Third in the series of Penric fantasy novellas by Lois McMaster Bujold, and I'm kind of getting into these! Penric, scholar and sorceror (courtesy of Third in the series of Penric fantasy novellas by Lois McMaster Bujold, and I'm kind of getting into these! Penric, scholar and sorceror (courtesy of Desdemona, the demonic spirit that shares his body), Penric's fishing expedition with his friend Inglis (the shaman from the prior book, Penric and the Shaman) gets interrupted by Locator Oswyl, who wants Penric's and Inglis's help with another murder case. The body of a sorceress has been found in a remote wood, with two arrows in her back, and no sign of what happened to the valuable demon that she hosted.
As far as they can tell from their investigations, everyone liked the sorceress, so they have a hard time telling who killed her and what their motive was. The other half of the investigation - what happened to her demon and where is it now - offers a few more clues. As they get deeper into the case, one part of the case begins to illuminate the other.
For a murder mystery this was ... well, not as twisty as I might have expected or hoped. But otherwise I enjoyed this adventure of Penric and Desdemona. They're interesting characters with an appealing, odd friendship. ...more
3.5 stars. These Penric fantasy novellas are by the wonderfully talented Lois McMaster Bujold (I highly recommend her Vorkosigan Saga SF series!). The3.5 stars. These Penric fantasy novellas are by the wonderfully talented Lois McMaster Bujold (I highly recommend her Vorkosigan Saga SF series!). They've been sitting on my Kindle app for several months but I think their time has finally come. :)
Penric is the younger son of country gentry who, through a mishap in the first novella in this series, Penric's Demon, found himself unexpectedly sharing his body and mind with a 200 year old demon ... a spirit of chaos but not necessarily evil. To make matters more interesting, the demon, who Penric names Desdemona, gives Penric magical powers - making him a powerful sorceror - as well as knowledge from the ten women who previously hosted the Demon.
It's now 4 years after the events of the first book, and Penric is now a fully-fledged sorceror as well as a scholar, working for the local "Princess-Archdivine," who's kind of a efficient and stern but kind motherly figure. When a detective or "locator" shows up seeking a sorceror's help in finding a runaway shaman who apparently murdered his good friend then ran away, the Archdivine volunteers Penric. It's the beginning of a couple of unusual friendships and an interesting investigation for Penric and Desdemona.
I'm not as familiar with this Five Gods world as maybe I should be, so I got a little lost in the details of shaman magic and how it works with animals ... which is kind of important here. The novella length feels a little short, but that means I can pop them down in a single sitting. Bujold always writes well, even if I still prefer her SF to her fantasy.
Still, I have like eight more Penric novellas to go, and maybe I'll be a true believer by the end of it. :)...more
Centaurs, unicorns, kelpies, fauns, perytons … Teenage Me would’ve loved this book. I wa3.5 stars. Full review, first posted on FantasyLiterature.com:
Centaurs, unicorns, kelpies, fauns, perytons … Teenage Me would’ve loved this book. I was the type of girl who rode horses whenever the occasion offered and used my artistic talents to draw them, all the time, to the point where horses are still the only animal I can reliably draw well without needing to look at a picture. So I came to Across the Green Grass Fields predisposed to like it.
Ten-year-old Regan adores horses and rides them regularly. She also has a mother and a father who are loving and attentive (something that can’t be taken for granted in YA fiction), as well as a close school friend named Laurel whose friendship Regan has hung onto for years. Laurel is clearly the toxic queen bee type, but Regan remains Laurel’s loyal shadow for several more years, even after Laurel permanently and cruelly rejects their other best friend, Heather, for bringing a snake to school (snakes not being as socially acceptable as horses). Regan somehow doesn’t fully realize, or maybe just doesn’t want to admit to herself, that Laurel could turn against her as quickly and terribly.
This being a WAYWARD CHILDREN novella, it’s a foregone conclusion that Regan will be different from the norm in some significant way. When Regan is ten going on eleven, she confronts her parents about why she isn’t physically maturing yet, and finds out that she’s intersex. Though her parents break the news as gently as they can, Regan’s world is rocked, and she makes the mistake of confiding in Laurel. I have to digress for a moment to say that, even with the abundance of mythological creatures in this book, Regan’s choice to disclose her physical difference to Laurel was probably the most unbelievable thing in the whole novel for me.
Regan had known from the beginning that Laurel’s love was conditional. It came with so many strings that it was easy to get tangled inside it, unable to even consider trying to break free.
Regan knows, far better than most girls, how unforgiving Laurel is of anyone who doesn’t conform to the norm and how cruelly she can lash out, and no amount of McGuire’s explaining why Regan made this choice made it seem a likely one to me.
Be that as it may, things predictably go wrong fast, Regan runs away from school — and finds herself faced with a magical doorway in the woods that leads to the Hooflands. The Hooflands is inhabited by large, muscular centaurs, lovely and brainless unicorns, carnivorous kelpies, and every other imaginable creature with hooves ... except horses (“What’s a horse?” asks one of the centaurs). Everyone has hooves of some kind, and humans are exotic creatures that show up once in a blue moon to heroically save the Hooflands from some terrible trouble and then disappear. Destiny? or perhaps not. In any case, Regan and the centaur herd that adopts her are in no hurry to send her to the queen of the Hooflands to face whatever trial may await.
McGuire spends a full quarter of Across the Green Grass Fields describing Regan’s childhood in our world, particularly the “vicious political landscape of the playground, where the slightest sign of aberration or strangeness was enough to bring about instant ostracism.” It’s well-told, with sympathy for everyone involved (well, except Laurel). In the Hooflands, Regan finds true friendship for the first time and begins to accept herself and understand that being “normal” is not the be-all and end-all she had thought it was. The tone shifts gears to become a pastoral, fairly slow-paced story, with the exception of one fairly frantic chapter. Even the climactic scenes toward the end of the novella don’t achieve any real sense of urgency.
Also, while these final scenes do slot in with the themes that McGuire has been addressing throughout the book, they felt rushed, and the same sense of improbability resurfaces around the events that occur toward the end. Maybe Seanan McGuire wrote this a little too quickly, or maybe she's just more focused on themes than plot. I really wanted more of an epilogue … in both the Hooflands and in our world.
This entry in the WAYWARD CHILDREN series doesn’t have any obvious links to Eleanor’s Home for Wayward Children or the characters in the other books in the series, at least at this point. Across the Green Grass Fields does have some great moments and poignant insights into human nature and life, but it lacks the full impact that the best books in this series have.
As I mentioned at the beginning of this review, Teenage Me would’ve loved this book. Adult Me sees the narrative flaws in it, but I was still moved by the characters and their obstacles. Across the Green Grass Fields is worth reading if you’re a fan of the series.
Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the review ARC!
Initial post: YES! Approved for the ARC of the latest Wayward Children book on NetGalley ... and immediately started reading it, because I have no self-control whatsoever with some series....more
One chilly autumn night, seven fox kits beg their mother for a scary story, “so scary our eyes fall out of our heads.” Don’t go to the Bog Cavern, she tells them, because the old storyteller lives there, and the tale she would tell them would be so scary it would put white in their tails. So naturally the seven kits scamper off through the woods to the Bog Cavern as soon as their mother is asleep, and beg the spooky-looking storyteller for a scary story.
“All scary stories have two sides,” the storyteller said. “Like the bright and dark of the moon. If you’re brave enough to listen and wise enough to stay to the end, the stories can shine a light on the good in the world.”
But, she warns, kits who lose heart and don’t stay until the end of the stories may lose all hope and be too frightened to ever leave their den again. Then she embarks on a series of eight tales. There’s a beloved teacher who turns into a gooey-eyed monster who attacks Mia and her brothers, the fox kits who adore her. There’s also Uly, a runt with a crippled forepaw and six cruel sisters who torment him … but they’re not as bad as the white-fanged Mr. Scratch. And more, including the underwater monster Golgathursh, a skin-stealing witch, and a creepy, crawling disembodied hand fox paw. The stories soon tie together to become one overall tale of the terrible — and occasionally good — adventures of Uly and Mia.
Scary Stories for Young Foxes, a 2019 Newbery Honor book, is a little like a middle-grade version of Watership Down, except with foxes rather than rabbits, and a liberal dose of fox-type horror. Each of the stories in it riffs on a different classic horror trope. For example, the first story — one of the most horrific ones — is a type of zombie tale, in the form of foxes contracting rabies, turning into monsters, and stalking and killing other foxes. A sadistic fox father, with no patience or love for a crippled son, takes on the role of Dracula. Beatrix Potter assumes the role of a scary witch who captures wild animals, steals their essence by writing a story about them, and then kills and stuffs them. (According to Heidicker, Beatrix Potter really did do amateur taxidermy as part of her nature studies, but from the fox’s point of view, of course, it’s horrific.)
One of the main attractions of Scary Stories for Young Foxes is that, despite their close ties to time-honored horror tales and tropes, these stories are generally realistic. Each story revolves around a life-and-death situation that could actually happen to a young wild fox. Heidicker does take a few liberties with real life, though: rabies spreads between the foxes far more quickly than is natural, an alligator shows up in a part of England where it has no business being, and Beatrix Potter’s story here (aside from painting her as villainous, which is certain to offend some readers) diverges somewhat from her actual life history.
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Scary Stories for Young Foxes is beautifully and evocatively told, with lovely and frequently creepy charcoal pencil illustrations by Junyi Wu. As the old storyteller said, there’s an affirmative message underlying the stories, but getting to the end is harrowing for both the fox kits and the reader. Foxes die. Baby foxes die. So it’s not for every reader, but for those who, like the bravest little fox kit, can stick it out, it’s a rewarding set of tales.
Initial post: My teenage son was sleuthing around on my Goodreads account for Christmas present ideas for me and landed on this one. Awww! So now I have a lovely hardback copy of this Newbery Honor book to read, with really wonderful illustrations. Can't wait!!...more
4.5 stars. A unique and intriguing Sherlock Holmes mystery about a valuable missing racehorse and a dead man. This one came close to making Arthur Con4.5 stars. A unique and intriguing Sherlock Holmes mystery about a valuable missing racehorse and a dead man. This one came close to making Arthur Conan Doyle’s list of his top 12 Sherlock Holmes stories, but he couldn’t quite forgive it for some errors he’d made regarding the rules of the horse racing world. But I think maybe it does make my own list of the top dozen Sherlock stories, because of the unusual plot and the fact that Doyle actually gives readers enough clues to solve the mystery for themselves....more
The Twisted Ones is a modern twist on an old horror classic, and it exceeds the original in my opinion. Review first posted on Fantasy Literature:
The Twisted Ones begins with mild consternation: Melissa, who goes by “Mouse,” has the thankless task of taking a trip to backwoods North Carolina, with her loyal redbone coonhound Bongo for company, to clean out her late grandmother’s home. “It’ll be a mess,” her father says, in a massive understatement. Consternation shifts to deep dismay: Grandma was a hoarder. It’s even worse than normal, since her grandmother was a cruel and vicious person, and something of her evil still infuses her house, like the room full of baby dolls that looks like a “monument to infanticide.” Luckily, Mouse finds one bedroom that is clear of clutter, the bedroom of her step-grandfather Cotgrave, who died many years earlier. (If you’ve read Arthur Machen’s 1904 classic horror novelette “The White People,” you should recognize the name Cotgrave here. It’s no coincidence.)
Mouse moves into Cotgrave’s bedroom for the duration, while she works on cleaning out the house so it can be sold. In Cotgrave’s nightstand she finds his handwritten journal. In his journal Cotgrave was fretting over a lost green book that he’d obtained from a man named Ambrose. He was also troubled by a phrase that was stuck in his head, like a song that will never stop replaying:
I made faces like the faces on the rocks, and I twisted myself about like the twisted ones, and I lay down flat on the ground like the dead ones.
In fact, once Mouse reads this sentence in the journal, she has a hard time getting it out of her head herself. But as it turns out, the hoarding and the creepy journal aren’t the worst things about staying in her grandparents’ house. There are things in the woods surrounding the house, and they may not just stay in the woods. Mouse’s dismay at her situation evolves into terror.
The Twisted Ones is an inventive horror novel that takes “The White People” as its launching point and creates a modern-day sequel to it. Kingfisher takes Machen’s story in a different direction that I’m morally certain never occurred to him, but that I’m confident he would have appreciated. The Twisted Ones contains a more folkloric type of horror than its source material, and it’s lightened by the appealing voice and wry humor of Mouse, who narrates the story. Her job as a freelance editor informs many of her opinions about Cotgrave’s writing, almost distracting her from the journal’s deeper import.
Another source of both comfort and comic relief is Mouse’s hound Bongo. He’s a dedicated companion, loyal and loving, even if dimwitted at times, and he has an excellent nose.
I had the impression that he was thinking very hard about something (or more accurately, that his nose was thinking very hard about something. Bongo’s nose is far more intelligent than the rest of him, and I believe it uses his brain primarily as a counterweight).
These moments of lightness balance the chilling horror, which creeps up on the reader as much as it does Mouse. I read the last ten percent with my heart in my throat.
The most difficult section of “The White People” is the lengthy and hallucinatory quoting of the Green Book; The Twisted Ones has a counterpart to this tale-within-a-tale approach as Mouse dives more deeply into dissecting Cotgrave’s journal. It felt a little lengthy and difficult to unpack, though it’s not nearly as difficult to wade through as the Green Book, and after re-familiarizing myself with “The White People,” this section became much more interesting and readable.
If you’ve ever read “The White People,” The Twisted Ones is a must-read. If you haven’t, I’d recommend giving “The White People” at least a quick skim (it’s freely available online) before jumping into this novel. It’s well worth your time for any fan of the horror genre … and even for readers who — like me — aren’t normally into horror novels. I decided to give it a try because T. Kingfisher (a pseudonym of Ursula Vernon) is a fantastic author with a talent for making fairy tales and other old things new again. It was an excellent decision.
I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley and the publisher for review. Thanks so much!...more
Bumping up to all 5 stars on reread! This novelette was nominated for the Hugo and the Nebula. Full review, first posted on Fantasy Literature:
This sBumping up to all 5 stars on reread! This novelette was nominated for the Hugo and the Nebula. Full review, first posted on Fantasy Literature:
This story, told entirely from a cat’s point of view, is a must-read for feline fans! Jeoffry the cat belongs toowns a mad poet who is confined to an insane asylum in 18th century Great Britain. Jeoffry regularly battles the imps and demons who torment the inmates at the asylum. But when Satan himself enters the picture, planning to use the poet’s abilities to bring about the end of the world, Jeoffry just might be overmatched.
Siobhan Carroll drew me in with this whimsical and insightful tale. She tells this story from Jeoffry’s point of view, capturing the elusive essence of cats.
Jeoffry knows he is a good cat, and a bold gentleman, and a pretty fellow. He tells the poet as much, pushing his head repeatedly at the man’s hands, which smell unpleasantly of blood. The demons have been at him again.…
Jeoffry feels … not guilty exactly, but annoyed. The poet is his human.
There are so many marvelous elements to this tale, including some Turkish Delight that would have been better not eaten and a scene-stealing black kitten named the Nighthunter Moppet. Bonus if you’re familiar with the long religious poem “Jubilate Agno” written by the poet Christopher Smart around 1760, or at least with the “Jeoffry” section of the poem. Smart wrote this poem when he was committed to an asylum, with only his cat Jeoffry for company. A brief excerpt:
For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry. … For God has blessed him in the variety of his movements. For, tho he cannot fly, he is an excellent clamberer. For his motions upon the face of the earth are more than any other quadruped. For he can tread to all the measures upon the music. For he can swim for life. For he can creep.
Gregory Funaro’s just-published Watch Hollow is a charmingly spooky (or perhaps spookily charmiOn sale now! Review first posted on Fantasy Literature:
Gregory Funaro’s just-published Watch Hollow is a charmingly spooky (or perhaps spookily charming) contemporary fantasy featuring an 11-year-old girl, Lucy Tinker, her 13-year-old brother Oliver, and their clockmaker father … and also a fearsome giant, a boy who mysteriously appears and disappears, and a full dozen magical talking animals sure to warm the hearts of middle grade readers.
After a brief prologue with a heart-stopping chase involving the giant, a traitorous crow, and a rat named Fennish Seven, the story shifts to our main characters, Lucy and her brother Oliver. Between their mother’s death from cancer two years earlier and their father’s lack of business acumen, the Tinker family is teetering on the brink of financial disaster. So it feels like a huge windfall when a stranger, Mr. Quigley, appears in Tinker’s Clock Shop and offers Mr. Tinker a fortune in gold coins to come to Quigley’s old, abandoned mansion, Blackford House, deep in the woods in Rhode Island, and fix a huge clock that’s built into the home and is the source of electrical power for the home. To sweeten the deal, Lucy and Oliver are invited along.
The Tinker family finds Blackford House an ominous place, dingy and dilapidated, with black twisted trees pressing in on every side. The broken clock is ten feet in diameter, with twelve animal-shaped holes where the numbers on the face of the clock would normally appear. Lucy finds two wooden statues of a snarling cat and a cute little dog that are the perfect size to fit in the clock face, but the animals’ positions are the wrong shape. The answer to that mystery is explained (at least in part) that night, when the wooden dog turns into a real one and begs Lucy for her help. Blackford House is sentient but weakened by an evil giant called the Garr who lurks in the woods. The house, its magical clock and animals, and even the Tinkers themselves are in danger.
Watch Hollow is an appealing magical adventure with just enough tension and creepiness to keep things exciting for younger readers. Both boys and girls will find the Tinker siblings sympathetic; they’re well-rounded characters with both strengths, like their courage and love, and problems, like Lucy’s tendency to get in fights with a bullying classmate and Oliver’s anxiety about his acne. The animal characters are also delightful, with some distinct personalities. Torsten Six, the little dog, is anxious but loving and eager to trust; Meridian the cat is far more suspicious of the Tinker family.
Funaro’s writing has improved noticeably since he wrote his first middle grade novels a few years ago, Alistair Grim's Odditorium and Alistair Grim's Odd Aquaticum. While Watch Hollow isn’t quite as crazily fantastical as those books, I found Watch Hollow more coherent in its plot, with improved flow and characterization. Funaro still occasionally does some telling rather than showing, but overall the plot flows well, with enough depth and interesting details to keep the reader engaged.
"Everything here was designed to work together in perfect balance ― sunstone and shadow wood, light and dark, day and night. For in such balance there is potent magic.
Watch Hollow is the type of book that would lend itself to reading aloud to younger children, as well as being given to middle grade readers who love fantasy, animals, or both. The story ends on an open note (not a cliffhanger, thankfully), with a second book, Watch Hollow: The Alchemist's Shadow, expected in early 2020. I look forward to the further adventures of Lucy and Oliver.
Thanks to the author for sending a copy of this book to me for review!...more
The Transfigured Hart, a 1975 novella by the talented Jane Yolen, was recently republished as part of Tachyon Publications’ Particle e-book imprint. It’s a lovely, evocative tale, juxtaposing fairy-tale-like fantasy and a contemporary rural setting.
Richard and Heather are twelve-year-old neighbors with vastly different personalities who barely know each other. Richard, an orphan who lives with his aunt and uncle, is an introspective loner. A long bout with rheumatic fever has given him the habit of reading, and the habit has remained with him. Heather is an enjoyer of life and people, and she particularly enjoys going off by herself on adventures. But both Richard and Heather love the Five Mile Wood.
When his aunt and uncle think he’s leaving the home to play with friends, Richard is actually going to hide in the woods and read a book in peace (something I deeply identify with!). Heather rides her gray appaloosa horse Hop into the woods to explore. Richard and Heather each independently catches a brief glimpse of the white hart that spends most of its time by the hidden, crystal blue pool in the woods. Richard is convinced it’s a unicorn; Heather, more pragmatic, immediately determines that it’s an albino hart. But when boy and girl meet in the woods, they both understand how important it is not to share their secret with others, even if they don’t agree on what they saw. Heather wants to believe Richard’s firm opinion that they’ve seen a unicorn, though. And both agree that they want to see the unicorn again, and tame it.
Yolen takes the ancient legend of the unicorn and sets in our logical world. The sense of magical realism surrounding the white hart (is it a unicorn?) contrasts with the mundane concerns of the real world, like Richard’s social isolation at school and Heather’s teasing older brothers, avid hunters who she knows will shoot the white hart if they can.
The two main characters, Richard and Heather, are well-drawn, with distinctly individual traits. Their budding relationship appears entirely innocent and platonic, but Yolen weaves in meaning-laden symbols, like a wine-stained handkerchief and the unicorn itself. It may be a suggestion that all is not as it seems, or perhaps a hint of what lies in their future.
In between the chapters that tell the children’s story are brief interludes from the hart’s point of view. The Transfigured Hart has a bit of an edge to it, particularly when the hart is tracked down by a deerhound and a brief, bloody encounter ensues. It’s a brief, shocking scene, a reminder that death can cruelly strike at a moment’s notice.
Readers who are fond of classic fantasy like Peter Beagle’s The Last Unicorn are likely to enjoy The Transfigured Hart. It’s imbued throughout with a delightful sense of childlike wonder.
What could one do with a unicorn? Look at it and long for it, and love it.
Many thanks to Tachyon and NetGalley for the free review copy!...more
Al Huxley and Cu are detectivesAll the stars for this Tor SF short story, free online here at Tor.com. Full review first posted on Fantasy Literature:
Al Huxley and Cu are detectives and partners in this near-future SF tale. Cu is a chimpanzee whose intelligence has been enhanced to human-level through a company’s cruel and illegal experimentation. Granted “personhood” rights ― and a hefty settlement ― in a court case, Cu still feels isolated. She’s most comfortable alone in her Washington state home, off Puget Sound, usually working with Huxley on a remote basis, and using sign language or a tablet and speech synthesizer to communicate with Huxley and other humans.
Cu and Huxley’s latest case is an apparently random subway murder by a young woman, Elody Polle. Their investigation leads to a technological phenomenon called echogirl/echoboy, where people allow others to buy the right to see through their eyes through contact lens-like cameras, listen through their ears, and give them a constant stream of instructions on what to do and say. Someone may have taken the echogirl role too far … But it proves extremely hard to trace whoever was behind Elody’s actions.
Small details in this story bring it to life, like Elody Polle’s mood-display floral pattern dress, where the flowers change from tight buds to full bloom depending on the wearer’s mood. Cu’s apartment is a marvel, filled with customized webbing and rafters for climbing, but it’s a little heartbreaking to read:
The design consultant, an excitable architect from Estonia, suggested artificial trees sprouting hydroponic moss. But Cu has no use for green things. She grew up in dull gray and antiseptic white.
There’s a lot more going on in this story than I thought there would be when I started reading it. It’s insightful and contemplative, much more than a straightforward murder mystery starring a simian detective. Larson shares many details that make you feel Cu’s feelings of isolation and her aversion to public attention, which drive her to isolate herself in her apartment. It’s hard for Cu to feel comfortable in a human world where she doesn’t readily fit in. “Meat And Salt And Sparks” is rather melancholic but, in the end, also uplifting (pun totally intended, sorry!)....more
4.5 stars - really a delightful middle grade novel, and it's standalone! Review first posted on Fantasy Literature:
[image] Fearless Girl statue
High up4.5 stars - really a delightful middle grade novel, and it's standalone! Review first posted on Fantasy Literature:
[image] Fearless Girl statue
High up in the mountains, in a marble house, live a stone girl and her animal friends, who are also carved from stone. In this world, magical symbols and marks carved into stone make the stone come alive, giving it the power to move above, see, speak and hear, think, and even fly. Mayka, the stone girl, and her family of living stone birds, rabbits, a cat, an owl and others, were all carved and brought to life by a kindly master stonemason. The marks tell their stories, and the stories give them life.
Mayka and her friends live an isolated and contented life. Any harm or danger is far away in the valleys below them … except the danger of time. Their beloved Father, the stonemason, died many years ago, and gradually the magical marks etched on Mayka and her stone friends are wearing away and breaking. Harlisona the rabbit can’t speak any more ― her mark for speech accidentally chipped off ― and Turtle and most of the stone fish in their stream have stopped moving and turned back into ordinary stone.
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There appears to be only one solution: Mayka decides to go down into the distant valley to find another stonemason who will be willing to climb the mountain to their home and re-etch the magical marks into their bodies. It’s a scary journey into the unknown, even for a girl made of stone … but the quest will be even more difficult than Mayka imagines.
The Stone Girl’s Story (2018) is such a charming middle grade fantasy! Mayka, carved in the semblance of a twelve year old girl, is an admirable heroine with a can-do attitude and courage in the face of the unknown. At the same time, she’s also a kind and loyal friend, determined to do whatever is necessary to save the lives of her friends, but also seeing the bigger picture when a danger arises that could threaten the free will of all living stone animals, and even lead to harm for the humans who are their keepers. Her creative approach to solving a difficult problem will entrance readers.
This story includes lots of humor, most of it supplied by Jacklo, a gray stone bird with an irrepressible personality and a joy for life. [image] Jacklo and his bird sister Risa insist on joining Mayka on her journey down to the human lands.
“We were elected to come with you.”
“Oh? Who elected you?” Mayka asked.
“It was a small election,” Jacklo said. “Very small. Only two votes. But we won in a landslide! There was a lot of cheering.”
Sarah Beth Durst has a knack for describing the living stone carvings, their magical markings, and the Stone Quarter in the city of Skye, where the stonemasons live and work, with vivid details that bring them to life. Kalgrey the cat’s marks say, in symbolic language, “Sharp of tongue and claws, nimble of paws and mind.” Si-Si is a knee-high dragon carved of a lovely, translucent orange stone, but she struggles with knowing that she’s always been valued only for being decorative, and longs with all her heart to be able to fly like Jacklo and Risa. [image] And I won’t soon forget Kisonan the noble stone griffin, offended by the questioning of his loyalty and determined to do what is right. [image] The Stone Girl’s Story is a delightful, magical tale, with depth and insight as well as action and adventure. I highly recommend it for young readers in the 10-13 age range, and for those of any age who enjoy children’s fantasies.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, for review. Thank you so much!...more
Update: Full review added for "The Starship and the Temple Cat," about a brave ghost cat. Seriously, cat lovers need to go read this story! (link beloUpdate: Full review added for "The Starship and the Temple Cat," about a brave ghost cat. Seriously, cat lovers need to go read this story! (link below) It's lovely.
There are three short stories in this issue of Beneath Ceaseless Skies, free online here. I've read two so far:
4.5 stars for "The Starship and the Temple Cat" by Yoon Ha Lee: The Seventy-Eighth Temple Cat of the High Bells is a ghost cat … but then, everyone else in the City of High Bells is a ghost as well. Years ago the Fleet Lords’ spaceships bombed the City, which was actually a space station, though a very restful-sounding one. But after the bombing, the cat is the only remaining temple cat ghost, and gradually all of the peoples’ ghosts have left as well.
One by one the ghosts of her people departed, despite her efforts to get them to stay. She purred—ghost cats are just as good at purring as the living kind—and she coaxed and she cajoled, as cats do. But the ghosts wearied of their long vigil, and they slipped away nonetheless.
So the cat is alone when the sentient starship Spectral Lance appears, seeking to find peace and do penance for its past misdeeds as part of the Fleet Lords’ forces. Unfortunately the Fleet Lords’ hunters are on the ship’s trail.
Stories of brave little cats are guaranteed to worm their way into my heart, but “The Starship and the Temple Cat” isn’t just a sentimental tale. Yoon Ha Lee deftly draws the temple cat’s character in a way that feels realistic and true to cats’ personalities, and fills this tale with evocative details about life in the peaceful temple, contrasting it with the vast destruction caused by the starships. This story deals with timeless themes of loyalty, courage and redemption in a way that feels fresh and new.
This story is more straightforward than some of the other Yoon Ha Lee stories I've read. Bonus points for such a lovely character in the brave and loyal temple cat! Cat lovers will be delighted with her.
4 stars for "Where the Anchor Lies" by Benjamin C. Kinney: Staff-General Eita is on a pilgrimage to a graveyard of warships, seeking the remains of the Vanguard, the ship with which she once shared a deep and devoted mental link. Eita is accompanied by two floating avatars, a journalist one and one for the Directorate. If the Chancellor realizes her true purpose in seeking out the Vanguard, she'll be in trouble. Some interesting political overtones to this one.
3.5 stars for this Kindle freebie. It's a cute, YA-level fantasy romance, and a retelling of the old Puss in Boots fairy tale, with a few twists to it3.5 stars for this Kindle freebie. It's a cute, YA-level fantasy romance, and a retelling of the old Puss in Boots fairy tale, with a few twists to it.
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The youngest child of the village miller, who inherits an odd cat, is a lovely young woman, Suzette, called Etta. She's astounded when her cat turns out to have the ability to speak ... especially when Puss starts ordering her around ("Learn to hunt!" "Take the game you catch to the king!").
Etta's head is turned by Kerrick, a handsome nobleman she meets in the village one day, to the dismay of Beau, another young man who's temporarily living in the village. He's very interested in Etta, but she firmly friendzones him while pursuing a relationship with Kerrick ... even though she knows that, as a destitute commoner, there's very little chance of the relationship with Kerrick going anywhere.
Despite the differences, the story sticks reasonably closely to the original fairy tale. It also manages to slide around the dreaded love triangle trope, though it skates a little close to the edge at times. Recommended if you're interested in a very light and rather amusing fairy tale retelling, with a fairly strong romance element. Not bad for a freebie and a self-published book!
3.5 star average, but there are a couple of stories here that are definitely worthwhile. (Edited to add additional reviews.)
Animal lovers alert: Fanta3.5 star average, but there are a couple of stories here that are definitely worthwhile. (Edited to add additional reviews.)
Animal lovers alert: Fantasy short stories about cats ("How the Maine Coon Cat Learned to Love the Sea") and birds ("A Nest of Ghosts, a House of Birds")! And also one ("Packing") about animals in general, though that one is bound to make animal lovers more unhappy than the first two. These and other stories are free to read online at Uncanny Magazine. I've read five of the stories in this issue, by the talented authors Mary Robinette Kowal, Seanan McGuire, Aliette de Bodard, T. Kingfisher and Kat Howard. Reviews first posted on Fantasy Literature:
4 stars for The Worshipful Society of Glovers by Mary Robinette Kowal: In a magical version of Victorian-era London, Vaughn is a journeyman to a glove maker, a strict master. In this world, gloves are magically imbued with different qualities matching their embroidery ― strength, height, chastity, cunning, etc. ― by brownies who cooperate with the glovers guild. Vaughn lives with his teenage sister Sarah in a dingy garrett, on the knife-edge of poverty. Sarah periodically has dangerous and uncontrollable seizures, and Vaughn knows that if he could get a brownie to help him with the magic, he could create a pair of gloves that would control her seizures. But he can’t afford a licensed pair, and no conscientious brownie will take the dishonest job of helping him create an unlicensed pair.
Vaughn’s life and world are vividly created, and despite the many problems in Vaughn’s and Sarah’s lives and some ominous undertones (like “pure white kidskin with golden chains around each wrist to preserve the young lady’s chastity”), it’s often an enchanting world. But Kowal isn’t interested here in showing us the lighter side of Victorian England, and as troubles mount, Vaughn’s situation becomes progressively bleaker. In the end, The Worshipful Society of Glovers is a hard-hitting, disturbing look at the problem of poverty and the unintended consequences of choices.
3.5 stars for "A Nest of Ghosts, a House of Birds" by Kat Howard: Twenty years after her grandmother has died, Luna receives a letter from her, informing Luna that she has inherited her grandmother’s home, if she’ll spend a year living there. As one might expect, the house is haunted; unexpectedly, the haunting is by bird. Sparrows, cardinals, ravens, owls. A wood duck is in the kitchen sink; a peacock in the bathtub (“He seemed friendly enough, but I preferred taking baths by myself”). At least they are oddly clean birds; no food scraps or droppings mess up Luna’s home. And Luna hears voices while she’s dreaming that seems to come from the birds.
It’s a bit of a cozy yet melancholy type of haunting, given additional resonance by its connections to the strained family relationships that Kat Howard explores in this story. Luna makes some interesting choices and intuitive leaps of logic in unraveling the mystery of the birds. I wasn’t sufficiently convinced by the plot of this story to buy into its underlying premise, but Howard’s evocative language and imagery are lovely.
3 stars for "How the Maine Coon Cat Learned to Love the Sea" by Seanan McGuire: In this whimsical tribute to cats and oral storytelling, Seanan McGuire relates a fable about the adventures of a clan of beautiful, fluffy white Angora Cats (with a capital C), part of the cargo of a sailing ship. One day one of their number, a young but polite Cat, has a conversation with a seagull. The gull warns the Cat that Mother Carey is planning to wreck their ship before it reaches land. Clearly this trip is going to be more of an adventure than the Cats (or the sailors) anticipated!
It’s a charmingly told tale though, like the Cats, it's rather fluffy. McGuire pulls in threads from various legends and folklore, but toward the end the story gets distinctly fragmented, as evidenced (for example) by the use of the phrase “but that is another story” no less than three times. Still, McGuire's writing is always appealing, and readers who love traditional storytelling mannerisms, or Cats, will almost certainly be enchanted.
2.5 stars for "Packing" by T. Kngfisher: It’s time, the narrator tells their reluctant younger companion: the new seasons are arriving, and the animals and plants need to be packed up ― but only those that they’re able to take with them, that will fit in.
All these choices were made long ago. Now is not the time to relitigate them.
Now our job is to decide what to bring with us.
No, you can’t take the polar bear. I’m sorry. I know you loved him. He takes up too much room, and he requires refrigeration. So does his food. We have to make hard choices now.
“Packing” is a brief allegory of our world and the climate changes that will alter it. One can speculate on who the narrator symbolically represents (Mother Nature? Our current world?) and who the childlike character is that the narrator is talking to. T. Kingfisher uses some colorful imagery and examples to illustrate the limitations and choices that climate change forces on us. It’s a slight tale, too plotless and one-note to really appeal to me, but it’s thought-provoking.
Also, 4 stars for "Children of Thorns, Children of Water" by Aliette de Bodard. This novelette is set in the same world as de Bodard’s 2015 novel The House of Shattered Wings, an alternative history type of novel set in the late 20th century in Paris, which lies in ruins in the aftermath of a magical conflict called the Great War. Helpful background for those who haven’t read that novel: Paris is inhabited by both humans and fallen angels, whose bodies carry magic that can be distilled used by other angels and humans. Great Houses, largely under the leadership of the fallen angels, vie for control and influence. Underneath the Seine River is the “dragon kingdom,” a hidden magical kingdom of Vietnamese who can shapeshift into Asian dragons, as well as sense and control the magical energy currents of khi (the Vietnamese equivalent of the Chinese chi).
Kim Cuc and Thuan have come from the dragon kingdom on a mission: House Hawthorn is having its annual hiring day for those who are Houseless to apply to become servants and House dependents. Hawthorn is the closest House to the dragon kingdom, and recently this House has begun encroaching on dragon territory under the Seine, for no known reason. If Kim Cuc and Thuan are successful at being hired by Hawthorn, they’ll be in a position to spy on Hawthorn’s doings.
All starts out well: they are placed in a group of three with Leila, a young girl of Maghrebi descent, and assigned to bake or create something “impressive” within an hour. Luckily Thuan has some skill in this area (Kim Cuc comments that he was “paying way too much attention to old recipes, back when he was trying to seduce the family cook”) and chocolate éclairs are well underway when the trio is suddenly interrupted. Some kind of emergency requires a hasty evacuation of the Hawthorn mansion … but will they all make it out?
The clash between different types of magic and cultures works well here, and the characters are well-developed enough, with a few quirks, to be memorable. The worldbuilding in "Children of Thorns, Children of Water" is rich and imaginative, though a little difficult to absorb if you aren’t familiar with that world from The House of Shattered Wings. I was floundering just a little during my first read of this novelette, which is set in between Shattered Wings and its sequel, The House of Binding Thorns. But reading the FanLit review for Shattered Wings was enough to give me my sea legs in this world, and the story made more sense and was more impactful when I reread it with this background knowledge. Though it interlocks with de Bodard’s novels in her DOMINION OF THE FALLEN series, "Children of Thorns, Children of Water" actually works nicely as a stand-alone story. ...more
4.5 stars. $1.99 Kindle sale, August 28, 2017. What a delightful, fun middle grade fantasy! It's not really much like Harry Potter plotwise, other tha4.5 stars. $1.99 Kindle sale, August 28, 2017. What a delightful, fun middle grade fantasy! It's not really much like Harry Potter plotwise, other than being about a boy who's discovering the magic powers in himself, who has some awful relatives, but it carries the same kind of vibe for me as the first HP book, in particular. So if that sounds appealing, grab a copy of this one!
Nick is a neglected, stubborn 12 year old runaway who somehow finds himself in the clutches of the evil Wizard Smallbone, unable to leave the wizard's small farm. The wizard calls him an apprentice, but he's really being treated just a servant. Can he turn the tables on the wizard? And what about the werewolf shapeshifter and his coyote gang that's threatening their small Maine town?
Nick told the grumpy wizard that he can't read, but he actually can, and the books in the wizard's library--when they're not lecturing him on patience and proper magical protocols--are very helpful, responding to his thoughts and actions. The odd townspeople get involved in the story as well, and it turns out the town has a particularly interesting history.
2.5 stars for this short story, free on Tor.com. karen (in her review thread for this story) suggested to me that that I needed to look deeper for mea2.5 stars for this short story, free on Tor.com. karen (in her review thread for this story) suggested to me that that I needed to look deeper for meaning, when I was initially very dismissive of this story. I did. I even read the whole thing a second time. I'm still feeling dismissive. :p But YMMV.
A young wife, who seems to have recently moved with her husband into a new home, struggles with visions of flocks of starlings that flutter all around her and whisper with a thousand shadowy voices. She develops a mistrust of her apparently loving and concerned husband, who is blending into a terrifying starling king type of figure in her mind. She feels totally unable to communicate with him or her friend about her troubled mind and heart. Meanwhile, a terrifying voice speaks to her of fearfully running through a cornfield, of monsters waiting for her and calling to her in the dark, and of debts owed.
“Shape Without Form, Shade Without Color” (the title is taken from a line in T.S. Eliot’s 1925 poem “The Hollow Men”) is highly fantastical on one level. There’s some interesting imagery here, including a creepy cornfield element, perhaps inspired by Stephen King’s “Children of the Corn,” as well as terrifying birds that Hitchcock would have approved of. But once you cut through all of the bird imagery and evocative language, it’s entirely straightforward at its heart: the story of a mentally disturbed woman who’s gradually going over the edge. I don’t believe this is even a fantasy, except to the extent we’re getting inside of the narrator’s head.
The narrator’s thoughts on her mental illness are occasionally intriguing:
Some of us want the light left on. But others of us want to surrender to the darkness. Everyone is eager for us to get over it. What we represent. What we are. What they sense. In our terror we become terrifying.
While I felt pity for the narrator and sympathy for her husband, ultimately this story failed to particularly interest or move me, and it didn’t especially illuminate the problem of mental illness....more
Now available! 4.5 stars. Final review, first posted on Fantasy Literature:
Emmaline knows a secret: Briar Hill, a Shropshire mansion turned into a chiNow available! 4.5 stars. Final review, first posted on Fantasy Literature:
Emmaline knows a secret: Briar Hill, a Shropshire mansion turned into a children’s hospital during World War II, has beautiful winged horses that live in the mirrors of its elegant rooms. They move in and out of the mirror-rooms, walking through doorways, nosing half-finished cups of tea. But only Emmaline can see them, and she keeps the secret to herself. She knows the boys like Benny and Jack will tease her mercilessly if they knew. She doesn’t even tell her best friend Anna, who’s the most ill person at the hospital, for fear that she’ll distress Anna.
One day Benny steals a treasured piece of chocolate from Emmaline and eats it. Upset, Emmaline runs outside and (breaking the hospital rules) climbs over the ivy of a walled garden on the grounds. Inside the abandoned garden, a beautiful white horse with a soft gray muzzle, a star-like blaze of dark hair between her eyes, and snow-white wings approaches her. Emmaline notices that the horse’s wing is hurt and figures that the horse must have somehow come into our world from the mirror world to find a place of healing.
Soon Emmaline begins finding written messages in the garden, signed by the Horse Lord, telling her that this winged horse, Foxfire, needs her help to avoid being captured by the sinister Black Horse that flies about the hospital by night, hunting for Foxfire in the colorless moonlight. Before the moon is full again in two weeks, the Horse Lord’s message tells Emmaline, she must surround Foxfire with large, colorful objects, one for each color of the rainbow, to create a spectral shield that will protect Foxfire from the Black Horse, whose eyes are burned by color. But there are very few bright colors in Emmaline’s drab world.
Everything at Briar Hill is white snow and gray stone. It is the dull browns and greens of soldiers’ uniforms, and the black of nuns’ habits. No wonder we have drawn the Black Horse straight to us. Our world is colorless midwinter.
This will be a huge challenge for Emmaline. But the Horse Lord’s messages, always signed “Ride true,” encourage her to do her best.
The Secret Horses of Briar Hill is a gem of a middle grade book, wondrous and bittersweet. Surrounded by sickness, death and fear, and burdened by traumatic memories, Emmaline treasures her glimpses of the mirrored horses and her growing bond with Foxfire. The search for brightly colored objects at the Horse Lord’s behest gives her a new purpose, but it also leads her into trouble and some questionable decisions, and even into danger.
Megan Shepherd gracefully captures the atmosphere of this one small corner of the World War II conflict, children with tuberculosis who were evacuated to hospitals and wards in the British country. Emmaline calls tuberculosis the “stillwaters,” partly because she feels that her lungs are as “still and thick as swamp water,” running deep within Emmaline’s body. But it’s also a reminder that of the proverb that still waters run deep, and that children and teens (not to mention older people) may be struggling with deep, hidden troubles ― whether physical sickness or other types of distress ― that may not be visible to others.
As the plot unfolds, we gradually learn more about Emmaline’s past and how that affects her now, which sheds new possible interpretations on Emmaline’s experiences. One of the intriguing aspects of The Secret Horses of Briar Hill is that it’s unusually ambiguous for a middle grade book. There are different possible interpretations of the events related by Emmaline: this might be a truly magical story, or it might be that the winged horses exist only in Emmaline’s imagination. Readers will need to decide for themselves what they believe actually happened. In some books this ambiguity would frustrate me, but here I found it lovely and emotionally touching.
The Secret Horses of Briar Hill deals with deeply serious issues but is delightfully imaginative at the same time. It’s a timeless story, combining fantasy and magic with sometimes dark realities. This book deals with some difficult subject matter but does so in a way that isn’t too ponderous or distressing for young readers, and inspires us to keep hope, to follow our dreams. To ride true.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher, Delacorte Press, in exchange for a review. Thank you!...more
4.5 stars, rounding up. (Note: This review is just for the title story, which you can listen to here: https://podcastle.org/2011/07/12/podc.... GR mer4.5 stars, rounding up. (Note: This review is just for the title story, which you can listen to here: https://podcastle.org/2011/07/12/podc.... GR merged my single short story review into this collection. I've read several of the other stories online - they're all excellent. I'd love to read this whole collection but haven't gotten to it yet.) A young boy, the son of an American father and a Chinese immigrant mother, discovers that his mother has the magical gift of making origami animals that live. She makes him a lion, Laohu, a shark, and other paper animals that play and chase around their home.
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The details of his childhood, playing with his living origami menagerie, are delightful:
Once, the water buffalo jumped into a dish of soy sauce on the table at dinner. (He wanted to wallow, like a real water buffalo.) I picked him out quickly but the capillary action had already pulled the dark liquid high up into his legs. The sauce-softened legs would not hold him up, and he collapsed onto the table. I dried him out in the sun, but his legs became crooked after that, and he ran around with a limp. Mom eventually wrapped his legs in saran wrap so that he could wallow to his heart’s content (just not in soy sauce).
But as the boy grows older, he experiences the prejudices that those who are different often suffer. Because of his loathing of everything that makes him other, he also grows ashamed of, and then distant from, his very Chinese mother.
This short story hit me hard. I was weeping by the time I finished it (the second time a story made me cry that day -- the other one was The Things We Keep). So I made my 17 year old daughter read it while we were sitting around for half an hour, waiting for her violin recital to start. I felt kind of badly for making her tear up and risk ruining her makeup right before going on stage, but she loved it as well.
I can see why some readers fault this as being overly sentimental, but sometimes we need stories that hit us in the heart and make us appreciate people we've taken for granted. And this story will stick with me.
“Speak English to him,” Dad said to Mom... “You have to. I’ve been too easy on you. Jack needs to fit in.”
Mom looked at him. “If I say ‘love,’ I feel here.” She pointed to her lips. “If I say ‘ai,’ I feel here.” She put her hand over her heart.
3.75 stars. This book is basically a series of vignettes from a six month period in the life of a spunky, independent 11 year old girl living in Texas3.75 stars. This book is basically a series of vignettes from a six month period in the life of a spunky, independent 11 year old girl living in Texas in 1899. Calpurnia Virginia (Callie Vee) Tate yearns for more than the life of a debutante and housewife that she already sees her mother herding her toward. She unexpectedly finds a kindred spirit in her scientifically-minded grandfather, who encourages her inquisitive character and teaches her, not just about scientific observation, but about great women scientists. The quotes from Charles Darwin at the beginning of each chapter have an interesting and often amusing connection to the events occurring in that chapter.
When Callie first looks into her grandfather's microscope at a drop of river water, you can see the world opening up for her:
A teeming, swirling world of enormous, wriggling creatures burst into my vision, scaring the daylights out of me. ... Something with many tiny hairs rowed past at high speed; something else with a lashing tail whipped by; a tumbling barbed sphere like a medieval mace rolled past; delicate, filmy ghostlike shadows flitted in and out of the field. It was chaotic, it was wild, it was . . . the most amazing thing I'd ever seen.
"This is what I swim in?" I said, wishing I didn't know.
This middle grade book reminds me of the Little House books of Laura Ingalls Wilder, but with more of a feminist slant. There's not much of a plot here, and what there is of it is kind of meandering and unresolved, but Callie is a sympathetic and engaging character, her brothers were a hoot (even if they seemed pretty much interchangeable to Callie's grandfather and to me), and her life and experiences in a small town in turn-of-the-century Texas felt very real.
Some fine research went into the writing of this book. I particularly liked the scenes of celebrating the turn of the century, Callie and brother drinking the new drink Coca-Cola (back when the "Coca" part of the name really meant something!), and winning ribbons at the county fair. Callie and her friend Lula have a hilarious talk about getting married, from an eleven year old's perspective:
"You have to let your husband kiss you once you're married. And you have to kiss him back."
"No," she said.
"Yes." I nodded, as if I knew everything there was to know about husbands and wives kissing. "That's what they do together."
"Do you have to?"
"Oh, absolutely. It's the law."
"I never heard of that law," she said dubiously.
"It's true, it's Texas law."
I wish Callie and the novel hadn't been quite so dismissive of homemaking--Callie's mother has seven children and regularly resorts to imbibing a tonic with a high alcoholic content to get her through the day, and Callie can't imagine anything worse than being a debutante and then a housewife, even though her family is wealthy enough to have several servants--but on the other hand I'm a firm believer in opportunities and choices for women, and deeply appreciate the sacrifices made by women in prior generations that have enabled us to have so many more rights and options for our lives today. This book is a good reminder for young readers, and for all of us, of the importance of having opportunities to pursue our dreams....more
On the one hand: cats! On the other hand: animal cruelty. On the other, other hand ...
This is an odd little H.P. Lovecraft tale, only ten paragraphs lOn the one hand: cats! On the other hand: animal cruelty. On the other, other hand ...
This is an odd little H.P. Lovecraft tale, only ten paragraphs long, told in a portentous voice:
It is said that in Ulthar, which lies beyond the river Skai, no man may kill a cat; and this I can verily believe as I gaze upon him who sitteth purring before the fire. For the cat is cryptic, and close to strange things which men cannot see. He is the soul of antique Aegyptus, and bearer of tales from forgotten cities in Meroe and Ophir. He is the kin of the jungle’s lords, and heir to the secrets of hoary and sinister Africa. The Sphinx is his cousin, and he speaks her language; but he is more ancient than the Sphinx, and remembers that which she hath forgotten.
It's a promising start, but I felt like it went downhill from there. There's a highly creepy old couple, doing ... something vague but awful ... to any of the village cats they can get their hands on, and the sheeplike villagers, unwilling to do anything about this cruel behavior. Things come to a head in a gruesome, otherworldly kind of way, as so often happens with Lovecraft.
And that's all I'll say about that, since you can easily read this tidbit for yourself, except that it never pays to mess with cats, and those who do will inevitably come to a horrific and well-deserved end.
I felt like this was a pretty thin tale, but my GR friends Althea Ann and Lyn really liked this one, so check out their reviews.
Tadiana ✩Night Owl☽
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