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.

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Runemarks

 

The Midnight Charter – David Whitley

Agora is a city of capitalism on crack. All transactions are barter, regulated by signed and sealed contracts. An orphanage sells Lily to a bookbinder’s when she’s six years old; Mark is eleven when his father sells him for medicine. Emotions are bought and sold, as are voices. Debtors eke out miserable lives in the streets, or are thrown in jail. Largely alone in the city, Lily and Mark try to make their own ways in the complicated economy and politics of Agora.

For a book clearly intended to show the Evils of Capitalism Run Amok, it’s surprisingly light-handed. Mark and Lily are well done, and the cast of scarred humanity around them are also convincing. Everyone has responded differently to the traumas laid upon them by life and the city, clinging to addictions, a safe haven, childhood, extreme pragmatism, or extreme idealism. The writing is quite solid overall, though marred by three two-page interludes—intended, I believe, to heighten the tension and the sense that this is about more than just two kids—written in unfortunately florid prose. I think it would be better without them, but those six pages over the course of the book only annoy, they don’t detract much from the book as a whole.

It reads like the first in a trilogy, though I haven’t seen any confimation of that; it does have a complete narrative arc, but Lily and Mark’s story is clearly far from done. I’ll be interested in seeing where Whitley takes them next.

September 2009

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The Midnight Charter

 

Fire – Kristin Cashore

In the Dells live monsters, animals of all types in brilliant colors – magenta, chartreuse, blues and purples rarely found in nature (wrong climate for tree frogs. Which is probably a good thing, as I’m not sure how they’d differentiate between normal and monster tree frogs.) The monsters are so beautiful that they impair peoples’ ability to think; people can become so mesmerized that they don’t defend themselves against a monster raptor, or against monster mosquitoes, for that matter.

Fire is the last human monster. Monster beauty and human intelligence combine such that she can read and influence minds that aren’t defended by a lot of willpower. It also means that people throw themselves at her a lot – wanting to profess their undying love, wanting to rape her, wanting to kill her out of jealousy, or wanting to kill her to prevent her from becoming like her father: a monster who controlled a weak king, used his power to rape and murder for sport, and left the kingdom ripe for civil war when both he and the weak king died. Fire has lived her life in a remote village, but eventually finds herself drawn into the lives of the royal family and the war they are fighting.

Fire’s being billed as a prequel to Graceling, and it does provide an origin story for King Leck, but both it and Graceling work very well as stand-alones. I actually think the Leck parts of Fire are the weakest parts and not really necessary to the story, though there’s certainly enough seeds to see where it’ll be important come the third book, the planned Bitterblue.

The rest of Fire, on the other hand, is very strong. The writing is gripping and both the characters and the relationships are complex and satisfying. There’s Fire, of course, who has to deal with what she could be with her abilities, what she doesn’t want to do with them, the constant danger she’s in, and the knowledge of what her father did with his abilities. The other characters are nearly as impressive, wrestling with conflicting desires and knowledge, secrets, guilt, and, especially, the complicated connections between love, jealousy, sex, and trust. Family issues are also potent; Fire isn’t the only character who must wrestle with what her parent(s) did, and whether or not she will follow the same path, and the rather complicated family trees raise issues of kinship and the definition of family.

All that in a good, enjoyable book.

October 2009

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My review of Graceling

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Fire ~ Kristin Cashore

 

Courtney Crumrin and the Night Things – Ted Naifeh

Courtney is not terribly excited that she and her parents are moving into a creepy old mansion with her great-uncle (or maybe he’s her great-great uncle – her parents don’t seem quite sure). She’s also not terribly excited about a new school full of the kind of snobby rich kids her snobby not-rich parents really wish she’d befriend. On the other hand, her uncle’s collection of books on goblins and spells look pretty cool, especially since there are goblins lurking in the house and on the shortcut home from school (shortcuts being critical if you’re trying to avoid being mugged by middle-school bullies).

The first four issues of the Courtney Crumrin comic books, Courtney Crumrin and the Night Things is an adorable shout-out to all of us nerds who spent middle school more or less unhappy, alone, and misunderstood, with only books to keep us company. Courtney’s adolescent angst is counteracted by her adventures and her confidence – and stubbornness – in the realm of the weird and the magical. We wished for magical/Jedi/etc. powers to prove that our perceived difference from our peers was real, and made us special; Courtney has those powers, but still sits alone at the lunch table. That’s life for you!

The black and white art is excellent, in a stylized, creepy sort of way. The blandness of Courtney’s parents is emphasized by a level of androgyny in their depictions, and blank eyes lend extra spookiness to most of the faces.

Courtney Crumrin and the Night Creatures is nowhere near a complete story, but I’m used to comics being serialized and there are several more Courtney Crumrin volumes after this one, so it doesn’t really bother me that this is the start of something rather than anything complete. It does feel a bit weird to review it at this point; these are definitely more initial thoughts than the more complete processing and analyzing I do after finishing a novel.

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Courtney Crumrin and the Night Things ~ Courtney Crumrin on Wikipedia
Ted Naifeh

 

Tender Morsels – Margo Lanagan

Outside a small village in (a slightly more magical) medieval Germany, Liga lives alone with her father. Who has been raping her regularly since she was twelve or thirteen. Liga’s life improves somewhat after her father’s death and the birth of her daughter, but a violent gang-rape undoes what little contentment she’s eked out for herself. Liga’s despair and desperation somehow push her into the magical world of her heart’s desire: a well-kept cottage near a quiet village where the taverns don’t serve alcohol and there is a no money, where women like and respect her, and where men are few, keep to themselves, and never threaten. It’s a peaceful and, above all, a safe place for Liga to raise her daughters: snow-white Branza and rose-red Urdda, with only a few incursions from real-world teenage-boys-in-the-shape-of-bears

It’s a fascinating book.

Mostly told in the third person Tender Morsels follows Liga’s life and focuses on her and her daughters. The deviations are lengthy first person sections told in the voices of men – some sympathetic, some really not – liberally interspersed through the book. These help the plot move along and provide context for the events in Liga’s dreamworld, but they do more than that; allowing these men to have a voice gives the book a balance it may not have otherwise had. Men are the primary instigators of violence and invasion in the book, but they are also thinking people. Even when they’re bears.

Rather than following a typical narrative arc (exposition -> rising action -> climax -> falling action ->dénoument), it proceeds rather like life: shit happens, it’s quiet for a while, other shit happens, minor shit happens, it’s quiet for a while, there’s a major change, it’s quiet for a while… and so on. This does make the book less sticky/gripping than many; you’re walking calmly through the book, not being pulled headlong by the movement of the plot. It’s also a relief; the plot revolves around some pretty horrible things and still other disturbing things, but, as life and time facilitate healing after trauma, the lifelike pacing facilitates the reader’s processing of what’s been read.

That the book spans years also lets Lanagan illuminate the nature changeability of desire, and the limits of our foresight and imagination. They live in a world constructed out of Liga’s desires as a traumatized fifteen-year-old, but she and her daughters grow and age; and as their desires change and grow, the limits of their world become apparent. It keeps them safe, but it cannot keep them from loneliness. At the same time, the very protection it gives hampers them as they grow older and must deal with incursions from the real world. And it keeps them content but not happy.

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Tender Morsels ~ Margo Lanagan