News & Thoughts

The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker. 2/5.
Barker tells the story of the Trojan War from the view of Briseis, the Trojan woman claimed by Achilles whose later claiming by Agamemnon results in Achilles’ famous sulking in his tent and refusing to fight. Using both first person and omniscient POVs, Barker seeks to tell of the silent women taken in the war. While the conceit is a great one, the characters mainly feel tired and shallowly created. The women are quite stock: the sex worker, the healer, the Stockholm Syndrome victim. Briseis herself is bland: we learn little of her actual character, her likes, her dislikes. She reports her sections in a flat, pragmatic manner. Perhaps this is intended to illustrate the numbing effects of war, but it didn’t work for me as such. Where the novel is most compelling is in the descriptions of the ghastly and gruesome aspects of the war; I ended up feeling pity and horror for Hector and Priam than the women.

White Stag by Kara Barbieri. 1/5.
A young woman with both goblin and human traits is captured, raped, and mutilated by goblins. Given to a nicer goblin, she develops Stockholm Syndrome and falls in love with her “master,” who exploits the power inequality of their relationship by taking her as his lover and forcing her to help him fight to become the supreme ruler of the goblins. Psychologically very disturbing, this novel also reinforces the problematic tropes of light=good and dark=bad, that gender identity is chosen, and that adult women are always rivals with one another.

How to Fracture a Fairy Tale by Jane Yolen. 1/5.
Jane Yolen is, as many know, an award-winning and oft-hailed writer of fantasy. However, her work has never stuck with me much, and I wanted to read this collection, which includes work from throughout her career and author’s notes on each story, as well as a poem for each story, to try to figure out why. Having read the book, I find her work rather dated and stuck in a 1970s ethos of second-wave feminism, and where she tries for inclusivity–borrowing Appalachian speech patterns and the like–her work comes off as being appropriative. I think it’s also aimed for readers we don’t really have anymore: young readers who have never heard a fairy tale from the “villain’s” POV; readers to whom the hint of sex is titillating, and who only know the cliches of heternormativity; readers who have grown up with characters and plots more sophisticated than what Yolen delivers. I wanted to find stories here that really stood out, that I could recommend to young readers and even older or more experienced readers who like subversions of the norm, but Yolen’s writing is prosaic and dull, the issues she deals with are old and tired, and there’s unfortunately little magic to be found here.

Edinburgh Dusk by Carole Lawrence. 2/5.
A decent enough procedural mystery, with added drama (and length) in the form of a theater group performing Hamlet, the protagonist’s alcoholic brother, their formidable aunt, and other side stories. Plenty of readers will enjoy it, but it wasn’t my cup of tea–too many stock characters, motives, and scenes.

The Thieftaker’s Trek by Joan S. Sumner. 2/5.
An interesting concept marred by clunky writing. There’s too much exposition in the dialogue, which sounds artificial and anachronistic; the characters are mostly cardboard and none are charismatic enough to garner the reader’s interest or sympathy; and several scenes do nothing to move the plot along but seem to hint that the author is writing more of a screen treatment than a novel.

The Bird King by G. Willow Wilson. 5/5.
This is a elegant, whimsical, history-rich, and satisfying novel of a young concubine and her best friend, a magical mapmaker, who escape the court of their sultan and the Inquisition with the help of a crafty djinn. The characters are well-drawn and complex, and the world–of courts, travelers, cities, seas, and islands–Wilson creates is a detailed and full of nuance and depth. There are surprises and unforeseen twists, and the ending is also a beginning that will keep readers thinking about the book for a long time.

Toil & Trouble by Tess Sharpe; Jessica Spotswood. 5/5.
This is a great collection of stories about witches, and not just the usual old-white-lady-doing-evil-deeds kind. The witches in Toil and Trouble are children, widows, teenagers, students, skateboarders, artists, city-dwellers, priestesses, farmers, and more, and their magics are as unique and interesting and fresh as they are. I loved this and am recommending it to anyone ages about 8 and up.

Virgil Wander by Leif Enger. 5/5.
A luminous, beguiling, charming book. Virgil Wander drives his car off a cliff in his small Midwestern town; saved by am acquaintance, his new life becomes one of wonder and discovery. Virgil’s brush with death leaves him with missing adjectives but new people in his life, including the widow, son, and father of the town’s most famous resident, who vanished a dozen years before; the town’s celebrity, an unsettling and manipulative man; and others. The entire novel is like a poem, something to be read and re-read and savored.

Unholy Land by Lavie Tidhar. 5/5.
Using the Kabbalah’s concept of sefirot, or mystical and creative forces that change the world, as a framework, Tidhar creates multiple tantalizing and richly detailed worlds through which his characters slip. Following three characters who have slipped between various worlds, in which a Jewish homeland has been established in differing places and through differing means, the novel is both a mystery and a meditation on the appeal of “what-ifs” and “might-have-beens” to readers, writers, and politicians.

Night and Silence by Seanan McGuire. 5/5.
This series just gets better and better. In this newest installment, faerie knight October Daye deals with the estrangement of her lover, the kidnap of her daughter (yes, again, but wait–it’s actually ok and not totally trite!), and learning some new family history. Although the kidnapping of Gillian, Daye’s daughter, was a previous plot point, in this episode the kidnap leads to changes in Daye’s world that I never expected and that work remarkably well with the series universe and previous plotlines. We also get introduced to a new character who begins as a threat and becomes…a possible future ally, and we get lots of the Luidaeg, who is one of the best characters in any fantasy world.

The Black God’s Drums by P. Djèlí Clark. 5/5
An outstanding fantasy novella set in an intriguing alternate-world New Orleans, where politics, orisha, street smarts, and airships mix. The characters are written well enough to grow beyond their generic trappings (the unbelievably talented street kid, the airship captain with an exciting and mysterious past) and become compelling. I’m looking forward to reading more from this author and about these characters and this world.

Deep Roots by Ruthanna Emrys. 4/5
Ruthanna Emrys’s *Deep Roots* is the smart and nuanced sequel to her *Winter Tide*. She does a brilliant job of turning Lovecraft’s Mythos on its head through beautiful writing, great character development, and thoughtful engagement with the period.

Guardian by A. J. Hartley. 5/5.
Guardian is the third installment in A. J. Hartley’s outstanding series that began with Steeplejack. Guardian returns readers to the city-state Bar-Selehm, where protagonist Anglet Sutonga, a smart and tactically brilliant young woman, finds herself grappling with a fascist take-over of the government. Able to climb high above the city and gather information from a variety of sources on the ground, Ang works to protect her community, political leaders, and friends. Hartley’s writing is clear and exciting, and often eloquent, a rare thing in thrillers. While Guardian will get marketed as “YA,” in part for its obvious (but never pedantic) messages about racism, sexism, politics, voting, and resistance in our own world, the book–and the entire, beautifully-crafted series–should appeal to readers of all ages. Quite honestly, I’d like to put this series in the hands of everyone in the US capable of reading it.