Manners and Mutiny
This book was provided to me by the publisher at no cost.
Firstly? I do not love this cover. It’s far too old to be Sophronia, which I don’t remember being a problem with the other covers. The crossbow is appropriate, at least. I am also not wild about the yellow.
Fortunately I do not tend to judge books by covers; at least, not books in a series I have been enjoying and whose author I tend to trust.
Domnall and the Borrowed Child
This book was provided to me by the publisher at no cost.
I did not love this book.
It’s perfectly adequate as a re-hashing of the ideas about Faerie stealing children and possible consequences and so on, but I don’t think it’s as clever as it thinks it is.
I think the idea of only the old and somewhat pathetic faeries still being around is meant to be – amusing? challenging? – but instead it just comes off as a bit confusing, because the reason for that isn’t really explored; sometimes an info dump can be useful. Additionally I think what happens with the mortal woman is meant to, I dunno, challenge expectations or something. Didn’t really work.
Domnall comes across as a bit boring, rather than the somewhat sly, hard-working and long-suffering fae that I think was the intention. And if he wasn’t meant to be that, and was instead meant to be the lazy good-for-nothing whose butt is kicked to get more done – well, that didn’t really work either. The sidekick that he accidentally ended up with didn’t have enough character to be a funny, ambitious, or appropriately sidekick-y sidekick, and there were a couple of uncomfortable moments between them too (of a sexual nature – nothing too squick, don’t worry).
The plot itself is serviceable, and if that sounds like damning with faint praise… that’s probably about right.
Witches of Lychford
This book was provided to me by the publisher at no cost.
In Witches of Lychford, Paul Cornell takes the idea of witches being people (and particularly women) who are tasked in some way to protect the humdrum population from things they don’t understand. Here, the place is a bog-standard (on the outside) English village, which is facing a very real and common threat: a giant supermarket chain wanting to move into the village and Change Things. On the face of it those things are alarming enough for those who are traditionalist, or who moved to the country to get away from big business and the corporate nature of the modern world. Underneath, though, is a far more alarming truth – that changing things in Lychford, such as boundary markers and the like, could have devastating results for the way the ‘real’ world interacts with the world of Faery and other, more malignant dimensions.
Cornell’s focus is on the three women who might have a chance to do something about this. By far my favourite is Judith Mawson: at 71, she has “a list of what she didn’t like, and almost everything – and everybody – in Lychford was on it.” There’s a point late in the story where she grudgingly tells someone they are not on that list. Cranky old women for the win, I say. Judith is competent but not a superhero; she gets things done and grumbles about it – and sometimes she fails. Also, her tragedy is absolutely and completely appalling.
The other two women were less convincing to me. Having read a few of these Tor novellas it’s striking to see some of the similarities – I don’t know whether it’s deliberate or if it’s just fallen out that way in my reading. But there are some similarities in theme between this and Angela Slatter’s Of Sorrow and Such, and in one of the young women there’s a link to Seanan McGuire’s Every Heart a Doorway because she spent time in the land of Faery and has been damaged by it. Her friend is the newly-arrived pastor, whose faith has been challenged by events in her past and who is really not feeling like she fits into the parish, where she herself grew up. Lizzie, the pastor, and Autumn both felt rather flat to me – especially coming off the back of McGuire and Slatter. Their issues were less emotionally gripping than I would have liked and they did not especially appeal to me as people, either (or perhaps concurrently). Nor did their role in solving the problems feel like it was fundamental.
Despite this problem of characterisation, I did still enjoy the book. It’s not a significant addition to the fiction on witches, or the real/faery divide, but it’s an interesting story and there are some lovely moments.
Rampant
By Diana Peterfreund
Sadly I did not love this book as much as I had hoped. Partly this is me, partly it is the book.
I had read the novella, Errant, so I thought I kinda knew what the story was going to be about. But Errant is set… I forget when, some time in the past. Rampant is not; it’s about a girl in modern America learning about unicorns. Which is fine, it was just a bit of a surprise. I had t read the blurb, deliberately; I didn’t want any spoilers since I figured it was going to be the sort of book I’d like anyway.
Killer unicorns? How can that not be awesome? That’s what it’s about, by the way. Unicorns are real and they hunt animals and people. Only certain people can hunt them in return. This is the learning-about-your-abilities book. If that’s your thing, feel free to ignore my whinging! Just go read it; it’s certainly enjoyable enough that I wouldn’t dissuade potential readers automatically.
Anyway, what I really had not expected was how much the book would be focussed in sex. Not having it, how people feel about you if you do or don’t, etc (do American teens really feel pressured to have sex before they leave high school??). It does make sense, given that Peterfreund has kept the virginity aspect for her unicorn hunters, but… it felt like it got in the way of what I was expecting, which was learning about unicorn hunting and dealing with that aspect of your nature. Which, yes, virginity is part of that. But there was a lot of going on dates and agonising which I guess just isn’t what I was interested in reading.
So I’m willing to agree that in that aspect, definitely a problem of my expectations. And I did like the discussion around rape, attitudes towards and reactions to, although the victim seemed to deal with it faster than I would expect. (Not that I want intense victiming either, necessarily.)
On the book’s side, I felt that the plot went a bit too fast sometimes; fast enough that things got a bit improbable (yes yes, around the killer unicorns bits) and too convenient. In the characters I especially found Astrid’s mother a bit much; a bit ridiculous.
For all its faults I will definitely read the sequel, Ascendant, at some point.
Sorcerer of the Wildeeps
This was provided to me by the publisher.
This is not a straightforward novel. The plot is not linear, the characters are slippery, and so is the language sometimes. But it is engaging and haunting and (much as its trite to say) challenging.
1. The plot is not linear. The focal character, Demane, sometimes has flashbacks to his past experiences – and sometimes to the experiences of other people, and sometimes he’s simply reflecting on history. It’s not always clear when this is happening, which I think is a stylistic choice; it took me a little while to understand when that was happening, but once I left myself go with the flow it usually made sense. The only frustrating thing by the end of it was that I really, really wanted to know more about Demane’s history and that of the world he lives in, with its Towers and demigods gods who have gone back to the stars…
2. The characters are slippery: this is somewhat related to the lack of narrative linearity (did I mention this isn’t a problem? It’s not a problem, as long as you don’t mind having to work a bit). Demane is definitely not straightforward – he’s got one mammoth backstory that only gets revealed in dribs and drabs, and that’s nothing on Captain, whose life is like a picture that’s entirely in shadow except for one tiny bit where one spotlight hits. Again, not a problem, but it does make it hard to explain what you’ve just read: “There’s this guy who works with a merchant caravan at the moment but he’s had this amazing life in the past, where he was kinda taught magic except it’s not magic, and in the present he’s trying to keep everyone around him alive…”
3. The language is slippery too. I’m not referring to the dialogue here, which is written very much in a spoken style (I know nothing about Wilson but I presume he’s thought long and hard about the use of the n-word; I can’t imagine Tor leaving that in a book without it being very deliberate and considered, either); dialogue doesn’t bother me. I think the elusiveness of the language often related to the non-linearity of the narrative actually. It took me a few pages to get the hang of it anyway, and once I was properly immersed it flowed beautifully.
I will look out for more work by Kai Ashante Wilson. Well recommended.
Of Sorrow and Such
I received this as an ARC from the publisher.
Firstly, LOOK AT THAT COVER OH MY IT IS A THING OF BEAUTY.
Secondly, Margo Lanagan is right, as usual. This is a riveting read.
Mistress Gideon, the narrator, is not a nice person. She’s not a good person, either; she works for and wants the best for those she loves, and for that reason is a fierce and loyal friend… but she’s not nice. And she’s not good. She is terrible to her enemies.
Mistress Gideon has enemies because she is a witch. Those of her neighbours in Edda’s Meadow who know she is a witch don’t say anything, because it’s useful having a witch nearby. But when visitors come through with a bit too much curiosity… well. Curiosity can be unhealthy.
Slatter has written a – well, not a lovely story. There’s a bit too much ruthlessness and hands cut off for ‘lovely.’ But it is a fierce story and one that demands to be finished; it’s complex and surprising. Don’t expect an entirely happy ending. It takes the old story of witches being found out and burnt at the stake and makes it a far more dynamic tale, exploring motivations and cause and consequence and collateral damage.
What I liked most, in the end, is that this is a story focussed on women. Women who love and who hate and who survive and who hang on through sheer bloody-mindedness. There are brutal witches and resentful teenagers and flighty wives and despairing lovers and bitter sisters and the guilty, the grim and the determined. Some of the women are a number of those things at the same time. These women are complex and challenging and very very real.
Of Sorrow and Such will be out in October. You know you want to read it.
Archer’s Goon
Yes, that Archer’s Goon.
I really do not understand how I missed Diana Wynne Jones as a child. It’s not like I was too old for her stuff when it was coming out. It’s not like there weren’t libraries in my town. There were even bookshops! … but there it is. I didn’t read my first Jones until a couple of years ago – a Chrestomanci – and I’ve been hearing about Archer’s Goon for ages. And now I’ve finally read it.
Yes, it is magnificent. Yes, I loved it. Yes, I will be foisting it onto every young person when I think they’re not quite ready for it.
If, like me, you haven’t read it – well, just do so. It’s about a family whose house gets gently invaded by a very large man with a very small head who insists that Dad has to write 2000 words, Or Else. And things go on from there with discovering that the town really does not run the way they thought it did. Which naturally leads to Adventures. And those adventures were genuinely absorbing and often unexpected and always wonderfully written.
So what did I really like?
Firstly, the family situation. The adventures centre on the son, Howard, but Mum and Dad are absolutely present and important and relevant. I love the family dynamics, actually; that Mum and Dad are so different, Dad is so magnificently obstinate and Mum is wonderfully competent; that they have a raging row which does not result in them considering divorce; that they complement one another and generally work together. And then there’s Awful. Seriously a family who nickname their daughter Awful and still go out of their way to make sure she’s ok – this family is so REAL. I love them.
I love the Goon. When people were talking about the book I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what the title meant. Clearly goon can mean henchman, but it didn’t seem to fit here; then there’s the Aussie slang term for cheap wine, and that really didn’t seem to fit… so I was lost. Discovering that actually it did mean henchman was a surprise, but made sense once I realised that Archer was of course a person. Anyway, I liked the Goon a lot. Especially his dialogue.
And I liked the plot. I loved that Jones did not explain absolutely everything about Archer’s family and their place in the town; you just need to accept that this is what Howard and his family know, so of course it’s what the reader knows. We regularly deal with events that we don’t have complete context for, so why must it be different in a novel? Going around visiting the different members of the family to investigate what’s going on is of course a familiar trope; it reminded me of Garth Nix’s Keys to the Kingdom series (which of course is a series, not a stand-alone, something else which is a bit different in Jones), amongst others. There’s nothing wrong with using this trope, of course – it’s used so often because it does let the author show you stuff about the world and reveal the plot in bits and pieces. And Jones does it so well.
Finally, in looking around for a picture of the cover, I discovered that it was a TV show – which I vaguely remember someone talking about at some stage. Is it wrong that I immediately got the Round the Twist theme song in my head? (Roger Lloyd Pack as Dad is SHEER BRILLIANCE.)
The Girl who Circumnavigated, etc
Neil Gaiman said this book was a “glorious balancing act between modernism and the Victorian fairy tale, done with heart and wisdom.”
Yes.
I love a sneaky, omniscient narrator who takes liberties with speaking directly to the reader. Especially when they’re not condescending to the reader but takes us into their confidence, presumes we are as intelligent as they are, and goes out of their way to be warm and inclusive.
I love a story where the girl who goes to Fairyland is chosen because she is irascible and short-tempered sometimes. Not because she is good or pretty.
I adore the concept of all children being Heartless in some degree or other. I adore Wyveraries (wyverns and libraries having babies, why not?), although a land of Autumn doesn’t really translate to the Australian experience – especially not for a girl who grew up in the tropics, where leaves don’t really turn red, let alone fall off branches – unless there’s a mighty storm.
I do actually really like whimsy, when the wide-eyed joy is balanced with just enough cynicism that is self-aware enough not to get in the way.
I like it when heroines are sensible and determined, when they know they’re in a story and try to decide how to be in that story, and when they get to be brave and afraid at the same time.
I liked this story more than I expected. I liked the pictures, too.
Every Heart a Doorway
The publisher sent me an e-galley of this book.
Just like I like Mary Robinette Kowal’s stories for talking about the bit after the falling-in-love stage, and shows that married life can be worth stories, Seanan McGuire has presented a story about the girls and boys who come back from fairyland… and wish they hadn’t.
Nancy went to the Halls of the Dead and basically learnt to act as a statue to please the Lord and Lady there. Her parents, of course, do not understand what she experienced and think she needs to be helped through whatever trauma is causing her to tell such dreadful tales. I’d never really thought to consider what Alice’s parents or friends might have thought… although Swift does have Gulliver deal with some repercussions of his travels and travails (these two go together in my mind because of a uni subject that made me read both).
Fortunately for Nancy, Miss West has a school specifically for people like her; those who have gone to other places and desperately want to go back, because that is home. Which sounds all well and good and like you’re going to meet people with whom you have lots in common… but not all fairylands are alike. In fact McGuire does marvellous work of sketching out how such places might be categorised, including the difficulty of ever really categorising such places, and if the place that felt like home to you was all about stillness and silence, how much do you actually have in common with someone who went to a land called Confection filled with light and colour? Yeh, adolescents have a hard time finding anyone they can actually connect with.
While simply telling a boarding-school story with such a bunch of misfits would probably have been enjoyable of its own, McGuire decides to hit them with problems as well – murder, to be specific – to play out the ramifications of trust issues, insecurity, and bonding under duress. And I haven’t even mentioned the fact that not all of the characters are heteronormative.
McGuire has created a fascinating world here, and much as I would like a series of boarding-school books set at Miss West’s, somehow I think that might hurt the magic. This is a wonderful novella and I’m glad it found a home with Tor. It comes out later this year. ETA: turns out it comes out in April 2016. Sorry!
Melusine, etc
Sarah Monette’s Melusine series is a remarkable set of four novels. I’ve been reading them for a while now, and they’re the sort of books where although I owned them all, I didn’t read one immediately after the other… because I didn’t want the story to finish yet.
Also, because it might hurt too much to keep going.
Slight spoilers
Do not read these books if you are really squeamish. There are some really distressing bits that I found quite harrowing; 
violence, and sexual violence, are at the heart of the first couple of books in particular. There’s more to the stories than that, but the violence is a fundamental part of the character and motivation and problem for both of the main characters.
The series is made up of Melusine, The Virtu, The Mirador, and Corambis. The stories are about magic, relationships, the abuse of trust, the recovery of trust, good governance, loyalty, sabotaging relationships, and how to heal. Yes they are complicated. Yes it is worthwhile. Yes even the distressing bits. Mostly.
All of the books have at least two viewpoints. The later books add another viewpoint, which is a bit weird as a reader but I think I get why Monette did it; it makes sense in terms of rounding out the main characters, and I think it makes sense artistically too, to give the world greater breadth. And here’s the slight spoiler: the narratives are from the perspective of brothers, but you don’t know that for quite a long time and it’s rather startling when it’s revealed, because they 
are so very different (and themselves don’t know their relationship). Monette is painstaking in developing the two different voices – Mildmay is uneducated and rough, and in telling his story is way down the spoken end of the register. He can’t be bothered impressing you; if you’re worried about his language and grammar and manners, well that’s your problem, yeh? Felix, on the other hand, is refined and learned and precise and all of his words are very. consciously. chosen. And learning how he came to be that way is part of the pain of the whole narrative trip. I love both of them; Felix I want to cosset and Mildmay I want to have a drink with (with no dice around. and very careful measures). Their relationship was by turns inspiring and despair-inducing, as
they figured out how to relate and not destroy one another.
Aside from the fraternal relationship it’s the world that Monette imagines that really, really works. For starters, she does something which could be corny and sad, but which manages to make work: her world is tantalisingly close to ‘the real world,’ with linguistic analogues just nearly making sense… but which then skip away from whatever French or Spanish or maybe Latin word you thought it was meant to resemble, with a hint at meaning but well and truly going its own way (homosexual relationships described as being about tarquins and martyrs… Cabalines, the Curia, Troia, the Empyrean…). This could have been disastrous. Instead, it is charming and elusive and adds possible depths that are enchanting as you try to chase them down. Frustrating sometimes, but with a come-hither look nonetheless. (Much of the narrative revolves around sex.) And then there’s the world of the Mirador, home of Felix and the centre of the first three novels (although much of the stories themselves are set elsewhere, the Mirador is the heart of the narrative). It’s a brutal and unpleasant place. So is the city around the Mirador. The thing I loved most about the fourth novel in particular is that although Felix and Mildmay have journeyed a long way from the Mirador before, it’s in this novel that the old-fashioned-ness of that place is placed in stark contrast against a city that – in the same world – is recognisably modern. After spending three novels thinking the Mirador was brutal but normal for this world, this contrast made me question everything that has come before by showing it in an entirely new light. Without compromising any of the narrative or world-building that has come before. Sarah Monette: brilliant.
This is not a happy series. Bad things happen. To men and women and if there are kittens, to kittens. Characters experience grief and loss and pain, they are cruelly treated and wrongfully accused and it’s just generally bad for pretty much everyone at different points. And sometimes this is pretty heavy going, as a reader. But there are good bits, too, not least of which is Mildmay’s sardonic, evil wit; he skewers the egos and shrugs off delicacy and is brutally honest. But other than that… there is also hope. There are good relationships – which are sometimes screwed up, yes, but they do exist. There are positive things that can be done, even in the midst of madness, and light never entirely abandons this world that I imagine as being lit (within the Mirador at least) entirely by smokey candles and never ever by the sun. (This is not in the least upheld by textual evidence, but it’s the vibe of the thing, man. It’s always night there. Or at least overcast.)
It’s not widely available – I got my copies from Better World Books – but if you’re keen to read fantasy with brilliantly realised magic and complex relationships, this is a pretty good bet.
Randomly Yours, Alex 