A Curse Dark as Gold – Elizabeth C. Bunce

The short version of the summary: Rumpelstiltskin in eighteenth century, early Industrial Revolution England. The medium-length version of the summary: Charlotte and her younger sister Rosie are struggling to keep their family’s mill running and pay of the debts he ran up before he died, and a series of accidents only makes it worse. Sensible Charlotte refuses to listen to the villager’s talk of a curse, even through the mill has a history of accidents and none of the millers has had a son live to inherit the mill.

It’s exceedingly well-written and -characterized. In particular, Charlotte’s romantic relationship is believable, though odd for a modern reader; the pace of courtship is vastly different than what we’re accustomed to, and I think that was more blatant in this than in much historical fiction. Also, refreshingly, the romance is imperfect; they disagree, they shut each other out, they do the wrong thing when trying to do the right thing. They’re human, and we see where they’re coming from and can understand why they make the mistakes they do.

And the villains? Unclear of motivation at the start, bits and pieces fall together until, by the end, they are just as real as the heroine. The characters are also not divided neatly into hero and villain; there are people who are pretty nasty but do no particular harm, and others who are desperate or confused more than malicious, yet manage to do significant harm.

The fantasy/fairy tale elements are woven deftly into the mundane that defines so much of Charlotte’s world. The portrayal of village life in particular, with its belief in curses and hex-marks living quietly alongside the church, brings everything together such that the historical fantasy feels simple and almost self-evident.

I read a copy checked out from the New York Public Library.

____________________
A Curse Dark as Gold ~ Elizabeth C. Bunce

 

Runemarks – Joanne Harris

Maddy has always been a bit of an outcast. Her father and sister are popular in town; perfectly normal, unimaginative, never dreaming, never wanting to hear any stories that aren’t in the Good Book. Maddy, on the other hand, dreams, imagines, loves stories. She also has a strange mark on her hand and can get rid of the goblins that like to sneak into the church and the basement of the inn. She’s useful because of that, but she isn’t liked. Except by One-Eye, a one-eyed wanderer her comes to Maddy’s town once a year, telling her stories and teaching her glams and rune-work: magic. The year Maddy is fourteen, things spiral out of control and Maddy—followed eventually by several other townspeople—is pulled into a dispute involving an ancient oracle and the Norse gods.

Loki the Trickster is, of course, involved, and the lines of loyalty and trust are appropriately fluid. This extends to the reader; we’re always in a bit of doubt as to why any character is doing what they’re doing, as it’s rarely for their stated reason. This gives it an interesting dynamic and the continuation of Norse myth occasionally sparkles, but for the most part, Runemarks falls flat. The human characters are overmuch pawns, of the gods and supernatural beings and of the church-like organization, rather than active figures in their own right. The Order, the church-like entity possessing the Good Book, is particularly troubling in the dehumanizing of its members; they have given up their names in favor of numbers tattooed on their arms and their sole emotional core seems to be ambition. Humans are often stupid, particularly in groups, but I found the lack of anything sympathetic from any character devoted to the Order to be unfortunate. On a technical level, lightning-quick changes in focus and point of view can be confusing and difficult to follow.

____________________
Runemarks

 

Devil’s Kiss – Sarwat Chadda

Billi doesn’t want to be a Knight Templar. Originally an official Church-sanctioned crusading order, they were officially disbanded and declared heretical in the thirteenth century. Now they exist in secret, a small band of deadly fighters based in London, charged with protecting humans from a standard slew of nasties: vampires, werewolves, and demons possessing dead bodies. Billi’s father, the current Grand Master, insisted that she become one of them, though several of the older Knights objected: Billi’s a girl and, historically, girls were not allowed in the Knights Templar (being a monastic order and all that). At fifteen, Billi is officially a member of the order, but would much rather go on dates and get her homework done on time than spend her nights fighting vampires. She might be slightly happier about it if her father ever showed the slightest pride or care for her well-being, but no such luck.

Angsty teenager + supernatural evils = melodrama.

Also, there is a general problem with many reluctant hero(in)es: we pick up books about, say, modern-day female Knights Templar because we want some badassitude. It’s an added bonus if the badass hero(ine) has a realistic, complex personality and therefore thinks about the reasons (s)he’s kicking ass, has some moral compunctions, and is generally three-dimensional. The bonus turns into a penalty if the thoughtfulness turns into whininess. Alas, the whininess:badassness ratio in Devil’s Kiss is rather high.

In a separate issue, I was left with an unanswered question: why are all the Knights except Billi (full name: Bilqis) named after Arthurian figures (Arthur, Percival, Gwaine, Bors, Balin, Pelleas, Kay, Elaine)? Granted, Devil’s Kiss is set in England, where Arthurian names are much more common, (I have a British cousin named Merlin), but to have all of them named thus begs an explanation. There are, apparently, some modern conspiracy theories connecting the Templars to Arthur¹ (and, of course, the entire book is based on the conspiracy theory that the Templars are still around), but neither these theories nor King Arthur are mentioned in the book, so that doesn’t go far in the way of explanation. Unlike Billi, the others weren’t born into the Templars; they came to it as adults. Did they change their names? Billi didn’t have to change her name when she officially joined. Was there some monumental coincidence? Where there are prophecies, as there are here, I have trouble accepting coincidences. So why the Arthurian names? Why does Billi pull a sword out of a stone? There could be some cool Arthurian connections, but the lack of explanation or exploration left my vastly unsatisfied. Perhaps Chadda will explain in one of the planned sequels, but I doubt my curiosity will be enough to get me to pick them up.

September 2009

____________________
¹ Wikipedia says, “Revisionist historians and conspiracy theorists claim that the Knights Templar stored secret knowledge, linking them to myriad other subjects: the Rosicrucians, the Cathars, the Priory of Sion, King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, the Hermetics, the Ebionites, the Rex Deus, lost relics or gospels of James the Just, Mary Magdalene or Jesus (such as a ‘Judas Testament’), King Solomon, Moses, and, ultimately, Hiram Abif and the mystery religion/mysteries of ancient Egypt.”

____________________
The Devil’s Kiss ~ Sarwat Chadda

 

Mortal Engines – Philip Reeve

Futuristic steampunk.

We screwed the world up so badly that not only were half the cities destroyed in wars, the rest were being threatened by earthquakes, floods, and other natural disasters caused by global warming, too many nuclear bombs disrupting the Earth’s crust, etc. So they put the cities on giant tracks/wheels/rafts. The cities consume a lot of fuel and raw materials, but the Earth’s pretty well tapped out. So the big cities prey on the little cities which prey on the towns. The Earth has settled down since then, but most of the cities are still moving and exist in a fragile stalemate with the Anti-Traction League of cities that stopped moving.

Tom grew up on a rather pseudo-Victorian London, wanting nothing more than to become a member of the Guild of Historians, and just maybe have an adventure and rescue a beautiful girl. Instead, he’s pushed off the city with a very ugly, scarred girl and learns that adventures are rarely so fun as they’re made out to be.

I’d prefer the premise if they just let it be steampunk, but the futuristic/post-apocalyptic setting made it harder for me to suspend disbelief. The adults are, by and large, fairly shallow, and one of them has a final redemptive moment that’s awfully unbelievable. But the setting is nifty, and it actually takes some pretty big risks.

____________________
Mortal Engines

 

Eon: Dragoneye Reborn – Alison Goodman

There are two ways a book can make one miss, or nearly miss, one’s subway/train/bus stop. Most commonly, the book absorbs you such that you stop paying attention to your surrounds. Eventually you look up and realize that you’ve traveled much further than you thought. Alternately, a book grips you but allows you to see your surroundings; you see the stop before yours come and go, you see your stop approach — and you still can barely slam shut the book and get out of the train. Eon does the latter. I read it in three train rides, one lunch, and an evening of ignoring the clock as it got closer and closer to my bed time.

I first heard of Eon when I was reading the starred review it got in Publisher’s Weekly. I looked at the title¹ and cover and thought, “Ugh, that looks like standard overwrought fantasy, why are they giving it a starred review?” I read the summary part of the review and thought, “Ugh, that sounds like standard overwrought fantasy, why are they giving it a starred review?” I read the part of the review where it talked about the gender issues, and thought “Oh!” and wrote it down on my to-read list. Many months later I got around to reading it, and am now refraining from beginning my review with a summary, for fear of making you think its standard overwrought fantasy.

So what is going on? In a vaguely imperial China-esque society, Eon is in the midst of a reverse-meteoric rise from slave to crippled, inauspicious trainee, to a rank just shy of the imperial family. Eon is thrust into the midst of court intrigue and desperate power struggles, in which Eon is as much pawn as player. Oh, and Eon was born Eona and is physically female. After four years dressing as a boy, speaking as a boy, behaving as a boy, and taking part in training and studies only boys are allowed, Eona has been reduced to a tiny presence in the back of Eon’s mind; a little harder to ignore around menstruation, but pushed back and, in many ways, seen by Eon as an enemy.

To this, we add two other central characters: Lady Dela, the court lady assigned to teach Eon courtly ways, and Ryko, Lady Dela’s bodyguard. Lady Dela is a Contraire – male-to-female transgender. The Empire is vast; where Dela is from, Contraires are admired because they combine male sun power and female moon power. Sent to court as a gift, she has had to pave her own way in a setting where she is looked on as more unnatural than a force of nature. Ryko is a eunuch.

This means that many of the conversations in the book take place, ostensibly, between a woman, a man, and a boy. And the woman’s the only one with a penis. And that’s where the power of the book is found. These three characters each have complex relationships with their bodies, their self-perception, and their sexuality, and they all have different complexities. It respects the diversity in gender identity and expression while painting a disturbing but honest picture of the discrimination and violence, often sexualized violence, perpetrated against both a lesser-valued gender and against those whose gender expression breaks societal norms.

It’s a complex, powerful, at times painful book. Beware reading it on trains.

____________________
¹ In Australia, the title is The Two Pearls of Wisdom. We always seem to get the worst titles. And in this case it’s particularly egregious, since Eon: Dragoneye Reborn in conjunction with the title of the sequel gives away something fairly major.

____________________
Eon: Dragoneye Reborn ~