Like Marillier’s adult novels that I’ve read before, Wildwood Dancing is a take on fairy tales and folklore.  This one combines aspects of the twelve dancing princesses and the frog prince, as well as drawing on Romanian vampire mythology and local folklore to give it a wonderful atmosphere.  When their father becomes sick and must go away to be treated, Jena and her four sisters are left behind and Jena takes over the running of the family home.  Times are hard, but the sisters find escape in their monthly nighttime visits to the fairy kingdom in the wildwood where they are welcomed as friends to join in the revels.  Jena also finds solace in the company of Gogu, a frog with whom she is able to talk and who is her closest friend.  However, their cousin Cezar does not believe that the girls can look after themselves and imposes himself on their lives.  At the same time, he is also attempting to destroy the wildwood.  Although he claims this is for the safety of the girls and the villagers, and as revenge for the mysterious death of his older brother Costi, his motives are not all that they seem.

A fairytale adaptation is always a double edged sword because its strength is also its weakness: I already know what will happen because I already know the story.  I know that frogs kissed will turn into men, that how something is said is as important as what is said, and that you should always be careful what you wish for.  Above all, I know that things are rarely what they seem.  Anyone likely to read a book like this is probably approaching from a similar position of prior knowledge and experience, and it takes a skillfull author to manage to write a story that satisfies the fairytale conventions while escaping the trap of feeling like something that’s been read before.  Juliet Marillier is such a writer (Daughter of the Forest is one of my favourite books) but this book didn’t quite get there for me.  The story, while enjoyable enough, erred on the side of obvious, to the point of making some of the characters unreasonably dense at times in order to further the plot.  There may be a dream sequence inserted to explain this, frankly, silly behaviour, but it feels like a contrived and flimsy way of excusing the heroine’s strange refusal to act on things which the reader can see that she obviously should.

Frustrations aside, there was a lot that I really enjoyed about this novel.  I liked the Romanian setting and the way that this colours all aspects of the book, from the character names to the food to the folklore.  I also liked the way that the setting, both the time and the place of the book, made Jena’s struggles to maintain her control over the family fortunes seem very real and understandable.  All too often it is easy to dismiss fantasy heroines who are dependent on men for either their day to day existence or for rescue as weak or somehow deficient, but Jena has no choice but to cede to her cousin Cezar’s polite but forceful requests to hand over her family’s money and the running of their affairs to him.  In fact, even though it feels wrong both to Jena and the reader, it is clear that what he is doing is the right thing albeit for the wrong reasons.  I also loved the inventive descriptions of the wildwood folk and their celebrations, which were just the blend of expected fairy tale convention and authorial creativity which I have come to expect from Juliet Marillier.

On balance, this was an enjoyable but unexceptional book, though perfect for the situation in which I read it.  It was entertaining but the story was too simple and obvious for it to be truly engaging and the interesting details of time and place, while they added flavour, were not quite enough to make up for this.

Wildwood Dancing by Juliet Marillier.  Published by Tor, 2007, pp. 370.  Originally published in 2007.

The novel opens shortly before the release of central character Shadow from prison, when he is summoned to the office to hear news of his wife Laura’s death in a car crash.  On the plane home, he is accosted by a strange man calling himself Mr Wednesday who claims to be a former god embroiled in a war with the new gods.  Little does Shadow know it, but he is soon to find himself playing a key role in this conflict, embroiled in a world of gods and legends fighting for survival in the improbable setting of the American Midwest.

On the one hand, I really like the idea of American Gods.  I like the thought of all the old gods and spirits emigrating from their native lands along with their believers and eventually finding themselves having to exist in 20th century small town America.  I love the little mythic episodes which litter the novel, detailing the story of a particular deity which isn’t relevant to the plot per se, but which helps to build up the whole picture of the world that Gaiman is creating.  I thoroughly enjoyed picking out all of the elements of folklore, myth and fairytale, even if I think this may have resulted in me working a lot of things out much sooner than I was probably supposed to.  I think that the idea that bizarre tourist attractions with no real significance are the modern day places of pilgrimage is completely inspired and it never failed to make me smile.  I like the idea of the gods being in conflict; it made the story feel like a myth that had been brought thoroughly up to date.  However, therein lies one of my problems with the book.

Why is there suddenly this conflict between the gods and material things?  The commandment ‘Thou shalt not commit idolatry’ would suggest that people have been worshipping things beside the approved deities for quite some time now, so it seems a little bit odd that this has been a non-issue until the 20th century.  The Norse gods who are the focus of this book have been quite firmly out of favour for at least a thousand years, so why are they at the forefront of the conflict?  Surely if anyone is fighting off the ‘new’ gods of materialism it should be some strange trinity of Jesus, Buddah and Mohammed, not those whose worship was already considered a bit archaic when Beowulf was written down?  I enjoyed the premise, but I didn’t really believe in it, if that makes sense.

Ultimately, I had the same criticism of American Gods that I did of Stardust when I read that back in 2010: I really like the ideas that Gaiman comes up with, but I’m not 100% convinced by what he does with them.  I found myself reading American Gods and interrupting myself by thinking ‘This would be so much better if it had been written by someone else’.  I think my ideal Neil Gaiman book is possibly written by Terry Pratchett (yes, I am aware of Good Omens; no, I haven’t read it yet).  That’s not to say that I think he’s a bad writer or even that I don’t enjoy his books, it’s simply that I don’t think I quite click with him.  I know it’s unfair to judge a book by what you hoped it would be, but I wanted American Gods to be more epic, more humorous, more sinister and, well, just more than what it turned out to be.

That said, there were sections of writing that I absolutely loved.  Samantha Black Crow’s bizarre creed was one of my favourite parts of the whole novel:

I can believe things that are true and things that aren’t true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they’re true or not.

I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and the Beatles and Marilyn Monroe and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen – I believe that people are perfectable, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkled lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women.

I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone’s ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state.

I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste.

I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we’ll all be wiped out by the common cold like martians in War of the Worlds.

I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman.

I believe that mankind’s destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it’s aerodynamically impossible for a bumble bee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there’s a cat in a box somewhere who’s alive and dead at the same time (although if they don’t ever open the box to feed it it’ll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself.

I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn’t even know that I’m alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck.

I believe that anyone who says sex is overrated just hasn’t done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what’s going on will lie about the little things too.

I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman’s right to choose, a baby’s right to live, that while all human life is sacred there’s nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system.

I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you’re alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.

It’s clever, it’s witty, it’s completely insane yet somehow rings true and I wish the whole novel had been more along those lines.

This is sounding like a very negative review, but I did honestly enjoy the book, just not as much as expectations had led me to believe I would.  I’ll continue to read Neil Gaimain’s books for the wonderfully innovative ideas that he comes up with.  Who knows, maybe his writing will grow on me the more I read?

American Gods by Neil Gaiman.  Published by Headline Review, 2005, pp. 656.  Originally published in 2001.

Song of Sorcery is a fantasy story about Maggie, a sensible, practical hearthwitch whose magic is used to light fires and cook meals.  But when her beautiful, empty headed sister Amberwine runs away from her husband with a gypsy, she is forced to leave her comfortable home life to go and retrieve her errant sibling.  Her travelling companions are Colin Songsmith, a minstrel who gets into trouble with Maggie’s grandmother by singing a popular song which has sprung up about Amberwine’s actions, and Ching, a talking cat.

Had I read this book ten or fifteen years ago, I’m sure I would have really enjoyed it as it has everything in it that little girls love: magic, unicorns, princesses, heroes, dragons, mermaids and talking animals.  The problem is that I’m no longer a ten year old girl and, although this is theoretically a book for adults, it feels very juvenile.  There are too many elements to the story given how short it is and they are all passed over too quickly without being particularly well developed so it feels rushed and bitty.  Equally, the characters never progress beyond the caricatures needed to perform the actions of the story, which is a shame.

On the other hand, some aspects are expanded to the point of being ridiculous.  Maggie’s domestic magical powers, for example, are used for everything from re-hydrating strips of dried venison in order to produce proper meals while camping to creating full length gowns out of her underwear.  There are some little details which are entertaining and innovative.  I particularly like their visit to Maggie’s aunt who lives in a gingerbread house and has to deal with all the terrible impracticalities that entails.  It’s taking a typical fairytale trope and turning it on its head, which I love and I wish there were more of it.

This book fulfilled its purpose.  It’s quite entertaining but entirely lacking in substance, which is what I wanted.  I’ll probably continue with the other books in the series, but only before bed when my critical faculties are firmly switched off.

Song of Sorcery by Elizabeth Scarborough.  Published by Bantam, 1987, pp. 216.  Originally published in 1982.

Fairy tales and folk stories were a huge part of my childhood and have continued to be so as I’ve become older.  I had them read to me by my parents; I read them to myself; I listened to storytellers weaving their own versions of the tales sat around campfires and in tents; I watched them performed on the stage in ballets, pantomimes and plays; and I heard them sung.  The ballad of Tam Lin was a story that I first encountered through the music of Steeleye Span (a nice video set to Steeleye Span singing Tam Lin can be found here for your entertainment), which made up a fair part of my parents’ record collection.  I was entranced by the music and the stories and I haven’t stopped loving folk music or folk tales ever since then.

In the ballad, Tam Lin is a young man who lives in the forest of Carterhaugh and takes either a possession or the virginity of any girl who passes through.  When Janet is caught by him plucking a rose there, she insists that she owns Carterhaugh as her father has given it to her.  When she returns home, as is the way in folk tales, she soon discovers she is pregnant, but will only say that the father is an elf and will not reveal who he is.  She goes back to Tam Lin who forbids her to terminate the pregnancy and tells her that he is in fact a human but was claimed by the Fairy Queen after he fell from his horse.  Every seven years the fairy court pays a tithe to hell and he fears that this year he will be part of the sacrifice and only Janet can save him.  That Halloween, Janet waits at the crossroads and watches as a procession of fairies ride past until finally Tam Lin comes by on a white horse.  Janet pulls him from his mount and must keep hold of him as the Fairy Queen transforms him into a succession of different creatures in order to attempt to make Janet let go.  Eventually, he is turned into a burning brand, upon which Janet plunges him into the well and he turns back into a man, she wraps him in her green mantle and he is hers.

The story is one that I’ve always found fascinating, not least because it features a woman rescuing her captured lover for a change, and so I was thrilled to learn that Pamela Dean had written a novel based on the ballad, also called Tam Lin. In Dean’s take on the story, Janet is an English student just starting out at Blackstock College.  There she not only has to deal with the usual teenage anxieties of studying, getting along with her roommates and discovering sex, but also more mysterious concerns.  What exactly is it about the strange and aloof Classics department that makes them stand apart from everyone else?  Who is the ghost that haunts their dorm room throwing old books out of the window, and why did she kill herself?  Who are the Classics boys who talk in verse and seem to have known each other forever and what makes them so different?

The more I think about this book, the more profoundly it irritates me.  This is a book which has 33 five star reviews out of 48 on Amazon and is about a topic I love (clearly I’ve missed something), so I started reading with high hopes, turning the pages in eager anticipation of spotting a clever, subtle reference to the ballad.  And I waited, and waited and waited.  With the exception of a rather painfully direct midnight Halloween procession on horseback from the Classics department part way through the book, it isn’t until the final fifty pages (a hundred if I’m feeling generous) that the story of the ballad really starts to play a part; in a book which is supposedly based on the ballad, I expected it to have a little more influence than that.  For that matter, I’m not sure why an author would spend so long creating a world which is totally different from that of the ballad only to insert large chunks of the original storyline exactly as they happen rather than subtly adapting it.  This would have been less of an issue had it not been for the fact that, by the time the book finally got to this point, I couldn’t bring myself to care as the story beforehand had been so lacklustre.

Without the prevailing influence of the ballad of Tam Lin, Dean’s Tam Lin is mostly just a story of university life.  We watch Janet study for exams, spend time in the library and go to classes all of which I unfortunately found rather dull.  The characters were so very pretentious that I couldn’t sympathise with any of them and the relationships between them all felt shallow and unreal.  There isn’t even any romance or desperation in Janet’s decision to pull Tom Lane (get it?) off his horse and save him (yes, it happens as obviously as that).  As these relationships are the driving force behind the book I didn’t find much to enjoy, I’m afraid.  In addition to the mundane university story, Dean has added a few of her own supernatural subplots, none of which tie in with the original ballad and none of which were explained to my satisfaction by the time the end of the novel rolled tediously round.  It was a huge disappointment.

Not only did the characters have unbelievable relationships, they also had unbelievable conversations with one another.  It seems that they hardly ever opened their mouths without uttering a line or five of a famous poem or making a clever literary, grammatical or historical pun and at times they speak more or less entirely in quotations from other works.  Picked at random, here’s a typical interchange between two characters:

“Will you talk sense for once!” said Janet, losing all patience.

“Sir,” said Robin, in an uncanny imitation of the Korean actor who had played Hamlet a year ago, “I cannot.  Cannot what, my lord?” he apostrophized himself sharply, as Rosencrantz had spoken to Hamlet.  “Make you a wholesome answer,” he said mournfully, as Hamlet.  “My wit’s diseased.”  He reverted to his own expression, and looked hopefully at Janet.

“Oh, go away!” said Janet.  “You’re enough to try the patience of a saint.  Leave me alone.  I’ll see you at supper. Don’t say it!” she added furiously, as Robin seemed about to add some of Hamlet’s observations about Polonius and the worms, which would, to a grasshopper mind like his, have been amply suggested by the word “supper”.

“I shan’t say it,” said Robin, getting up off the bed and bowing to her.  “Nobody is dead yet.”  He turned with considerable aplomb and shut the door with a dignified click that spoke volumes more than Thomas’s slam.

“We’re all mad here,” said Janet after a moment, and turned resolutely back to Pope.  (p. 329)

Not only does making your eighteen year old characters speak like this make any form of realism impossible, it’s also incredibly abrasive.  There were times when I wanted to strangle the next person to say “I cry you mercy” instead of just apologising.

Now, I’m all in favour of making clever literary allusions and judicious use of intertextuality: Chaucer and Shakespeare both did it to great effect, so it’s hard to argue that one.  Dean, however, is not a Chaucer or a Shakespeare.  They wrote works that are brilliant in their own right and the allusions and quotations to other texts serve to illuminate and expand upon the message of their own writing, whereas in this book the clever lines from other people are a substitute for the text doing anything clever itself.  In fact, there’s no space for any original intelligence, so full is this book of thoughts, ideas and words borrowed from other sources.  I felt that it uses other people’s brilliance to disguise its own lack thereof, and also as a way for the author to show of how many famous books she’s read.  It all came across as rather self-indulgent and didn’t sit well with me.

It’s going to come as no surprise that this book will be searching for a new home soon.  Why is it always the books with the prettiest cover art that are the most disappointing this year?

Tam Lin by Pamela Dean.  Published by Tor, 1992, pp. 468.  Originally published in 1990.

Elfland centres around the community of Aetherials, members of a fairy race who have chosen to live in the human world, indistinguishable from regular mortals.  Once every seven years, Lawrence Wilder throws open the Gates between the worlds to allow access to the fairy realm, known as the Spiral.  However, when the book opens Lawrence refuses to open the Gates and instead seals all entrances to the Spiral in order to keep the Aetherials safe from a threat which he will not name.  Some continue with their lives, becoming increasingly human, while others resent Lawrence’s decision and try to find ways to force his hand.  Meanwhile the Aetheiral children grow up without ever having visited their magical homeland and both Rosie Fox and her brother Matthew marry humans.  But Rosie is continually tempted by a life outside of her mundane, human existence, epitomised in the form of tempting bad boy Sam Wilder.  Like the problem of the gates, this cannot be ignored and soon things reach boiling point.

I’m sure there are a great many people out there who love this book, but personally I found it very frustrating.  What this book reveals about the Aetherials and the world inside the Spiral as fascinating, but I felt that the fact that the characters were part of a semi-immortal race of fairies was irrelevant for about 70% of the plot which instead focused around normal, mundane things like family relationships and whether the heroine will choose her safe, ordinary husband or the attractive bad boy that she seems unable to resist (hmmmm, I wonder how that will work out.  No prizes for guessing).  At times it seemed that the only special thing about being Aetherial is that it leads to lots of really great sex.  Which is fine, but I wanted to read about how the Aetherials live and the problems of the gate between the two worlds being closed and then cracked open again, not about how much better sex is for them.

Because I picked this book up expecting a fantasy novel, I found the lack of focus on this aspect of the novel to be incredibly irritating. I couldn’t get to like any of the characters, not least because a lot of them were cliche-riddled, but also because I was increasingly annoyed at their interactions distracting from what should have been the main plot concerning the cracking open of the gates.    I found myself racing through the relationship stuff in order to get to the main meat of the fantasy plot, only to discover that it never really came.  This is a shame, because the little that was shown of the Spiral was fascinating.  The Aetherial world and mythology sounds really interesting and I only wish that there had been more of it and that there had been more time given over to developing it.

Elfland is book one of the Aetherial Tales series, of which Warrington has written one more book at present.  As her interests and mine don’t really correspond (I like a bit of romance with my fantasy, not the other way around) I doubt I’ll be continuing with the series.  It would however be a really great book for someone who typically reads romance novels and would like to try out a new genre.

Elfland by Freda Warrington.  Published by Tor, 2010, pp. 610.  Originally published in 2009.

In The Final Reckoning the mice find themselves under threat not only from the army of rats that is massing under London but also from the mysterious eternal winter which has enveloped Deptford.  Everything points to Jupiter being back and so the mice, together with the bats and the Starwife, must try to stay alive long enough to defeat him.

You may remember that one of my favourite things about Robin Jarvis’ writing is that he isn’t afraid to be dark even though he is writing for a younger age group, and this book was no exception.  Often in children’s fiction, the forces of evil (whatever form they may take) are distant, incompetent or impotent or a combination of all three.  Evil is usually active in a far off land to which the protagonist must journey to fight it, its plans fail fairly easily before they can be put into practice, and if a character is important and liked then Evil will frequently content itself with capturing rather than killing them.  All in all, Evil often isn’t terribly threatening.  However, the forces of evil in Jarvis’ books are immediate, powerful, bloodthirsty and indiscriminate in who they attack.  Just because a character has a name and has been well developed does not mean that they are safe.  I love that I can read a book for younger readers entitled The Final Reckoning with a final chapter also called ‘The Final Reckoning’ and do so with apprehension because I don’t know which, if any, of the characters will make it through to the end alive.  There is real tension and anxiety in these books which I’ve not often found in children’s fantasy.  Of course, this might be far more common in children’s literature now, I don’t know, but I still think Jarvis should be applauded for what he has done, particularly considering The Deptford Mice Trilogy is more than twenty years old.

The Final Reckoning by Robin Jarvis.  Published by Macdonald, 1997, pp. 305.  Originally published in 1990.

Willow tells the story of a Nelwyn, a halfling race similar to hobbits from what I can gather, who finds a baby washed up from the river bordering his lands.  It turns out that this baby is the Elora Danan, the child foretold in prophecy whose birth would bring about the downfall of the evil sorceress Bavmorda who rules over the lands.  Pursued by the Death Dogs and Bavmorda’s minions, Willow must find the good sorceress Fin Raziel and, together with swordsman Madmartigan and some dubious brownies, journey to the castle of Tir Asleen to save the child and defeat Bavmorda.

I feel I should start out by saying that I’ve never seen the film Willow on which this book is based.  Doubtless it is very entertaining in the same amusing, 80′s fantasy way that Labyrinth and Legend are.  The plot is riddled with cliches, but it trundles along at a fair old pace and probably makes quite good cinema (albeit with special effects that are no doubt incredibly dated).  The book, however, is genuinely dreadful.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words and this book is definitely a case in point.  When adapting a film that is (according to Amazon) approximately two hours in length into a book, that book can either try to capture and convey properly everything that takes place in the film and thus be quite lengthy, or it can be quite short and skim along the top of the action and appear shallow.  Sadly, Drew appears to have gone for the latter, depthless option (although how much choice he had in the matter I don’t know; he may have been making the best of a bad lot).  The writing continually states the obvious and is entirely without subtlety: no character has a thought which they don’t vocalise, an emotion which doesn’t show in their face or contemplates an action without immediately following through.  There is no sense that any of the people Drew writes about have inner lives or even minds.  Because of this, their actions often seem arbitrary, perfunctory and unreasonable.  A character will suddenly decide they are in love or that al their actions up until now have been evil and they must change to fight for good, then act on these thoughts without further ado.  It might work in a film, but in a book it comes across as utterly ridiculous. 

The dialogue is wooden at the best of times and laughable at the worst.  At one point, one character refers to another as a ‘jackass’, which is incredibly inappropriate vocabulary choice for a fantasy with vaguely faux-medieval overtones, as this one attempts to be (most of the time).  These may be faithfully reproduced lines from the film, I don’t know, but whatever the reason for them they don’t make for good reading.

I started this book because I needed something to read in the bath that I wouldn’t mind too much if I accidentally dropped it in the water.  Sadly I think it might have been better for all concerned had I done so.

Willow by Wayland Drew.  Published by Sphere, 1988, pp. 276.  First published in 1988.

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms tells the story of Yeine, who is summoned to the ruling city of Sky following the death of her mother, Kinneth.  There she finds herself named as one of her grandfather’s three heirs and must compete against her two cousins to succeed him as ruler of Sky when he dies.  While trying to keep herself alive, Yeine is befriended by the Enefadah, the god of night, Nahadoth, and his children imprisoned in human form and forced to serve Yeine’s family.  They offer to help her but not without a price and Yeine soon finds herself tied up in events much bigger than she had anticipated.

I think my chief issue with this book was that it was not the book that I was expecting it to be.  The title The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms suggests fantasy of epic proportions, concerned either with a journey through many distant lands or with political intrigue affecting whole nations.  In fact, it had a grand total of three different settings (although the palace of Sky is a fascinating one) and any plotting and scheming was secondary to what quickly became the main storyline: the romance between Yeine and Nahadoth.  From the moment that Yeine and Nahadoth, on first meeting, both try to kill each other, following which he inexplicably kisses her and both feel a wave of desire it was apparent that this book was not going where I had anticipated.  I get the feeling that in some of these reviews I come across as a bit of a prude.  I’m not: I have no objections to sex in books, and certainly not to romance in books, per se.  What I do object to is romance that comes out of nowhere and sex that feels gratuitous or is poorly written.  The sex in The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms does have some significance to the whole mythology of Jemisin’s world, so it (mostly)  doesn’t fall into the former category.  It is, however, possibly the most overblown, ridiculous sex scene I have ever read (this coming from someone who read a sex scene involving tinfoil penis hats and false moustaches last year), in which Yeine and Nahadoth fly through the sky and see, amongst other strange visions, ‘vast, whalelike beings with terrifying eyes and the faces of long-lost friends‘ (p. 322).  Whales!  Why whales?  I could just about have coped until the whales came along, making me snort with laughter in a way which attracted most unnecessary attention on the train.  So, I didn’t like the sex and the romance and the fact that this was a large part of the book distinctly lessened its appeal for me, unfortunately.

Characterisation is also an area in which I consider this book falls down.  With the exception of some interesting traits which result from being a god, Nahadoth is the stereotypical dark, brooding romance hero.  As the novel is written in the first person from Yeine’s perspective, it is understandable that he remains a mystery up to a point, but I can only take so much enigma and angst before I find the romance unbelieveable and this book pushed beyond that stage for me.  A lot of the other characters are left unexplored, which is a shame as a lot of them have really interesting back stories which could have been fascinating if developed further.  The glimpse of Yeine’s grandmother is intriguing as are the snippets of information that are gathered about Yeine’s parents, but these are left as scraps and fragments.  A closer look at Dekarta and what exactly motivates him would also have been interesting.  Similarly, Relad had the potential to come across as compellingly conflicted rather than weak and insignificant, and I would have enjoyed Scimina, his rival cousin, more had she not been quite such a cackling Disney villain.  On the other hand, I thought that Sieh, the child trickster god, was beautifully drawn.  His character was multifaceted and mercurial, changeable in a way which made me wonder what would happen next.  I thought that the way that his physical form reflected his state of mind and his strength was a particularly clever touch, appearing as an old man when he is exhausted or in pain rather than his usual childish guise.

Yeine herself is of course fascinating, and this is primarily due to the wonderful, skillful use that Jemisin makes of her as first person narrator.  It is apparent that this is going to be a little bit different from the opening lines of the book:

I am not as I once was.  They have done this to me, broken me open and torn out my heart.  I do not know who I am anymore.

I must try to remember

**********

My people tell stories of the night I was born. They say my mother crossed her legs in the middle of labor and fought with all her strength not to release me into the world. I was born anyhow, of course; nature cannot be denied. Yet it does not surprise me that she tried.  (p. 1)

She doesn’t just tell the story from her perspective, she changes her mind, she forgets details, she goes back to add things in and tries to puzzle things out as she goes along.  It is exactly as though she is a real person talking directly to the reader and I loved it.  Admittedly, I wasn’t sure about the narrative style at first, as the little broken up paragraphs can feel rather bitty and disjointed, but once I reached longer passages of continuous narrative I realised that this was a deliberate choice and a perfect reflection of Yeine’s broken mind.  It certainly makes for compelling reading.

I also really enjoyed the mythology that Jemisin has created for this world.  It is only revealed in fragments, which can be frustrating, but each detail that Yeine reveals adds to the overall picture of the gods and what happened to them until the reader begins to understand how current situations have arisen.  I particularly liked the limitations that have been put on the Enefadah, specifically that they have to obey any order given to them by one of the Arameri clan.  The ways in which they can choose to misinterpret these orders and the fact that Yeine deliberately tries to avoid giving them are important points in the development of these characters.

I intend to continue with this series because, although I found the story disappointly not to my tastes, I thought Jemisin’s writing was superb, plus I’m intrigued to see how she continues after an ending which is quite so spectacular.  Hopefully further installments in this trilogy will develop some of the other Hundred Thousand Kingdoms and some of the characters neglected in this book.

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N. K. Jemisin.  Published by Orbit, 2010, pp. 421.  Originally published in 2010.

Title:

Author: Trudi Canavan

Published: Orbit, 2007, pp. 674.  Originally published 2003.

Genre: Fantasy

Blurb: In the city of Imardin, where those who wield magic wield power, a young street-girl, adopted by the Magicians’ Guild, finds herself at the centre of a terrible plot that may destroy the entire world…

Sonea has learned much at the Magicians’ Guild and the other novices now treat her with a grudging respect.  But she cannot forget what she witnessed in the high lord’s underground room — or his warning that the realm’s ancient enemy is growing in power once more.  As Sonea learns more, she begins to doubt her guildmaster’s word.  Could the truth really be as terrifying as Akkarin claims, or is he trying to trick her into assisting in some unspeakably dark scheme?

When, where and why: I got this book along with the first two from someone on BookMooch.  I made the mistake of loaning them to the Old English Thorn, who devoured them and has been pestering me to give him the third one ever since.  Naturally I couldn’t let him have the book before I had read it, and so I thought I should get round to it sooner rather than later.

What I thought: I thought that The High Lord was a tremendously satisfying end to The Black Magician Trilogy: it ties up all of the loose ends from the previous two books while still leaving room for further development if the author decides to revisit the series.  I know that Trudi Canavan has several other books out related to this world, although I’m not sure how exactly the books tie in with the story of The Black Magician Trilogy, so it may be that she’s already done so.  After the enjoyment I’ve had from this trilogy, I’ll definitely be investigating the others at some point.

What I liked most about this book was that it actually managed to surprise me, unlike its predecessors.  Trudi Canavan’s system of black magic is intriguing and different, not least because of the culture that she has created around it.  I thought that the tension that builds up as Sonea and Akkarin try to counter the Ichani on their own is well sustained, helped by the continued futile or dangerous attempts of others to defeat them.  The plot twists are excellent, making this definitely the best book in the trilogy and a fitting culmination.

My only issue with the book is that Trudi Canavan’s habit of picking up and dropping characters as it suits her rears its ugly head again.  I was pleased to see that Cery makes a return after being mostly (and inexplicably) absent from the middle installment, but other characters suffer the same fate.  The first half of the book is set in the Guild and yet Regin, the focus and driving force behind The Novice, is mentioned once in passing and never appears again.  I can understand him not being physically present, but Sonea doesn’t even think about him, despite the important role he plays in her development.  I like what Canavan did with Regin in the end, but his sudden disappearance prior to that irked me.  The same is true of Dorrien, who was also fairly significant in The Novice but isn’t even thought of until the mid point of the book.  The part he plays in this final book is also unrelated to his importance in the previous book, which seemed a little disjointed to me.  On the whole though, while I would have preferred more consistency, I really liked this trilogy and will definitely be investigating Trudi Canavan’s other books.

Where this book goes: At the moment this book is in the care of the Old English Thorn, but once he has finished reading it, it will be back with its friends on my fantasy shelf.

Tea talk: It’s been cold again recently, so I’ve been drinking Lapsang Souchong.  To me, it tastes like curling up in front of a fire on a miserable day and I’ve been doing a lot o that recently.

Author: Neil Gaiman

Published: Headline Review, 2005, pp. 214.  Originally published 1999.

Genre: Fantasy

Blurb: In the sleepy English countryside at the dawn of the Victorian era, life moves at a leisurely pace in the tiny town of Wall.  Young Tristran Thorn has lost his heart to the beautiful Victoria Forester, but Victoria is as cold and distant as the star she and Tristran see fall from the sky one evening.  For the prize of Victoria’s hand, Tristran vows to retrieve the star for his beloved.  It is an oath that sends the lovelorn swain over the town’s ancient wall and into a world that is dangerous and strange beyond imagining…

When, where and why: I picked this book up from, surprise surprise, a charity shop.  I loved the film of the book and so thought it would be interesting to read the original work.  I chose it to read because I finished my previous book while I was in the office and this one just happened to be lurking there and looked short enough that it wouldn’t divert me too long from the older books languishing on my shelves that I’m meant to be reading.

What I thought: Although I liked this book, I think I would have enjoyed it a great deal more if I hadn’t seen the film beforehand.  While both stories follow the same narrative trajectory, the details are nearly always different and I think I’m going to have to commit the sacrilege of saying that I actually preferred the film, which maximises the drama of the story at the expense of some of its subtleties.  I was also extremely disappointed that some of my favourite characters in the film weren’t in the book at all.

That said, this is my fault for seeing the film first not an inherent fault of the book, and I did enjoy Stardust.  Neil Gaiman’s prose is wonderful to read, both highly descriptive and very appropriate to the fairy tale genre in which he is writing.  I liked the fact that he makes use of lots of the traditional tropes from folk tales, such as things coming in threes, the power of names, question and answer games and the importance of not straying from the path.  There is magic, adventure and whimsy, all reported with the author’s tongue placed firmly in his cheek.

I think that ultimately having seen the film spoiled this book for me, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t a good read, I just didn’t enjoy it as much as I could have done.

Where this book goes: This book is staying and joining my ever-increasing fantasy collection.

Tea talk: I anticipated this book being a quick read and it ended up being so quick that I read it from cover to cover on the train home, so no tea for me.