The Demon King – Cinda Williams Chima

Princess Heir Raisa is trapped: expected to behave well and not make a fuss, to make a politically expedient marriage, to be politically and socially close to wizards but not to marry one, to balance her mountain clan-bred father and her flatlander mother. Han is also trapped: by his mother’s low expectations, by lack of money, by the temptation to reenter a lucrative but dangerous criminal lifestyle, by the silver cuffs on his wrist which make him instantly recognizable and are impossible to remove. The summer they both turn sixteen—and thus become adults—things get worse: the political intrigue thickens, gang members are found tortured to death. Even in the clan’s camps, where both Raisa and Han have found comfort and friendship, there is dissension and strain.

This is another book that I read two-thirds of the way through and then realized that it had to be the first in a trilogy. Seriously, people who write copy for ARCs, if it’s not a standalone, the ARC copy should say so. Seriously. I checked on Google; it’s listed as “Volume 1 of Seven Realms Trilogy.” Good to know.

It’s solidly written, with characters who are true to type but still interesting. The society is also well done, with the city and its economic inequality countered by the clan camps, which are more egalitarian on the surface but have their own immutable rules. Though city and camp societies are well-drawn, the wizards are quite flat; luckily, the direction she seems to be taking the story at the end of this volume leave open quite a bit of potential for interesting wizard-development in the second and third books. Issues of loyalty, personal choice, and the imperfect way events are remembered as history give the fantasy some extra depth.

I was given an ARC by my mother, who works at a bookstore.

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The Demon King ~ Cinda Williams Chima

 

The Goose Girl – Shannon Hale

My first exposure to this particular fairy tale was only a few months ago, when I was reading Troll’s-Eye View – a collection of short stories told from the villains’ points of view. The Goose Girl tells the story from a more traditional perspective, but with plenty of personality anyway.

Ani never fit in as a princess. Even as a baby, she was odd; only her aunt, herself an outsider, could make sense of her. Confident and comfortable when talking to swans and other birds—her aunt had taught her their language—she is nearly paralyzed with anxiety when interacting with most humans. However, she respects her position as Crown Princess and, with a lady in waiting who is much more skilled with people than she is, she watches and studies her mother and governance. But then she’s packed off to the neighboring country, separated from her own by mountains and woods that few pass, to be married off to a prince she knows nothing about. In true fairy tale form, a betrayal and reversal occur, sending the lady in waiting to the palace and the princess to the goose pasture.

Anyone familiar with fairy tales can predict the overall story arc fairly early in the novel, even if they have limited exposure to this particular story. It’s Ani who makes it special. The early descriptions of her panic in the face of socialization are a painfully accurate portrait of anxiety. Her disillusionment, as she realizes that her status does not guarantee her loyalty from everyone, paves the way for her evolution over the rest of the book: becoming comfortable in her skin for the first time, making friends for the first time, learning to trust again—this time not blind trust based on class, but earned trust based on shared experiences and friendship—and even learning how to lead.

The world Hale created is rich and interesting, with plenty of unplumbed depth. Unplumbed in this book, anyway; she has since written two more books (Enna Burning and River secrets) set in the same world. Likewise, the supporting characters have personalities of their own, which I look forward to exploring in Hale’s later books.

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The Goose Girl ~ Shannon Hale
My review of Rapunzel’s Revenge

 

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

 

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)

 

Hush – Donna Jo Napoli

In a Norse saga, there’s a mention of an Irishwoman captured and sold as a slave, Melorka. In Hush, Donna Jo Napoli takes Melkorka and gives her a book of her own.

Melkorka’s a spoiled teenager, firmly convinced of her royal superiority over the ordinary people and slaves, firm in her hatred of Vikings, and not very good at thinking before she speaks. Then comes her kidnapping, and her enslavement. Remembering her sister and her mother, she refuses to speak to her captors; listening to a fellow slave, she resolves to not speak to anyone. Her silence, flimsy though it is, becomes the only power she has.

It’s told in a first-person, present-tense narrative that works. Melkorka’s inner monologue reveals what she doesn’t say and lets us watch her adjust to her situation – and adjust again when it changes again. We see the helplessness of slaver, but also how the slave comes to have more strength than the princess ever did. It’s surprisingly gentle for a slave narrative, I think in part because it’s present-tense, but that gentleness is actually quite revealing. When Melkorka is experiencing something she can’t deal with, she thinks about it only obliquely, and that sideways experience is what we’re given.

The end is rushed and trite. Looking back on it, the beginning seems tacked-on, not really part of the story. But in many ways that’s part of Melkorka’s story; the experiences she has make her no longer the person she was. It’s a powerful book, which makes no excuses for the cruelties of the world but gives us a woman who can’t escape them, but can survive them.

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Hush ~ Donna Jo Napoli