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Fiesta: The Sun Also Rises by Earnest Hemingway
Arrow 1994 (1927)
218 pages
Classics


I first read this several years ago, around 2003 I think, while I was living in Japan. I remember really struggling to read the first chapter, which is the narrator's description and explanation of a character called Robert Cohn. I don't know why I had so much trouble reading it, just that I couldn't follow it, couldn't keep track of it. It wasn't a good way to start. Then, I was hoping right up to the last page for a happy ending. I felt cheated that I didn't get it. Kind of like "why the hell did I read this then?"

This time around (reading it again for a book club - I missed the meeting, incidentally), because I knew what to expect, I could focus on all the other things in the novel, knowing that the narrator, Jake, would still be alone at the end of it. That he wouldn't get to keep Brett. And I had no trouble reading the first chapter. Really, the prose is incredibly easy to read, simplistic even, except for when the descriptions get vague.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Set in 1924, Fiesta is the story of Jake, an American living and working in Paris, who goes to Pamplona in Spain to see the bull fighting with some friends, a mix of American and English ex-pats - one of which is Brett, Lady Ashley, a beautiful and charismatic woman of 34 who's waiting for her divorce to come through so she can marry a bankrupt, Mike Campbell.

Jake and Brett met during the war, when he was recovering from an injury. They fell in love, but his injury was of the groin variety so they can't be physically together - hence, she doesn't want to stay with him even though she loves him. Instead, she has casual relationships and affairs, while Jake has to watch. Sometimes he even introduces them. But there's nothing he can do about it.

The story is heavily detailed with the kind of descriptions that, while apparently perfectly acceptable in classics and other works of literature, can be the cause of some rather heavy criticism in genre fiction. Like so:

"I unpacked my bags and stacked the books on the table beside the head of the bed, put out my shaving things, hung up some clothes in the big armoire, and made up a bundle for the laundry. Then I took a shower in the bathroom and went down to lunch." (p.207)

It would be petty of me to ask, Where else would he take a shower? wouldn't it. Shame.

This book is all prose, very little plot. It's not that it's wordy, rather that it reads like a mouth full of crooked, over-crowded teeth. The dialogue is very 20s-specific, and if I was the kind of reviewer who liked to write snappy, witty, clever little reviews, the first thing I'd do is satirise the dialogue. Like so:

"I feel so rotten!" Brett said.
"Don't be a damned fool," Jake said.
"The count's a brick."
"Let's have a drink."
"Here's the pub."
"This is a hell of a place," Bill said.
"Why don't you see when you're not wanted, Cohn? Go away. Take that sad Jewish face away," said Mike.
"I feel like hell. Don't let's talk," said Brett.
"It's been damned hard on Mike."
"Do you still love me Jake?" asked Brett.
"Yes."
"Because I'm a goner. I'm in love with the bullfighting boy."
"It's been damned hard on Mike."
"Where's that beer?" Mike asked.

And so on. A lot of repetition, a lot of drunken mouthing off, a lot of really very pointless, empty conversation that goes round and round in circles. The problem is, of course, that the characters are all horrible, shallow, self-interested, boorish, ill-mannered, childish tourists, the kind that make you cringe. Jake is probably the only character you can feel any real sympathy for, but even he has his moments.

As the first-person narrator, it's amazing how little we know Jake's thoughts. He hides behind recounting pointless dialogue and describing mundane things. There are times when he gets thoughtful, wistful even, and those parts are what make the novel worthwhile. It's also very easy to feel like you're in Paris, and Spain. The heavily descriptive prose does help create a realistic, breathing setting. Especially when they reach Pamplona, to watch the bull-fighting. It just also happens to be the place where their behaviour becomes even more embarrassing.

I'm not sure if Hemingway was criticising his fellow ex-pats or not - but I think he is. Maybe he was just describing it how it was - and it is believable. Jake isn't a judgemental character, but I wonder how much of that is Jake and how much Hemingway? This edition doesn't come with any additional notes or introductions or appendices, so I haven't read anything about the novel that might shed light on this. As a chronicle of ex-pat life, especially among those who have money, in the 20s, and of bull-fighting, it's a success. But it's still two-dimensional.

As for the bull-fighting, it's one of the more interesting sections, especially towards the end where there's an involved recounting of three bull-fighters at work. We now know that bull's are red-green colour-blind; it's the movement of the cape that enrages them, not the colour. So I wonder what was wrong with the bull Jake assumed was colour-blind?

As simplistic as I've made this novel sound, there is quite a lot going on in the details, things that make it both interesting and deplorable. The bull fighting, for instance, is both a commemoration and a presentation of a highly controversial topic. There's certainly a parallel between the beauty and brutality of the bull-fighting, and the way these ex-pats treat each other. They are at once unlikeable, and likeable. It just goes to show how confounding humans can be, and how contradictory.

Reviewed in November 2009

Tags: classics

Night's Cold Kiss by Tracey O'Hara
Dark Brethren #1
Eos 2009
332 pages
Urban Fantasy; Paranormal Romance


There are two kinds of vampire in the world: the Aeturnus, who after centuries of bloodshed forged a treaty with humans to live peaceably together; and the Necrodreniacs, those vampires who have become addicted to the high they get from killing humans, draining them dry. It is a distinction that Antoinette Petrescu, the legendary Venator whose job it is to hunt down and execute Necrodreniacs, has never been able to see, not since her mother was murdered and her father died.

But now a serial killer is running wild in New York, targeting women who look an awful lot like Antoinette, and she must team up with the Aeturnus Christian Laroque - who used to bear the nickname the Crimson Executioner. With the help of Christian's friend and fellow Aeturnus, Viktor, and a bear-shifter called Oberon, Antoinette and Christian follow all the leads they can find. But what Antoinette finds is more than she ever could have expected: she comes face to face with a ghost from her past, learns the truth of her family, and discovers that the difference between sexy Aeturnus Christian and a filthy Necrodreniac is as wide as an ocean.


This book is marketed as Urban fantasy but I found it in the Romance section - for once, I think the bookshop has it right. Though it was gritty, it had the happy romantic ending that is the trademark of romance novels, and several sex scenes scattered throughout. Looking at the cover and reading the blurb, I was prepared for a Night Huntress-type book - it's one of my favourite paranormal series, and I wouldn't mind something a bit similar, but this one can't compare.

There were a few issues. One, Antoinette could get pretty annoying in her stubbornness - and her violence. It didn't quite add up: one minute she's an intelligent, deadly Venator, the next she's throwing a tantrum like a five year old. It made it hard to give a toss what happened to her. Secondly, I didn't buy the chemistry between her and Christian. I wanted to like Christian - he had all the markings of a dark, charismatic, enigmatic, powerful man/vampire, but failed to deliver. I didn't care for the way he treated Antoinette either - the way he tended to treat her like a child, so perhaps it's not surprising she sometimes behaved like one.

Parts of the plot were predictable - it was easy to guess who was the mastermind behind it all. On the other hand, the structure of government and parahuman departments etc. were confusing as hell. If the series continues with Antoinette and Christian as the main characters, it might work out, but it it doesn't it'll lose it's edge, and our chance to see these characters grow and develop and mature (they need it).

There were parts I liked as well, though it's been several days since I read this and it's not a good sign that I can mostly only remember the negatives. The prose relies heavily on well-worn descriptive clichés but at least the grammar is sound. The pacing is good, with some nicely timed slower scenes amongst the chases and fights. There's some good atmosphere: dark and gritty and a bit smelly, violent and nasty. Sadly, with under-developed characters and a lack of emotional intensity, it doesn't work for me. The potential is there, but so were my high hopes and, now, my disappointment. It was a three-star book when I finished it, but after writing this I have to lower it. I simply can't justify 3 stars anymore.

Reviewed in November 2009

Tags: paranormal romance, urban fantasy

Say You're One of Them by Uwem Akpan
Back Bay Books 2009 (2008)
354 pages
Fiction; Short stories


This cover has one of the most beautiful photos - I kept seeing it in the bookshop, picking it up and dithering but ultimately putting it down again. In the end, a few people on Goodreads got me interested in it - they were talking about how it was the latest book in Oprah's book club but that they'd read the sample story and it was so depressing and they didn't want to read something that upset them.

That actually made me want to read it. I want to be confronted, to be challenged, to be emotionally involved, to be taken out of my comfort zone, to learn something new, to experience something different. Sometimes I want a fun story, or a romantic one, and that's fine too. But I also thirst to have my intellect engaged, and to explore a culture, a way of life, an attitude or understanding, different from my own. And, even though I haven't yet read many, I love hearing stories set in Africa, fiction or nonfiction.

Maybe it's a primitive part of my subconscious that centuries of Anglo heritage hasn't quite subsumed, but I feel drawn to this land of human origins, to where it all began - Africa and the Middle East. In a way, aren't they everyone's ancestors? Aren't their cultures and beliefs everyone's heritage? And aren't their problems the concern of us all - not least because in many ways our "western" lands have caused some of them? I feel that if a book is confrontational, upsetting even, that makes it more important to read. To shut yourself off from negative experiences is detrimental, not just to yourself and the development of your world view, but on a collective scale to the world itself.


This collection of five stories - three short stories and two novellas - are set in Nigeria, Benin, Kenya, Rwanda, Ethiopia, revolve around the experiences of children from different socio-economic, cultural and religious backgrounds, and show how universal a tragedy is their lot, and the lot of all their people, but especially how the things adults do to each other effect children.

The first story, "An Ex-mas Feast", is set in a shanty in the slums of Nairobi, Kenya. There are street children and then there are street gangs - eight year old Jigana is a street child living with his street family in a tin hovel, sniffing glue to keep the hunger at bay. They're all saving so he can go back to school, including his oldest sister Maisha who is selling herself on the streets to rich white men. Jigana loves Maisha and would rather join a street gang than see her become a full-time prostitute.

The story goes back and forth between the present, Christmas, written in present tense; and bits from previous days, written in past tense. Their dialect is a hodgepodge of their native one and English, and can make it an effort to read. Sometimes I don't know if something is meant literally or not - I'm not even sure if Jigana and Maisha and Naema, Baby and the twins are even related to the ones they call Mama and Bapa. I'm not sure but I think not, except for the authority Mama and Bapa have. On the other hand, it's understandable that these children would want to have a family, a home, somewhere they can return to and belong - if they don't actually have one, they create one. But again, I'm not sure.

Akpan wrote the story from Jigana's first-person perspective, and he is wise for his age - that kind of maturity that comes from having no real chance to be a real child. The sense of distance and coldness that infects the prose works in this particular story, saving it from becoming melodramatic and indulgent.

In "Fattening for Gabon", two small children are being cared for by their uncle, Fofo Kpee ("Fofo" meaning uncle), because their parents are dying of AIDs, in his small tin shack by the coast in Benin. Fofo Kpee makes his living ferrying people across the border into Nigeria, and picking coconuts. He quite possibly has some serious debt, because he makes a deal with a corrupt immigration official who he calls Big Guy, to sell the children to child slavers in Gabon.

At first, Kotchikpa and his little sister Yewa are excited, and eagerly learn their lines in order to go over the border, while Fofo Kpee becomes almost paranoid about the deal. Soon his guilt sees him try to flee with the children, but escape is clearly not an option.

Reflecting the various colonial influences, the characters speak a mishmash of their native tongue, French and English, and at times it was even harder to read than the first story. Yet even with the unfamiliar native words sprinkled through their speech, you could still follow what they were saying. Here the distance inherent in the prose made it harder to get into the story - that and the increasing amount of detail present, though it does allow the story to focus on the inner heart and mind without the burden of plot.

As with the other long story, "Luxurious Hearses", not a lot happens: it's all in the details, and the interactions of the characters. But even though the story is written in past tense by Kotchikpa, it's too unemotional, too mature a voice. Yewa, who's only about six, feels like a real child. Kotchikpa is old enough to start seeing things differently, but he's on the cusp. That was a subtle distinction, and yet - and yet the distance created a coldness that made it hard for me to really sympathise, to really invest myself in the story. It could have been much shorter.

After the slow, lengthy story about child trafficking, the third is so short it feels over before it's even begun. Set in Ethiopia, "What Language is That?" feels like filler, like playing Danger Mouse to fill the gap between Doctor Who and Gardening Australia on the ABC. It's about two six year old girls from rich families who live across the street from each other and are best friends - until religious fighting in the streets forces their parents to prohibit their friendship because Selam is Muslim and the narrator is Christian. In their innocent, childlike way, they can't see that it should make a difference.

Because this story is written in present second-person voice ("you" instead of "I"), after the present tense of "An Ex-mas Feast" and the past tense of "Fattening for Gabon", it makes the book start to read like an amateur writer's notebook of experimentation. Yes, there are many ways to write a story, but that doesn't mean you should use it just because it exists and you want to try it. It has to work for the story, and second person rarely works. It aims for a universal voice, to create a common feeling, to involve the reader as protagonist - but often it's just unsettling, creepy or alienating. I'm not sold on it working in this particular story. In a way, it did, but I can't shake off this image of a writer who doesn't understand the "less is more" adage.

The fourth story, "Luxurious Hearses", is the longest and the most painful to read - simply because it's set on a stationary bus. On the one hand, it could be read as a superb story that puts a lone Muslim teenager on a bus of Christians, all fleeing north Nigeria for the apparent safety of the south, all bringing their differing cultural and religious values as well as their fears onto a bus while around them Muslims and Christians are killing each other - only to find that it's happening in the south now too. Tempers flare, suspicions turn nasty, the country is a new democracy but only in name: the police are still corrupt, and some want the generals back. They fight over who has the rights to the oil, over traditional beliefs and modern religions, and who gets a seat on the bus. The Luxurious Buses company sells tickets for every inch of aisle space as well as the prized seats - some buses are full of corpses, people killed in the north being returned to their families in the south for burial.

Jubril is the lone Muslim, pretending to be Christian but finding it hard when there are women all around him and the TVs on the bus come on. He undergoes many moments of revelation and change-of-opinions while on the bus, remembering how he got here, his past - born of a Muslim mother and a Christian father - and trying to keep his head down: not easy when your right hand has been amputated for stealing a goat, a sure sign that you're Muslim.

It's a fascinating exploration of the psyche of this fifteen year old, and into the people - the bus is a microcosm of the country, in a way: even when they're more-or-less of the same religion, strife occurs, showing it's not just religious differences that cause these people to turn on each other.

For as interesting as it is, though, it's also a slog to read. There's a wide variety of dialects on the bus, including people who can't pronounce "l" or "sh", making for an obstacle-course of dialogue. The ending isn't pretty but it is a natural culmination of everything that was brewing on that bus.

The final story is perhaps the most tragic - the story of a Rwandan family at the start of the genocide, "My Parents' Bedroom" is about Monique and her little brother Jean, and their beautiful, graceful Tutsi mother and their Hutu father - if you don't know much about Rwanda as a Belgian colony, the Belgians deliberately set the lighter-skinned, more classically beautiful Tutsis up as the superior native race, and the Hutus - darker, broader in the face - as the lower class, creating simmering racial tension that hadn't been there before until it finally exploded and they started killing each other - though soon enough it was the Hutus who were doing the worst.

What happens to Monique and Jean's parents is devastating, and here the distant, chilling quality of the narration creates both distance and intimacy. It's written in the present tense, and for once this does narrow time down to this moment, and not let you escape. Because we see things through Monique's young eyes, it's hard to tell at first what's happening, but as you near the end of the story everything makes sense - a harsh, brutal kind of sense. Like when she sees blood running down the lounge room wall, and how her parents seem so cruel to her even after she's nearly raped by a man in her own bedroom.

The stories are powerful - where they're let down is the writing. Akpan has potential, but he's not entirely successful here. That distance I keep mentioning, it's inherent in the prose of all the stories, even when they're written in first person, and it detaches you from the stories. The dialogue is realistic but too cluttered and hard to read, which breaks the flow and detracts from the point of the story. I didn't feel like it made the characters Other, just that it kept me from really understanding. Which could just be my flaw.

Sometimes it was hard to follow what was going on - the way a child sees things, no matter how mature they are, is going to be somewhat different - and there's plenty you need to infer, or that is implied. Which I don't mind at all, except that I lacked confidence in what I understood to be happening, because there was no definitive answer that reassured you that you were on the right track. Nowhere in "Fattening for Gabon", for instance, does anyone say that they're child traffickers - that one's fairly obvious, granted, but I wasn't 100% because I was wondering about a few other plausible possibilities until I read the interview with the author at the end. It's a small quibble.

All in all, these are some powerful stories, not sensationalised, perhaps a little contrived at times, and they don't try to force emotion or dictate your reaction, which I appreciate. I'll be interested in what the author, who is a Jesuit priest, writes about next - one thing's for sure, it will be set in Africa.

Reviewed in November 2009

Tags: fiction, short stories

The Darkangel by Meredith Ann Pierce
The Darkangel Trilogy #1
Little, Brown and Company 2007 (1982)
238 pages
YA Fantasy


Aeriel was bought at the slave markets as a baby and raised alongside her young mistress, Eoduin, the beautiful daughter of the town syndic. Now nearly a woman grown, she accompanies Eoduin in the climb up the mountain to collect hornbloom nectar for Eoduin's cousin's wedding - the tradition being that you are not married until the bride and groom have shared the bridal cup, and the bride's cousin must collect it on the day.

But when they reach the mountaintop, the Darkangel flies down, all pale luminescent beauty and a dozen black wings, and snatches Eoduin, carrying her off to make her his bride. No one in the town believes Aeriel - the Darkangel is just a story, after all - and some even accuse her of causing her mistress' death. Knowing that Eoduin's father means to sell her, she goes back to the mountain, hoping the Darkangel comes again so that she can kill him.

When he comes, the Darkangel is too strong and beautiful to kill, as cruel and selfish as he is. Instead he takes Aeriel back to his home, an abandoned palace carved out of the side of a mountain, to spin clothes for his thirteen brides. His brides are all indistinguishable, fragile wraiths, their hearts cut out, their blood drunk, their souls collected into little vials that hang from a necklace around the Darkangel's neck.

When the Darkangel has acquired his fourteenth wife in a year's time and collected her soul, Aeriel learns, he will take all the souls to his mother, a water witch, and become a full-fledged vampyre with his six brothers. Together the vampyres will carve up the world and rule absolute. Only Aeriel can stop him, but to do so she will have to escape the palace and find the starhorse, one of the wardens of the land created by the Ancients, those who first arrived and made the air and atmosphere, the plants and animals, before sealing themselves inside their domes, forgotten in all but name.

Even though the vampyre is a monster who must be stopped, Aeriel doesn't want to kill him, doesn't want his beauty and majesty to leave the world. But time is running out, and the stakes are high. Soon Aeriel will have to make the hardest decision of her life in order to prevent the vampyres from taking over the world.


The prose of this book reminded me of Alphabet of Thorn: they both have that fairy-tale quality, a slight distance between voice and character even though, especially here, you only get one perspective (Aeriel's). I don't know if there's a word for it, and it's hard to describe. It creates a certain tone, a kind of mythological or biblical tone, a flavour that works especially well with Fantasy and works very well here.

Aside from the sad fact that there was at least one typo on almost every single page (surely, Little, Brown & Co, when a book has been out for more than two decades, you'd have plenty of time to fix these glaring mistakes?), it's well written, with a controlled, measured pace that only adds to that fairy-tale quality. Aeriel is a sweet girl, the Darkangel an almost sulky, petulant teen who whines about how ugly his wives are in one breath, and threatens to strangle Aeriel in the next. He does have charisma, and even though Aeriel is in his thrall you can understand why she'd want to save him.

The other main character in the story is a duarough, a little man called Talb who turns to stone if he's caught in the sun. He lives in the caves beneath the palace and helps Aeriel against the Darkangel. Every fairy-tale needs a fairy godmother! and Talb fits that role. There is the Lorelei, the water-witch who steals little boys and turns them into vampyres, and a quest story that's pure Fantasy. Then we have Narnia-inspired beasts: magnificent talking animals who guard their part of the land with wisdom and fierce pride; and a dash of science fiction in the story of the Ancients. There's plenty going on here but it never loses its quiet, patient tone or measured pacing. Despite the variety of characters, the plot is simple and straight-forward, with no real surprises.

The only part I found lacking, which undermined the story, was Aeriel's love for the Darkangel. Even though she qualifies it as love "in a way", I thought she pitied him, felt compassion for him, and believed in the "spark of good" that still lay in him - maybe that is love "in a way", but there was so little interaction between the two that it was hard to see how she could develop these feelings for him, good girl or no. I don't like it when stories take emotions like these for granted, and don't spend time on developing them for the reader - it smacks of mere convenience for the plot's sake.

I never really understood the measures of time - Solstar is both "daylight" and the sun? I think the world might be a moon - they refer to Oceanus, a planet they guide by, which might actually be Earth. They say "day-month" and I was never sure if they actually meant months or not. It was so confusing it was distracting because I was trying to figure it out. An author's note would have been helpful.

Reviewed in November 2009

Tags: fantasy, ya

Intertwined by Gena Showalter
A Novel of the Damned #1
Harlequin Teen 2009
440 pages
YA Urban Fantasy; Paranormal Romance


Aden Stone has never been a normal boy. Abandoned at a tender age into foster care and a string of psychiatric hospitals, he's learnt to keep his differences to himself to avoid more drugs and therapy. And he is very, very different.

Four souls are trapped inside Aden. One, Eve, can time travel, sending him back in time and into his younger self, where the slightest change can affect the future. Another, Julian, can raise the dead. Zombies rise from graves if Aden steps foot in the cemetery. A third, Elijah, can tell the future - deaths, mostly, so that Aden knows how everyone is going to die, including himself. The fourth, Caleb, can possess another human being.

And yet, they're his friends, his only friends. Their chatter in his head can become deafening, until one day Aden meets a girl called Mary Ann whose presence sends the souls into a temporary void, giving Aden blessed peace. The mystery of Mary Ann is only the beginning - soon the mystery girl Elijah predicted enters Aden's life, a beautiful, enigmatic girl called Victoria who is the daughter of none other than Vlad the Impaler - otherwise known as Dracula. As a vampire princess, her bodyguard is a werewolf called Riley, who spends more time getting to know Mary Ann than he does keeping Victoria and Riley apart.

But the vampires aren't the only ones Aden's strange powers have called into the area. Soon the neighbourhood and nearby city are crawling with witches, fairies, goblins and other supernatural folk who want to capture Aden, learn his secrets, appropriate his power if possible, and kill him. Even if he weren't falling in love with Victoria, the vampires are his best chance of an ally.

As Aden, Mary Ann, Victoria and Riley delve into the mystery of the trapped souls, they discover a surprising truth - and the chance to free them forever.

As you can tell, this is a novel with pretty much every paranormal creature you can think of thrown in. It comes about fairly gradually, which makes it more believable than if they'd been thrust in your face from the start, but it also makes it incredibly crowded. Part of me would have liked it better if it had just been Aden and the souls (and their strange powers) who supplied the true, the only, supernatural "meat" of the novel. I also find it hard to pinpoint which genre it's mostly aiming for. The beginning was a classic horror zombie attack, but there's not much of that here really. It has an urban fantasy plot, with thick dollops of paranormal romance - too thick, I thought, and too convenient.

That was my main problem with the story: it was often too convenient. I don't mean that the characters had a smooth ride, that things always worked in their favour (except that, really, they did), but that despite the apparent messiness of the premise, it's incredibly neat. And the only reason this bothers me is because the romance side of things, especially, was too neat. Love and relationships are never neat - Romance novels in general take that way too far and create all sorts of ridiculous, real and psychological obstacles for the hero and heroine to clamber over. It's actually refreshing not to have that. But because there's so much crowded in, because it's also Fantasy and so needs to keep the Fantasy plot going, you don't get to spend much time with the characters as they explore their first real relationship. Since that's one of the big draws of Romance for me, it did make this feel a little rushed, a little paint-by-numbers.

But there was plenty to love. It is fast-paced, and Showalter has a firm hand on the various sub-plots, weaving them together like a skilled choreographer. Okay, yes, at times it was a bit rehearsed, sticking with that analogy, but it was also a lot of fun. The premise of Aden with four gifted souls trapped in his head is a good one - I haven't come across it before either, or certainly not to this scale. The voices were sadly a bit indistinguishable, aside from Eve being "mothering" and Caleb being vain and predictable. Mary Ann is a goodie goodie but I found myself liking her anyway - especially because of how firm she was when breaking up with her clichéd-American-football-boyfriend Tucker (seriously, what kind of name is "Tucker"? Ugh).

Aden started out charismatically, but after a while he became surprisingly ordinary. Not a bad thing in order to keep him from being too Other, and it allowed the strangeness to shift to Victoria. Let's face it, if Aden didn't have souls stuck in him he'd be perfectly ordinary. It's not him who has these powers but the souls. No souls, no powers. Although, he probably has something which we won't find out about until after he's freed them all. Seeing as how one soul is freed in this book, that probably allows for four books in the series: one for each soul.

I know I keep highlighting the book's flaws, but I gave it four stars because I did really enjoy it, I did get drawn into this world and I did care for the characters. I've read a few of Showalter's adult paranormal romance and some of them I really enjoyed - this YA novel is aimed at the 16+ teens who don't get embarrassed at French kissing. Or maybe I'm showing my age ...

Reviewed in November 2009

Tags: paranormal romance, urban fantasy, ya

Me and My Shadow by Katie MacAlister
Silver Dragons #3
Signet 2009
330 pages
Paranormal romance


This review contains a few spoilers of the previous book.

This book was so long in coming (a year), that I had pretty much forgotten all the plot details from the previous one. I couldn't remember why Magoth had been expelled from Abaddon or why he had lost his powers. I certainly couldn't remember how he ended up living with May and Gabriel - though I suppose that's because he's bound to May. I couldn't remember how the dragon shard had ended up in May and, oh, lots of other little things. But it didn't really matter. I soldiered on, and was soon caught up in the story again.

May Northcott is a doppleganger, created by a demon lord and Prince of Abaddon, Magoth, from a water naid, Cyrene. Cyrene sacrificed her common sense to have May created, and is now a silly twit - but she's still May's twin and she'll do anything to protect her. She's also bound to Magoth, who used to send her out to the mortal world to steal things for him - which is how she met Gabriel, a silver dragon and wyvern (leader) of a sept. The silver dragons had been cursed to never have a mate born to them - but May wasn't born, she was made, and she and Gabriel are happily in love.

If only things could be that simple. May is still bound to Magoth, only now the arrogant, sex-crazed and annoying ex-Prince of Abaddon is living in their home and there seems to be no way to get rid of him. May is being hunted by Baltic, a black dragon who was supposed to have died centuries ago but now seems to be back - with a vengeance. Because May carries a dragon shard inside her, the same one that Baltic's mate Ysolde once carried, he's determined to have May and the dragon heart itself. They need to find Baltic's old lair to get his dragon shard, then negotiate a truce between the other septs so that they can bring the dragon shards together, draw out the one from May, and re-shard the heart.

With all the threats to her life, May and Gabriel get little time together. If they can form and re-shard the dragon heart, and put at rest the animosity between the silver and black dragons, maybe, just maybe, they could have some peace together. But it means stopping Baltic, and this returned dragon has some very unusual powers that he shouldn't have.

This and the Aisling Grey: Guardian series (the first series about the dragons) are great fun, and the fantasy world overlaid on our own is well fleshed out. Some of the banter grates on me after a while - I can really only take so much of Magoth's blustering, Cyrene's shrieking and Jim's quips and whining. But I love May, she's one of those rare paranormal heroines you can really identify with and feel for - paradoxically, as Other as she is she also comes across as the most human. I also love Gabriel, though I'm with May on the foreplay thing.

Speaking of, there's only one sex scene in this book, which isn't that unusual for MacAlister but, dare I say it, was a little disappointing. I like the intensity and the building chemistry that comes with it, though there's a lot of that in many of the other scenes as well. Instead, this one is very plot-driven: fast-paced, rarely quiet, often with three things happening all at once, it was actually a bit exhausting. I think that's why I like the sex scenes (or one reason anyway): they provide a bit of calm from the plot, a moment for the characters to be themselves: a glimpse of what could be, should the dastardly plot be resolved. That's the Romance side of things. The Silver Dragons series leans more heavily towards Urban Fantasy.

But it is inventive, and rollicking, and has some great deadpan moments - and there's May, who's worth it. It's so nice to have a heroine who isn't annoying! Even Aisling, in the first series (and who has a small side role in this one), could get on my nerves. Always arguing and protesting! So loud. May is capable, resourceful, thinks before she speaks, embraced her feelings for Gabriel, and has real but not irritating flaws. Refreshing.

Now, there are bound to be a few very small plot holes - details that get forgotten - and some convenient coincidences. What with everyone being so noisy - and really, this is a deafening book - it's easy to get confused by the plot and sub-plots. I had to just shrug off my confusion a few times, but since this is a more plot-driven urban fantasy than a romance, the plot could have been a bit tighter and clearer. If you're thinking about giving this series a go, my recommendation is first, start with Aisling Grey, and then wait till all four books in this series are out - it helps to read them close together.

Reviewed in November 2009

Tags: paranormal romance

The Pages by Murray Bail
Vintage 2009 (2008)
199 pages
Fiction


Murray Bail's 1998 book, Eucalyptus, is one of my most beloved books. It resonates so strongly with me that I'm always disappointed when other readers don't like it like I do - even though I can understand it, especially if they're not Australian and have never been there. It's a mix of Bail's distinctive writing style and the story itself: it either works for you or it doesn't.

The same is very much true of The Pages, a simple, short novel about two women, psychologists from Sydney, who travel seven hours to a sheep station in rural New South Wales to read a possible philosophic work written by a farmer's son, Wesley Antill, now dead. It was in his will that someone read and evaluate his work with the possibility of publishing it, and Erica is sent by the university to do just that. She takes her friend Sophie with her, who after yet another failed affair with a married man needs a break. Wesley's younger brother and sister, Roger and Lindsey, run the sheep station and are just as curious about Wesley's work. Interwoven with this present-day story is the story of Wesley, leaving home first to live in Sydney and then to travel around Europe.

Perhaps because it's a simpler, more straight-forward story, perhaps because it's quiet and uneventful, but it was definitely not the masterpiece Eucalyptus is. It still has Bail's beautiful, introspective prose - a style I simply do not have the words for, and in my failure I can only let Bail speak for himself:

"Erica who was holding onto the door - just his thumb and forefingeer keeping them on track - hand closest often changing down to first - saw how his way of conversing, which had plenty more stops and starts and false trails than actual words, followed the contours of the meandering landscape. Having to negotiate the unevenness on a daily basis had infected his speech. And when coming out with a sentence of more than three words he closed his eyes, the eyelids fluttering slightly as he spoke." (p.87)

"On the train to Bath, a young Frenchman with a violin case on his knees spoke of the conversion of nature into art. Art, being human, is imperfect - hence, its power, smiled the Frenchman. Antill enjoyed the conversation, and thought of seeing more of him, perhaps becoming friends, but when it came to it he couldn't find his address. Women were like small towns: to come upon them, and be surrounded by their neatness, but without the help of directions, before reaching unexpected dead ends; and begin all over again, elsewhere." (p.123)

"It was time for Erica to return to the shed, to submerge herself in the pages. But it was comfortable on the veranda, in the cane chairs with cushions, looking out past the sheds to the brown-purple horizon, tall spreading gum on the left. Lindsey was easy company. The way she allowed, and even encouraged gaps, imitated the landscape." (p.170)

It's Bail's ability to anthropomorphise the land, or to do the opposite - to render humans and their ways into a kind of landscape, to naturalise them - that I love. However, I felt that his style was limited here, that it wasn't quite appropriate to the story, or didn't go far enough. It certainly doesn't have the same magic as in Eucalyptus - I struggled to find quote-worthy passages and I'm not sure I picked appropriate ones. Bail writes like he truly understands that writing is an artform - and he's still experimenting. It may be a weaker story, and his prose might not be as satisfying as it was in his first book, but it still picks me up and carries me off as if on the wind, all lightness and astute glimpses into people's hearts.

That's the magic of Bail's prose, to enable me to see things in a way I'd never seen them before. It's got nothing to do with adjectives, not really. It's more of an approach, and a perspective. It comes across as a "tell" rather than "show" style because it's very narrative, but actually when you stop to think about it you'll realise how much he's not saying, but subtly revealing, or leaving open to interpretation. Yet, even just looking at these quotes here, I found some of the grammar and structure awkward, and itch to readjust it.

The actual story didn't interest me as much, though I did like it. I liked Erica's story better than Wesley's - Wesley wasn't a convincing character, but an inconclusive one. Not as believable, despite being familiar. He read too fictional, and I felt nothing for him except, I admit, a bit of superiority.

Despite my complaints, I still really liked it, mostly because of how Bail can transport me home, to the country I love best and miss with all my heart and which, I feel, Bail always knows how to bring alive for me - like he's the only one who understands and sees the country the same way I do. I can lose myself in his words. His style isn't for everyone, that I can understand, and this isn't the better book to start with. He has three other novels and a collection of short stories, but I can only speak for Eucalyptus, which makes my veins hum.

Reviewed in November 2009

Tags: fiction

Moon Called by Patricia Briggs
Mercy Thompson #1
Ace 2006
288 pages
Urban fantasy


Mercy Thompson is a car mechanic who runs her own garage almost single-handedly. Her life follows a fairly simple pattern: teaching the world's only friendly vampire, Stefan, how to fix his old bus; chatting to undercover cop Tony; and quietly baiting the meticulous Alpha of the local werewolf pack, Adam, by putting a battered old spare-parts VW beetle in the field between their homes where he can see it from his bedroom window and wince.

Mercy knows how to deal with the werewolves - after all, she's a coyote shifter who was fostered by a werewolf family in the heart of the Marrok's own pack (the Marrok being the leader of all the werewolves in North America). So when a boy comes to her garage looking for work, she can instantly tell a few things about him: one, that he's a newly changed werewolf; two, that he doesn't have control yet; and three, that he doesn't belong to Adam's pack. Her suspicions escalate when two men, a poorly trained werewolf and a human, turn up at night to take the kid, Mac, away.

No sooner has she got Mac safe at Adam's then the Alpha's own home is attacked and his teenage daughter Jesse kidnapped. Mercy has good instincts, and a good chance of finding Jesse - but there's a lot more going on here than a simple kidnapping, and Mercy is soon risking her own life to get to the truth.

I'm torn between absolutely loving this and giving it five stars, and holding back a bit on four. It seems unfair to give this four when I gave Dead Until Dark five. So I will probably change my mind a few times.

This book reminded me more of Kelley Armstrong's Women of the Underworld series (Bitten etc.) than of Sookie Stackhouse, but really it falls somewhere in-between. All three series are set in a present-day world full of magical and supernatural beings: werewolves, vampires, fae and fairies, mind-readers and so on. In all three, the supernatural are either "out of the closet" or thinking about it - oh except for Armstrong I think, though I've only read two books in the series so far. All three feature a female protagonist who's somewhat supernatural herself: Elena in Bitten is a werewolf, Mercy is a coyote-shifter, Sookie is a telepath. They each attract some powerful, sexy men and they each get caught up in some nasty underworld business. Hence the Urban Fantasy tag.

Of the three my favourite so far is Elena/Women of the Underworld, but only because it's just that much darker, more dangerous, and the books are longer so you can get more involved in the story, characters and world. The Sookie books are short, but this was even shorter. However, it was also tightly plotted and finely structured, so it didn't feel particularly short. It is a teaser, though. Just as you're really getting into it, it ends and you're left with air and that compulsion to go out and grab the next book pronto. So that does put it firmly in the "Loved it!" camp.

Mercy is no goody-goody, which sometimes Sookie is too much of, and she stands up to the domineering, aggressive men (though, with the werewolves especially, she also knows when it's not the time). She has a loner streak, especially since the females in the packs tend to hate her. I don't feel like I know all that much about her, and I was confused about what she is exactly - she says she is a "walker", which "is derived from 'skinwalker', a witch of the Southwest Indian tribes who uses a skin to turn into a coyote or some other animal and goes around causing disease and death." (p.4) That was as much of an explanation as we get, perhaps because walkers are a rare breed and she doesn't know much about her inheritance herself. She's descended on her father's side from Native Americans, and she's immune to some kinds of magic, like some vampire magic, and her ancestors used to hunt the supernatural. I hope her magic is explained more over the series because I'd like to understand it better.

I loved Adam - his magnetic charisma just jumped off the page, and when he first appears and Mercy's describing him, ending with how he was a bit scary, I certainly felt that too. It added an edge of danger and unpredictability to the story, balanced by the joke between Mercy and Jesse about the car that spoils his view (every time he pisses her off she thinks up something new to do to it, like remove a few wheels, paint graffiti on it - it made me laugh), and by the moments of sweetness. He's a scary, sleek-looking Alpha werewolf who hides his liking for Mercy behind threats to her cat. The news that he keeps a photo of Mercy in his bedroom could have been creepy but just made me go "awwwwwww"!

The story focuses on werewolf politics but there's a bit of vampire in there too - the vampire part was really confusing and it seemed like a bit of a plot hole; I have no idea what was going on there, unless it was nothing more than what we saw and heard about. I am a bit perplexed at all the "don't swear in front of the lady" nonsense - people are dying and you're worried about swearing? I just find it patronising.

These paranormal urban fantasy books are really the closest I get to reading mystery-crime-thriller-suspense; I can't enjoy a good mystery if the characters are all boring humans. Briggs also writes fantasy, and I do have Dragon Bones to read, but I think I'll work my way through this series first. Veeeeery curious about book 2, Blood Bound. I hope annoying obstacles aren't thrown in to keep her and Adam from having a real relationship. That's such a cheap television trick and it's even worse when used in books, like in Alyson Noël's YA Immortals series (Evermore etc.).

Reviewed in November 2009

Tags: urban fantasy

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
The Hunger Games #2
Scholastic 2009
391 pages
YA dystopian/post-apocalyptic fiction


This review contains mild spoilers for the ending of book 1, The Hunger Games

In the land of Panem, ruled by President Snow and the Capitol (the capital city), life is hard and dirty and violent. Outside of the Capitol - a city of riches and luxury, bloody entertainment and cruel punishment - the land is divided up into twelve districts. Each is responsible for a certain type of industry. District 11 is agriculture and orchards. District 7 is lumber. District 4 is fisheries, District 12 is coal. Ever since the violent uprising of the people of District 13 (graphite mining and nuclear power) 75 years ago - a district that was obliterated in punishment - the people of the districts have been kept hungry and barely surviving. To repress them further, the Capitol came up with a devious game called the Hunger Games. Every year, two tributes, a boy and a girl under eighteen from each district are selected to compete. Each year the arena is different, but the aim remains the same: these children must fight and kill each other until there is only one left.

It's an effective strategy, and some children, called "Careers", even train for it - those usually win. In District 12, one of the poorest, harshest districts, there had been only one victor, now an old drunk called Haymitch. That is, until Katniss and Peeta broke every rule and came home, together as Victors, from the last Hunger Games.

They might have each been given a Victor's house to live in and more food and money than they can use, but things only seem to be worse. The fake love Katniss showed for Peeta, part of her and Haymitch's strategy for winning the Hunger Games, has created a rift between her and her best friend Gale. But the love the people of the Capitol have for her and Peeta and their star-crossed love is the only thing keeping the Capitol from simply killing her.

A surprise and highly unwelcome visit from President Snow himself ups the stakes. If Katniss can't convince him that she loves Peeta, her family and friends are in danger of losing their lives - because Katniss unwittingly inspired and fostered rebellion in the districts with her daring act that forced the Gamemakers to make both her and Peeta victors of the last Games.

Their Victory Tour will start soon, and it is her last chance to convince the people that she loves Peeta and doesn't support an uprising. But nothing's ever that simple, and Katniss knew the time may come to simply flee, escape, with her family into the wilderness. But Katniss lacks President Snow's sadistic streak, could never have predicted what he would do. For this year is the year of the Quarter Quell, a special Hunger Games to mark the 75th anniversary of District 13's failed uprising, and to mark the special occasion, to remind the people of the districts of the Capitol's power, one of the most important rules of the Games will be broken: Victors never have to go into the draw to be tributes ever again.

Breaking this golden rule changes everything, and once again Katniss' life is in the worst danger imaginable. But this time, she's determined: it's not her own life she cares about, but Peeta's. Keeping Peeta alive is her goal. She's not going to run this time.

This is a fitting sequel to The Hunger Games, though it has one of those endings that feels like the story's only just getting started, because it's the close of one phase of life in Panem and the opening of another.

I do like Katniss, though she isn't really growing and developing all that much. The most notable, if the only notable, development was her deciding to put Peeta's life before her own - though her reasoning was purely practical. With her toughness and resourcefulness, she reminds me of Ellie from the Tomorrow series - but the similarity ends there. I prefer Ellie. There's something about Katniss that makes me feel cold. I think it has something to do with Collins' decision to have Katniss narrate in first-person present-tense.

I talked a bit about this in my review for the first book, but I think, now that I've read this one, I can articulate it better. The problem is tone, and rhythm. The present-tense voice reads like past-tense because the tone never changes. What I mean is, when Katniss is describing something horrific, something traumatic, and her voice doesn't change from when she's telling us about something that's ordinary. Sure she describes her own reaction, but it's from a distance. It makes her seem very cold, and a bit fake.

"In that one slight motion, I see the end of hope, the beginning of the destruction of everything I hold dear in the world. I can't guess what form my punishment will take, how wide the net will be cast, but when it is finished, there will most likely be nothing left. So you would think that at this moment, I would be in utter despair. Here's what's strange. The main thing I feel is a sense of relief. That I can give up this game. That the question of whether I can succeed in this venture has been answered, even if that answer is a resounding no. That if desperate times call for desperate measures, then I am free to act as desperately as I wish." (p.75)

"I lunge across the table and rake [my fingernails] down Haymitch's face, causing blood to flow and damage to one eye. Then we are both screaming terrible, terrible things at each other, and Finnick is trying to drag me out ... Other hands help Finnick and I'm back on my table, my body restrained, my wrists tied down, so I slam my head in fury again and again against the table. A needle pokes my arm and my head hurts so badly I stop fighting and simply wail in a horrible, dying-animal way, until my voice gives out." (pp.387-8)

See what I mean? She is always telling us how she feels, what she's doing, never showing - this, in combination with the way she talks as if she were discussing it after the event, makes the present-tense voice a fraud. It loses its immediacy, and often its tension and suspense. It makes it hard to believe that Katniss doesn't already know what's going to happen.

I'm also not a big fan of the supposed love triangle between her, Gale and Peeta. Mostly because she doesn't love either of them but they love her, and I don't get why they love her, and I'm tired of her not making a decision. Oh, there are some great things about Katniss. She's bright but not overly clever, she's totally in her element with a bow and arrow and can survive in the wild, and she does care about people and the plight of the districts. When she highlights one of the horrible traits in the Capitol - like how the people serve elaborate dinners bursting with food, and a purgatory drink so the guests can quickly throw up and come back to eat more, while the people in the districts are starving to death - this is when I like her the most, I think - because she shows some sensitivity to social justice. And at their heart, that's what this series is about, isn't it? Social justice, or lack thereof? That makes it highly relevant, post-apocalyptic dystopian world or not. Just reinterpret it all as a metaphor and bingo, you've got your own home.

In some ways, I liked this book better than the first one, yet I was also slightly disappointed by the direction it took. I love these kinds of scenarios, but I've read better YA stories in the same genre. And there are a lot of them. This series owes a lot to Battle Royale, but it's also part of a long and vibrant sub-genre of YA post-apocalyptic survival stories. If you enjoyed this, don't stop here. There are some gems around that deserve being made popular again.

Reviewed in November 2009

Tags: post-apocalyptic/dystopian fiction, ya

Ten Thousand Lovers by Edeet Ravel
Tel Aviv Trilogy #1
Review 2003
373 pages
Fiction


This was a random buy the other week; the author's new book caught my eye and since it was the third book in a sort-of trilogy, I picked up the first one, this one, and was interested enough to take it home with me. For some reason, it was just begging to be read, so it didn't have to wait the usual waiting period of books I take home (which is anywhere between five months and five years). However, now that it's time to write the review, I find myself stuck. Every time I try to summarise it, it just doesn't sound right. So I'm ditching my usual review structure and will just talk about the book, revealing necessary bits of the plot-light story as I go.

The premise, in brief, is about a young woman, Lily, studying linguistics and language at the university in Jerusalem who meets a man, Ami, who works as an interrogator for the army. It is a story of their love for one another, a story of horror and heartbreak in a war-torn country, of a people persecuted - and I'm not talking about the Jews here. It's a powerful story, set in the 70s, that is inherently relevant today.

I'm always interested in reading books about other countries and people, especially when I've been immobile in one place for too long. I love to get a sense of that other place, I want to taste it and touch it and see it - I can practically smell it, if the book works for me. That was one of the biggest disappointments about Joe Speedboat, which was set in the Netherlands but seemed to be trying to hide its Dutch qualities rather than explore, highlight, celebrate them. There was none of that problem here, in Ten Thousand Lovers. Because Lily is Canadian-Israeli, and spent the first seven years of her life on a Kibbutz with her parents, she has a history with the place and understands the people. She speaks fluent Hebrew. Why she returned to Israel to do her university degree isn't very clear, but since it's a story of shadows and things unsaid, it fits.

In fact, I can't go any further without talking about the prose style. If you start this book expecting a fairly typical style of writing, you could be alienated by what you do get. This is a very dialogue-driven story, fit into a fine mesh net of sparse description, and even the dialogue is stripped bare of flounces. There are few descriptors, very little adjectives, so that Ami, especially, sounds formal, distant, even aloof. Yet also not, because Lily also includes explanations on the people and the language - on certain words, their meanings and history and implications - that are fascinating and revealing. Be prepared to read of a people and culture different from your own. You cannot place your own expectations and moral code onto them. It gives it a faint touch of Fantasy, because they sound alien, yet their story is so human the lack of description and adjectives just drives it home all the more powerfully.

Lily meets Ami when she's hitchhiking from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv. Ami falls for her almost instantly, and is always open and frank with her. He doesn't try to hide what he does for a living, and Lily doesn't hide how much it scares her, how she doesn't trust him or know him - through it all he persists and holds true, and eventually she moves past her fears. Ami is an incredibly charismatic character, totally believable, and it's understandable that he can interrogate prisoners without an ounce of violence and find out everything they want to know. He hates his job but every time he quits they offer him more money to come back - plus, I think he feels that if he weren't doing it, the way he does it, the other interrogators would step in and they are, in Ami's words, sadistic. He explains his technique to Lily, and as we get to know Ami - who, really, is the true hero and protagonist of the story - and learn more about his personal views, it feels like Ami vs. the whole crazy world.

Things were rough in Israel during the 70s, and they're probably worse now. Ten Thousand Lovers gives honest insight into the situation at the human level, yet you won't learn much in terms of facts and figures. This isn't that kind of historical fiction. I wasn't even sure, for most of the book, when it was set. I guessed 80s, based purely on how old Lily's daughter seemed to be. See, the story has two parallel time lines. In one, present-day Lily is writing the story of meeting Ami and what happened there, while her daughter and her daughter's boyfriend flit in and out of her home. In the other is the story itself. The third part of the novel is the small sections explaining quirks of Hebrew, which were the most factual, informative parts of the novel and really interesting too. You'll learn more about the language and culture than you will about what the hell is going on in the country.

Actually, that's not true either. You will learn about it, just not at the political and economic level. Fear and prejudice is explored, but never baldly. The shadows move softly throughout this novel, and I found myself leaning closer, trying to peer through them to the "truth". But there is no simple, straight-forward truth, only interpretations and perspectives of it. I wouldn't want a simple, straight-forward story anyway, I wouldn't want to be told.

It did take me a while to adjust to the prose, though. It's quite different, and it won't work for everyone. It was frustrating at times, because it made the characters and story seem almost elusive, but it was also highly effective. For a while I was scared of Ami too. I didn't trust him, I was suspicious of him, I thought bad things would happen to Lily if she got into a relationship with him. He's so magnetic, so controlled and calm and intelligent, I knew he'd outwit me no matter what. I worried about his sincerity. I worried about his motives. I worried that he really was involved in torture. In short, I absorbed all Lily's fears and made them my own - and then I absorbed her growing love and trust in Ami, and loved him too.

It's this kind of emotional connection that I look for in a book, that makes a book a perfect fit for me. I can see that some readers would have an opposite reaction to mine, because of the prose style, but for me the sparsity of words made it all that much closer, more intimate, stripped bare of the usual descriptions that can in fact protect you from getting too close. I can see I need to give an example, so I've picked a more-or-less random passage:

"It's funny how we met. Such a fluke. If I hadn't lent my roommate money. If I hadn't bought a chocolate on the way to the bus. If I'd been there ten minutes earlier or later."
"I thought about that too."
"I suppose God had it all planned out."
I didn't mean it literally, but Ami underwent a transformation when I said that. He became fierce. "Don't bring God into it," he said.
"I was just joking. What's the matter? You're scaring me."
"I don't like religious people," he said. I saw how intimidating he could be if he felt like it.
"Well, I'm not religious. I'm an atheist, I was born on a kibbutz, remember? The first time I heard that word, 'God', was when we went back to Canada, and I went to Hebrew school. You can be scary."
"Sorry."
"Don't scare me like that again. The next time you scare me like that I'm leaving."
"I didn't mean to scare you. You're very sensitive, Lily."
"Why do you hate the religious?"
"It's psychotic to say this is what God wants, because that's what you want. This is what's written in the Torah, God said we should have this land, and the Arabs, who don't have a soul anyway, who are subhuman anyway, should just be demolished, because that's what God wants. Who can argue with yehova? I wish the ground would just open up and swallow them."
"In my fantasy they don't die, they just all move to New York."
He pulled me towards him and rolled me so that I was lying on top of him. He smiled at me. "Yes, that's much more humane," he said, in English. [pp. 77-78]

I loved Lily too, she's very identifiable - no doubt from all her years living in Canada (she writes her story from her home in London, not Canada, but that just adds to her Western feel). Politics does come up, of course - how could it not? - and religion too; I was far more offended than Lily even by the Jewish wedding traditions. She wasn't even required to speak during the ceremony! And I loved Ami all the more for hating it all. I guess he's very modern.

If you're interested in reading about Israel during the 70s, if you're interested in that area at all, or if you feel in the mood to read a heart-breaking love story; if you like stories that are written differently, if you study creative writing and are drawn to books that try out different prose styles - or from some reason of your own, I really recommend this book and I'm eager to read the other two books in Ravel's Tel Aviv trilogy.

Reviewed in November 2009

Tags: fiction

Sister Wife by Shelley Hrdlitschka
Orca Book Publishers 2008
269 pages
YA fiction


All her life, Celeste has practised purity and obedience in order to be a fitting sister wife. Now, with her fifteenth birthday approaching, it will soon be time for the Prophet to announce which man God has assigned her to. This will be the man she will belong to for life and eternity in the Kingdom of Heaven. It is only through having many wives can a man enter God's kingdom, they believe, and those wives must be pure of thought and obedient to their husbands in order to belong to him there, as well.

Growing up in Unity, the settlement where the members of the Movement live, has been a simple, happy time for Celeste. She lives in a big house with her father Kelvin and his four wives, including her own mother Irene and her six other children - Celeste is the oldest. But even after all the housework and time spent looking after the children, and despite her attempts to be obedient, Celeste has impure thoughts: she doesn't want to marry, she'd rather do something with her life, like be a vet. And she thinks about Jon Nielsson, a boy who lives nearby with whom she's merely exchanged eye contact. She knows it's wrong, but she can't stop thinking and questioning the things she was raised to believe in.

Confiding in her younger sister Nanette turns out to be a mistake: Nanette is a firm believer in her place in the world and is shocked at Celeste's disobedience. Taviana, a slightly older girl who, over a year ago, was rescued from a life of living on the streets and selling her body by one of the members of the Movement, understands better and the two become even closer. Celeste is also drawn to the river, where she saw a young man build an inuksuk - a body made of carefully balanced rocks. She makes her own, and when she visits later she finds a third - so begins a community of rock people, the first creative thing she's done in her life and one that brings her joy and calm.

But it is like the calm before the storm, and everything in Celeste's life starts falling apart. Her secret meetings with Jon have been discovered by Nanette, who tells their father. Soon after, the Prophet assigns Celeste to Jon's father, Martin Nielsson, a much older man who already has five wives - but not before Jon leaves Unity, bringing shame on his family. He wants Celeste to come with him, but Celeste can't, she can't do that to her own family. She doesn't want to marry Mr Nielsson and become like all the other women in the Movement, like her own mother who, now in her eighth pregnancy, is having complications. But she can't do that to her mother, or her father. She can't bring shame to them.

Celeste, Nanette and Taviana must each find their way, reconciling their hearts and their beliefs, their upbringings and their instincts, their needs and their repressed desires.

Set in British Columbia (but, sadly, Americanised), this story brings to life a polygamous society and subtly explores the problems inherent in it. Told in first-person narration by the three girls, we get three very different perspectives that flesh out a three-dimensional world that, due to its own isolation, also feels barren and secluded. The atmosphere is subtle: there's a slight edge of volatile unpredictability to the men of Unity that provides an element of danger, and also of threat. Yet, at the same time these are for the most part good people, or ordinary people, practising their beliefs and obeying their own laws.

As with any dystopian society, individualism has no place here: if everyone started doing what they wanted to do, the whole structure would fall apart. There's also a whiff of perversion: there are no young men, say over eighteen, in the story - only these much older men getting young girls pregnant. It is creepy and repulsive, even though these men aren't portrayed as pedophiles, not only because these girls are so young and naïve and at an age where they should be having healthy crushes - like Celeste with Jon - but also because they're nothing more than breeding machines. That side of the story is handled very well, and Hrdlitschka displays a real talent for showing rather than telling, and letting us draw our own conclusions (it isn't pro-polygamy, but it does try to shed light on and understand why so many women are happy living in such a community, or cult or sect, whatever you want to call it).

Celeste is the main protagonist here, and it is her story that resonates the most strongly, that we can identify and sympathise with the most, even though Taviana is of "our" world. Yet even thirteen-year-old Nanette, so firmly entrenched in the Movement's dogma, is a sympathetic figure. We might feel a slight edge of superiority over her, based on a mix of being older and wiser than her and from seeing more clearly than she can. She develops a youthful crush on Mr Nielsson (and he has a strong - and yes, creepy - liking for her) that becomes over-blown - because their natural desires are so repressed and demonised, these girls don't know what to do with their feelings and ones like Nanette form unhealthy attachments to much older men, father figures even. Hers comes from the fact that Mr Nielsson is the first man to show her attention, to touch her even. He is taking advantage, no matter how nice he is.

This is such a beautiful story, though, told in a simple style while at the same time dealing with a complicated subject. The scenes at the river, building inuksuks and learning to balance rocks, provide a restful balance to the perversion of life in Unity - the contrast of being one with nature, of enjoying its beauty and adding to it, not destroying it or using it but simply relaxing into it, creates a very nice juxtaposition to the baby factory outsiders jokingly call Rabbitsville. It also highlights the stale, forced and unnatural parameters of the Movement, and gradually Celeste adjusts her understanding of God into something that is present in nature, that brings her comfort - though she can't shake off her belief in a judging God.

The prose was a delight to read, effortless and graceful, not fussy or over-burdened. I was swept up in the story, in the the voices of the three girls, which is devoid of bad grammar and old clichés. (Sad to say, but when I read books in the Romance genre I'm often cringing over the writing, and fixing the grammar in my head. Really ruins a story.) Told in the present tense, the style is also formal - especially when Celeste and Nanette are narrating, which fits - and adds to the stilted atmosphere of the place and the people. I would have liked to have seen more of it, get a broader understanding of how it works. A lot of the boys have left Unity - when you don't let teenaged boys and young men get laid, they're bound to become frustrated and unhappy, but it's only "men" who get wives. Maybe this explains why there don't seem to be any young men; all the men in the story are older and established, with several wives already. The Prophet has the most wives of course - it's always men who start these polygamist communities, quite clearly because they benefit the most. They just need to come up with a dogma that supports their perverted desire to have a harem and have sex with young girls and women who aren't allowed to say "no". (I'm always torn between repulsion and wanting to vomit, and sheer rage.)

This would be a great book to study in an English class, maybe grade 9 or 10. It raises a lot of questions, both ethical, moral and political, as well as being a beautifully written story about three strong young women and their struggle to realise their dreams, be proud of themselves rather than ashamed, and find an equilibrium within themselves that enables their beliefs to bring them happiness.

Reviewed in October 2009

Tags: fiction, ya

The Stepsister Scheme by Jim C. Hines
Princess #1
Daw 2009
344 pages
Fantasy


Since the night she escaped her drudgery to go to the ball where she caught the eye of Prince Armand and danced with him, leaving behind one of her glass slippers which he used to find her, Danielle has known happiness. Her new life as Princess has had its moments, and she keeps trying to befriend the palace servants, but she loves her prince and she's escaped her hellish life as servant to her stepmother and stepsisters.

Until, a few short months after the wedding, her stepsister Charlotte turns up, determined to kill her. Not only that, but she seems to have magical help. With the aid of the Queen's maidservant, Talia, who proves that she's not just a pretty face, Charlotte is driven off, but not before baiting Danielle with the knowledge that Armand won't be coming home, ever.

Drawn into the Queen's inner circle, Danielle learns a few more interesting things. Like that Talia is better known as Sleeping Beauty and is quite the martial arts and weapons expert. And that the Queen's other protector is none other than Snow White, a talented sorcerer with a penchant for flirting.

Together the three women must travel to inhospitable Fairy Town to find and rescue Armand from Danielle's stepsisters. But Fairy Town is a duplicitous place, the kind of place where there's a price to pay for everything and gifts can become curses.

I admit it, I am not the right audience for this book. That is to say, I want to read these kinds of stories, but when I do they're just not satisfying enough. It's why I can't get into Terry Pratchett or Neil Gaiman, and why I have to take even Douglas Adams, whom I love, in small bites. The issue isn't prose or plotting or humour, it's character depth. Funny books tend to be light on their characters. I'm not sure why, they just are.

Granted, there was a lot more depth to Danielle, Talia and Snow than I would get from Pratchett, who, if memory serves me well, presented fairly superficial characters who operated on a basis of stereotypes and a comedic quirk here and there. Maybe this is necessary for comedy's sake, and I'm too serious a person. But I don't think so. I need to really know a character in order to sympathise with them. Towards the end, when things really started to go to the shitter for the three would-be rescuers, I did really feel for them. But it took a while.

Prose-wise, it's very readable, if a little slow in patches. The humour is mostly in the dialogue and situations, and it has plenty of darkness to help the comedy stand out - but it's not a laugh-out-loud kind of story. At times I had trouble keeping up with the plot connections the characters made, and I didn't always understand their actions. They seemed to operate on greater knowledge than I, as if during an ad break I got up for the loo and missed the first few minutes of the show on returning.

The dialogue can be quite clever and surprising, but it was one of those books where the characters - especially Danielle, the main character - didn't ask the obvious question, the one I'm burning to know, and I find that frustrating. You know the one, where you can't help but think "If only they'd asked that question, they wouldn't be having this problem!!"

Coming full circle back to characters, I have to say that even though I liked having the the story start off with Charlotte's attempted assassination of Danielle, it does mean that we don't get to see Armand till the very end and so, because we don't get to see Danielle and Armand together, happy and in love, it's hard to really believe it, to really feel it - and a story like this one, where one lover goes into danger to rescue the other, needs that anchor. It adds to the danger element, the level of risk and tension, and enables the reader to feel as driven as the character to rescue the loved one. Yet, beginning with Armand and Danielle, happy together, would be like starting a firecracker night with the Sleeping Lions "game" (you remember, when you were a kid and it was nap time at school so everyone lay down to play Sleeping Lions): you'd be bored before the story had a chance to get going.

I guess the only way around it is to add character depth, to make time for Danielle to really show us how and why she loved Armand, a man she barely knew before marrying him. All she does is tell us a few times that she loves him - but if I don't get to see it, I can't really believe it, or invest my energy into her adventure.

That was my biggest problem with the story. Aside from that, there's plenty of fun, some clever banter, and the character growth of all three women was subtle and satisfying. I was drawn to the premise, and I like these stories that tackle the "what happened after?" of fairy tales - the happily-ever-after endings never gelled for me, not as a kid and certainly not now (though, I know, they're not really the point of the fairy tales). I'd really like to read the next one, The Mermaid's Madness, which is, as you've guessed from the title, the "true" story of the Little Mermaid. I'm no fan of Disney's versions, so these adult, darker, funny stories are more enjoyable.

Reviewed in October 2009

Tags: fantasy

The Society of S: A Novel by Susan Hubbard
Society of S #1
Simon & Schuster Paperbacks
304 pages
Fiction


Raised by her handsome, clever, enigmatic father, Raphael, thirteen-year-old Ariella Montero never knew her mother or why she suddenly left - she only knows how sad her father always is, and that he won't speak of her.

Ariella tells her story of growing up in a large, mostly empty mansion, looked after by a daytime housekeeper called Mrs McGarritt who has ten kids of her own, while her father and his friend and assistant Dennis spend their time in the basement laboratory working on biomedical research with a woman, Mary Ellis Root, who scares Ariella. Home schooled by Raphael in classic literature, philosophy, science and mathematics, she is mature beyond her years. It's not until Mrs McG finally convinces Raphael that Ariella needs friends her own age, and takes her home to meet her own kids, that Ariella gets a wider, more modern and less formal world view.

Mrs McG's daughter Kathleen befriends her, and her older brother Michael takes an interest in Ariella too. As she grows older and enters adolescence, Ariella starts thinking more closely about her strange life, about the mysteries of the past and the ghosts that haunt the house. Feelings of being watched taunt her, she has dreams that connect her to her mother, she never sees her father eat and the one time Kathleen took a photo of him he disappeared from the shot - not to mention the fact that Ariella always looks blurry in photos - all lead her to research vampires.

When she finally learns the truth from her father about his real nature, she also learns the truth about her mother - or what her father knows of it, anyway.

Now thirteen and restless, Ariella ventures out into the world to find her mother and learn why she really left her only child motherless as soon as she was born. Following the clues of her mother's favourite letter, S, Ariella hitchhikes south to Florida, and finds something wholly unexpected.

This was recommended to me by a friend who doesn't care for paranormal romance, and who said it was a more realistic, adult take on vampires. Incidentally, I've seen people categorise this as Young Adult - it's not. A teenaged protagonist does not a YA novel instantly make. Teenagers can, by all means, read this book, but I haven't seen it shelved in YA and I wouldn't expect it to be. I believe it can generally found in the Fiction section, though it is also a mystery and has a touch of horror too.

So I wasn't sure what to expect when I started this, and I admit I was a bit worried it would be dry and too far removed from the paranormal. Quite the opposite is true. From the opening scene, which is the story of how her father and mother met - or part of it - I was drawn in and hooked. The story is engrossing, the pacing superb, the prose simply lovely. I felt instantly captivated by Ari's story, fascinated by her seemingly eccentric father and her life in the empty mansion. Her loneliness comes across not because she tells her she is lonely, but from her descriptions. The elements of horror are deliciously subtle and chilling, little glimpses of shivery terror, gone almost as fast as they appeared.

As different as Ari is, hers is a very human story. She barely left the house, growing up, because of Raphael's over-protectiveness, yet she was fairly content to read and write in a journal. She didn't really know what she was missing until she met Mrs McG's children. Then she starts asking for clothes rather than just wearing the plain black pants and white shirts Mrs McG always buys for her (her father can't stand prints and patterns). She gets a bicycle and with Kathleen they ride to places she's never seen before, and visit the track where the racehorses are being exercised. She's introduced to TV and modern music, though she doesn't take to either. The internet proves more useful.

As her education expands, and she gains insight into other families, she realises how strange her own is. But she's not going from a typical world into a strange one, so when she has the truth confirmed she's not at all shocked. She's half-vampire, because her mother was human, and her father isn't sure what that means for Ari but is sure she has a choice. The vampire plot isn't a spoiler because the fact that this is a vampire novel is no secret. It's the details that give it new life, for a vampire novel. These vampires are more traditional and yet different again. The classic things of sunlight, garlic and crosses have no effect on vampires, though the sun can severely burn them. Many have found ways around drinking blood from humans, and many have strong ethics about it. Yet they can also read minds and live longer - they're just not superhuman.

The strength of this novel rests in its characters, who are vividly realised and realistic, while also being somewhat larger-than-life. Mary Ellis Root is so realistic she's almost a caricature, but she's no laughing figure. Even Raphael can be scary at times. Ari often describes them as Other, and it's a perfect use of the word. Even she is Other, and she knows it. Having the chance to be inside her head as she narrates is quite a treat.

The third part of the novel, the Florida part and the ending, is quite different in tone, but this suits the situation perfectly. Hubbard creates atmosphere effortlessly, and keeps the story rolling just as easily. It was a hard book to put down but thankfully I had a day off and read it almost in one sitting. I haven't done a great job of reviewing it, I know - it's different enough that I don't know where to start, and I loved it so much I find it hard to articulate why.

For a new and refreshing vampire story, this is exactly what you want, and even if vampires aren't your thing but you love a bit of mystery and horror and an engaging coming-of-age story, I highly recommend this.

Reviewed in October 2009

Tags: fiction

Soulless by Gail Carriger
The Parasol Protectorate #1
Orbit 2009
357 pages
Fantasy; Gothic horror; Paranormal/Historical romance; Steampunk; Alternate history


Miss Alexia Tarabotti has many things against her. First, she is half-Italian and has the nose and skin to prove it. Second, she is a twenty-six year old spinster who must chaperone her silly younger half-sisters to balls where she would like to dance but where no one asks her to. Third, she is assertive, has an independent streak, and talks too much. Fouth, she is soulless.

Her soulless state is a secret from everyone but the paranormals - she is, after all, on the Bureau of Unnatural Registry (BUR) register. The vampires know of her, as do the werewolves and ghosts, but humans don't even know the soulless, or "preternatural", even exist.

So imagine her shock when a vampire in a very cheap shirt tries to bite her neck. Her soulless state neutralises him, but he keeps trying, so she is forced to use her trusty custom-made parasol to fend him off. When she accidentally kills him, the head of BUR, Lord Conall Maccon, is soon on the scene. Lord Maccon is also alpha of the Woolsey pack and he and Alexia have constantly butted heads ever since the hedgehog incident when they first met a few years ago.

It's soon apparent that something's not right with this dead vampire, aside from his embarrassing fang lisp. He didn't belong to any of the London hives, even though he smells - according to Lord Maccon - of the Westminster hive. The cases of disappearing vampires and werewolves, and the appearance of new rogue vampires, increases, and Alexia herself seems to always be in the thick of things. A wax-faced man keeps trying to kidnap her, and Lord Maccon has set BUR paranormals to guard her. It might not be enough to save her life, but as long as she can get a cup of tea and some decent cake Alexia is up to the challenge of discovering what is really going on.

One of the fun things about genre fiction is how fluid the boundaries are. Soulless is such a rich mix of genres and sub-genres that trying to pinpoint them all makes you dizzy, and yet it works wonderfully. Marketed as Fantasy/Horror, I can tell the publisher was also a bit confused as to how to sell this one, because it could just as easily have ended up in the Romance section. The romance isn't the main point of the novel, though, which is why it fits better in Fantasy - it does have a happy ending, romance-wise, though. The steampunk elements are slight and generally subtle, but important to the plot, and there's definitely a touch of the gothic.

Set in a more mechanised London - roughly 1870s, going by the clues - with a history of vampires and werewolves incorporated into society dating back to Henry VIII (the real reason behind the schism with the Pope), it seamlessly integrates new and fictional history into Victorian society without losing any of the prim and proper-ness of the period (more on that in a bit).

The story is fun in more ways than its mish-mash of generic tropes. Possessed of an ironic humour with a slight tongue-in-cheek touch - aimed at the social mores of the day - Soulless has witty banter and intelligent observations. Alexia can be at turns annoying and loveable, but always sympathetic. Lord Maccon the werewolf has his moments of also being a bit of a twit, but there's balance between wanting to laugh at him and respecting him that saves his character from being a buffoon. Besides, he's a romantic hero.

Theories about the soul are integral to the story, including the idea that vampires and werewolves exist because of too much soul, rather than none at all. Alexia, having no soul, can revert a vampire to human just from a touch. Aside from Alexia's own calmly reasoned opinions on the subject, the "truth" of the matter is very much open and quite fascinating to think about.

Soulless also breathes fresh life into the paranormal genre, blending more traditional vampires etc. with a few new twists. These aren't ridiculously handsome, all-powerful specimens: if a man was bald in life, he'll be bald as a vampire. The addition of the ultra-gay Lord Akeldama, who left his hive over disagreements about waistcoats, pokes irreverent fun at the hyper-heterosexuality of contemporary vampires.

There are a few slow points to the plot, but I often found the book hard to put down. The "bad guys" you can spot from the beginning, so it's not much of a mystery; the attempts to abduct Alexia add danger and threat to the tone of the story, and it's nicely dark and even macabre at points. It bothers me that, despite it's very English setting, it's littered with American spelling - absolutely jarring and completely weird, when they do that. Removes some of the authenticity of the setting and period, too.

The Victorian time period - which is lengthy (1837 - 1901) - has already produced great works in literature, such as that of Dickens, H.G. Wells and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Contemporary genre fiction though has been slow to utilise it, especially Romance which possibly gets side-tracked by the illusion of gloom and prudish hide-the-ankles-of-the-table sexual repression (whereas they were just as horny and sexually active as any other period - and sex also took on what we would now see as gothic overtones, such as in the treatment of female hysteria by giving orgasms - the vibrator was invented around 1870 for doctors to give their upper class female patients orgasms).

It's fantastic to see writers like Laura Lee Guhrke (in Romance) and now Gail Carriger, bring new life to what is arguably one of the most fascinating time periods in British history - fascinating for all the changes that occurred, for being the "beginning" of the modern period, for being a time of flux and inventions and new ideas and Freud and vivid contradictions and even the beginnings, late Victorian-era, of feminism. There is some Fantasy of the steampunk variety already set in this period, but not a lot. I certainly hope to see more genre fiction set in this period, but it will need some thorough research.

Reviewed in October 2009

Tags: alternate history, fantasy, gothic horror, paranormal romance, steampunk

How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff
Wendy Lamb Books 2004
194 pages
YA Apocalyptic fiction


While the world wavers on the brink of war, struck by terrorist attacks and embargoes, Daisy's big concern is whether her stepmother is poisoning her food and how much she hates the unborn baby. Shipped off by her father to stay with cousins she's never met in England, she's not so far into herself that she doesn't notice something a bit odd about them.

Osbert, the eldest, seems fairly normal, being responsible for his siblings while their mother, Daisy's Aunt Penn, is away but really wanting to spend time with his friends spying on the enemy. Twins Edmond and Isaac are the most strange. Edmond can hear her thoughts and silent Isaac prefers to talk to the farm animals. The youngest, Piper, is a sweet girl who has a way with animals too, and likes to forage in the woods for things to eat.

Daisy doesn't eat. She's made herself anorexic through her fanciful fear of her stepmother poisoning her, and then it became something she didn't have to think about.

When Aunt Penn leaves for Oslo to help with peace negotiations, the five children are left alone at the old farmhouse. They feel far removed from any conflict, and hear conflicting reports. Warnings of small-pox keep people practically housebound, and idle days lead to an intense relationship between Daisy and her cousin Edmond.

Finally, the Territorial Army comes and commandeers the house and land for their own use, and Daisy and Piper are sent to live with a Major's wife whose son is fighting elsewhere. Daisy's one goal is to get back to Edmond and the farmhouse, but first she must figure out where Edmond and Isaac have been taken, and how to get there.

I had heard high praise of this book - with such a boring cover, I probably wouldn't have read it otherwise. I certainly never noticed it. But it was a hugely disappointing read.

I can see what the author was aiming for here: to show how desensitised young people are to war and violence, and also how they can rise to the occasion and what they go through to survive. There are lots of exceptional stories about these themes; I wrote an assignment on them for my teaching degree. I just don't think Rosoff did a very good job. Also, it piggy-backs on some better novels that deal with the same or similar themes and situations. As with The Hunger Games, an enjoyable book that can be read as a Hollywood rewrite of Battle Royale, How I Live Now simply reminded me of far better books - especially John Marsden's Tomorrow, When the War Began.

Written in a stream-of-consciousness first-person narration in two parts, the first part meant to show Daisy's underdeveloped ability to write "properly" because she doesn't know how to write dialogue, as compared to the second part written six years later, it can be exhausting to read. Melinda in Speak narrated in similar style but to better effect. Daisy's voice runs on with barely a breath and gives it a rushed feeling, so that details were hard to take in and I sometimes became disorientated. As an example of her running sentences, here's her description of Edmond:

Now let me tell you what he looks like before I forget because it's not exactly what you'd expect from your average fourteen-year-old what with the CIGARETTE and hair that looked like he cut it himself with a hatchet in the dead of night, but aside from that he's exactly like some kind of mutt, you know the ones you see at the dog shelter who are kind of hopeful and sweet and put their nose straight into your hand when they meet you with a certain kind of dignity and you know from that second that you're going to take him home? Well that's him. (p. 3)

It made me dizzy. Sure her exuberance could be seen as energising, or at least realistic, but Daisy was such an unlikeable character for the better part of the book that it's hard to listen to her. Sure, she's vulnerable and yes, she did seem to be a realistic portrayal of self-centred modern teens, and she would doubtless appeal to others for her frankness and inner vulnerability, but to me she was empty, hollow. For someone who's narrating, I didn't learn much about her, and through her shallow eyes I learnt only superficial things about others.

Likewise, I didn't buy her relationship with Edmond. She talks about how intense it is, how they connect, but I can't buy it because she never shows me. She never shows anything, just tells tells tells. I've read some very good books with first-person narration that, through the author's skill, manage to reveal more than the narrator realises, so that the reader has an even better understanding of what's going on than the narrator does, even though they're our only source. There's nothing of that here. And since I couldn't get to know any of the characters, I couldn't care about them either.

I was expecting more, to be honest, on all fronts. This is a decidedly lacklustre book and the more I talk about it the less impressed I become. The war situation is never explained in a way that makes sense, so it's more like an annoying gnat trying to get your attention but just isn't important enough to. Daisy says the enemy drew the British troops somewhere else then swooped in and took the country and now defend it from the original army. Okay. But that then creates a very interesting situation of invader and occupier that is barely touched upon. Want to convince me that Daisy IS in a war zone? Rationing, send the kids off to strangers, shoot a couple of people, a massacre at a farmhouse - yeah, that should do it.

Huh. No.

When you read books written by people who lived through invasions and occupations, who lived through war - books like Suite Française for example - you really notice that people being shot is the least of it. It's so much more than that. The elements are here, such as the disintegration of Aunt Penn's family, but it lacks any kind of real emotional involvement. Keep it superficial and hope the reader will fill in the gaps with their imagination? Nice try, but you're missing the point. The only satisfying thing about this survival tale is Daisy learning to eat - the smartest thing she does.

There are other things that nag at me. Quite possibly the reason Rosoff set this story in England is because she now lives there, having moved from America - but it's more than that. For a century England has been the place of children's war stories, Narnia being the most famous. I grew up exposed to many more through books and BBC adaptations, and my mother is a big fan of these stories. There's something about England, captured in Narnia and fantasy books like Mythago Wood, that draw on its druidic roots and ancient magic that makes England a place that straddles the line between realms, that makes it a place of possibility and secret gardens and all sorts of things.

Moving Daisy to England seemed a bit redundant, because it wasn't utilised to its full effectiveness. So her cousins were misfits, being telepathic and the like - with so much potential between the war and England's magic and mind powers, it's no wonder I was expecting something with more oomph. Daisy glosses over so many things, never fully explaining or delving into things so that everything becomes almost trite, that I struggled to finish it. My main emotional response a lot of the time was "So?"

Depending on the laws of your country, cousinly love isn't technically incestuous - but there is definitely something a bit creepy about it. The father of Aunt Penn's children is never revealed, but considering the children's oddness it could be thought their parents were cousins themselves. Because the relationship didn't feel real to me, not the way it was written (and I'm not asking for graphic sex scenes, far from it!), it didn't feel necessary either.

Add it all up, and you get a quick in-and-out survival story told by someone who's really quite boring and, yes, a product of her (our) times and not a flattering one either - but the novel fails to really explore anything, and what could have been insightful observations, gripping plot and engaging characters merely becomes flaws. The magic that should come with setting a children's war survival story in England is completely missing. A shame, but like I said, there are better books out there.

Reviewed in October 2009

Tags: apocalyptic fiction, ya

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
Illustrated by Quentin Blake
Puffin 2007 (1964)
155 pages
Children's


I'm sure by now everyone knows the story: Charlie Bucket lives with his parents and his four extremely aged grandparents in a tiny shack not far from Willy Wonka's famous chocolate factory, barely managing to survive on cabbage soup. After years of secrecy and reclusiveness, Mr Wonka announces that in five ordinary chocolate bars are five golden tickets, and the five children who find the golden tickets will be allowed inside the factory for a tour.

Augustus Gloop, an obscenely fat boy, wins the first ticket. Incredibly spoilt Veruca Salt wins the second, while gum-chewing fanatic Violet Beauregarde wins the third. An obsessive TV-watcher, Mike Teavee, wins the fourth and, at the last minute, it is Charlie who finds the fifth golden ticket.

Taking his grandpa Joe with him, Charlie enters the wondrous magical world of Willy Wonka's chocolate factory, where the bizarre happens and wonders never before imagined meet his eyes.

This is one of Dahl's most famous books, and one of a bare few that I never read growing up. My first was The BFG, and my copy looks rather tattered now. I also devoured The Twits, Danny the Champion of the World, The Witches, Matilda, Boy and The Magic Finger, as well as his books of nursery rhymes and short stories. It may have something to do with the first movie adaptation of Charlie, but I didn't want to read this one. How we come to regret our silly youthful fancies! Ah well.

Even reading it now, just shy of thirty years old, the magic was still there. As is the humour, Dahl's vivid imagination, the subtle characterisation and the beloved eccentricity. Roald Dahl has always been one of my favourite authors, and his death in 1990 came as a shock when I learned of it - I was about ten, and my primary school librarian told me. As children we are naturally self-centred, and my shock at his death was along the lines of "But I want more stories!" I don't think I'd realised he was old, but Dahl had been writing for a long time - it's just that his books don't really age. Sure, you can't buy a chocolate bar for ten cents anymore, but the stories never date.

This is a book to make you laugh, but it also draws the eye to and criticises the way some children turn out - glued to the television, obnoxious, gluttonous, demanding, selfish and so on. I loved the Oompa-Loompa's song about the evils of TV turning kids stupid --

... But did you ever stop to think,
To wonder just exactly what
This does to your beloved tot?
IT ROTS THE SENSES IN THE HEAD!
IT KILLS IMAGINATION DEAD!
IT CLOGS AND CLUTTERS UP THE MIND!
IT MAKES A CHILD SO DULL AND BLIND
HE CAN NO LONGER UNDERSTAND
A FANTASY, A FAIRYLAND!
HIS BRAIN BECOMES AS SOFT AS CHEESE!
HIS POWERS OF THINKING RUST AND FREEZE!
HE CANNOT THINK - HE ONLY SEES!
"All right!" you'll cry. "All right!" you'll say,
"But if we take the set away,
What shall we do to entertain
Our darling children? Please explain!"
We'll answer this by asking you,
"What used the darling ones to do?
"How used they keep themselves contented
Before this monster was invented?"
Have you forgotten? Don't you know?
We'll say it very loud and slow:
THEY ... USED ... TO ... READ! They'd READ and
READ,
AND READ and READ, and then proceed
To READ some more. Great Scott! Gadzooks!
One half their lives was reading books! (p.139-140)

And so on. It was very satisfying!

Long before Harry Potter got kids back into reading, Dahl was at the forefront of keeping kids immersed in stories. There's always a place for a Roald Dahl collection in your house, full of stories that invigorate the mind, energise the spirit, free of advertising, sex, swearing and various other things that concern today's parents. Roald Dahl was the king of the Fantastic children's book, and his work will always hold a special place in our lives - and in the lives of our children, as we re-introduce him.

Reviewed in October 2009

Tags: children's

Witch Blood by Anya Bast
Elemental Witches #2
Berkley Sensation 2008
275 pages
Paranormal romance


Ever since Isabelle Novak's sister Angela was brutally murdered by a demon called to Earth by the warlocks, she's been out for revenge. When she couldn't track the demon she turned her attention to the leader of the Duskoff Cabal, Stefan. Stefan is a powerful fire witch-turned-warlock, but Isabelle is a very strong water witch with a plan and the need to avenge her sister - the one person she cared about in the world - driving her on.

Her plan had just come to fruition, too, when the leader of the Coven shows up. Thomas Monahan, an earth witch, isn't blinded by personal revenge and knows they need Stefan alive. With Stefan now in the Coven's prison, Thomas and Isabelle turn their attention to the demon who's killing more witches. Things get even more personal, however, when the attraction between Isabelle and Thomas leads from mind-blowing sex to something more long-lasting and deeper - something Isabelle, with her long history of independence and fear, yearns for.

But the demon has his own plan, and Isabelle is an important piece in it. He needs to kill witches of a certain power and at certain times in order to open a doorway between the human realm and the daaeman one: and Isabelle is on his list. His ultimatum seals her fate: go willingly with him to die when it's time, or have another witch sacrificed in her place - and don't tell Thomas, or he'll die first. It's no choice, really, and Isabelle knows it. They're one hope is to destroy the demon first, but how do you destroy something so much more powerful than any earthly witch?

This sequel to Witch Fire was very enjoyable for several reasons. It adds depth to the world of witches and warlocks, revealing their history and how they came to be. It created a very sweet romance that took the time to build the chemistry between Isabelle and Thomas. And it didn't feature one of those annoying hero's who must prove how strong he is by resisting his feelings for the heroine, because love is such a weakening emotion and oh she'll be hurt! I am so sick of those men, who are nothing but cowards really, and rather boring and repetitive - but they've popped up way too many times in romance books. Honestly I don't think they're worth the time the heroines give them. Thomas wasn't like that at all, and it was refreshing.

Isabelle was tough and sarcastic but not too much so, and she had a wealth of vulnerability and paranoia that made her character make sense. We've all known someone who's hidden their insecurities and fears behind an aggressive or bitingly witty demeanour. The nice thing about Isabelle was that she didn't go the way of those annoying heroes either - she wanted what Thomas could give her but her own demise was ticking closer. Every Romance needs an obstacle, and this was a pretty effective one.

The book is short, which I also appreciated - the plot wouldn't have been able to hold up anything longer - and the ending gave it fresh life and new beginnings. The demon doesn't make sense, but then he is alien and doesn't understand them, so in a weird way it makes sense. He was an interesting character, actually - a homesick demon: I could sympathise with that.

Reviewed in October 2009

Tags: paranormal romance

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
Anchor Canada 2007 (2006)
408 pages
Fiction; Historical fiction


When Margaret Lea returns home one night to her flat above her father's antiquarian bookshop, she is surprised to find a letter addressed to her in a childlike, invalid's hand, but even more surprised by its contents.

The letter is from the English-language world's most famous fiction author, Miss Vida Winter, who has written fifty-six novels over fifty-six years, each one hugely popular. As to her own life, there are even more stories, none of them true. Now in her eighties, the time to tell the truth has arrived and it is Margaret whom she has chosen as her biographer.

Margaret is perplexed. She has written a couple of biographical essays but considers herself an amateur. Not only that, but even though she is a voracious reader she has never read anything modern - certainly none of Miss Winter's works. Her father is a fan though, and she finds a rare edition of Miss Winter's first book in the shop, Thirteen Tales of Change and Desperation, a collection of short stories that retell old fairy tales in new and vivid ways. But there are only twelve stories - and the world has always wondered about the thirteenth tale.

Taking the assignment, Margaret arrives at Miss Winter's Yorkshire home and almost instantly is caught up in its gothic atmosphere and mysteries - but especially in Miss Winter's unfolding tale, which soon becomes larger than life and consumes Margaret's world.

This is a book that has been recommended to me time and time again but which took me forever to get around to. It's my kind of book - a book about a woman who loves books and knows how to treasure them, how to read them, knows that they're more than just words on a page or a momentary flirt with someone else's life. It's also a gothic mystery in the vein of Jane Eyre and Rebecca, and the stories-within-the-story reinvigorate it with each fresh page. Yet it wasn't until towards the end that I stopped being wary and let myself get truly sucked in.

This is also a book that made me cry. I should start a list or a Goodreads shelf for books that make me cry - they're winners. A book can't make me cry unless it's utterly successful at what it sets out to do, telling a gripping story with characters who become alive for you. If they remain mere storybook characters, you know they're not "real" people so it's easy to distance yourself and not empathise, not feel what they're feeling. When characters come alive, you feel every breath, every thought is your own, every difficulty is your difficulty, the pain and loss yours.

At first I worried that Vida Winter was too obvious, too clichéd, but the change this character subtly goes through gives her the right to start off as crotchety, forbidding, grumpy, acerbic, sharp etc., hunkered down in her bright purple cushions with huge rings covering her hands, hair dyed bright red and face made up. Even her name is classic, bringing to mind Vita Sackville-West, Virginia Woolf and the like. The set up of Vida's character as something almost predictable, adds force to the effect of her true story upon her. It is as if, in telling the story of her past, all the layers are peeled back to expose the real Vida Winter in the present, leaving her stripped bare, vulnerable - and corresponds neatly to the revelations in her story. It was, from a reader's perspective, satisfying, and I was so drawn in I didn't see it as contrived, obvious or predictable.

Margaret was a little harder to get close to. When she talked about books and her love of reading, I felt connected to her because I knew exactly what she meant. But as she hears more and more of Miss Winter's story, it is as if the story takes over and Margaret fades, is subsumed by the characters in the story and becomes inseparable from the telling of it. Like she becomes a ghost, almost.

And this is a ghost story, in several ways. But I won't tell you more about that or it would spoil things.

This is Setterfield's debut novel and it's an ambitious one - but successful and powerful. It'd be a daunting task for anyone to create a brilliant writer and have them tell the story, because you're own writing ability would need to live up to the expectations. Winter's "voice" isn't a showy one; it's her ability to pace and time things, to reveal things at the right time, to drop clues that you don't even notice until later, to paint a picture in few words, that defines her skill and power as a storyteller - and Setterfield's, in turn.

Her story is one of unhealthy and incestuous brotherly love, of insanity and babies and fire, of ghosts and legacies and twins. There's always an edge of impending tragedy, of madness, to the story that keeps you gnawing at your knuckles. Some of the plot you can figure out, but maybe the Big Reveal will surprise you. I didn't see it - with hindsight, I can't believe I didn't, but I don't mind at all because it had more effect when it hits you, when Margaret figures it out. I don't try to predict things, generally, so when I can it annoys me.

Reviewed in October 2009

Tags: fiction, historical fiction

Flashforward by Robert J. Sawyer
Tor 2000 (1999)
319 pages
Science Fiction


It is 2009, and a team of international physicists working at CERN near Geneva in Switzerland (by the French border), are about to run an experiment that they hope will give them the Higg's boson, resulting in a breakthrough in generating energy. Everything's ready to go, and the computer will run the actual experiment; all they have to do is count down and hope.

At exactly 5 p.m. local time, it begins. The result is unexpected, to say the least: world-wide catastrophe.

Across the globe, every human being passes out (even if they were sleeping) while their consciousness jumps forward in time to 2030, where they become silent watchers of their future lives through their own eyes. But while their minds leap, or start to, their bodies go limp. Planes taking off or landing crash. Every road becomes a death trap as suddenly uncontrolled vehicles collide, killing drivers, passengers and pedestrians. People fall down stairs, breaking their necks. Surgeons in the middle of delicate surgery unwittingly leave their patients to die on the table. There are numerous minor injuries too, of people hitting their heads as they collapse, of spilling hot coffee on themselves, breaking their legs.

It is a while before the team of physicists realise what occurred, and that it happened world-wide. The leader of the team, Canadian Lloyd Simcoe, is shaken because his vision saw him in bed with a woman who is not his fiancée, Michiko. His partner, a twenty-seven year old Greek called Theo, had no vision at all. The reason becomes clear: by 2030, he is dead. Michiko's vision showed her with a seven-year-old daughter in Tokyo, while her actual daughter from her first marriage, Tamiko, was killed outside her school by a careening car during the experiment, which someone on CNN dubs the "Flashforward".

The world is slow to recover. Everyone is too afraid it will happen again, and everyone has lost someone. The world seems to grind to a halt, and Lloyd believes there's only one thing for it: to come clean and tell the world that it was CERNs experiment that caused it, even though they don't understand how, in order to reassure everyone that it won't happen again.

But Lloyd himself, a firm believer in an immutable future who denies the existence of free will, is agonising over whether he should marry Michiko when his vision clearly shows him married to another woman. The product of an unhappy marriage and divorce, he always promised himself that he would never divorce. As people debate whether the future is fixed or not, Michiko comes up with one way to know: run the Flashforward experiment again, and see.

I knew absolutely nothing about this story before I started reading it, and I haven't read anything by Sawyer before so I didn't know what his writing would be like either. I was pleasantly surprised. These Big Names in Science fiction always make me wary: more often than not, I expect dull, heavy-handed, jargon-cluttered, vague, needlessly obtuse, and painfully slow-moving prose in which characters are flimsy stereotypes and ideas are set up in a way to test your patience. That's harsh I know, and only covers one kind of science fiction. Over the last few years I've read some very good sci-fi that manages to convey ideas within an interesting story that's actually readable. So good prose and good ideas are not mutually exclusive by any means.

There are a few spots of science-geek talk that didn't mean much to me - mostly where they get talking about protons and electrons and neutrinos and space and stars and supernovas, and a bit at the end about an idea someone has to cancel out the original Flashforward so all those people wouldn't die. It's like reading a foreign language for me. But in general Sawyer does a good job of explaining things, and pretty much everything else came across clear and vivid. (There's that word again -- I like the word "vivid", I like to use it, and if I can put it in a review, well, personal cliché it may be, but it's a good sign!) There's nothing flashy about the prose; it's competent, a vehicle or medium through which to carry ideas and a story across, nothing more.

Likewise, the characters are fairly simplistic, and while I admire Sawyer's efforts to make a multi-national story peopled with multi-national characters, his ability to capture said people in all their culturally different ways is a bit lacking. Clearly confident with Canadians and Americans, everyone else either comes across as North American, like Michiko and Theo, or as nothing but a shell. Despite the international cast of characters, Sawyer puts an emphasis on those he's more comfortable with -- as you would, I suppose, though I wonder if I can denounce it as lazy writing?

Thing is, people use the term "ideas-driven book" to excuse all or any flaws in the other aspects of the novel, especially with high-brow science fiction which strives to be ideas-driven, and I just don't think that's a good enough excuse. As with good prose and good ideas not being mutually exclusive, neither do well-written characters and ideas cancel each other out. Thing is, if you want your ideas-driven novel to convey its ideas in a convincing, profound way, you need convincing characters and a convincing story through which to convey those ideas. I'm thinking of books like The Left Hand of Darkness or Stranger in a Strange Land, and there are many more, that struggle with this. Being an "ideas" book doesn't excuse a science fiction novel of its flaws, the biggest of which is usually flimsy characters who often become mouthpieces for the author, or foils for these characters. To be a really successful ideas-driven science fiction novel, you need to tell a bloody good story with unforgettable characters through which the ideas come across more subtly.

So what are the ideas inherent in Flashforward? The big one concerns free will, whether we have it, whether the future is as set as the past or is changeable (which would require the existence of free will), and so on. The main characters are Lloyd and Theo, though many others get their time as well. Lloyd firmly disbelieves in free will, which comes in handy because it removes his sense of guilt over the death of Michiko's little girl -- it was his experiment, and the idea of fault hangs over his head. On the other hand, Theo wants, needs, to believe in free will; otherwise, there is nothing he can do to stop his murder, which he learns from other people's visions of seeing the news will happen a couple of days before the day of the visions, in 2030.

Some of the arguments weren't made convincingly enough -- or perhaps it's that my own opinions are quite firm and so theirs seemed shaky. Still, it's a worthy debate, and the scene that most drove it home was that of Theo's poor brother Dominic who has always dreamed of being a literary success. Instead, his vision saw him working in a tacky tourist restaurant. He recognised the owner, who owns it in the present, who also recognised Dom. He accused his brother Theo of ruining his dream, and that of countless other people as well. He's so depressed he plans his suicide.

But it's a catch-22: If he goes ahead and kills himself, he will have proven that the future is changeable; but if it is changeable, he'll be dead and won't be able to pursue his dream after all. It's such a horrible, horrible position to be in that despite the book showing that the majority of people liked having a glimpse of their future and wanted another, I think it's a bad, bad idea. I sympathised the most with Dominic, and I know, I have an awful feeling, that if I saw a vision of my future I'd be just as devastated. I'd rather not know. I'd rather feel that I had some measure of control. I'd rather feel hope than free of responsibility.

One thing that bugs me about books or movies set in the future, especially the near future, is the expectations that come across. This book was written in 1999 but set in 2009 (I honestly don't know why); even in the space of ten years, Sawyer expected a lot of humanity and our technological progress. Add another 21 years and we have hovering, computer-driven cars and all sorts of other fancy things. Maybe that's not that far-fetched, but in general I find that we move a lot slower than that. The speed of the 20th century is deceiving.

I also get put off by stories like this, and H.G. Well's The Time Machine (I haven't read it but I did see the movie, and Lloyd himself refers to it), that go so far into the future that it gets scary. Not only that, but by following our current patterns, the future is bleak and miserable and Sawyer's depiction is no less so. The complete rape of the Earth is a common feature, with only humans surviving because, after all, we are the most important thing around, and it's a natural conclusion to the path of "progress" we've chosen. It's one of the themes, this perfectly ordinary and acceptable human-centric vision, of sci-fi that I really detest, one that almost justifies and makes acceptable our current abuse of our home. It's certainly here, in Flashforward, and it makes me scornful.

Towards the end, as the mystery of Theo's impending death comes closer, the novel takes a slightly weird turn into murder-mystery race-the-clock drama, which has the wind taken out of its sails by the most hilarious "car chase" I think I've ever come across -- by golf cart, in an underground concrete ring. At times like these, Sawyer's pacing could have been improved, but I like the attempt at suspense.

Reviewed in October 2009

Tags: science fiction

The Child Thief by Brom
Eos 2009
481 pages
Urban Fantasy


In the seedy underbelly of New York and Boston, children are being neglected, abused, molested, beaten up and forced to run away from home. These vulnerable, unloved children are not entirely alone. Watching from the trees and shadows and fire escapes is a wild, charismatic half-fae boy called Peter. He rescues them from abusive parents, from street gangs and from the hardships of their world, and offers them the chance to live in paradise, to play games with other children and never have to grow up into a hateful adult.

Fourteen-year-old Nick is one such child, bullied and physically abused and threatened by the drug dealers who have moved into his grandmother's house to help them cover the bills. Feeling betrayed by his mother, he takes the dealer Marko's stash and runs off into the night, only to find it harder than he thought to avoid Marko's drug pushing street gang. It is only the sudden appearance of Peter that saves Nick's life, and while it takes a little extra convincing for Peter to lure Nick to the island, he succeeds.

The island is Avalon, home of the Lady whom we know of as the Lady of the Lake. Once nestled in Britain, the death of the old ways and the rise of Christianity saw the faerie folk, the elves and trolls and other creatures, threatened, persecuted, executed. The Lady let the island drift across the ocean, until eventually it settled off the coast of what is now Manhattan, where friendly trading with the indigenous people occurred.

But then their old foes arrived at the continent, and two big ships of Puritans accidentally landed on the shores of Avalon. Death and cries of "demon!" quickly resulted; the ships' canons proved too great for the faery folk, who retreated to the northern stretches of the island. To protect Avalon, the Lady created the mist, which hides Avalon and also detaches it from time and space. Time passes more slowly on Avalon, and humans are unaware of its existence. But it is there, and only Peter, being half-human, can navigate the treacherous, magical path back to the human world, where he finds more children to bring home with him.

Altered by the magic of the island, the children become fast and fleet of foot, they stop ageing and become just as wild as Peter. And Peter needs them, needs them all, to fight an endless war with the Flesh-eaters who are slowly devouring the island, killing and burning the trees and searching for the Lady - and a way off a land they consider Purgatory.

The children live and die for Peter, as Nick quickly realises, but things are even more dire for him: he is too old for Avalon, and the magic is twisting him into something dark and monstrous - into a Flesh-eater, the enemy.

This is a dark, violent and grisly re-telling of J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan, and as a large-format, almost square and very heavy hardcover, it's worth the price and the aching arms to get this edition. It is beautifully illustrated by the author, Brom, who has worked on World of Warcraft, comics such as Batman, Diablo and Doom as well as Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow. This is his third book, and it's a thing of beauty and wonder and horror.

I fully respect the author's copyright on his illustrations, but I really wanted to show you some and there were a couple floating around the internet. I'm not sure where they come from, but I'm taking full advantage of it.



An image of Peter in the tree. These gorgeous sketches herald the start of each new chapter, while between pages 278 and 279 are full colour illustrations like these, of Peter, the Lady and one of Peter's Devils, Sekeu:



Even if you hold out for the paperback, at the very least take the book off the shelf at the book shop and flip through it, to see these drawings.

The story is highly detailed but the prose is - not stark or colourless, but almost factual, lacking pretension or frivolous adjectives. A taste:

"He snuck several sidelong glances at the pointy-eared boy. There was something captivating about him, something about his strangeness, the wildness in his eyes that Nick found exciting. From his gestures to the odd way he was dressed, even in the way he bopped down the street so light on his toes, like some real cool cat -- bold as brass, as though daring anyone to challenge his right to be there. Nothing escaped his attention, not a flittering gum wrapper, a cooing pigeon, or a falling leaf. And he was ever glancing up at the stars, as though making sure they were still there." (p.25)

At times it can become too slow as the almost toneless narrator methodically describes everything, but that is my only problem with the story.

I've actually never read the original, but I have an old ex-Deloraine Primary School Library edition from the 60s (that's my primary school). I don't remember why I got it, because the story of Peter Pan never really interested me. I'm not even sure why. After reading about Brom's inspiration for this re-telling, though, I'm quite keen to read it. Brom talks about reading the original story again as an adult, and noticing all the dark stuff, the disturbing things about Peter, and one line in particular about the fate of Peter's Lost Boys, that "when they seem to be growing up, which is against the rules, Peter thins them out..." I have to agree: there is something incredibly ominous about this thins them out line. Creating the Child Thief is no far stretch, since Barrie's Peter Pan did in effect kidnap children; creating a Child Thief who thought of lost children as "new blood", fodder for the war against the Flesh-eaters in order to save his Lady, fits perfectly.

Interwoven in the story of Nick and the other Devils and their fight with the Flesh-eaters, parallel even, is the story of Peter - his origins, how he came to Avalon, how he came to have a band of wild children called Devils. Inherent in Peter's story is his own tale of neglect and abuse, as well as the chance to see Avalon in its glory, before the Scourge began to kill the forest and the magical creatures were forced to flee to the furthest corners to escape the Flesh-eaters. It's an engaging story, this story-within-a-story, at times heart-breaking, but when you come out the other side Peter is a tangible, known entity, a boy you can understand and sympathise, while at the same time being unalterably Other.

The dark tones of the novel, the grittiness, the vivid descriptions of things right out of horror movies - it all creates a very real, vivid, believable world that has begun to go mad. More than that, it very clearly represents a kind of fairy tale rendering of the clash of pagan and Church, the death of magic in the hands of the pious, the death of the imagination in adults. Fantasy, as one theory goes, is often frowned upon as a genre because it encapsulates Play - and play is a childish thing, something you are supposed to outgrow. It is the perfect genre, then, in which to capture this and mourn it. And who better than Peter Pan, the boy who didn't want to grow up, to be the figurehead?

Things aren't as simplistic as all that. To hear the Flesh-eater's side of the story is just as horrible, and I actually felt sympathy for the Captain who only ever wanted to get off the cursed island and see his little boys again. This is another theme: how miscommunication, and misunderstandings, can lead to bloodshed and lifelong hatred. It has happened time and again throughout our history - squeeze it onto a small island and you have it play out in microcosm, with no way to ignore the high cost.

This is one of the things I love about Fantasy, the genre - and something most fans deny that it does: it's ability to explore our shared histories, examine and shine light on the good and the bad, reminding us of how repetitive history can be, how we don't learn, and showing us that there can be another way; or at least, showing us the consequences if we follow the same, well-worn path as before. With history so old and boring to most of us, Fantasy can play a pivotal role in bringing things to life. Because our history and culture influences us so much when we write, even authors who aim for nothing more than to tell a good story end up saying so much more. (Then there are the ones who can't even tell a good story: we learn nothing much about ourselves from them!)

The Child Thief shines a light on a great many aspects of our culture and society and history, both past and present, and the open ending helps add to the mythological nature of the character Peter Pan. Far from detracting from the original story, this feels like the real thing. Read for its own sake, you'll never look at Peter Pan in quite the same way again.

Reviewed in October 2009

Tags: urban fantasy

Sweet Restraint by Beth Kery
Heat 2009
326 pages
Erotic romance


FBI agent Shane Dominic is in charge of a special operation to rid the Chicago Police Department of a group of corrupt police officers and detectives who for decades have been running a highly profitable trafficking ring. For Shane, the hunt is personal: he's determined to nail Huey Mays, even though he's sure Mays isn't the brains behind the operation, because of one thing: Laura Vasquez.

Nearly thirteen years ago, Shane and Laura had been a couple deeply in love until suddenly, she marries Huey Mays and breaks off all contact with Shane. He's sure there must be a reason for it, but he's scared she could be a willing part of Mays' sleazy world and the corrupt police gang.

Now, Huey Mays has apparently committed suicide and Shane's determined to break through Laura's years of silence to get at the truth. How to get her to trust him though? Realising that the one thing Laura can't lie about is her attraction and desire for Shane, and that she must have enjoyed her husband's penchant for tying women up and dominating them, he kidnaps her and takes her to his parent's cottage in the woods for a weekend.

But trying to get Laura to give up control and put her trust in him isn't going to be easy, and Laura has good reason to stay quiet and keep Shane from the truth.

I'm a big fan of Kery's previous books, Wicked Burn and Daring Time, which are personal favourites of mine. There was something lacking here though, to make this a slightly disappointing read, and I can't quite put my finger on it.

Shane is at once sexy and considerate, loving and humorous and all things good. He's also domineering and bossy, but he's not an arsehole. He doesn't have any faults, it seems, though his methods with Laura were pretty short-sighted; but again, he's so wonderful he can admit to that and even regret it. Flawed heroes are always more interesting, and Shane put me off because he was too perfect. He also wasn't convincingly dominating - his attempts to get Laura to submit sexually to him were just uncomfortable. She just wasn't in the "zone".

Part of the problem is also Laura, who is also too perfect for words. I found the situation to be a bit much, and I sympathised with Laura while at the same time thinking she was an idiot. Not that I've ever been blackmailed or in fear for my life or the life of loved ones, so it's true I don't really know what that's like. But why must victims - female ones - always be so easy to manipulate like this? I'm speaking generally, and wistfully.

Kery's prose is as confident and invigorating as ever; she has a firm grasp on her plot and unravels it at a measured pace. Part of my problem would stem from my disinterest in murder plots, criminal story lines, detective stories, that sort of thing. My dissatisfaction would also no doubt come from over three hundred pages of Laura not giving an inch - it was a bit exhausting, and I tired of it quickly. I needed more depth, more layers, something, it's hard to know what.

Some of the scenarios (I'm talking sex here) felt too familiar, because there were very similar ones in the previous two books - there were plenty of new ones too, but it lacked an edge that the other books had. Again, very hard to put my finger on it. I also don't get how anyone could sleep with their hands tied, above their heads, to the bed frame. Seriously. That would be extremely uncomfortable to say the least. Feeling uncomfortable with the pleasure side of things is not what you want when reading any kind of romance book.

Reviewed in October 2009

Tags: erotic romance

To Seek a Master by Monica Belle
Black Lace 2008
242 pages
Erotica


Laura's pleasures in life are few: her dog Smudge, proper seamed stockings, and reading trashy 50s romance novels. She travels between her home and her job as Assistant to the Manager by train and has nicknames for all the regulars in her carriage: Mr Brown, Hovis Boy, the Grey Man, the Devil, Miss Scarlet, Darcy and the Tramp. Her active imagination is further captured by a scene in her book, Taken to Turkey, where the otherwise-bland hero takes the helplessly idiotic heroine over his lap for a good spanking.

She can't get it out of her head, but she knows it's wrong to like the idea of a spanking - not just the physical act but the humiliation as well. When she suddenly receives an email from someone calling himself "the Controller", telling her to wear stockings the next day, Laura is torn between two reactions: determination, in finding out who is doing this and why; and an unmistakable urge to comply with the authoritative order.

Telling herself she'll do as she's told only so that she can test her co-workers and find out who it is, Laura goes along with it. As the days and the orders continue, and she rules out the other employers, she narrows it down to the men on the train. By the time the Controller reveals himself, she has let go of many of her inhibitions - but it will take a firm, understanding hand to help her come to terms with what she really needs.

I was completely lost inside this book. Apparently, according to my husband, I read this with a smile on my face. You have to love a book that can make you smile for over two hundred pages! And I did, despite its flaws.

The first hundred pages are incredibly heightened by the play of psychological tension and suspense - erotica is generally concerned with the psychological aspects of exploring and accepting our sexual natures, but they can sometimes get angst-ridden and depressing. Here, Belle makes a strong attempt here to create a plausible, realistic scenario in which a "normal", "nice" girl - Laura - faces a newly awakened need in herself that is not just frowned upon by her society, and many others, but is outright denounced unless it's just a game.

But it's when it's real, not just playing, that it gets really interesting. It was always within her, deep down, and she could have gone her whole life without exploring it - and never been entirely satisfied with herself or her life. It takes courage to do it, and reading Laura's story was fascinating. I'm also reminded of what Nancy Madore said in her introduction to Enchanted, about how important it is for women to remove the shame from our sexuality, to not feel guilt or shame but to own it. That is what Laura does: she learns to own her own sexuality.

I found it hard to put down, at any point, and read it quickly. The prose isn't fancy or cheesy but manages to convey the heightened tension and psychological - shall we say titillation? Here is one of my favourite passages, to demonstrate (she is on the train, and the Controller has just revealed himself):

She knew he was looking down at her, and turned to him, unable to look away, to find his bright pale-grey eyes looking into hers, then lower, to feast on the crescent of pale flesh showing within her blouse. He smiled, cool and certain and knowing. Laura felt her body tighten, a reaction like a small faint orgasm and a gasp escaped her lips before she could stop herself. One edge of his mouth curled up, giving his smile the wry wicked edge she remembered from before. He spoke.

"Good morning Laura. Stand up."

From there, the novel further explores Laura's desires and her relationship with this man (you will be able to guess his identity but even so, I don't want to reveal it). It's highly charged, but the man's calm authority and confidence, as well as his experience (he's "trained" girls before, as a mentor), means that the situation never declines into something painful, icky, abhorrent, sadistic, misogynistic, or anything else that could put you off. It isn't a book for everyone, by any means, but I can see where Maya Banks may have been inspired for her book Sweet Persuasion - though they handle it in different ways. There's a lot more suspense here, more sexual tension and a more level-headed exploration - not like Anne Rice's Beauty trilogy, which is rather over-the-top bizarre and not at all realistic. Sometimes you want that obvious fantasy-land feel, but personally the real-world feel works better for me.

Laura herself is a tricky character. She's a walking contradiction - which is fine, once you acknowledge that pretty much everyone is. On the one hand, she comes across as sweet and girly, a bit of a twit really who's wholly preoccupied with public punishment and having her bottom smacked. It even, at times, isn't even sexual - and yet it is. The Controller - Charles (that doesn't give it away, not really) - gives a pretty good layman's explanation of women like Laura and their more unusual needs. Yet she also has moments of strength, conviction - and let's be honest, courage too. The relationship she works out with Charles isn't an uneven one, nor a subjugated one, because they both get so much out of it. He even likens it to a marriage, in a traditional sense - the vows, anyway.

The annoying thing is how suddenly the book ends, with some details still up in the air - mostly concerning Laura's job, which is a whole subplot I left out of my summary because I don't want to give too much away (these books are generally light on plot, since they delve into emotions and our mentality). I wanted to know more, since this is the most realistic depiction of a master-slave relationship I've come across. By "realistic" I mean "feasible", "plausible", "believable" - and not scary or creepy or misogynistic.

I also wanted to know Charles' feelings better. We can glean a fair bit from the third person narrator, but the perspective is always Laura's. I'm not calling this an erotic romance because the "love" side of things is uncertain, at least from Charles' side. I loved him as a character - he had the right amount of charisma and stern authority, humour and confidence, and never came across as sleazy. If his own emotions had been revealed, in favour of Laura, the book would be a romance - but an extra edge is given through not knowing, and trusting instead.

To Seek a Master kept me totally absorbed. Even though it's written in past tense, it's written in such a way that it feels immediate, like you are right there with Laura every step of the way. This kind of emotional intensity I love, and is partly why this book is such a winner with me. It needs proof-reading; there were way too many obvious typos, even a double negative, and you really don't need those kinds of distractions.

While we're on the subject of the edition itself, it says "15th anniversary edition" on the cover but I couldn't find any earlier editions, and the publication data only refers to the 2008 publication. So I really don't know whether it was first published 15 years or so ago, or what. It's bugging me. An anniversary edition usually celebrates a book that has some kind of acclaim, or popularity. But there's nothing about an earlier book.

Reviewed in October 2009

Tags: erotica

Doubleblind by Ann Aguirre
Sirantha Jax #3
Ace 2009
302 pages
Science fiction


This review contains mild spoilers for the previous two books.

With Morgut attacks on space stations and planetary settlements escalating, the ousted Farwan Corporation's supporters pirating space ships, and the Syndicate coming out in the open to offer protection from the Morgut - for the right price, the success of Sirantha Jax's mission as the Conglomerate's ambassador to Ithiss-Tor has never been more important. She needs to broker an alliance with the one species who successfully drove off the Morguta couple of centuries before, but there's a big problem: the Ithtorians hate and despise humanity, seeing them as smelly carrion-eaters with no manners.

Jax arrives with new scars, both physical and psychological. Her lover and pilot, March, has become a cold killing machine who can't stand to be touched and only remembers that he loved her. She won't give up on him, but she has no idea how to fix the mind-reading Psi - Mair, a powerful Psi and Chi master, fixed his mind the first time through violent and painful means, ways Jax can't access and honestly doesn't want to. The idea of causing him more pain and nightmares on top of what he's already experiencing is anathema to her.

But at least he hasn't run away to become a mercenary, at least he's here with her on Ithiss-Tor, as unstable as he is. Her best friend, the Ithtorian bounty hunter Vel, is with her to translate and guide her through the intricacies of Ithtorian etiquette, and her PA, Constance (now in her realistic human casing), is also a huge help. Jael, her Bred bodyguard; Dina and the pilot Hit; and Saul the geneticist, are with her as well, but all eyes are on Jax. No one really believes the irresponsible Grimspace Jumper who used to get drunk, dance on tabletops and display her breasts to the news cameras can actually pull this off. At worst, she'll add a new enemy to the Conglomerate's list. At best, she might escape with her life.

I could gush endlessly about how much I love this series. It's superb. Each book just gets better and better, the stakes get higher, the details more complex, the relationships more complicated, the intergalactic world more vivid.

Jax grows within each book, and from book to book, slowly maturing and becoming less and less selfish in the face of more and more demanding and tragic circumstances. A great deal happens in these books, but the characters never become lost amidst the plotting - if anything, they strengthen it and bind it tighter together. While Jax narrates, her growing ability to truly see people, wonder about them, try to empathise and understand them, gives us fully fleshed out supporting characters - and it's testament to Aguirre's skill that even when, in Grimspace, she was selfish and whiny and running from her own feelings and needs, you never tired of her but grew attached to her spunky ways and the characters around her, characters that we saw more clearly than she did.

The plotting is tight in Doubleblind, but I'm still figuring out the connection between the story and the title. A "double blind" is a study, for example a test for a new drug, where the test groups don't know whether they have the drug or a placebo. Taken metaphorically or symbolically, it's not an obvious allusion and the best I can do at this point is take it as a reference to Jax's tenuous diplomatic mission, the inscrutable Bugs and their own scheming, and the "unexpected" traitor. I say that in air quotes only because it wasn't unexpected to me - the only thing predictable was the traitor, and who was behind them. But there was plenty else to keep me guessing.

The way Aguirre handles the alien race, the "bugs" as the humans call them (because they look much like the insect aliens in the movie District 9, though more human in size), is excellent: their alien qualities come across well, and even Vel, who has spent so long amongst humans and is the only Ithtorian who likes humans, is undeniably alien. He doesn't have the same reactions and responses, his clever mind works differently, and you never forget what he is or that he is completely Other. But we do get to know him here, and he's become one of the most vivid characters in the series. I'm very fond of Vel.

I absolutely love the way Aguirre handles Jax and March's relationship. At the end of Wanderlust I was left in despair and had to wait nearly an entire year to get my hands on the third book - that's a year of anxiety and heartbreak. By the end of Wanderlust Jax and March had become so much a part of me that I felt Jax's pain - and March's - like a physical ache. That tension and despair carries through here, and I loved the way she "fixes" him.

Speaking of the year-long wait, if you haven't started this series yet I recommend you read the books close together. Even though Jax does some recapping, there was a lot I'd forgotten, details that are important - not to mention these books build like an ongoing climax, and even though this has one of the more complete endings, it also feels like the story has only just begun.

One thing I noticed that I really have to mention, is the issue of a private company - in this case, the Syndicate - selling their services to the government - in this case, the Conglomerate - for a high price. It's a timely and subtle dig at the way the US government contracted out all its services to private corporations, especially for the Iraq war, based on the idea that they can do it better but at the cost of billions and billions of taxpayer dollars, most of which disappeared into "overheads" and resulted in half-finished, dodgy jobs.

The Syndicate want the job, for a high price, of going to war against the Morgut. There would be a lot of money at stake, and it wouldn't surprise me if they were somehow egging the Morgut on to escalate things. Their use of advertising to gradually connect the idea of the Syndicate=safe and peaceful life in people's subconscious adds to this: visual commercials showing people relaxed and happy while Syndicate employees do the cleaning and cooking and war-faring in the background, seep in and become established fact. As one character puts it, "There will come a point when people just won't care about the truth, and all the exposés in the world won't matter." (234)

This is one of the things I love about Fantasy and Science Fiction: their ability - or potential - to explore our own issues in a "neutral" environment. Doubleblind is a delicious, entertaining read, but it'd be a shame to miss the deeper meanings too.

Reviewed in October 2009

Tags: science fiction

Seduced by Shadows by Jessa Slade
Marked Souls #1
Signet 2009
378 pages
Paranormal romance; Urban fantasy


Sera Littlejohn is a thanatologist - she sits with dying hospital patients and helps them in their last hours - but ever since she was hit by a drunk-driver her world has become one of pain medication, physiotherapy and struggle. But it's not her physical scars that draw a demon to her from beyond the veil but guilt over her mother. Either way, she's the first female in countless centuries to be possessed by a demon.

Ferris Archer knows all about being possessed. He's one of many men who, at a time of temptation, have accepted a teshuva, a repenting demon, from beyond the veil. Leaving a reven - an intricate tattoo - to mark the place where the teshuva came to them, the talyan - the possessed - aren't the only people playing host to demons: some are host to angels, becoming seraphim, who fight the djinn-possessed who are too strong for they talyan, while the talyan spend their days and nights endlessly draining lesser demons.

It is into this world of endless violence, death and evil that Sera finds a place at last. With the help of Archer, her possession went smoothly, but her demon seems to be a little different. Instead of simply draining a malice or a feralis, a lesser demon, she somehow sends it back through the veil. There's also the troubling issue of the strong attraction between Sera and Archer, when he's always been a loner - and he's determined not to give in to these new feelings.

Soon it becomes clear that a djinn-man is targeting Sera, trying to capture her for some unknown purpose, and if Archer won't help her be bait for a trap, she'll do it alone.

I'm not a big fan of good vs. evil stories, or even those that utilise Christian beliefs to create a dark urban fantasy - not unless there's a lot of originality involved. While a good dark tale about evil can be entertaining, even chilling, to read, it needs a lot of atmosphere and tension, you need to really invest in the main characters and you really need to be cheering them on. Even then, I find it hard to get into a black-and-white scenario like this, which at its worst can be just plain boring.

There's a lot of promise here, but sadly it just doesn't quite deliver. The immortal, possessed warrior men bring to mind the Black Dagger Brotherhood and their fight against the lessers - but the characters lacked the fleshing-out necessary for me to really care about them. The set-up is clear-cut, with angels battling djinni and the "weaker" repenting demons off to the side, dispatching the lesser demons who pray on human emotions. The emphasis on the idea that the real battle between good and evil is played out in the human heart saves it from being too simplistic, but not nearly enough. "Good and Evil" is a simplistic concept, and you can't just "get rid of" or banish evil - if you could, then "good" is equally as flimsy a concept. (Maybe it is, but that's beside the point.)

The talyan do talk a bit about blame, about whether an individual is blameless because a demon is enflaming violent etc. tendencies, or whether they are just as responsible for their actions because they let themselves be tempted. It's along the same lines of: is someone born bad or are they made bad by their environment, by society? Seduced by Shadows hints at this issue but doesn't really delve into it. Archer's idea that evil could be cured like smallpox really made me lose my good opinion of him.

And there is part of its problem: it takes on too much. I found the premise and the details, especially when it got onto the veil and hell, very confusing. At times it was a comment a character would say, or something Sera or Archer would think, that produced a total "huh?" moment. The narration skips along too lightly to really cement anything, ground anything, make it feel real or plausible. Sub-plots are dropped as if they never happened, leaving me feeling like there are chapters missing. It's dialogue-heavy, and when someone isn't talking, Sera or Archer get introspective and reflective. A little bit of this can go a long way, but unfortunately it's like a constant twitch.

How long had it been since he'd done anything besides destroy? And long for his own destruction? When had he last had an inkling of possibility for an end to his pain?

Sera was his hope.

Her devotion to the last moments, when even loved ones gave up, had given her a clear-eyed resilience of spirit, the opposite of everything he feared he'd become. The realization shifted something inside him, something he didn't want to examine too closely.

Hope could be crippling in ways beyond mere feralis claws and malice slime. The wounds left by shattered hope plunged deeper than the healing power of the strongest teshuva.

This kind of prose just exhausts me. Characters who constantly internalise everything, ponder everything, worry over everything, second-guess everything ... it just goes on and on and I'm left knowing them no more intimately than I did at the beginning. Besides which, Archer and Sera's chemistry was lacklustre and unconvincing. I enjoyed Sera's humour and sarcasm, but it may have worked better, atmosphere-wise, if the story had kept to a darker tone. Maybe not. Either way, it didn't seem like Slade was very interested in the romance side of what is being marketed as a paranormal romance.

There is a bad guy too, a djinn-man called Corvus, and I confess I never understood what his plan was or why. I mean, he wanted to use Sera to rip open the veil and free all the demons, but I don't really get why. He was old, and tired, and wanted to end it, wanted perhaps to turn earth into a battleground between God's horde and Hell's demons - but it was unclear what his personal motivations were, and I found the entire climactic ending very confusing. I couldn't follow it at all.

Overall, I wanted to enjoy this, it had elements that definitely appeal to me, but the execution made it hard for me to get into it. I would normally read a paranormal romance book in a day, but this one took me a week. It's more an urban fantasy novel really; the romance is secondary, but I'm not entirely sure what is primary here. Better chemistry, sexual tension and romance would have saved it, or going the opposite way it could have delved deeper into urban fantasy and given us something really rich. A few authors, like the before-mentioned J.R. Ward, have managed to combine both genres with excellent results. Seduced by Shadows is a confused book that left me confused.

My thanks to the author/publisher for a copy of the book

Reviewed in October 2009

Tags: paranormal romance, urban fantasy