Storytelling Resource: Nonfiction: Victorian Fairy Tales, the Revolt of the Fairies and Elves, collected and edited by Jack Zipes

Victorian Fairy Tales: The Revolt of the Fairies and Elves
collected and edited: Jack Zipes
ISBN: 0415901405
Read June 18-22, 2016

An interesting collection of mostly lesser or unknown fairy tales by prominent Victorian authors (here meaning authors who were prominent in Victorian times, although most are unknown now).  There are a few "known" tales sprinkled into the mix, and a few author names which are recognizable, even if the particular story is unknown.  A few notable stories that I knew from before reading this collection: Oscar Wilde's The Happy Prince, Kenneth Grahame's The Reluctant Dragon, and Jean Ingelow's The Prince's Dream.  Notable authors that people might recognize are: Lewis Carroll, Charles Dickens, George MacDonald, Andrew Lang (of color fairy book fame) and Edith Nesbit, and Rudyard Kipling.  I was thrilled to discover that so many of these favorite authors had written interesting (if not particularly always GOOD) fairy tales.

So what do we have here?  A collection, with preface notes for each story (!)  As a side note, I love a good preface note so very much - it adds so much to understanding and to context, and to placing the author and story into a framework to see why and how they did what they did.  22 fairy tales in all, from writers who were popular or well-regarded or at least prolific during the Victorian times, writing for children instead of adults, and MOSTLY not writing solely with a particular moral or societal axe to grind, but instead creating stories to entertain rather than to educate. Many of the stories also include the original artworks for covers or interior drawings, and those are less interesting to me, but nice to see included and replicated for art-lovers or scholars.

This was really fun, dense reading, and I deeply enjoyed it.  More of most of these author's works can be found on Project Gutenberg or on Google Books, having been many years out of print and out of copyright.  

Story summaries and thoughts;

1) Uncle David's Nonsensical Story about Giants and Fairies, by Catherine Sinclair.
Moralistic story of a lazy boy in the vein of Pilgrim's Progress, with a set of good and bad fairies and a boy-eating giant who just loves fat lazy boy for dinner.  A happy ending that reinforces the value (and joy) in good clean fun and effort.

Very much like a Uncle Arthur's Bedtime Tale: treacly and mealy-mouthed and insufferably perfectly good boys and terribly bad lazy boys.  The fairies and giant are an interesting touch, but could be easiily substituted with any sort of plot device without any changes necessary.


2) King of the Golden River/The Black Brothers, by John Ruskin
A hidden magical valley has beautiful weather until the landowning two brothers mistreat and abuse the visiting god of the winds one night.  The youngest brother tries to intervene, but is beaten for his troubles.  The winds then change and the valley withers, so the brothers head to the big city to swindle people there, taking work as cheating goldsmiths. When they are facing starvation, the youngest brother is forced to melt down his only prized possession: a gold cup bearing the face of a dwarf, but instead of gold, an actual dwarf emerges, and claims to be the king of the river in their original valley, and that anyone who reaches the spring at the top of the mountain with "holy water" will have unending riches and the valley will prosper again, but anyone who fails will be turned to a black rock.  Obvs the older nasty brothers steal the birthright but they each fail in turn, and the younger thinks he fails because he squanders the holy water on the weak and suffering beings beside the river on the way up.  But all is good, because charity is great or something, and everything ends beautifully (but they left the brothers to rot as stones - yay!)

This was a very interesting multi-part story, with complex fairy-tale underpinnings and a real sense of adventure and far-away-lands, and despite a bit of heavy-handed christlike suffering imagery at the end, it was a fun romp and a really great story.  I would be shocked if no one had made it into a longer fantasy story - I'd like to do it myself.

3) Cinderella and the Glass Slipper, by George Cruikshank
Moralizing story where the stepmother is a gambler, and Cinderella's fairy godmother is a little person (referred to as a dwarf in the text) who is an anti-drink campaigner, who lectures the King himself about the refreshments to be served at the wedding reception.

Oh. My. God.  Would have been funnier if it hadn't been so deadly earnest.  What's funny is that the story troupes along with only the odd little side-light or comment to show the author is a dead bore and a kill-joy, UNTIL we get to the end, and fall straight into the rabbit hole where this dead-serious little person basically lays into the poor unsuspecting King, going on for almost a WHOLE page out of a roughly 12-page story, and entirely killing the pace and fun of the ending.

4) Heinrich/The Love of Gold, by Alfred Crowquill (best pseudonym ever for Alfred Henry Forrester)
Our main dude is a super-talented stonemason, but he doesn't love his work, he's just a work-a-holic with technical genius. He's hard at work late one evening and his just-finished gargoyle starts talking to him, and tells him the secret to gaining nearly limitless gold.  Heinrich is all for it, and spends forver mining and digging and piling up gold - never thinking about the time he spends.  He finally comes up for air and drops in on the gargoyle, who tells him he's a dumbshit and his whole life has gone by, and he goes and lives like a hermit in the mountains for a few weeks before he kicks it.

Interesting variant on the "don't waste your life" theme like the one seen in Golden Threads (the boy who gets the magic ball of his life's thread that he can pull out to make time pass quickly), but I was amused that the guy gets a few weeks of life to be a crazy holy hermit before he dies, so he can leave his greedy gold to the church as is only proper.


5) Bruno's Revenge, Lewis Carroll (from an earlier drafted version)
The author goes for a walk at a friend's manor fields, and interacts with a young fairy boy who is dissuaded from pulling a mean prank on his older sister for revenge.

Very quirky (as appropriate for Carroll, I suppose) and lighthearted and grounded - very much in the feel of Doctor Dolittle.


6) The Magic Fishbone, Charles Dickens
A king is given a magic fishbone to give to his daughter, who "will know when to use it" but keeps holding out despite many exaggerated difficulties.  This is a short and very childlike and almost stream-of-consciousness or dream-like story, where the logic of adults is subverted and the child is the clever and conquering hero.

I really like this story, and the odd unsettling childish nature of the telling and the plot development.  Very peculiar and quite individual. Extremely unlike his long work.


7) Cinderella, Anne Isabella Ritchie
Cinderella as a Regency romance, complete with foppish but sweet Prince Charming, and a delightfully vicious stepmother, and a neighboring Lady who acts the Godmother role with relish and an all-seeing eye.

Not particularly memorable, but a sweet homage to Cinderella in the vein of a classic Victorian romance, with all the mores and social climbing and details of dress and fashion that entail.


8) The Ogre Courting, Juliana Horatia Ewing
A nasty ogre lives as a local landowner, with a particularly nasty penchant for marrying beautiful young women and then having them mysteriously die within months or weeks.  He sets his cap for Managing Molly, but she's more than a match for him, and manages him within an inch of his life.

LOVE this story.  The only way it would be better is if it were called Managing Molly, and I'd like it a lot better. This one is really begging to be made into a picture book.


9) The Prince's Dream, Jean Ingelow
A young sheltered prince lives in a high tower room in the center of a great desert - all he knows are Bedouin and the herds they keep, until a stranger arrives for a brief stay and confirms for the Prince all the stories he's heard from the servants about Labour and Liberty and Gold.

A bit too allegorical for my tastes, but well-drawn, a fantasical Aladdin setting and with a light touch overall.


10) Charlie Among the Elves, Edward H. Knatchbull-Hugessen (what a name)
A slight story about a boy who takes a tumble down hill and is "captured" by the fair folk and spends an afternoon with them observing their amusements.

This one was unsettling, because all of the fair folk are in their more adult aspect, and the child has no agency or really character at all - he just sits and listens and watches, not allowed to participate or to comment by the adults.  A very peculiar and slightly offputting story, with overtones of child-snatching and grooming behaviors.


11) A Toy Princess, Mary de Morgan
A solid fairy tale about a country where manners dictated no opinions or emotions to be shown, where the lovely sweet princess baby was replaced with an automaton by a kind fairy, who offers to reverse the switch when the girl reaches her majority, but the court and kingdom are stunned and disgusted with this open-hearted emotional and opinionated actual girl, and prefer to crown the automaton (with only a few mealy-mouthed stock phrases) as their ruler instead.

Saucy and sharp and beautifully crafted and neatly plotted and paced.  A really excellent story, and I went onto Gutenberg to find some of her other works, and found them nearly as fine and enjoyable.  Another good candidate for a good juvenile fantasy adaptation or a picture book.


12) The Day Boy and the Night Girl, George MacDonald
A witch finds and lures two pregnant ladies to her castle, and treats one to a sunny life and another to a shadowy night existence, then steals their infants after birth and sends one lady packing (the other one dies).  The witch continues this regimen of night and day existence for the two children - the boy Photogen only knows of the day, and the girl Nycteris only knows of the night, until she grows ill and the children get old enough to start figuring things out on their own.  They discover the opposite time, and are made frightened or weak because of it, but despite that, they work together to conquer the witch.

This is a freaking seriously amazing fairy tale, and I loved it unabashedly and wholeheartedly.  I want to write something like this myself someday.  It is beautiful and classic and delightful and perfect.  The best out story out of the collection, by miles, and also one of the longer ones - 31 pages.


13)  All My Doing - or Red Riding Hood All Over Again, Harriet Louisa Childe-Pemberton
Moralistic re-telling of Red Riding Hood set as a Victorian-era thriller/psychological horror story of a con man taking advantage of a naive child to sneak into and rob a rich manor house, nearly killing the grandmother and the girl's suitor.

Hoooooy boy does this lay the Victorian girl guilt on thick.  This is some serious Uncle Arthur victim blaming bullshit here, and despite the fun trappings of a carefree girl being stalked and conned by a ruthless villain, the fun of the story is sucked right out by the militaristic insistence on feeling guilt and internalizing a sense of "female self-deprecation."  Even with all of that leading up to the ending, the hand-wringing 'everything is ruined forever and it's all my fault' melodrama of the framing story and the narrator's coda left a nasty taste in my mouth.


14) Princess Nobody, Andrew Lang
A version of the classic "fetch the princess" quest tale, with the Prince a devoted but ugly person who is changed to become beautiful himself by fairy magic, and the princess basically a plot-point to allow the Prince to wander and suffer and encounter magical lands.

Eh.  Very similar to many other stories where the hero has to find the macguffin. The pacing was also veeeeery draggy. I felt a little left down by my beloved Color Fairy Book collector.


15) The Story of a King's Daughter, Mary Louisa Molesworth
A beautiful and kind-hearted princess cannot bear cruelty or unkindness, even to animals, and she spurns her betrothed husband when he injures a castle dog.  He is untouched by her strength of character until he is abducted into the enchanted forest, and turned into a ravening beast until an even dozen forest animals are willing to rest on his back while he carries them from the woods.  Obvs the princess and her forest friends are the ones to do this, and he sufficiently repents and is redeemed by her character and her forgiveness.

A VERY unfortunately named princess: Aureole.  Eeek.  Also a nasty bit of commentary about how she's not willing to be the queen because she's a woman and that's obvs not a woman's place.  Sigh.  Other than that, I'm willing to believe the change of heart of the suitor because it's given time and foreshadowed, and it's nice to have the princess doing the saving every once in a while.


16) The Happy Prince, Oscar Wilde
A gilded and be-jeweled statue of a prince sits in the middle of town, broken-hearted because he can see the needs of the poor and suffering, but can't do anything to help them.  A sparrow stops by on his migration, and at the Prince's request, begins despoiling the statue to provide gems and gold to the needy people. The prince is rendered leaden and and bird freezes to death, and they get tossed in the rubbish by the city leadership.

Wilde and Hans Christian Andersen are horrid people who make me cry all the time, and I deeply resent the heavy-handed symbolism and heart-tugging.  It makes the stories seem cheap and artificial and trying too hard, and I'm not inclined to give the benefit of the doubt to a story that purposefully and pedantically sets out to make me sad.


17) Wooden Tony, Lucy Lane Clifford
A couple in the Alps has a strange son who wanders about and makes odd whistles and music, but can't be bothered to work, or even to study or to learn anything. His father is a wood-carver, and hates him for being worthless and different, but his mother loves him and defends him as best she can. A traveling peddler stops by and offers to take the boy to the city and see if he can make a sensation of him with his odd music, but the man magically steals the song, and slowly turns the boy to wood and shrinks him down, and puts him into a cuckoo clock with one of his father's carvings.  the story ends with his parents looking at him inside the clock, and knowing it is their son, but being unable to prove it or to save him.

This is like Victorian R. L. Stine craziness here.  This is amazing horror, and a great creeping pace to it as you try and figure out where the story is going and what's going to happen to poor unfortunate Tony.  I don't like the casual ableism - it's very easy to read Tony as being mentally handicapped, or having a processing disorder, and no one is willing to work with him, and people are very willing to take advantage of him or get rid of him, but it works for the story and is a very modern mindset to apply here.  Still - a really great tale, and excellent atmosphere.


18) The Potted Princess, Rudyard Kipling
A clever Jack tale of a task set to rescue the princess from a pot, and all the emirs and sultans and rajas and princes learn arcane and powerful magics from the far ends of the earth in vain, and a potter's son walks up and just opens the pot.  No magic - she was just in a pot.

This was funny and cute and slight, and the framing story was almost as funny.


19) The Rooted Lover, Laurence Housman
A gardener sees the princess and falls in love, and asks a local witch for help.  She turns him into a fiery poppy and plants him in the princess's garden - if she picks him and wears him next to her heart, she'll fall in love with him and he'll be re-born as a man, but if not, he'll die when the flower dies at the end of the season.  After many trials and an opposing suitor, the long-suffering poppy boy is rewarded at last when the princess sacrifices wealth and position to find and be with her dark-eyed red-haired dream lover.

An interesting twist where the boy becomes the flower, and a nice happy ending after lots of trials and suffering on each side, but I still don't like the "love spell" nature of the relationship.  Would be interesting to try and adapt for a non mind-controlled version.

20) The Reluctant Dragon, Kenneth Grahame
A posh dragon, a very educated (but fight-loving) young boy, and Sir George all converge on the English countryside for a battle that ends up being entirely pro-forma, but none the less enjoyable.

I like this story more for the wry tones and asides and snarky commentary, but the basic story is cute and fun.

21) The Last of the Dragons, Edith Nesbit
A very emancipated princess and a reluctant knight make their way to the cave of the last dragon to entice it out with biscuits instead of her being forced to be captured and freed.  Very much in the vein of Wrede's Dealing with Dragons concept, meshed with the Serendipity book The Muffin Dragon.

Cute and light.

22) The Spell of the Magician's Daughter, Evelyn Sharp
A fiesty magician's child daughter doesn't want to be a magician - she doesn't even study her spells, but she DOES want to be a princess. When she sees the young prince out in the woods, he's searching for the perfect princess, and she sets him up with a quest - creating a magic spell of course.  Naturally because it's her first spell, she's got to go ahead of him and make sure everything's properly set up for him, so she travels the world with her wits and her cleverness, all the time he is following after the trail she's setting up.  They finally meet at the end of the world, and they're all grown up, and quite fond of each other after their quasi-shared questing experience.

A really interesting story, and my second favorite after the MacDonald masterpiece.  This one is more straightforward, but I really liked her fond telling of the characters, and the reveal of how they're all grown up now.

Juvenile Classic: Ballet Shoes, Noel Streatfeild and Diane Goode

Ballet Shoes
Noel Streatfeild, illustrated by Diane Goode
ISBN: 0679901051 (library binding)
Re-read while off at a conference.

I don't remember the first time I read this book, but I know it wasn't during childhood.  Which is a crying shame, because I would have loved this sweet little classic domestic about three adopted siblings finding their passions and their purpose in the worlds of dance and performance and machinery.

The plot is simple: an old man is an inveterate traveler and fossil hunter, and he picks up three "fossils" along the way that are a bit different.  They're left at his big home in the care of "nanny" and his grand-niece, and while he's away, they grow up in difficult financial circumstances, necessitating them hosting boarders and the girls performing (dance and acting) professionally to earn money as soon as possible.

It's like Alcott, but less twee, and not really any moralizing at all.

There's a movie also, with a very peculiarly aged (and blonde!) Emma Watson, which I haven't seen yet, but seems watchable in that sort of "Shirley Temple" adorable saccharine way.

Juv Fantasy: How to Catch a Bogle, Catherine Jinks

How to Catch a Bogle
Catherine Jinks, illustrated by Sarah Watts
ISBN: 9780544087088
Juv historical fantasy: Street-level London victoriana features an angel-voiced child as bogle bait.
Read last summer

I could have sworn that I reviewed this book when I read it, but I guess I missed it.

Birdie is the cream of the crop.  She's not a street-sweeper, or a thief, or a ragpicker or a mudlark, or even a lace or flower maker.  Oh no.  She's better than all those street trash, because she has a real job.  She's a bogler's girl, and she's the best that ever was.  Her voice is clear and childlike, and her courage is strong.  Besides, she's got to take care of Alfred, the old bogler.  He needs someone to care for him.

But Birdie has come to the attention of a lady academic, who is also taking an interest in the world of bogling, and pretty soon, Birdie is going to have to make some hard decisions about her life.



Really solid storytelling, excellent characters, and the bogles are creepy as hell.  Reminded me strongly of Y.S. Lee's (also excellent) Agency series, or of Berlie Doherty's Street Child.

Romance: Where the Horses Run, Kaki Warner

Where the Horses Run
Kaki Warner
ISBN: 9780425263273
Series: Heartbreak Creek, #2 (first book in series: Behind His Blue Eyes)
Romance: An ex-Ranger turned horse-whisperer rancher goes to England to find a horse and a lady needing rescue.
Read January 7, 2015.

Picked this up on the strength of the back cover copy and the associated Goodreads reviews (I love negative reviews, they often are much more revealing than the positive ones) in this case, a set of negative reviews griping about the lack of intimate scenes and the slow pace of the story and the focus on elements of the book besides the growing relationship between the two main protagonists.  Really?  Sounds perfect!

Rafe Jessup quit the Rangers after a bloody shootout (one minor complaint from me is that the circumstances of that event remain cloudy) and moved on to his real joy - working with horses.  He's a sort of horse-whisperer with a reputation for helping animals others would have put down or broken.  Based on that, he's hired by an ex-pat Scot from Heartbreak Creek to run his newly established stables, and their first big job is to head over to jolly old England to pick up horses from distressed nobles short on cash-flow.

Josephine Cathcart is the daughter of one such distressed noble - well, actually, they aren't noble, and that's the problem.  Her father worked his way up from a position in the mines to become that disgusting creature known as "new money" and as such, he and Josephine are barely tolerated in polite society, despite the grand house and scrupulously-correct manners and his continued bribes and gifts to fellow noblemen.  Josephine learned her status the hard way as a young girl, smitten by a neighboring young lord, who pledged love, but married a Countess.  Now, with a young bastard son, and her prize stallion ruined by a grueling steeplechase, she is being farmed out for marriage or companionship by her desperate and broke father.

I loved that the story came first (as ridiculous a premise as it is) and I loved the "fish out of water" impact of a Texan in British polite society (he keeps getting himself kicked out of the house) and I loved that the villains were actually three-dimensional people (eventually) and the conundrum was presented as an actual difficult proposition to consider and manage the repercussions, rather than the obvious "marry the Texan and run off" that I worried it would become.

I don't think I'll be reading the first in the series.  The blurb didn't appeal to me, but if there is a subsequent book about our interesting Scots lord and his feisty English wife, I think I might pick that one up.  I am interested in the next book about one of the minor characters, an American-Cherokee warrior and his Quaker, African-American freed-slave lover.  Talk about getting into an interesting political debate there!

  

The Runaway Wife, Rowan Coleman

The Runaway Wife
Rowan Coleman
ISBN: 9781476725239
Slice-of-life "finding yourself " romance set in England/Scotland.
Read July 22, 2014

I actually read a grownup book start to finish!  It's been a long, busy, internet-distracted summer.

Rose had a rough life.  Her alcoholic father walked out when she was nine, her mother walked into the ocean when she was 16, and she walked down the aisle with the first man who told her she was beautiful.  He was an abusive creeper, natch.  Now she's 31, has a daughter of her own, and after her husband finally crosses the line (her lines were set way the hell too far back, by the way) she's run away to her "picture postcard fantasy" village where she hopes to meet one man she has built up in her mind into being a prince charming.  Predictable heart-warming slushy read.


Good characters:  Maddie, John (before he went all soft and squishy), Jenny and Brian the B&B owners, poor Ted.

Less developed characters: Rose herself (a bit of a problem when she's the reason for the story), Prince Charming, Richard the evil doctor husband, Shona.

Good bits: Rose's teenage fumblings with sexuality at age 31.  Coming from a repressed childhood myself, that rang really true.  Maddie's peculiar quirks and personality.  The connection between John and Maddie as artists.

Less good bits: The contrived drama with Ted, Jenny and Frasier.  John getting all sappy and parental.

Predictable bits: The entire last third of the book.  Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, just I was hoping that at least one of my predictions would end up being somewhat subverted (the prince charming letter bit at the end was just wayyy too much for this cynical girl to manage.)

Enjoyable, but not really my cuppa.

The Fire Lord's Lover, Kathryne Kennedy

The Fire Lord's Lover
Kathryne Kennedy
ISBN: 9781402236525
Alternate History Fantasy Romance
Read February 25, 2014

I actually read the last book in this series (The Lord of Illusion) sometime last year maybe?  It was an interesting take on alternate elven history, and I was just coming off of a Mercedes Lackey Elves on the Road kick, and wanted more weird stuck-up elves.

So this is actually the first book in a series (there's one in the middle, Lady of the Storm, that I may or may not read).  To be honest, The Fire Lord's Lover feels like a middle-of-a-series book, with lots of info and titles and relationships casually dropped in.  I was actually really surprised, and a bit taken aback, when I learned that it's actually the first book, because when I read the last one, it had a very strong sense of 'lets tie up dozens of loose ends from lots of different books and relationships that we've established over the course of this long series,' and I was really shocked to learn there were only three of them total.

So, the last one obviously wasn't awful, because I recognized this one as being related to it, and picked it up for a quick jaunt into weird-ass English elfland.

I have a lot of minor plot-related nits that I could pick (and have done in the privacy of my own mind) regarding the worldbuilding and the social relationships at play in this series, but my only major quibble with the book itself is the dialogue.

No one talks like that.  Everyone in this book is expository and declaratory, like really bad gradeschoolers attempting to write a Shakespearean soliloquy, and it gets simply ridiculous in places.  It makes it somewhat difficult to take the characters and their perilous situations quite seriously when they are declaiming at each other in a very 'doth mother know thou wearest her drapes' sort of way.  That said, when the characters aren't having big emotional moments, they usually manage to talk just fine.  It's only when they need to be emotionally wrought that it gets a little silly.

I can't really comment much on the 'adult content' except to say that it was there, it seemed more flowery than gritty, and it wasn't overly cringeworthy or eyerolly.

Characterization was decent, although again - I thought we were in a middle book instead of the first of a set, so take that into account.

The plot is obvious, but fun, and each character got a chance to grow and change, and to contribute towards the plot as well as towards the developing relationship.  Secondary characters were either total ciphers, or oddly, more finely drawn than the leads.

I really like the plot concept, and despite niggles, think it was worked out well.  I am a bit saddened that the overall plot was sorted out in three books, as knowing the finish makes it a little difficult to be worried about later sets of characters that might get written into the middle of the series in the future.

Still, lighthearted, fun, lots of girl power,some enjoyable revolt against evil crazy elven tyranny.

Good fun for an evening!

Short Reviews: March 2013: Ashton Place Series, Pretty-Girl 13, Orleans, Freaks

Freaks, Kieran Larwood.  ISBN: 978-0545474245March 2013
Sheba is a wolf-girl raised as a side-show freak, and bought to join a troupe in London, joining a Strongman, a women with a strange connection to her rats, a monkey boy, and a mysterious ninja girl with cat eyes.  When a mudlark sneaks into the show, Sheba realizes life could always be worse.  Then the mudlark vanishes, and the poor desparate parents turn to the Freaks for help, or vengeance.  Set around the Great Exhibition.  Creepy villainess. 

Orleans, Sherri L. Smith.  ISBN: 978-0399252945
March 2013
YA virus/illness dystopia.  Fen lives in the quarantined former American states of Louisiana, Texas, and Florida.  She, like most other residents, suffers from an unspecified Fever that impacts different blood types differently.  Mainly an extended chase-escape narrative as Fen tries desperately to rescue an infant (an amazingly durable infant) from the hell she calls home.

Pretty Girl-13, Liz Coley.  ISBN: 978-0062127372
March 2013
YA psychological thriller.  Angie is kidnapped at age 13, and blocks the whole multi-year experience.  Relies heavily on psychobabble about DID/multiple personality syndrome.  Overly simplistic and lighthearted for a very complicated and traumatic real-life subject matter.

The Incorrigible Childern of Ashton Place, Maryrose Wood (series in progress)
The Mysterious Howling (ISBN: 978-0061791055) read 2010
The Hidden Gallery (ISBN: 978-0061791123) read 2011
The Unseen Guest (ISBN: 978-0061791185) read Spring 2013
Juv "manners" fiction, leaning fantastical.  Brilliant.  For everyone who likes the wordplay of Snicket but needs something a little less depressing.  Werewolves and feral children and governesses with copper hair and mysterious pasts.  Did I mention it was brilliant?

Short Reviews: January 2013. Ironskin, Tina Connolly

Ironskin, Tina Connolly.  ISBN: 9780765330598

January 2013

YA: This book reminded me very strongly of Jenna Starborn, in that it really does quite simply take Jane Eyre, mess around with the setting, and let it fly again.  I enjoyed Jenna Starborn, and I did enjoy Ironskin also, but I do think that the world-building in the former was a little more realized.  There were some implications in this endeavor that weren't fully dealt with, and several others which were just left to hang unresolved.  

However!  While the setting in Jenna Starborn is pretty ho-hum Victoriana in space, THIS setting is really very interesting.  I would have LOVED to see an original story set in this world, rather than a re-hash of a classic.  I got the impression that a lot of thought had gone into creating an interesting concept for a world, and then when it came time to write a story - they choked up.  I totally understand that; I'm a worldbuilder, and a character writer myself, not a plotter.  But I do feel somewhat cheated that this really very interesting scenery and background was wasted on a watered down YA edition of Jane Eyre.  

A world in the twilight of an Empire powered by the stolen life-energy of the fae really deserves something a bit more original.

ETA: apparently there is now a sequel: Copperhead.

Mary Quinn "Agency" Mysteries, Y.S. Lee

1) A Spy in the House.  ISBN: 9780763640675
2) The Body at the Tower.  ISBN: 9780763649685
3) The Traitor in the Tunnel.  ISBN: 9780763653163

All by Y. S. Lee.

Re-read 1&2, Read 3 September 27, 2013

YA historical mysteries, half-Chinese female protagonist, light romance.

These are enjoyable, but there are a lot of mysteries left in the stories.

Particularly, the role and scope of the Agency is puzzlingly unclear, as is their reach.  Mary herself is a puzzle - able to pass as an elderly lady AND a 12-year old "penniless lord" working boy (within the same day, mind).  There are also some liberties taken with the Royals in the palace in the last book - I don't care how dissolute poor Bertie was, or how pretty he thought her, there's no way that the prince of the realm would act that way around a servant.  Likewise the enemies of the second and third book are left puzzlingly un-motivated.  I don't know why the blackmailer kept asking for more, and got violent when he failed.  I don't know why the traitor decided that he needed to PERSONALLY handle guncotton.  Even the first villain's aims are unclear - there are reasons to suspect the motivation, but the problem isn't exactly solved.

And speaking of solving problems, I find myself increasingly irritated at how the heritage situation has been resolved (or if there are future works, at least how it has been dealt with thus far).  It seems upon reflection that the author simply didn't wish to deal with the complications she introduced in the first book, and so they were made to vanish in awfully convenient ways.  First by unnecessary housefire and death (and when there is a fire, people put their lives in danger by fetching what they most love - I find it very hard to accept that a certain item was simply left behind after the rescue was completed.)  Then, another unnecessary death (with the attendant inability to convey any information at all) ties the whole thing off quite nicely. 

I think that's taking the easy way out, and I would very much like to have seen Mary handling her heritage, instead of having it conveniently whisked away from her to leave her burden-free to head into the future.   

Other than those quibbles, they are quippy, quick, fun, well-set, and enjoyable, even on a second read.  I've been unable to determine if they are a trilogy, or if there are other books forthcoming.  I do hope for the latter, and if so, I hope that the heritage question is brought up again, because that is the real sticking point of dislike for me so far.   

Off the Road, Nina Bawden

Off the Road, Nina Bawden

Read September 19, 2013

Juv/YA post-apocalyptic England.  

12 year-old Tom lives in an Urb, secure in the knowlege that he and all other children are the most important people in the world.  Malcontents and "bad people" were exiled from the Inside in his grandparents' days, and everyone here is happy, well-adjusted, and safe in their highly regulated lives.  His information is incomplete, as he'll discover when his grandfather makes a run for the Outside instead of passively relocating to a "Memory Theme Park" for old people.  Gandy has lost his wits due to age, Tom's sure.  Despite this, Tom still loves him, and he follows the old man of 65 into the frightening woods of Outside, to save him from the dragons and wild men that lurk there.

Very similar in themes and world concept to Shyamalan's The Village, and Haddix's first book Running out of Time.  Similar likewise in that too much deep thought after the book ends will bring headaches and irritation, despite an innocuous and forgettable plotline involving the messy nature of family, the balance of convenience and safety against freedom, and who the true movers and shakers of policy are, both In and Outside.  I know I read too much, and am often too demanding of the genre, especially for books aimed at younger readers, but I really do wish writers would apply behavioral science or simple economics to their dystopias and alternate histories.

For one example: Inside, a draconian one-child law is such the absolute reality that the very words "sibling" or "brother/sister" are considered foul language.  So how does that mesh with a child from Outside "visiting" the interior for the summer break, with the gloss from the book that "The Trusties don't run checks on children during the school holidays."  Right.

Mrs Queen Takes the Train, William Kuhn

Mrs Queen Takes the Train
William Kuhn
British/Scottish Monarch Fantasy
ISBN: 978-0062208286

If you totally disregard actual real life and the staggeringly minute possibility that anything like this could ever actually happen, this is a fun little romp through the purported mind of the aging figurehead.

The Queen has been feeling a bit down lately.  Her yoga hasn't been helping, neither has her horse Elizabeth (born on Her birthday natch) or her doggies.

So one rainy sleety night, she pops off to the stables and ends up headed off to Scotland to visit the old family yacht, now pulling tourist-attraction duty. 

The narrative splits niftily between The Queen and the people around her - butler par excellence William, novice equerry Luke, the queen's personal dresser Shirley, her somewhat titled (but broke) lady in waiting Anne, the horse-keeper Rebecca (perhaps an Aspie?) and English-Indian Rajiv.  All of them have their own lives, their own goals, and their own problems, and in perfect little cozy fashion, all of their needs are met quite nicely by their coming together during this interesting event.

The sections are labeled by yoga poses, and The Queen references her yoga practice often in her efforts to remain calm and stable, which I thought cute, but maybe a bit twee.  What was most certainly twee was the inclusion of photographs of various subjects based on what was being talked about - a badger, for instance, or various photos of The Queen in the past.  That was actually offputting, to be quite honest.

Again, the premise is laughable, but while you're reading it, you don't want to laugh - you want to pat The Queen on the hand and tell her everything will be all right (wouldn't that cause fits if it were done?). 

The inevitable coupling off was a bit heavy-handed, if sweet, and I especially side-eyed the equerry's very quick decision. 

It would be interesting to have this as the read for a grandmother-mother-granddaughter book-club, to see if the impressions of the story and the characters changes with the stage of life you're in. 

Raiders' Ransom, Emily Diamand

This is the beginning of a series.

Set in post-apocalyptic flooded England (similar idea to Ship Breaker, but very different feel) there are 10 remaining counties of England, ruled by an idiotic Prime Minister - everything else has been lost to the sea or to Greater Scotland.  (Imagine this set in America, with everything north of the Mason-Dixon Line suddenly part of Expanded Canada.  What shock!  What horror!) 

Anyway - the poor suckers stuck in those last Ten Counties suffer mostly in silence, working fishing boats and trying to keep up with their taxes.  Technology is forbidden.  Up north, the sinful Scots use all sorts of tech, but they're in league with the devil, so that's why. 

Lilly and her seacat only want a nice peaceful fisher life - her, her seacat, and her sweetheart Andy (who will hopefully marry her and still let her go fishing!) living together until the far future.  Yeah right.

Raiders attack, stealing the PM's daughter (who was stowed at the fishing village with her exiled aunt), and Lilly sets off on a quest to retrieve the girl and save her village from impression or hanging from the asanine PM himself.  (Getting the impression throughout this book that the author isn't too fond of politicians.) 

In the alternate viewpoint, Zeph is the younger son of the boss of the Angel Isling gang of raiders.  They fled London in the great flooding, and now they prowl around, stealing from the Scots and the fishing villages alike ("no one helped us escape, so we don't owe them any loyalty" is the idea here).  Family is everything, and life is brutal, with slaves and captives galore, and turf-wars over status and position.  His dad just stole the PM's daughter!  The Boss is actually looking forward to starting a war with the PM - he can't wait to fight it out and prove once and for all that the Raiders are the true Englishmen!

By some miracle, Lilly and Zeph, along with the seacat and an intriguing "jewel," meet up with each other and have to figure out how to survive the chaos wrought by one small theft of one small girl.

Not a world-stopping read - there were some technical difficulties.  There were some really interesting characters picked up and then dropped nearly instantly (Lilly's "uncle" comes to mind) but with a series, I'm willing to give that a chance to repair itself over time (still, for a single installment, it was a bit abrupt).  The plot was strangely herky-jerky, and more than a tad unrealistic in all of the chance meetings and lucky breaks - but so is most juvenile fiction.  Even the world was strangely ad hoc - the PM and bureaucrats were described as well off, but if all they have is a tiny collection of fishing villages, where does that come from?  Likewise, despite religious protestations and enforced borders, technology from Scotland wouldn't be entirely unknown to desperate natives just a few miles down the pike.  Similarly, London itself is totally flooded - or maybe just a muddy mess, or maybe only flooded at high tide.  Lots of questions unanswered about how things work in this world. 

I did appreciate that the dual narratives were very clear and demonstrably different.  I really like knowing who is "speaking" from the very first, and clear character concepts are absolutely necessary for that sort of writing convention.  Also - seacats.  Great idea.  I love cats, and the idea of strange little grey kittens latching on to someone and helping them navigate over undersea obstacles and by forcasting weather changes - really neat concept!

Overall, pretty good - Not an amazing read, but I am looking forward to the sequel.

Juniper; Wise Child; Colman, Monica Furlong

I am listing these in chronological order by events as they happen in the books themselves, as that is how I found them.  Many years ago, I read and enjoyed Juniper, but never thought to follow up on possible sequels.  Apparently, most people encounter Wise Child first.

These are set in a Northern Britain (Cornwall, Scotland, Ireland, Dalraida) where Christianity is finally beginning to take hold over the population.

Juniper tells the story of a spoilt princess who is taken in by her godmother, a local wisewoman, to learn the powers of good witchery, healing, and herblore.  The wise woman, the girl, and their young friends must rise up against the girl's evil aunt, who has ensorcelled her own child, the girl's dear cousin. 

Wise Child picks up many years later, in a distant land, where a girl is abandoned by her careless sorceress of a mother and her wandering sailor father.  When her grandmother dies, she is left to the care of Juniper, the local wisewoman (and, the good Christians of the village know) the witch.  This young girl learns that faith and knowledge can coexist and be quite powerful, but that evil and hateful people can be powerful forces also.  

Colman finishes out the series (there are indications that Ms Furlong did not have a chance to edit or revise this last volume, as she passed away immediately upon penning it).  Here Juniper, Wise Child, and their (now much more important) male companions return to Juniper's home for a final confrontation (a serious let-down) with her evil aunt and her terrifying knight companion - who are much the worse for wear in this last episode.

I wouldn't say that any of them are bad, but Colman and Wise Child both suffer greatly from a lot of fear and worry and talking up of "oh dear, the bad guys are awful, what are they going to do?" and then not being able to follow that up with any sort of equal action because these really are very Juvenile-level books. 

Done well, that can be ok - done not so well, it makes the bad guys fall flat, and makes the good guys look a bit idiotic for being so worried and worked-up when everything was obviously not so dangerous after all.  Good guys also look a lot less good and heroic when they don't have something (or someone) of worth and equal power to oppose them, and make them really sweat for their victory.

Anyway - minor complaints.  A lovely series, and one I'm glad to finally have read.  Both Wise Child and Colman are sweet stories that offer lovely counterpoints to the original tale I read as a child of the spoilt Juniper and her experiences while learning to become a wisewoman.