead to an escalating series of changes and losses, eventually resulting in... well, I won't spoil that).

The story is bookmarked by two references. At the beginning is an extract from Christina Rossetti's bewitchingly enticing poem, also Goblin Market, stressing the ripeness, the juiciness, the taste, of all those fruits that are on offer. Towards the end, McGuire's authorial voice declares sadly that "this is not a fairy story". (I may slightly misquote, I listened to the audio so can't easily check the text).

It certainly isn't that sort of fairy story - you know, where the Princess and the Handsomse Prince kiss and live Happily Ever After. But I think McGuire's warning is slightly deceptive. That first quote has already given us some orientation as to what sort of (fairy) story the book is. Rossetti's poem may be interpreted as a sort of yearning warning to Victorian young womanhood against temptation, in the form of those oh-so-sweet goblin fruits, but there is more than one level of meaning to it and McGuire deftly exploits another that is a common theme of fairy stories - the bad bargain. Lundy (she chooses to use her surname after a warning that names have power) is told what the rules of the Market are, and soon learns the consequences of failing to keep them, but she is, as well as being a rule-taker, always on the lookout for loopholes. This leads her to (in a sense) gamble with the Market, the stakes becoming higher and higher. Whether that will ultimately buy her freedom and her heart's desire or... not... you have to read the book to see.

It's in some respects a curious book. Part of the Wayward Children series, it is very much a standalone, with little involvement of Miss Eleanor and her School.

Curiouser (and curiouser) still, the focus of this novel is very much on the progress of Lundy's bargaining and how that develops. We hear about high adventures - much Questing goes on, there is talk of defending the Market's borders and even a death of a friend of Lundy's - but this is all off camera, as it were with the book dwelling instead on Lundy's comings and goings, the tension between The Market, the world where she belongs (her "home") and our world, the world of her parents and sister. So we see a lot of her coming and going, with her life in the Goblin Market glossed over. That felt frustrating at times, you just have to trust McGuire though - in a sense we can imagine what we don't see, and putting all that in would make the book a lot longer and smother the theme she's trying to develop. Still, I would like to know more about those skipped over episodes.

Finally, I've referred above to bargaining, to "fair value" and the central metaphor of this book is a market. The Archivist, the nearest thing Lundy has to a guide and mentor in that strange world, is rather fond of lecturing her on the workings of that market. If you listen carefully (remember, I was listening, not reading) I think you'll conclude that this market is not a "market" in the sense that the modern neoliberal consensus would recognise (it's too fair for that; a Goblin Market is, after all, a fair, and so has to give fair value?) but it's still hard for these passages not to resemble economics seminars. And in at least one of them (which explained the background to Lundy's first big gamble) I never quite understood the reasoning. (Sorry this is obscure, spoilers, spoilers, spoilers). I think two things are going on here - first, since Rossetti's day, terms like "market" and "value" have become tainted by what is, after all, referred to as the "dismal science" and secondly, the ideas at the heart of this book are quite complex to convey in what is a short book.

That seems to have taken us a long way from fairy tales and magic doors. Rest assured, those are present here, it's really an enchanting extension to the Wayward Children series. Also present - of course - is Lundy, an engaging and steely young woman whose love, loyalty and courage shine through.

It is really a very enjoyable book, and confirms that McGuire is continually taking this series to new places. I hope she does so again soon.

For more info on the book see the publisher's website here.

Review - Beneath the Sugar Sky by Seanan McGuire

Cover by Sean Rodwell

Beneath the Sugar Sky (Wayward Children, 3)
Seanan McGuire
Tor, 1 February 2018
HB, e 174pp

Warning: this is the third book in a series and there are some spoilers below for earlier ones.

I bought my copy of this book (another 2018 book I'd left unread too long, and caught up with over Christmas).

I'm loving McGuire's Wayward Children series. To start with the concept is brilliant - Eleanor West runs the Home for Wayward Children, those who've wandered through doorways into other worlds, returned to this one, and don't fit in - but the execution, ah, the execution is sublime. These are real kids, people you will recognise or even people you might have been. Or indeed, be. This series is just so well written, has so much heart and soul and I really, really enjoyed this latest instalment.

Beneath the Sugar Sky opens out the themes of the series somewhat. While the first two books, Every Heart a Doorway and Down Among the Sticks and Bones, told different parts of the same story - that of Jack and Jill, their time on the Moors and their time in the School - in Beneath the Sugar Sky, Rini - daughter of Sumi, who we met in Every Heart - appears from the land of Confection, a place of sugars and baked goods... where everything has now gone wrong. What happened in the earlier book has brought about a catastrophe. The Queen of Cakes is rising again, and Rini's very existence is threatened.

A party of friends sets out to put things right, travelling through various worlds, meeting the Lord and Lady of the Dead and then, inevitably, coming up against the Queen herself.

It's smart, funny, touching and has a pace and tension to it that will keep you turning the pages, as well as smart characters out of their depth - they're in a strange world, not one they would have travelled to. But there is more here and I thought that - after the third book - it might be worth saying something about this series in general.

I understand that one of the hallmarks of science fiction or fantasy is to make metaphors actual. I do find this a hard concept to grasp. I can see for example that "time travel" leaps over our short lives to consider the effect of what we do on the future - or pushes us into the past to consider how similar, and different, we may be to our ancestors. But it's hard to feel this idea other than as a clever talking point, it seems to add little to one's understanding of a book.

In the Wayward Children books, though, McGuire takes this idea and makes it dance and sing. her series has a very clear focus: the kids she conjures up literally don't fit into this (our) world. They want to find a world where they do fit and, if they fall back out of it - those doorways have a pesky habit of reopening just when you don't want them - they need to find their way back in. Eleanor West's Home is a kind of waystation, a safe space where such kids can wait and learn, while they hope to go back.

So we have here, for example, Cora, who's curvy and excellent at swimming and has spent time as a mermaid in a water world. Back home, though, she's taunted for being "fat". Or Kade, whose misfortune is to have been exiled from the world he really wants, where he would be a brave prince - because it identified him, as his parents do, as female. (Not every story has a happy ending).

The Home provides a place to wait, to hope that the door will eventually reopen and - however imperfect this is - the society of others who are in a similar position. It isn't all sweetness and light (witness what happened in the first book) but it is better than a disbelieving and, well, adult world.

The writing therefore speaks to the sense of many young adults that they are misunderstood, out of place, different and it holds out hope of a better future. But there are no promises. This acceptance has to count for a lot, the happy ending may not come (and don't many or even most of us adults go around with similar feelings at least some of the time?) Not every door reopens.

But it goes further than this. By positively identifying with a glorious gamut of diversity (the books acknowledge race, gender, sexuality and many more characteristics - including simply loners and those who identify as weird in various ways) McGuire subtly (well, perhaps not so subtly) renders people visible. In a sense the book is Eleanor West's academy, because that is the place that Christopher, Cora, Sumi, Nancy and all the others have gone because that is where they will accepted and acknowledged..

If that sounds like the worst dream of a certain sort of pallid, angry SFF fan, well, perhaps it is. But I think the reason for that is not because, oh look, here's a SFF book with LGBT people in it, or people of colour, or whatever, and why did she have to do that, and can't we just have a fantastical adventure anymore? No, I think what stands out is that these books don't just have a diverse range of characters, in passing as it were, rather their theme and purpose is that diversity. The whole point of Wayward Children is that with an un-diverse different cast of characters they wouldn't work. The central idea - that we all have, or may have, our own doorway, to a land where we make sense, that we can go there, but we can lose that place - only works on the premise that all those doorways are different. Narnia isn't Never Never Land. Wonderland and Nutwood are different places, even if they have similarities, and the Hundred Acre Wood, to which Christopher Robin escaped, different again.

McGuire's embracing of diversity makes this obvious and - I think - changes that metaphor of falling down the rabbit hole or stepping through a wardrobe forever, making clear that such fantasies, such quests, are about the child stepping into the pond, through the mirror, or into the crack in the tree rather than the ostensible business of the quest or adventure then that takes place. What need is inside someone that they travel to such places so that it can be recognised and met?

So - rather that a nod to diversity through including these characters, McGuire  has full-bloodedly turned it into the subject, the bedrock and the central metaphor of her book (of this series). It's an exemplary use of that 'make the metaphor concrete' idea, in the very best, most mainstream SFF tradition - but it turns this idea on something that, let's admit it, still gets a minuscule share of the action (or perhaps of the attention).

Oh, and in case I wasn't clear above, Beneath the Sugar Sky (as well as Every Heart a Doorway and Down Among the Sticks and Bones) are rattling good stories. I don't think McGuire could produce a dud if she tried.

On, now, to Book 4, In an Absent Dream, which isn't out yet as a physical book (1 February if you're waiting!) but is available on Audible now...

Review - Down Among the Sticks and Bones by Seanan McGuire

Jacket design by FORT

Down Among the Sticks and Bones (Wayward Children, 2)
Seanan Mcguire
Tor, 2017
HB, 187pp

I'm continuing to review some books that have been on my shelves far too long, having taken the chance of a lengthy car journey to listen to the audiobook of Down Among the Sticks and Bones. (I bought a physical copy of this book from Wallingford Bookshop and the audiobook from Audible via Amazon. The audiobook, read by McGuire herself, is excellent, although Dr Bleak's signature whisper of a voice does at times make him a little hard to follow when driving!)

In this, the second part of her Wayward Children series, McGuire tells the other side of the story she began in Every Heart a Doorway (my review here). I won't say too much about that in case you haven't read it, but EHAD featured twins Jacqueline and Jillian - Jack and Jill ("because our parents shouldn't be allowed to name children") and their adventures at Eleanor West's School for Wayward Children. Down Among the Sticks and Bones tells more about the two and about their time in the world known as The Moors, under the care, respectively, of the strange Dr Bleak and the commanding Master. It forms a whole with the earlier book and I think the two are best read together.

McGuire has written more recent books about the Home and the Wayward Children, but moving onto other characters and with a slightly different focus. Here, though, we have an almost clinical dissection of lives, of parenting and of the weight of expectations, the story going back to Jack and Jill's parents, Chester and Serena Wolcott. Despite a disclaimer that the story hasn't actually started yet, McGuire devotes nearly a third of the book to this complacent, insufferable pair, showing how their sheer conventionality, their refusal to admit wonder to their kids' lives, above all their sheer stuffiness, warps and forms the two girls, laying the foundations for what will occur after. There are perhaps shades of the Dursleys here though I think McGuire writes with much more psychological grip.

Indeed, she writes wisely throughout and shows, I think, a deep understanding of children: appropriately, the atmosphere reminded me of writers such E Nesbit and CS Lewis who - whatever their other failings may be - understand and glory in the differences between adults and children/ young adults, and take the latter seriously. This book is, McGuire is, on their side (something that shines through all the books in this series).

I'm not going to try and précis the book because it speaks for itself, but while telling an exciting story (you find a hidden doorway in your house and go through it to a world of monsters! A world of werewolves, vampires and mad scientists! A world where you can be yourself!) McGuire also teases out the damage done by expectations and just how hard that may make finding "yourself". While the Moors may ostensibly be a place of freedom from a certain sort of adulthood, there is Authority there and it happily, greedily, feeds on what is presented to it. So Jack and Jill are set on their way well before they cross that threshold, past that notice saying "BE SURE". The story thereafter is one of McGuire teasing out how the little faults and fractures between the sisters grow, are worked on by events and undermine their relationship, their unity, until... well, until things happen.

It's a short book - all of the books in this series are - and McGuire impressively draws on our knowledge of genre conventions to save having to spell out what could otherwise take a great deal of space. In a sense the Moors (like the others worlds visited by the Wayward Children) are narrative come alive, the book referencing films, novels, poems and art to give a much clearer impression of the place than mere words might but also to prefigure how things may go in the story. This saves a lot of explanation, yet the book remains novel, fresh and compelling.

After reading Every Heart a Doorway it's good to explore one of the worlds in more detail. In the next book, Beneath the Sugar Sky, McGuire develops this idea in a very different sort of world, also making a major theme of this series - diversity - more explicit.

But that's for another review: watch this space.

Review - Spellslinger by Sebastien de Castell

Image from http://decastell.com/press-kit/

Spellslinger
Sebastien de Castell
Hot Key Books, 4 May 2017
PB, 396pp

I was sent this book for review by Amazon Vine.

Imagine you're back at Hogwarts, But you've no magic. You're a muggle - or at best a Squib - and about to be found out...

That's the dilemma that faces Kellen in this fast-paced YA fantasy. Kellen is from an ancient, high family of spellcasters, but what little magic he has is drying up - and he's due his trials in a few days.

But in Kellen's world, those with no magic, those who fail the trials, are disowned, cast out, treated as servants of even slaves.

De Castell takes this idea and spins a high-stakes tale of ingenuity, of growing up and of realisation. It's set in what - were it cloaked in modern dress and language - would be a classic dystopia: a cruel world, based on lies, prejudice and power, where those who fail are trampled down and a narrow ruling caste holds power for itself. The book spares no punches as it dissects Kellen's society: a society of rather conceited wizards who take for granted their moral superiority and their fitness to lord it over all around. And Kellen's part of it - so long as he sees himself among the privileged. But the events he sets in train as his trials approach will reveal some secrets about both his clan, and himself...

I loved this book. While serious in its subject, it's far from being dark fantasy of any sort - not least in Castell's brilliant counterpoint to Kellen and the pompous wizards: a woman called Ferius, a stranger who rides into town, looking and sounding for all the world like a gunslinger from a Western (except, no guns). As such strangers tend to do, she challenges the self-satisfied, brings new ways and stands up for the weak. Kellen is both enthralled and repelled by her, the struggle mirroring, perhaps, his internal struggle as he comes to realise there's more wrong with his people than simply his failing magic.

Add in a gallery of bullies and entitled schoolmates who could easily have come from Dickens or Tom Brown's Schooldays, a talking squirrel cat who drives a hard bargain, and layer upon layer of conspiracies, and you have potent blend. Indeed the only feature that isn't immediately obvious is where the title comes from: its derivation may seem obvious but until quite late in the book it isn't really clear what, in this world, a 'spellslinger' might be. That is eventually cleared up, though, and De Castell thereby prepares us for, I hope, many sequels following Kellen's and Ferius's future adventures.

Excellent, page-turnery reading.

Review - Dragon's Green by Scarlett Thomas

Image from http://www.canongate.tv/

Dragon's Green (Worldquake Book One)
Scarlett Thomas
Canongate Books, 6 April 2017
HB, 352pp

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance copy of this book via NetGalley.

This is, I think, Thomas's first book not for adults (It's described as YA but I'd have said perhaps YYA... I'm never really sure of the boundaries though). I should confess that I asked to read it because it's one of hers - having read and enjoyed her books for adults, I didn't really know what to expect, but was interested to see what she had written.

Which just shows the wonders of chance and coincidence because - apart from that perhaps rather dry sense of interest - this book was a real joy to read, reminding me a lot of the magical worlds of Diana Wynne Jones. Like them, the world of Dragon's Green is plainly, to a degree our world, though also (changed here, by the 'Worldquake') into one where magic might be real (even if not everyone believes in it). There's a similar sense that old secrets are all around, encrypted somehow, if only we could see them, or sleeping, just ready to be woken.

In this story it's Euphemia Truelove (Effie) who will uncover the secrets. She's a lonely girl: her mother Aurora... gone... in a way which has an air of mystery about (the Worldquake?) and her father, Orwell, distant, preoccupied by his new wife Cait (Cait is perhaps a bit of a wicked stepmother but not really strong enough a character to be really wicked). Effie attends the Tusitala School for the Gifted, Troubled and Strange) where she mingles with a wider group of other misfits and lonely kids (Carl, Maximilian, Lexy) - not all of them to be trusted.

When Griffin, Effie's beloved grandfather, is attacked in the street and taken to hospital, Effie begins a race against time to save his beloved library of rare and magical books - and the even stranger and more magical items he's entrusted to her care. Doing so involves Effie and her classmates sinking themselves into Stories, following Quests - and testing their friendship. All while under the thumb of the awful Mrs Beathag Hide, Effie's English teacher, of Orwell and of Cait (who's got the family on a diet of nutritionless shakes).

It's all great fun, never more so that when Effie actually gets to visit Dragon's Green, where princesses are trained to be fed to the dragon. In a welcome contrast to the typical fairy story treatment of a clanking , metal-clad knight saving a limp and grateful princess, Effie selects a cool outfit and sets out to match wits with him.

Then there's the awful Diberi, evil sorcerers whose worst crime is to use up and destroy books. A creepy book dealer. And a houseful of existential poets (dressed in black, naturally) who guard the secret of the Underworld...

This book is smart, packed with clever literary allusions (the passages spouted by the existentialists; a creepy encounter in the market with some goblin men selling their tempting fruits) as well as genuinely funny asides ('Could one arrive to save one's evil co-conspirator in a minicab? Perhaps not') and sharp observations ('the cruel courtship rituals of celebrities').

In places the tone is perhaps slightly uneven (a vital concept about a kind of otherworld magical life-force that governs what one can do is referred to as 'M-currency' which grates slightly in a book that's full of ingenious names and wordplay and which also shows a real sense of place).

Above all, though, Effie is a true hero (she really is - a True Hero; you'll need to read the book to find out what this means) and a rather magnificent one at that. This is a story of how she finds her mates and how they support her, but she's front and centre of the story and clearly destined for more adventures. They can't come soon enough.

As Black as Ebony

Image from www.hotkeybooks.com

As Black as Ebony
Salla Simukka (trans Owen F Witesman)
Hot Key Books, 6 August 2015
PB, 166pp
Source: Advance copy kindly provided by Hot Key

Snow White Week, part 3

I'm reviewing the three books in Salla Simukka's Snow White trilogy. My review of As Red as Blood is here and my review of As White as Snow, here.

 Now we come to the third and final book, As Black as Ebony.

Once upon a time there was a secret girl.
Once upon a time there was a girl who wasn't.

Like the earlier books, the story focusses on Lumikki Andersson, surely destined to be one of the greatest (and coolest) Scandi noir characters.

We're back in Tampere now. It's nearing Christmas and Lumikki's at school again, preparing for the Christmas play, a version of Snow White (of course). But weird stuff begins to happen. Unlike before, where Lumikki got into trouble by breaking her own rule of not getting involved in others' business, here it's focussed on her from the start. She begins to get anonymous messages, obsessive, increasingly unhinged messages.

Whoever is sending them knows a great deal about her - perhaps more than she does herself.

Because over the course of her previous adventures, Lumikki began to suspect that her parents were keeping something from her - something about her early life. Now, she begins to fear that this knowledge is what's driving her pursuer: to save herself she may have to go to places her family has walled off from her.

This is a tense and taut story, shorter than the other books, and spends much of its time in Lumikki's thoughts (although we also get glimpses - disturbing glimpses - inside someone else's mind). The knowledge we've built up, in the earlier books, of her character and history adds to the atmosphere here.  Indeed this book is the culmination of those earlier stories: looking back over the trilogy, each book focusses more closely on Lumikki herself and the bad fairytale that her life turns out to have been

As if having an all-knowing stalker wasn't enough, She also has to deal with the two boys in her life - the enigmatic and sensual Blaze returns (about whom Lumikki fantasises and who she is clearly still in love with) but she's started a relationship with Sampsa, a more homely and gentle type. Blaze has, she feels hurt her and she can't be with him, even though him who comes into her head when she's in bed with Sampsa. But can she trust either of them when those oh-so-accurate messages about her past begin to arrive?

This was a compelling read, wrapped up even more than the previous books in the retelling of a fairy story: at times it's as though Lumikki was written by the Brothers Grimm but she has none of the conventionality of a Snow White or a Sleeping Beauty - she's not waiting for a prince and not prepared to fall under anybody's enchantment. In the end she has the determination to act - she's not going to have her story written for her.

In bringing this haunting trilogy to a marvellous conclusion, Simukka has completed a memorable and truly original story with a truly enchanting and capable hero who deserves - I hope - further books.

For more about the books, see here. To buy As Black as Ebony, go to your local bookshop, or here, here or here.

I'll be hosting an interview with Salla Simukka about the books here tomorrow - watch this space!

As White as Snow

Image from www.hotkeybooks.com

Salla Simukka (trans Owen F Witesman)
Hot Key Books, 5 March 2015
PB, 214pp
Source: Advance copy kindly provided by Hot Key

Snow White Week, part 2

I reviewed the first part of Salla Simukka's Snow White trilogy, As Red as Blood, here yesterday.

Now for part 2, As White as Snow 

Once upon a time, there was a woman with a secret...

Like As Red as Blood, this book features the sparky but haunted Lumikki Andersson. In the previous book Lumikki was drawn into a conflict over drug money, which put her life in danger. Now she's sworn to stay out of anyone else's business and decamped to Prague for a bit of me-time (though using the money she kept back from the stash in her previous escapade).

Sometimes, though, trouble follows you where you least expect it.

Approached by another young woman who believes they are sisters, Lumikki is forced to confront some issues her family never discusses - as well as new dangers.

This is another cracking story by Salla Simuka. Like the earlier book, there is something of a fairytale setting, with allusions to Snow White, a sinister shadow puppet show and, of course, the architecture of Prague itself. More fundamentally, there are questions of identity, of sisterhood and of self reflection (a couple of key scenes involve the two women and mirrors). The mystery which was hinted at in As Red as Blood returns here - there is definitely something off about the Andersson family, and Limukka is beginning to remember things but nothing makes any sense. Has her father been lying to her all these years? Does her mother know? We also learn about Lumikki's own more recent history, her passionate liaison with the enigmatic Blaze, for whom she still yearns.

The atmosphere of the books continues to intrigue me - I'm not sure whether it's despite their relative shortness or because of it that Simukka is able to convey so many overtones, but alongside the fairytale trappings I began to see something of the noir abut Lumikki - a woman with strained and broken relationships walking, like it or no, on the dark side of the street but herself a person with a moral centre, incorruptible, taking fearful risks for an innocent(?) who has asked for help. It's easy to fall for Lumikki!

She certainly needs all her moral centre here, as she becomes embroiled in a plot which involves not only the mysterious Lenka but also a sinister religious cult and a journalist on the make. It's a slightly less complicated plot than in As Red as Blood allowing more time to reflect on Lumikki's own circumstances but the peril is as real and the lessons she has learned from fighting back after years of being bullied are as useful here as in her earlier adventure.

My admiration for Simukka only grew after reading this book. She has added new layers of complicity to Lumikki while producing a taut, gripping thriller that grabbed me right to the end and left me wanting more. There's no Happy Ever After yet, so I want to know how the fairytale ends and I'll be moving straight onto As Black as Ebony - which I'll review tomorrow.

For more about the books, see here. To buy As White as Snow, go to your local bookshop, or here, here or here.

As Red as Blood

Image from www.hotkeybooks.com

As Red as Blood
Salla Simukka (trans Owen F Witesman)
Hot Key Books, 7 August 2014
PB, 236pp
Source: Advance copy from Hot Key Books

Snow White Week, part 1

Snow White Week begins here! 

To explain - I'm celebrating Salla Simukka's Snow White trilogy (As Red as Blood/ As White as Snow/ As Black as Ebony), published in the UK by Hot Key. I'm a sucker for twisted fairytales (for example, Sarah Pinborough's retellings in Tales from the Kingdoms) and I've loved these stories of Lumikki Anderson.

They're YA crime/ thriller/ undefinable and just generally terrific. There are three relatively short books - perfect for a summer binge read.

I'll be posting reviews of the three books over the next few days, followed by an interview with the author herself.

So here goes - As Red as Blood.

Once upon a time, there was a girl who had no fear...

Reading As Red as Blood taught me two things. First, that labels aren't always helpful. Secondly, that I can be a teensy bit prejudiced.

What do I mean? Well, it was only after reading this wonderful, gripping, suspenseful crime caper story that I bumped into someone who told me it was a YA book. Well, yes, I can see that now but it certainly didn't occur to me when I read it. And it might even have put me off if I'd known before. I have my biases (no YA in my young day, etc etc). Clearly I need to be more flexible.

Whatever. I want to persuade you to read this, and I'll tell you whatever it takes - call it a YA drama, a twisted fairytale, a crime thriller, or just a stonking good story. (It is all of those things).

Lumikki Anderson is a Finnish high school student living in the city of Tampere. Finland is a foreign country: they do things differently there. Lumikki is living 70 miles from home, in her own little flat, while she finishes school. It sounds a nice life, yet her days are haunted by regret and the memory of some dark events. Regret, for the lover she knew in the summer and has lost. (This book is set in the deepest, darkest winter). Memory of - well, that might be a spoiler. It's enough to say she learned some tough lessons in survival, the first of which is, don't get involved.

That's an easy enough rule to follow in the cauldron of school, just avoid the cliques, the popular kids, find a place of your own in the pecking order, don't join in. Simukka is good at conveying the subtle nuances of teenage life, the positioning between groups:

She was the puzzle piece that didn't have its own place but could suddenly fill in almost any hole you needed it to.

She wasn't like the others.

She was exactly like the others.

This, Lumikka can cope with. It's not so easy though when you walk into the middle of something nastier...

At the start of the book we witness a death. Then some kids seem to be involved in a crime. Then Lumikki (named after Snow White) comes on the scene. Her self-sufficient life is about to be split right open by the consequences of the murder, of the crime when on February 29th, Leap Day, Lumikki wanders into the school darkroom and find money hanging up to dry.

Blood stained money...

From that moment the story never lets up. The general setup is clear - shady drug bosses keeping their underlings in line - but exactly how the pieces fit together is kept mysterious till well on in the story. The tension, and peril, crackles like a high voltage power line. Just what kind of a mess is Limukki getting into? Can she rely on her three classmates - Elisa, Tuuka and Kasper - or will they lead her into worse trouble?  It's a tautly written, driven narrative, very well served, I think, by Witesman's translation, in which Simukka adroitly balances the everyday (survival in the cold of a Finnish winter when if you go out without a warm hat you may die), the comings and goings from the school and coffee shop, the clothes, the rivalries between the teenagers - and the darkness that lurks just out of sight. 

The immediate darkness is the criminal gang, which seems to have tentacles everywhere, but there's also Lumikki's history - just what has happened to her, and how has it made her so good at escaping attention? Maybe she can use those skills to solve the crime, but then she'll become involved in a world of drug dealing, pimps and murder. (Never get involved).

Woven together with these are fragments of fairytale:

Once upon a time, there was a girl who learned to fear...

It's an exciting read, and only the first part of a trilogy. 

Tomorrow, I'll be reviewing As White as Snow, and we'll see what Lumikki gets up to next...

For more about the books, see here. To buy As Red as Blood, go to your local bookshop, or here, here or here.

The High Ground

Image from http://zenoagency.com/

The High Ground (The Imperials Saga, 1)
Melinda Snodgrass
Titan Books, 5 July 2016
PB, 432pp
Source: Advance copy kindly provided by the publisher

Six hundred years in the future, enabled by the discovery of how to fold space, humanity has spread out across the Galaxy. Old Earth is abandoned, a violent, inhospitable place, its climate ruined, and of interest only to eccentrics and romantics.

Progress.

In other ways things have gone backwards - the Galaxy is ruled by the Emperor of the Solar League under whom an extensive aristocracy flourishes.

Like aristocracies everywhere, they are arrogant, entitled and more ornamental then useful (for certain values of "ornamental"). But they do have power.

Women are treated as breeding units, forbidden any autonomy and tyrannised by the Church. Aliens whose planets have been conquered by the human race are mistrusted and kept down (in a sly vignette Snodgrass shows us how under this hierarchical model even the lowest class humans have somebody to look down on: a perfect illustration of colonialism and racism).

If that makes the book sound rather worthy, it's not. I mean, it is (what's wrong with being worthy?) but it is first and foremost a story, and a well-told one. In a blend of SF, YA, school story and even fairytale ("the Princess and the Tailor's son") Snodgrass drives the plot though two enthralling - if often very annoying - protagonists, Tracy (the tailor's son - and a pretty mean stitcher himself) and Mercedes (the daughter of the Emperor). Of course, they fall in love, despite their different status and of course, this causes problems (a princess and a dirty intitulado?) But there's more going on here. There is the whole dynamic of an able, but poor, man who has an opportunity to make his mark when he wins a scholarship to the elite Academy, the High ground of the title but who is forced to defer to a bunch of often incompetent toffs. Even when he saves the day he risks being blamed for whatever has gone wrong, and can't take any credit.

Similarly for Mercedes - ostensibly a pampered, privileged daughter of power, she has no autonomy, no say over her life - she never wanted to join the High Ground, but is forced to, the first woman ever, yes, but not of her choice: it's all for for reasons of politics. yet she wants to make a success of it, not to be a token woman, to graduate: but that seems to mean having to be twice as good as the boys (while hobbled by impractical clothing). The same as the men but backwards and in high heels, as it were. There is a hilarious scene where Mercedes beats the male cadets hands down in a space fighter simulator. They're furious. It must be rigged, mustn't it? One can't help thinking of the recent tedious sulking by male gamers (so, OK, perhaps this future isn't so far from our present as you'd think...)

It's an enjoyable read. Through all their trials and setbacks, Tracy and Mercedes remain vivid, real characters, teenagers learning about life in a world they don't control and can't (much) influence (not even the all mighty Princess). This is the first volume of a series and rightly it concentrates on establishing the world and drawing the characters. There are some hints of wider things going on (in the prologue, in the mentions of Hidden Worlds and missing ships, and in the closing part of the book, where feudal politics suddenly and violently intrudes into the lives of the pair) but this is largely a character study: think Romeo and Juliet in space, with a dash of Hogwarts mixed in.

Finally, for a book that takes a swords-and-honour culture (unless you're one of the peasants, who can't afford honour) the culture was (for me) refreshingly different as the chivalric titles and general ambience are Spanish rather than Anglo. Not only did that add a dash of the exotic (again, there's humour when it's explained what the titles are derived form!), but it also avoids the impression, whenever a new character appears with a resounding title, that he (it's generally he) is clothed in furs and has just come in from a snowstorm.

The only slight drawback for me was the sheer numbers of aristocratic characters with florid titles: it's hard at times to keep up with who everyone is and whether or not they are Tracy's allies or enemies (actually that's not so hard, he has few friends). Aristocrats - what use are they?

For an interview with Melinda Snodgrass, listen to this Episode of the Tea and Jeopardy podcast, with Emma Newman.

Review: Every Heart a Doorway

Every Heart a Doorway
Seanan McGuire
Tor, 2016
HB, 173pp
Source: Bought from Waterstones

This a brilliant book which I enjoyed immensely (as well as being very moved by it, both saddened and uplifted).

It is also I think the weirdest book I've read in a long time. (Which is great. Weird is good: long live the Weird!)

But - and I often find this with books I really loved - it's hard to know where to start in writing the review.

The plot is easy to summarise. Eleanor West runs a boarding school for survivors, children (mostly women and girls) who've come back after straying into other worlds - many of them Wonderlands of various types, some more... gothic. On return, of course, nobody will believe them and each pines for the life she enjoyed in a place attuned precisely to here.

Eleanor picks up the pieces.

To this school comes Nancy, lately returned from service to the Lord of the Dead. As if it wasn't already hard enough having parent who think she's off her head and having to fit in with girls who (mostly) seemed to have visited sparkly rainbow fantasy worlds, nasty things begin to happen after her arrival...

Yes, this book has plot, it has super plot. But the story isn't really about the plot. The heart of this book is very much the characters McGuire sketches and this is where I fear I won't be able to do justice to the book. It's a short book, but she makes each believable, rounded and - in their own way - both tragic and hopeful. There's Jack and Jill, the two girls who visited the achingly bleak Moors, inhabited by vampires and mad scientists. There's Kade, one of the few boys, who everyone used to think was a girl. he was exiled from his adopted world because that broke a rule: the others may hope to return, he never can. Sumi became accustomed in her world to high Nonsense and is really having trouble fitting in. Loriel found a home in a world of spiders.

It gradually becomes clear that all of these young people are traumatised, scarred by exile from places where they felt uniquely at home - many of them refer to their other worlds as "home" and most have been rejected pretty much by their families. Indeed, I think that they may have been alienated from their families before the strayed through those doorways to find refuge in a different place.

That is a pretty obvious metaphorical point here about people who are exploring their own identity, trying to find a life, a world, that suits them and cutting ties with family and home. It's emphasised by the presence of those who are different in other ways - the minority here who have a gothic outlook, longing for sweet darkness, stillness and quiet, those whose gender identity makes them different, those who are, simply, odd - and spelling it out perhaps makes it seem laboured. But in the book it's not. McGuire has whatever the writers' equivalent of green fingers is (inky hands?), displaying a sure touch with her characters and she makes this extended metaphor come alive, celebrating the glory of difference at the same time as she evokes the pain of knowing there is somewhere you fit in but not being able to get there.

While I don't think the idea of an "aftermath" for adults who experienced other worlds as children is a a new one - I'd point to Joe Hill's NOS4R2 or Alan Garner's Boneland as other examples and I'm sure there are more - Every Heart a Doorway is distinct in focussing on the phenomenon as though it applied to multiple young people, so enabling interaction between them, exploring the group dynamics of the situation, as it were. And it does so very well, touching on some fascinating issues (isn't it a bit, well, creepy for a teenager to want to go and serve as a living statue in the Halls of the Dead? Is she actually capable of making that choice? What would you be prepared to do to get back to that other place? How will you live if, like most of us, you know you can never reach it?)

I've rambled on enough. Read this. It will introduce you to some terrific characters and take you to very dark places. Parts are almost tear jerkingly sad. But, as I said above, it is also uplifting. Above all it is a real experience of a read. Strongly recommended.

Review - 13 Minutes by Sarah Pinborough

13 Minutes
Sarah Pinborough

Gollancz, 18 February 2016
HB, 416pp

I'm grateful to NetGalley for an advance e-copy of this book.

Sarah Pinborough is well known as a horror writer. With recent books she has blended her horror with YA (The Death House), detection (Murder/ Mayhem and The Dog-Faced Gods) and even fairy stories. Now she turns more squarely to teenage life even than in The Death House.

You might think a story of a young woman who was drowned, died for 13 minutes but then returned to life would be a tale of darkness and haunting, and of course this is - but not in the kind of supernatural way you might expect. Pinborough continues to surprise, though, and you shouldn't take anything on trust: the group of teenagers affected by the events in this book may be ordinary but that doesn't mean everyone is happy, secure or - perhaps most of all - safe.

Tasha Howland is a successful girl, popular at school, leader of the cooler-than-cool clique known as the Barbies. So how did she end up, the middle of one night, in an ice cold river, clinically dead? 13 Minutes follows Tasha's attempts to rebuild her life and to make sense of what happened to her. The story's told from multiple viewpoints: mainly Tasha's onetime BFF Becca but we also see a lot of Tasha herself, of the detective assigned to the case, and of Becca's boyfriend. There are texts, transcripts of sessions with a counsellor, newspaper cuttings and excerpts from Tasha's diary. And it all comes together, oh so cleverly, oh so slowly. Pinborough has written a very clever book, on several levels.

First, she gets under the skin of the sixth formers - Tasha, her cohorts Jenny and Hayley, Becca and her uncool friend Hannah. The book revolves around them and to a great extent they form a little world of their own, looking out, everything seen through their motivations - rivalries, anxieties, popularity and unpopularity. There is history between them, but we only discover it gradually. The author was, I understand, a teacher and I'd guess a very good one - the observation and understanding here is razor sharp.

Secondly, she... oh I don't know if I should even say. No spoilers, but this book is tricksy. There are lots of narrators here, OK? Are they all telling themselves the truth all of the time? Are there things that are known but hidden, not referred to, lurking under the surface? Are there things, under the surface, that even the confident, sassy teenagers don't know about?

And then, the book is so skilfully plotted. It seems to be one thing and then something happens - you'll know it when you reach it, you might even see it coming a little way ahead and congratulate yourself, but watch out, it's the consequences that matter more than the event itself.

From that moment the rather careful choreography of the group of girls - not friends, but pushed into shifting alliances by the event that befall Becca - changes pace, as though a performance of Swan Lake suddenly turned into The Rite of Spring - and secrets emerge like little dancing devils. It becomes more and more clear that something is badly wrong, but Pinborough keeps a final understanding from the reader till almost the last page, when the book closes with frenzied action.

It is, I would say (as one who'd a long long way from teenage) a realistic, not moralistic, portrayal of teenage life. There's a bit of sex, there are drugs, but it's not a book about those things or their Dire Consequences: they aren't markers for Out of Control Youth or Moral Decay, just stuff the characters are coping with. If such things bother you, be aware.

Most of all though, it's a great read. Pinborough continues to delight her readers, refusing to be confined to simple genre categories and increasing her range all the time.

Goodness knows what she'll do next.

An Amazon Vine review: Truthwitch by Susan Dennard

Truthwitch
Susan Dennard
Tor, January 2016
HB, 416pp

I was sent a copy of this book by Amazon UK to review as part of their Vine programme.

Reading it was something of a leap in the dark for me - this type of epic fantasy, not to say YA(ish) (which is how it seems to be presented - though I'm not 100% sure...) isn't what I usually go for. But I'd heard good things about the book (and series) and thought it worth a try - and I'm glad to say that I found it very entertaining, deftly written and engaging.

We first meet Iseult and Safi, the teenage (?) protagonists as they - literally - commit highway robbery on a remote coast road. They're quickly established as two very capable young women (indeed so much so that Dennard soon has to find ways to incapacitate, separate or otherwise hamper them, or else they'd make mincemeat of their enemies and the book would be done in half the length). Not only are they able and willing to kill (a bit chilling, that) but they have magical abilities - Safi is the Truthwitch of the title and can distinguish between truth and lies, Iseult can see (and manipulate?) people's "threads" - the coloured strands that reveal emotions, bind together lovers or friends and dictate one's way in life.

These aren't the only magical abilities in the book. We meet windwitches, tidewitches, firewitches and even blood- and iron- witches, to list only a few. There's also a supporting cast of emperors (and empresses), kings, princes, fighting monks, sailors and merchants. It's a vivid, jostling world, clearly modelled (there is a map! look at the map!) on medieval Europe, albeit one with REAL witches and REAL magic.

It's also a troubled world where an uneasy peace exists between rival empires. Where the poison of ancient wars taints the land. Where witches are hunted both by those who prize their powers and by those who fear and hate them. Dennard doesn't bother to explain much of this, rather we're plunged right in and have to pick it up as we go along, so the first 50 or 100 pages may be rather bewildering. Indeed I stopped trying to remember some of the detail - like which empire was which - and I was worried for a while, then realised it doesn't really matter. Dennard has you safe and takes you where you need to go, just as the wind-witchery catches up Safi and Iseult many times and sets them down again.

It's a fairly intricate plot involving kidnap, forced marriage and high politics (taking Safi and Iseult into a world they are less familiar with and where they are unable to solve their problems at swordpoint) but a big-hearted one. The two fearless girls are that heart. Amidst the breakneck action their friendship burns brightly and when they are together - and unhampered - it can burn through any obstacle.

There are of course some familiar fantasy tropes: a mysterious shadow in Iseult's dreams, a hint of some coming, prophesied hero or god, a warrior with a sworn duty, the high-born aristocrat and the humble, runaway tribe member striking up a friendship - but these don't distract and much of the action, at least in this book, is character driven and immediate: no doubt the bigger picture will be explored in the sequels. And even here Dennard plays with the ideas and overturns them - so for example that warrior would rather hire out his sword than fulfil his sworn destiny - and I'm sure that even when these elements assume more prominence they'll still be secondary to the joyous team that is Safi and Iseult.

A VERY strong start to a new series.