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.

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A Curse Dark as Gold ~ Elizabeth C. Bunce

 

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

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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.”

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The Devil’s Kiss ~ Sarwat Chadda

 

Nation – Terry Pratchett

In the 1870s, a tidal wave sweeps through the South Pacific. Mau is the only person left alive of his island Nation, and Daphne is the only person left alive on a British ship, conveniently wrecked on the same island. The two must stay alive, deal with their traumas, figure out what the Rules — of life, or society — are when no one else is alive to obey them, and, eventually, hold together the group of survivors that coalesces as, one by one, those who survived the wave find the ocean.

I haven’t read much Pratchett, but Nation adds fodder to my suspicion that I like his books when they’re silly and am frustrated by them when they’re dealing with serious issues. Nation is dealing with serious issues: grief, trauma, adulthood/life transitions/coming of age, independence, the existence of evil and the crisis of faith that can come after a disaster. This last is probably the main focus of the book, and probably my largest frustration. I felt like I was being hit over the head with Mau’s lost faith. To be fair, Mau probably felt like he was being hit over the head by his sudden disbelief in the gods, or at least their goodness, but it still made me want to skim instead of read. Worse, Mau has supernatural experiences and makes no attempt to reconcile them with his belief or disbelief in the gods. There is no questioning of these experiences, no looking at them in relationship to the existence or nonexistence of gods (or vice versa). Mau’s personality and his ability to doubt the gods is explained by a childhood inquisitiveness, a habit of asking difficult questions, and yet he inexplicably stops asking those questions.

“But wait! You mentioned another main character,” I hear you say. “What about this Daphne?” What about her? She seems to exist to prompt events more than to be a character. Actually, most of the women fit that description; they’re there, they occasionally do important stuff, but really, it’s about men trying to define and control their world. Plot-wise, I can partly excuse this as a reflection of both nineteenth-century British society and the Nation’s society; both are largely homosocial and patriarchal. Characterization-wise, it’s hard to excuse.

And the epilogue has one of the worst cases of Profundity Syndrome I’ve ever seen.

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Nation (Google Books) ~ Nation (Wikipedia)

 

I, Coriander – Sally Gardner

For her first nine years, Coriander Hobie lived a charmed life: daughter of a wealthy merchant father and an herbalist mother, known for her medicinal potions. There are a few oddnesses to her life—the fairy stories her parents tell, the efficacy of her mother’s potions, a mysterious pair of silver shoes—but Coriander’s hardly notices until her life begins to unravel. Then, of course, she begins to realize both the dangers of this world and the existence of another.

Set against the backdrop of Oliver Cromwell’s Puritan rule of London, I, Coriander is in many ways as charming as Coriander’s life. The writing is smooth and fits the story, and everything Coriander experiences in London is vividly described. Experiences and characters in the fairy world are disappointing poorly developed, particularly in comparison to the London scenes.

I also, once I stopped to think about it, was unexpectedly disturbed by such a smooth, gentle book.

If you’re very spoiler-averse, you can stop reading here. I don’t think you need to, though; the fairy tale nature gives the story a sense of inevitability, so I don’t think anything I’m about to tell you will spoil the story. Whether or not it will ruin the book is a different matter entirely.

Time moves differently in fairy as in our world, of course. Coriander’s time there is measured in hours or, at most, days; while those hours or days elapse, she misses months and years in ours, though when she returns her body has aged appropriately. So we have a girl who only has memories and experiences taking her through the age of twelve in a fifteen-year-old’s body, and then a six-months-older-than-that girl in a seventeen-year-old’s body. As far as the book is concerned, this causes absolutely no issues: no freakouts about going from an early-pubescent body to a post-pubescent body, no freakouts about sudden menstruation, and no acting like she’s still twelve. We’re to believe that she is the age she appears and ready for a mature (if terribly developed, narrative-wise) romantic relationship. I’ll grant you that she can have the hormones and brain development of an older girl/young woman—magic, after all— but I can’t completely discount the role experience plays in the process of growing up.

Coriander’s written in a very ageless style—she’s the same at six as she is at twelve, or at the end of the book—but even then, I can’t believe that she’s an adult, even a young one. She’s a twelve- or thirteen-year-old who happens to look like an adult. And when romance gets involved, that gets even creepier.

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I, Coriander (Google Books) ~ I, Coriander (Wikipedia)

 

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.

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Mortal Engines