Snapshot: Sean the Bookonaut
Your blog, Adventures of a Bookonaut, aims to promote Australian speculative fiction through reviews and interviews. Why did you decide to start the site? What have been the challenges and rewards in writing for it?
I have been blogging since about December 2006 in various forms. I never thought it would stick. I have a shelf full of empty journals because I love the idea of recording my thoughts but writing down something that no one ever read kinda felt a bit silly, pretentious even.
I think the difference with blogging was the interaction and the exchange of ideas, the connection to a wider community that shared my passions.
In March 2008 I started blogging about an abusive Ministry that promised an all in one solution to various issues affecting young women, from unwanted pregnancy to mental health issues. From 2008-2010 I helped a group of abuse survivors get the Ministry closed in Australia, it still operates internationally.
After those 2 years I was suffering from burnout, it’s very hard to blog when all you have to write about is injustice and bad news. Adventures of a Bookonaut was initially a way to enjoy blogging and talking about my love of books, and it’s mostly good news stories.
The blog started in August 2010 but I decided to focus on Speculative Fiction around the time I got a chance to review Trent Jamieson’s Death Most Definite. So yeah you can blame Trent. I had also finished some studies in Journalism so I was eager to use some of my training.
Promoting the Australian speculative fiction scene seemed to be both a natural extension of my personality and I had a couple of very good role models in Marianne de Pierres and Rowena Cory Daniells who despite their heavy workloads, promoted other authors and writers, and were brilliant at building community (still are).
The challenge has been keeping a balance. A balance in my blogging and in my reading. It’s cool getting review copies for about the first 3 months then the reality sets in that you really have quite a bit of reading to do and it never stops. The rewards have been meeting and interacting with authors, fans and other book bloggers.
You’ve been pretty vocal on your blog and other social media sites in promoting and encouraging other people to get involved with the Australian Women Writers Challenge for 2012. Why did you decide to take the challenge on board? How do you feel about it, five months in? What have other people’s reactions been?
Now this one I can blame on Galactic Suburbia. In 2011 after having listened to Galactic Suburbia for a few episodes I ended up doing a Gender Audit of my reading. Sadly the original post was lost in a blog move instigated by hacking; but the results were very poor, much poorer than I’d led myself to believe. Somewhere in the 18 % Female author range was the end result – pretty ordinary for a reviewer. So that year I made a conscious decision to focus on trying to get a 50/50 split. I managed 40/60 due to a loss of focus and the fact that a lot of my review copies were by male authors.
So in 2012 Elizabeth Lhuede started the Australian Women Writers challenge in response to the poor reviewing that Australian female authors were getting from traditional reviewing sources. I was engaged in a couple of posts about gender, and implicit bias and decided to put my money where my mouth was and give myself a very structured approach to achieving gender parity in my reading and reviewing. Nothing like fear of failure to motivate.
I truly think the only way that you can tackle cultural bias is through fairly blunt and blatant approaches like a challenge or instituting some sort of systematic approach. Left to personal whim you’ll just end up reverting to what is ingrained.
I think it’s important to be vocal about it because we need to show men reading, reviewing and enjoying books by women. It’s going very well by the way. I finished the challenge a couple of books back but will continue until the end of the year.
There’s no sign of quality female speculative fiction running out.
As well the as the blog, you’ve been contributing to Galactic Chat, a podcast of interviews with – mostly – Australian authors. What has it been like to record interviews rather than write them? What are its challenges? Do you find ‘live’ interviews more rewarding than written ones, or do they both have things to recommend them?
A lot more work for a start. Writing questions for written interviews is generally fairly easy; the interviewee has to do all the work (unless it’s transcribed from audio, which you’d have to pay me to do – two finger typist).
The challenges are generally technical. I got over my nerves when I interviewed Kelley Armstrong.Everything seemed to be going wrong that day. I had the wrong number, I was recording in my lunch hour, people wanted to use the room I was in. Nothing like interviewing a New York Times bestseller as your first. She was lovely though.
I do enjoy the live interviews as they feel more dynamic to me and you can take advantage of the ebb and flow of conversation. Sometimes questions just naturally flow into one another. I still do some written questions of course, it’s handy if you want to ask a group of people the same questions to get a consensus or to form a large picture on an issue.
What Australian works have you loved recently?
Gotta love goodreads, it makes answering this much easier. When We Have Wings by Claire Corbett, I thought was brilliant. Kind of sad it didn’t make it to the Ditmar ballot. It just blew me away with the vision of a world with genetically engineered wings- the physical, social and cultural changes that would be a result of such an innovation.
Margo Lanagan’s Sea Hearts was another book that showcased her skill and playfulness, I wrote of it: “Reading Lanagan is like watching the world through aged glass. The world and its characters are identifiable but there is a ripple, a distortion that separates us.” And she makes me feel like this with most of her work.
Bitter Greens by Kate Forsyth was just one of those joyful surprises you get as a reviewer. I’d never read her work before and Bitter Greens tickled several of my fancies – historical fiction and mature fairytales being two of them.
The Shattered City by Tansy Rayner Roberts was a bloody good second book, not a bridge between book 1 and 3, but upping of the ante in what is a very unique tale.
Bad Power by Deb Biancotti just makes me want to read an expanded novel length version of the world that’s been created.
Roil by Trent Jamieson, I think is his best work to date. I could go on.
What would you like to see happen in the Australian speculative fiction scene over the next couple of years?
I have only been participating in and observing the scene for a relatively short time, so take what I say with that in mind. I’d like to see it more connected. By that I mean, I get the distinct impression that in fandom at least, there are distinct communities within the larger community. I think this is the result of geography to a large extent and I am not sure that we have taken full advantage of online resources to address this. I think things are beginning to coalesce though, podcasting seems to be growing and fanzines once consigned to the printed form are getting easier to find online. But perhaps fans are happy, I come from a culture of isolation, living in remote communities most of my life.
I’d also like to see a deeper appreciation of our Australian Speculative Fiction history. I do get the sense that we might be too forward looking, focussed on the next best thing. Have you tried finding copies of George Turner’s work, even his Miles Franklin Award winning book? Very difficult.
This interview was conducted as part of the 2012 Snapshot of Australian Speculative Fiction. We’ll be blogging interviews from 1st June to 8th June and archiving them at ASif!: Australian SpecFic in Focus. You can read interviews at:
http://thebooknut.wordpress.com/tag/2012snapshot/
http://kathrynlinge.livejournal.com/tag/2012snapshot/
http://helenm.posterous.com/tag/2012snapshot
http://bookonaut.blogspot.com.au/search/label/2012Snapshot
http://www.davidmcdonaldspage.com/tag/2012snapshot/
Snapshot 2012: Penni Russon
It was occasionally difficult to track. I decided that when Claire entered Sedge that it would be third person, to highlight a further disconnect (the waking dream), but also to make it really clear to the reader that a significant shift had happened. There was one scene where Claire and Clara occupy the same space and I had a lot of trouble deciding what POV that should be from!
Your trilogy from a few years ago, Undine, Breathe and Drift focussed on a teenaged girl and her discovery of magic. What drew you to working with this particular mythology, and bringing it into the modern world?
I grew up in Tasmania which is where Undine is set. I was fascinated by what it meant to grow up on an island – I am still curious about this, as I come to realise actually just how socially disadvantaged Tasmania is compared to Melbourne where I live now. Anyway, to me it seemed natural that magic would be linked to the ocean. I once commented on Twitter about experiencing ambivalence with regards to the ocean. Another writer scoffed (I’m paraphrasing), ‘The ocean makes me feel many things, but nothing so wishy-washy as ambivalent.’ But I am happy to embrace my wishy-washiness! I am fascinated by ambivalence, ambiguity, halfway states, where you linger between, not quite one thing or another. Undine is all about being halfway between – human and magical creature, love and like, the thing and the reflection of the thing and so the Undine myth (which is not literally in the novel) is a metaphor for this.
I love Margaret Mahy’s YA fiction, so I wanted to write something with “magic in the real world”. Writing Undine was a very organic process, I really didn’t understand much about the practical aspects of writing fantasy when I began. The Undine books are actually incredibly autobiographical in parts, many incidents in the books actually happened to me.
You’ve written both speculative fiction and what might be called mainstream YA as part of the Girlfriend series; do you see yourself having to choose between genres, or continuing to cross them, in the future?
I think all my books belong together, despite the genre crossing. They are really all about those halfway states, about what’s real and what’s pretend. In The Indigo Girls the girls go night surfing – this is very similar to the way Undine experiences power and her body. In Little Bird Ruby-Lee falls in maternal love with the baby she is babysitting, and then transfers these feelings onto the baby’s single father in a romantic way and then has to try and figure out what is real and what is part of her fantasy life. I don’t think I will ever tire of this theme
What are some works by Australians that you’ve been enjoying recently?
I loved Queen of the Night, Leanne Hall’s excellent sequel to This is Shyness, with its comic book aesthetic. The FitzOsborne’s at War, the third book in Michelle Cooper’s Montmaray trilogy, made me cry and smile and laugh – these are historical fiction, though Montmaray is a made up island. I really admire Cooper’s world building, the way she stitches her fictional world and history together so seamlessly. Also this year I loved Foal’s Bread, which I read as magical realism.
Also I am reading Emily Rodda’s Fairy Realm books aloud to my six year old! Emily Rodda and I will be on a panel together at the Melbourne Writer’s Festival – my daughters are very excited!
It’s been two years since the World Science Fiction Convention was held in Australia. How do you think the speculative fiction scene in Australia has changed since then?
Well, the biggest change in Australia in the last two years is the loss of Borders and Angus & Robertson, the “middle” market, and at the same time many publishers are dropping their sales staff, instead having booksellers go to the website to select stock for their stores. I think as a result we are going to increasingly see a bigger divide – a lot more trashy trash, and some really interesting, experimental “literary” spec fic that works hard to catch a bookseller’s eye. Perhaps as a result of this, I think publishers are more focussed on “The Pitch” than on “The Talent” (though I don’t think a talented author will ever be overlooked). Still, it’s easier for publishers to sell books that can be summed up in a sentence, not just to customers, but to their own marketing departments, to booksellers, to reviewers, to overseas markets. It was really hard for me to sum up Only Ever Always in a sentence, and the exercise seemed artificial, nothing to do with marking art. It was actually the rights manager, Angela Namoi who crystallised it by describing it as ” a meditation on grief”. Of course the question I started out asking was where do stories come from? And Angela made me realise I had answered that question: “from lack, from absence, from loss. From the spaces between where the lost things dwell.”
This interview was conducted as part of the 2012 Snapshot of Australian Speculative Fiction. We’ll be blogging interviews from 1st June to 8th June and archiving them at ASif!: Australian SpecFic in Focus. You can read interviews at:
http://thebooknut.wordpress.com/tag/2012snapshot/
http://kathrynlinge.livejournal.com/tag/2012snapshot/
http://helenm.posterous.com/tag/2012snapshot
http://bookonaut.blogspot.com.au/search/label/2012Snapshot
http://www.davidmcdonaldspage.com/tag/2012snapshot/
tansyrr.com/tansywp/tag/2012snapshot/
www.champagneandsocks.com/tag/2012snapshot/
https://randomalex.net/tag/2012snapshot/
http://jasonnahrung.com/tag/2012snapshot/
Snapshot 2012: Tansy Rayner Roberts
So you’ve just had the final book in your Creature Court trilogy published by HarperCollins. How did that feel and what’s been the reaction to it?
It was a huge relief to get the book out there and have the trilogy be complete – and while I was expecting pangs of loss as well, they haven’t arrived yet, possibly because it’s so long since I completed the third book and left the characters behind. I’ve been delighted by the response to the books – a bunch of award nominations certainly help a nervous author feel like they’re doing the right thing! And very happy that many of my loyal readers seems to think that it ties up well with the third book. Would be terrible to stumble at the last post…
I understand you’re currently working on a novel-length treatment for Nancy Napoleon, the character first introduced in the novella “Siren Beat” as the supernatural protector of Hobart. Aufleur of the Creature Court books were set in a heavily fictionalised Rome, but you took a fairly faithful approach to Hobart in the novella. What is it like giving your home town the fictional treatment? Does it liberate or restrict you?
Faithful apart from the kraken in the Derwent, the Fates running a pub in Salamanca Place and the sexy sea pony, you mean? One of the things I love most about urban fantasy is the way that it conveys a strong sense of a realistic location – it’s one of the best aspects of the crime genre that it has taken on as its own – and I definitely wanted to Just Add Magic to Hobart for this particular series. I actually find it quite intimidating to write work set in Tasmania rather than in imaginary worlds, which is part of the reason I avoided it so long. There’s a freedom to it but it can be stressful too – at one point I destroyed a very specific area of the city, part of which is where friends of mine live, and I actually felt incredibly guilty about that, as if it might have some kind of sympathetic magic effect on the real population.
Another danger is that I know the area so well but don’t necessarily know what parts I’m taking for granted rather than describing properly, which is where good beta readers and editors come in!
The Creature Court is set in a secondary fantasy world, Nancy Napoleon in a recognisable Australia. Your short stories have bounced between near future ‘real world’ settings and fantastical ones. What sort of settings do you see yourself working in for the future? And is there one genre that is most likely to keep you, or do you anticipate genre-crossing and -blurring?
The lovely thing about science fiction and fantasy is that I don’t have to choose, not at all. If one piece of work is especially successful then I have no qualms about doing more of that sort of thing, but otherwise I prefer to keep my work as diverse as possible, to keep me entertained. Lots of genre crossing and -blurring, as much as possible! BRING IT.
Right now, for instance, in an only slightly chaotic tangle of novel and short story projects, I am writing steampunk Victoriana gothic with faeries and robots, contemporary ghostbusting comedy, genderbending science fiction, smutty superheroes, and a boarding school time travel romp (or tragedy; haven’t decided yet). The four shorts I’ve written so far this year (I am RICH in short stories) are post-apocalyptic surrealism about Wuthering Heights, magical realism with talking kangaroos, horror-fantasy with imps, and a war veteran romance set against the backdrop of a famous children’s fantasy novel. I really don’t like to be tied down…
Which Australians’ work have you been loving recently?
So much great short fiction! I have a soft spot for Narrelle M Harris’ Twelfth Planet collection Showtime, though not remotely unbiased because I helped edit some of the stories. I really enjoyed Ishtar, featuring stories about the goddess by Kaaron Warren, Deb Biancotti and Cat Sparks – some of the best work than any of them have ever done, plus the theme itself makes me so very happy. It’s a great book to read for big bad mean goddess action. In the comics world I am excited to see Nicola Scott back drawing for DC Comics, and the title in question Earth 2 is looking pretty fantastic so far. When it comes to art, I want to hug every single thing that Kathleen Jennings draws, and I was particularly impressed with her work on the Fablecroft book To Spin a Darker Stair.
It’s two years since Australia hosted the WorldCon. What do you think are the biggest changes to the Australian speculative fiction scene in that time?
Are we absolutely sure that it’s only been two years? I feel like I blinked and missed them. The rise of podcasts is something I have greatly enjoyed, but that was already well underway when the Worldcon happened. I think the interest in e-books from readers is probably one of the biggest changes, but we’re still yet to see how that pans out for Australian publishing. And of course, we’ve been losing bookshops hand over fist across the country. Sad, and a sign of a new paradigm heading our way. If only we knew exactly what it looked like…
This interview was conducted as part of the 2012 Snapshot of Australian Speculative Fiction. We’ll be blogging interviews from 1st June to 8th June and archiving them at ASif!: Australian SpecFic in Focus. You can read interviews at:
http://thebooknut.wordpress.com/tag/2012snapshot/
http://kathrynlinge.livejournal.com/tag/2012snapshot/
http://helenm.posterous.com/tag/2012snapshot
http://bookonaut.blogspot.com.au/search/label/2012Snapshot
http://www.davidmcdonaldspage.com/tag/2012snapshot/
tansyrr.com/tansywp/tag/2012snapshot/
www.champagneandsocks.com/tag/2012snapshot/
https://randomalex.net/tag/2012snapshot/
Snapshot 2012 is HERE!
The Australian Speculative Fiction Snapshot has taken place three times over the past eight years. In 2005, Ben Peek spent a frantic week interviewing 43 people in the Australian spec fic scene, and since then
it’s grown every time, now taking a team of interviewers working together to accomplish! In the lead up to Continuum 8 in Melbourne, we will be blogging interviews for Snapshot 2012 conducted by Alisa Krasnostein, Kathryn Linge, David McDonald, Helen Merrick, Ian Mond, Jason Nahrung, Alex Pierce, Tansy Rayner Roberts, Tehani Wessely and Sean Wright. To read the interviews hot off the press, check these blogs daily from June 1 to June 7, 2012.
As we celebrate the breadth and depth of the Australian spec fic scene, 2012 Snapshot is also a bittersweet time and we take the opportunity to remember two well-loved members of the community who sadly passed away in the past year: Paul Haines and Sara Douglass.
You can find the past three Snapshots at the following links: 2005, 2007 and 2010.
Let the stories begin…
Rapunzel’s Revenge: a graphic novel
Fairy tales in the wild west. Yes indeed.
(I could say something here about the idea of the wild west being as much of a fairy tale as Rapunzel herself, but I’ll leave that for another day.)
This one is c/-Tansy, and I’m very pleased to have got hold of it. Hale expands on the role of Mother Gothel, and although she’s still a mean nasty magicy person, she’s much expanded: she has a political role in the surrounding lands, there’s a purpose of sorts to her magic, and there seems to be more of a purpose in her taking Rapunzel, too.
Rapunzel herself is way, way more interesting than most of the stories make her, which is unsurprising. She’s learning to lasso from a young age – not with her hair at that stage, that comes later – and she’s much more rounded in terms of motivation, naivety mixed with determination, and so on. She rescues herself from her tower (which is a most awesome tower), she rescues herself and others in a variety of situations, and she has interesting relationships with a bunch of other characters.
The other characters are a really nice part of this story. Rapunzel’s companion for much of it is Jack (who has a goose, and a bean…), who is NOT WHITE – as are a number of the other characters. Jack is quite nuanced, I think, moving from flighty schemer to serious and earnest – in a good way though. The pair run into a variety of law-types and rogues, and while I think all of the authority figures (except Mother Gothel herself) are male, a good proportion of the others, who help or hinder on the way, are female – just because they could be and it really doesn’t matter.
The pictures are fun. Lassoing with hair looks… painful, actually. Also, I loved Rapunzel’s costumes. She basically starts off in a dress that she wears for four years; then she’s in what looks like a nightie, with a belt and awesome green tights – she looks like Pippi Longstocking; she gets into pants eventually, but even when she’s in a ball gown (in which she is uncomfortable), she manages to fight effectively. Which is fun.
Galactic Suburbia turns 60 and has cake
In which we celebrate our 60th episode and Peter MacNamara Award for Excellence win with cake, yarn and superheroes. For best results, consume this podcast with fabulous cake and/or sock yarn. You can get us from iTunes or Galactic Suburbia.
News
Aurealis Awards:
Sturgeon shortlist
50% female speakers at a tech conference and how it was done
The Hugo Packet is released
Kirstyn examines her 23 year old self through the lens of her current feminist self.
Marvel Comics follows Archie’s lead with a gay marriage between Northstar and Kyle: the news was launched by Whoopi Goldberg on The View.
Chicks Unravel Time announced from Mad Norwegian Press and Tansy is in it
What Culture Have we Consumed?
Alex: The Monster, Garth Nix and Sean Williams (Troubletwisters #2); Agatha H and the Clockwork Princess, Phil and Kaia Foglio; Birds of Prey: Dead of Winter; Wonder Woman: Rise of the Olympian
Tansy: Discount Armageddon by Seanan McGuire, Made in Dagenham
Alisa: Black Heart by Holly Black; The Avengers movie
Please send feedback to us (especially about any cake you may have eaten or yarn you may have knitted with this podcast) at galacticsuburbia@gmail.com, follow us on Twitter at @galacticsuburbs, check out Galactic Suburbia Podcast on Facebook and don’t forget to leave a review on iTunes if you love us!
Galactic Suburbia #59
In which the boob window is explained. Don’t say we’re not educational! You can get us from iTunes or Galactic Suburbia.
News
Drink Tank loves us! Download their Hugo shortlist commentary here.
Mondy loves us too! He makes us go awww.
James Tiptree Jr finally in the Science Fiction Hall of Fame, and about time too.
Talking to Alistair Reynolds: he defends the idea that science fiction has a limited number of plots
Women in (Japanese) Comics: Cheryl Morgan reports; Anime News Network
Some kickstarter stuff:
Feminist Historical Anthology from Ann & Jeff VanderMeer
Scalzi on Amanda Palmer and how she worked hard for 10 years to get her “overnight success”
What Culture Have we Consumed?
Alisa: We Wuz Pushed by Brit Mandelo
Alex: Castles Made of Sand, Gwyneth Jones; Captain America; The Avengers; Confusion of Princes, Garth Nix
Tansy: A Confusion of Princes, Garth Nix; The Avengers; Earth 2 & World’s Finest; Ishtar
Tansy’s Note: “I do not mourn the boob window” is a classic line that should be long remembered and oft repeated – but Cheryl Morgan said it first! I only steal from the best…
Please send feedback to us at galacticsuburbia@gmail.com, follow us on Twitter at @galacticsuburbs, check out Galactic Suburbia Podcast on Facebook and don’t forget to leave a review on iTunes if you love us!
Galactic Suburbia 58
In which we pore over the Ditmar ballot, Alex makes Tansy squirm about her nominations, Alisa makes Alex say ‘sexytimes’ more than once, and we take on the hard-hitting issues of the day: plagiarism, pirates and mommy porn. You can get us from iTunes or Galactic Suburbia.
News
Ditmar shortlist
Shirley Jackson shortlist featuring Deborah B
Stephenie Meyer moves into film production and who can blame her?
Story Siren & Plagiarism: Smart Bitches presents the story. Kristi’s apology.
MindMeld looks at great SF reads for teenage girls. But what KIND of teenage girls?
What Culture Have we Consumed?
Alisa: Feed by Mira Grant
Alex: By Light Alone, Adam Roberts; Lathe of Heaven, Ursula le Guin; In the Mouth of the Whale, Paul McAuley; Among Others, Jo Walton;
Tansy: Womanthology, The Pirates! Band of Misfits
Feedback: Fifty Shades of Grey
COMPETITION – SHOWTIME – What’s your favourite vampire?
Please send feedback to us at galacticsuburbia@gmail.com, follow us on Twitter at @galacticsuburbs, check out Galactic Suburbia Podcast on Facebook and don’t forget to leave a review on iTunes if you love us!
So Silver Bright
This review contains spoilers for the first two books, but not for this one.
I am pleased to have finished this series! Having the questions of whether Bertie’s parents could or would ever get back together, or even whether she would ever see either of them again; and whether she would end up with Ariel or Nate (or neither? or both?! – as River Song would say, that is a whole other birthday…) in the end were driving me a bit nuts.
And now I know how Mantchev resolved it. And if you haven’t read the books, you don’t. So nyer.
The story opens with Bertie dealing with the aftermath of how she dealt with Sedna, the Sea Goddess, and its repercussions for her father, as well as Nate – whom she has rescued – and Ariel, to whom she is kind of now married… as well as being married to Nate. Um, oops. So, it’s back to the Caravanserai, but not for long because she receives a summons from Her Gracious Majesty to perform before her, and so the journeys of this crazy little troupe continue. They involve bandits, a queen, several tricky journeys, the use of magic, gaining and losing companions, and finally a return to where everything began, the Theatre Illuminata.
The plot is generally well-paced, and there were some clever twists and turns to it. As far as characters go, Bertie did not grow on me further. I really liked her in Eyes Like Stars, the first novel; then she got a little grating in the second, as it didn’t feel like she was quite taking charge enough. By this time, even though it’s only a few weeks after the events in the first story, she has… evened out, maybe? Although she is still being pushed around by the winds of fortune (heh), she feels more balanced, and at the same time more willing to take necessary risks. I don’t think I’m explaining this very well, but the upshot was I think that I like and respect her more in this story, certainly by the end, although I’m still not convinced I’d like to know her in reality.
The rest of the cast don’t change that much, with the exception of Ariel. Nate develops more as an individual because he actually has some page-space, which his kidnapping had largely disallowed for the last book and a half or so, but he doesn’t exhibit any unexpected character traits like sea-sickness or being a mathematical genius. He remains a loyal friend, and a good friend, which is exactly what he should be. Waschbar is probably the most intriguing and underdeveloped of all the characters, with his determination only to steal unwanted items… and just wait til you meet Varvara. But then there’s Ariel, who is developed in this story. We finally get more of an insight into his motivations (aside from lusting after Bertie like nothing else), and that’s unexpectedly poignant (much as I dislike the terminology, I have always been Team Nate).
Finally there’s the fairies, who continue to be awesome and pastry-lusting and crude. Just for bonus marks, there is a marvellous exchange between Moth and Peasablossom on the question of vampire bats: “Don’t be ridiculous… Vampire bats don’t sparkle.” “They do! They’re a great glittery menace!” Ah fairies. So snarky. So true.
Timeless: the last Alexia Tarabotti novel
The last Parasol Protectorate book, Heartless, bugged me because of its snobbish attitudes towards the middle class. I was very pleased to see that this was not quite such an issue here, mostly because there is little real interaction with the middle classes. So that was one problem cleared up.
This review contains spoilers for the first four books, but NOT this one.
Timeless opens with a delightfully domestic scene: Alexia Tarabotti and Conall Maccon dressing for the theatre (to the latter’s disgust) when they are summoned… to the bathroom. Where chaos is ensuing, because their toddler daughter Prudence really, really doesn’t want a bath. And while bathing a toddler can be a trying time under ordinary circumstances, when said toddler steals vampirism and werewolfism from those individuals with a single touch and she is being bathed by vampires… well. Potential disaster for those involved, hilarity for onlookers.
This is the reader’s introduction to the new life Alexia finds herself with, since the end of Heartless saw the birth of said daughter. For most of that book, Alexia was heavily pregnant but did not generally allow that state to get in the way of adventures and potentially risky undertakings. Having had her daughter frees Alexia somewhat to go back to her old life with even less worry, especially since Prudence has officially been adopted by the outrageously dressed Lord Akeldama (confidant, vampire, fashion guru). Alexia is a devoted and caring mother, and also a working mother. She can manage to balance motherhood and work fairly well because of her privileged position in terms of wealth and what essentially amounts to a very large, devoted, extended family who are willing to do much of the routine stuff. There is little explicitly said about how this affects Alexia (or Prudence), and the only other mother in the book with toddlers also has enough money to afford a nanny, so the realities of life for working mothers is left uninterrogated. This is also, I think, a factor of the book’s setting in Victorian London, where this was the norm for moneyed mothers, even those who did not undertake paid work. So while it was good to see a mother being able to act as a human being, apart from her child but still with the child making a fundamental change to her life, it would have been nice to see a bit more reflection on that situation. (Perhaps that was too much to want in what is intended as a romp.) While this aspect was a little underdone to my tastes, the very fact that there was any discussion of the impact of fatherhood on Lord Maccon was very welcome indeed. Although it had been revealed in an earlier book that he was already a father, we see here how he feels about a toddler – and the answer is very positive. Devoted, in fact, and willing to be directly involved in her life and upbringing. His distress at being unable to hold Prudence whenever he likes, because of her ability to turn him mortal and herself therefore into a werewolf cub, is subtly but clearly painted, and is one of the nicest domestic aspects of the whole book.
Domesticity is therefore a consistently present theme throughout the book, and how to balance it with undertaking potentially life-endangering missions for pack, queen and country. The action, though, is driven by a summons Alexia receives from the vampire queen of Alexandria, requiring her to present herself and Prudence before her. This necessitates some sort of cover to allow them to travel without suspicion to Egypt, and the gaining of that cover is definitely the funniest part of the entire narrative. Capers is Egypt unfold as expected, which is to say unexpectedly, and involve boats, balloons, and donkeys.
More than any other of the Parasol Protectorate novels, this one features a substantial sub-plot, involving Maccon’s great-great-great-granddaugher, Sidheag Maccon, the Lady Kingair. It also ends up involving Biffy, Akeldama’s former acolyte turned reluctant werewolf. His particular journey is one of the most interesting across the novels, I think, because many of the other immortals have either been that way for a very long time or were desperately hoping to become one. Biffy, though, is now cut off from most everything he loved in his former life – starting with Akeldama and descending, oh my, to the fact that he just can’t keep his hair neat any more. While this latter issue may seem incredibly superficial, as does his fastidious attention to fashion, it reflects his attempts to integrate his original life with his new one, so the compromises he makes are actually quite significant. Plus, awesome dress sense.
Also, there are a lot of frocks. And cravats, and hats. Ivy features, and she has a lot of hats. Some of them have feathers.
Randomly Yours, Alex 