Into the Woods - Lyn Gardner

Lyn Gardner's Into the Woods is an interesting tale about three sisters that incorporates a host of familiar fairy tale elements (and numerous other pop culture references) that are used in interesting ways.

The story is both a quest and a rescue, although the two often merge, double up and split apart again. Aurora (almost 16), Storm and baby Anything Eden are almost-orphans (their mother died after giving birth to Anything and their father has disappeared to who-knows-where). The three live in a dilapidated manor house called Eden End. The villain of the piece is a man called Dr DeWilde, who is usually accompanied by at least half a dozen wolves and who needs a constant supply of plump children to work in the underground gemstone mine beneath Piper's Peak. His assistant in acquiring such children is a witch named Bee Bumble, who lives in rather more upmarket version of the gingerbread house. She finds children for DeWilde and fattens them up so that DeWilde can enslave them.

Storm encounters a boy named Kit, who has a splinter of ice in his heart (making him akin to Hans Christian Andersen's Kay). Kit's quest is to get his hands on a magic pipe bequeathed to Storm by her dying mother. Kit is working, sometimes reluctantly, for DeWilde - although he helps the two older girls on more than one occasion...

The girls' great-grandmother is an ogress who, in common with so many post-modern monsters (or so it appears), turns out to be completely hopeless at being bad. A key part of her job description involves eating children, but she's actually a strict vegetarian with a penchant for jelly babies (which she eats feet-first to stop them running away !), who wants nothing more than to end her days in the sunshine-filled garden of Eden End.

The key part of the story involves DeWilde's nefarious attempts to get Storm's magical pipe from her since he cannot take it from her by force without it burning him, he must either be given it freely (and with love) or win it from Storm. DeWilde is the Pied Piper and wants the pipe for himself as it contains great power - it can persuade anyone who hears it to do exactly what the player most wishes for or wants.

To accompany Gardner's intertextual tale are some funny and clever drawings by Mini Grey, for example: the illustratation of the books that DeWilde has on his shelves includes I Was a Rat by one P Pullman and the collected works of Browning !

This book, if it is about one thing in particular, is about the way in which an appetite, whether for sweets, stories, love or home, can send one off on adventures that lead, quite often, back to the place where the characters (and the reader) first started. There's a hint too, that this book may have a sequel - the words "The End" are followed by a question mark, and I'd be interested to see if Gardner could sustain the same intertextual mix for a sequel.

Into the Woods is out in the US in June 2007.

New Permanent Gallery for Children's Illustration

The Illustration Cupboard, Britain’s only specialist dealer in contemporary book illustration, last week opened a brand new gallery space in central London. The new space is dedicated to exhibiting and selling original artwork by more than 100 different artists, and is the first of its kind. With exhibition space on three floors, this central London gallery will display a constant and revolving programme throughout the year of single artists shows, specialist events, guest exhibitions from around the world, family afternoons and author signings.

The Illustration Cupboard provides a unique opportunity for collectors and enthusiasts to acquire original artwork by many best selling and internationally acclaimed artists, as well as the chance to purchase signed first edition books and limited edition prints. The Illustration Cupboard was established in 1995 by John Huddy, a former specialist in Old Masters who trained at Christie's, St James's, and who came to illustration through a close family connection in publishing. More and more people are appreciating the value of modern illustration both as an investment and something that can be passed from generation to generation.

The Illustration Cupboard gallery will be at 22 Bury Street, London SW1 with opening hours as follows:

Monday to Friday 10am to 6pm
Thursdays 10am to 7pm until Christmas
Saturdays 11am to 5pm until Christmas

You will find more information on the gallery's website (which is Flash enabled).

The Stones of Muncaster Cathedral - Robert Westall

Robert Westall's The Stones of Muncaster Cathedral is actually two supernatural stories in one volume. The titular tale is set in the early 1990s, and is a first-person narrative which contains a fair amount of Northern English dialect. The story is recounted by Joe Clarke, a steeplejack who agrees to work on the restoration of the southwest tower of Muncaster Cathedral. As he works, he senses in the very stonework of the tower itself, a sinister force that appears to emanate from one extra demonic-looking gargoyle. Joe's concerns are heightened when he has a nightmare about his eight year old son, Kevin, being trapped up the tower; the nightmare wakes him, screaming in his bed. The next night, Joe's fears are confirmed when Kevin sleepwalks to the tower, but is picked up by the police as he's only wearing his pyjama top. He's taken to the hospital where he's heard speaking in medieaval Latin, although he's never learnt the language, then after he wakes up, he's kept in for a few days observation. In the meantime, Joe and his mate Billy continue their work on the tower, and Joe starts digging into the history of the tower, talking to both the local museum curator and a local vicar, the Rev. Morris, whom Joe initially despises as one of the "happy-clappy" sort. Whilst Joe and Billy are working on the tower, they find the body of another little boy, and Joe realises that something really sinister is going on. He is convinced that Kevin woke up because the tower had found itself another victim.

Joe discovers that the demonic gargoyle on the south west tower looks like the master mason responsible for getting the tower built in the 14th century, and his worries persuade the vicar to do some more investigating. In the meantime, after Kevin is allowed to go home from the hospital, he attempts to go to the tower again, but this time his mum and dad manage to stop him from getting out of the house, and they tie him up and get him into the car to take him to Joe's sister-in-law in mid-Wales. Once they get Kevin across the River Severn, he comes out of his trance; Joe realises that Black Magic is at work when they start to head back home and Kevin goes back into a trance the minute they re-cross the river into England.

With Kevin safely away in Wales, Joe, together with a grumpy Detective-Sergeant named Allardyce and the Reverend Morris, goes through the cathedral's history and establishes just what Jacapo Mancini of Milan did to keep the tower up against the power of the "serpent in the sand" (an underground spring) that kept making the foundations give way as it was being built. The three of them find the knowledge that Joe needs to destroy the power of the bloodthirsty gargoyle for once and all.

The second story, Brangwyn Gardens, is set in London in 1955, where student Harry Shaftoe finds a girl's wartime diary and a photograph in the attic of his lodgings in Brangwyn Gardens. He becomes obsessed with the girl, whose diary reveals that she longs to find a dark and dangerous man somewhere in the Blitz. He convinces himself that she is dead, but he hears her talking with her friends, smells her scent in the house, and even hears the noise of the Blitz outside the house. Harry becomes mesmerised and longs to satisfy her remorseless appetite for a man, but how far can he go without being lost in the past ?

Of these two tales, the first was by far the more chilling for me, whilst I guessed reasonably early on, just what was going on in the second tale.

YA Author bemoans role of adults in YA fiction

The The UK SF Book News Network carries an interesting piece about the role of adults in YA novels. First time YA author, Jay Amory, comments:

"It's the adult characters! They're only there to be ignored. They introduce the young protagonist into the action then step back and play no further part, except maybe at the end. That doesn't strike me as true. Drama-wise, it helps to have your teenage heroes and heroines adrift for a while, developing their skills and learning to fend for themselves, but not for the entire book. YA authors do everything they can to remove grownups from the mix, but that, to me, hits an unrealistic note, and I prefer a bit of realism in my fantasy."

Amory finds J K Rowling's Harry Potter books, to be a prime example of this problem:

"Dumbledore is presented as this godlike, nearly omnipotent figure. He always knows what's going on. Yet in each book he leaves Harry to stumble and bumble along and get into dreadful, life-threatening scrapes for several hundred pages, then emerges at the end to resolve everything, literally with a wave of his wand. It's unfair, to say the least. He ought to pitch in right at the start. If he truly cared about Harry, he would. In fact, someone should report Dumbledore to the education board for cruelty. I'd say Harry's Muggle rights are being infringed!"

In Amory's The Fledging of Az Gabrielson, the first volume in his Clouded World series, the teen hero is in more need of help than most teen heroes.

"Az is a kid who's been born in an environment where everyone has wings … except him," Amory says. "In effect, he's disabled. He can't fly, and the sky-cities his people, the Airborn, inhabit are designed for those who can. He is looked on as a freak and somewhat resented by certain members of his race. This is the obstacle he's had to overcome all his life – until he gets recruited by the Airborn leadership for a mission, one for which he is uniquely suited. The trouble is, Az has a bit of a chip on his shoulder about his winglessness, understandably. Not only does this make him a reluctant hero, it puts him at odds with everyone around him, especially the adults."

You can read the full story at the link above.

Do readers of YA fiction agree with Amory that adults should be more involved in YA novels ? Or will it put off the readers at whom the books are marketed ?

Blog Logo

I'm toying with the idea of adding a logo to my Blog, and have come up with a couple of designs. I'd be interested to know what people think of them - do you prefer one more than the other, or just dislike them both ? The font style of the second one will look familiar to Buffy fans - it's called "Buffied" !





(I'm not quite sure why the first one is coming out so small - it's actually bigger than the second one when viewed in my photo editing program !)

Stones of Abraxas - K Osborn Sullivan

K Osborn Sullivan's Stones of Abraxas was rather disappointing. Before reading it, I had seen a review which revealed that unlike most children's quest fantasy tales, the two protagonists go off on a magical quest and their parents go too. I had high hopes that it would prove to be a subgenre-busting debut novel, but it was not to be.

David Stanhope is 12 years old and about to start the long summer vacation. He enjoys squabbling with his 14 year old sister, Amanda; they live in the suburbs of Chicago with their parents. His mother is the head librarian at his middle school and his father is the shop teacher at the high school. We're told this, and a great deal more about David, his family, friends, and neighbours in the first chapter of Stones of Abraxas, but most of the information there proves irrelevant as it's barely mentioned again, which is frustrating. Instead, whilst the children are helping their mother to find their camping gear (their father is at an out-of-town teacher's conference), in preparation for spending a month at their cottage that's badly in need of repair, they find a large ruby on a chain, which it turns out to have unexpected powers. It transports them to an alternate world, known as Abraxas, where different species control different-coloured Stones. If the Stones of Abraxas are joined with a large golden shield, then the evil magician, Adrian the Deceiver, will use them to make him invulnerable. At this point, I nearly stopped reading, Whoever heard of an evil magician named "Adrian" ? Sullivan invented some quite extraordinary names, so why not use one of them for the evil magician ? Was she trying to make the point that even the mundane can be evil ? I don't know, but I do know that I could not take seriously a bad guy named Adrian as I kept thinking of Sue Townsend's Adrian Mole !

I also could not see the point of the children's parents coming to Abraxas with them, since both of them largely ignored their children in order to attend meetings of the Shield Council, who are desperate to find ways of stopping Adrian from acquiring the Ruby, or else they reverted to their Terran selves, with Dad roaming around looking for the Abraxan equivalent of electronic bugging devices, and Mom spending hours in the library, looking for a book that explained how to destroy the Stones without destroying both the worlds. The adults are worried as it's clear there's a spy in Annwyn Castle (and the spy was flagged up so far in advance I'd have been more surprised if the person who was unmasked had been someone else), but the children are still allowed to roam around with whomever they choose and wherever they please, with the result that they nearly get themselves killed on occasion.

I realise this is Sullivan's first book (she's planning a series of five books set in this world) and that first books are rarely brilliant, but I was disappointed that it didn't live up to its potential. I've read some brilliant books this year, several of them Cybils nominations, that have gripped me from start to finish, and left me desperate for more, but this book was not one of them. Of course, I'm just one reader, and other readers may find much to enjoy in this book, so don't let my disappointment with it put you off trying it for yourself. I really hope that Sullivan's later books live up to the potential of this one.

Firefly Quote of the Week

Zoe: Sir, I know she's unpredictable, but I don't think she'd harm anyone.
Jayne: Butcher's knife!
Zoe: Anyone we can't spare.

("Objects in Space", Season 1)

The Edge of the Forest - November issue

The November edition of The Edge of the Forest is now online. Here's a quick run down of what's over there this month:

• New this month is Sounds from the Forest, a podcast column produced by Andrea and Mark of Just One More Book!! You can find out what the folks at the Classof2k7 are doing.
  
• Little Willow brings us the Blogging Writer interview, speaking with Lisa Yee.
  
• There's an interview with Sebastian Meschenmoser, author of Learning to Fly, by Kelly Herold.
  
• Pam Coughlan continues her series on funny books for kids with Bring on the Funny III - this month she's recommended hilarious books for teenagers.
• Adrienne Furness recommends board books for the youngest readers in The Latest in Board Book Technology.
  
• Kim Winters contributes two columns this month, speaking to Illinois SCBWI members for What's in their Backpacks? and children's writer, Carolyn Crimi, for A Day in the Life.
  
• And I consider Terry Pratchett's Tiffany Aching series

.

In addition to this, there are reviews in all categories — from Picture book to Young Adult.

The Kid Picks this month is actually Teen Picks as Little Willow talks books with some high school students.

Don't forget to subscribe to The Edge of the Forest with the Subscribe feature. Just enter your name and email address and you will receive notification of when each new issue is published.

The Edge of the Forest will return December 18 with our final issue for 2006.

My Swordhand Is Singing - Marcus Sedgwick

From the title onwards, Marcus Sedgwick's My Swordhand is Singing is a poetic tale set in the isolated, hostile environment of the forests of seventeenth century Romania. It tells the story of the woodcutter Tomas and his teenage son, Peter, who are outsiders in the village of Chust. The pair cannot seem to find a place to settle, although they have spent longer in Chust than anywhere else before, and Peter is starting to put down some roots, beginning a tentative romance with Agnes, the daughter of the draper. However, Tomas is keeping secrets from his son (such as what is hidden in the long wooden box that Tomas hides under his mattress), and strange and menacing things are happening in Chust: a man who died recently in mysterious circumstances is said to be visiting his widow at night, and she is looking pale and weak as a consequence. Something is very, very wrong in Chust.

In an author's note, Sedgwick notes that there are many old vampire legends, which all tell different stories, some of them contradicting others. In some of the legends, the undead are the fang-toothed vampires of Hammer Horror movies, whilst in others they are more like zombie flesh-eaters, and in still others they are werewolves. Sedgwick explains that My Swordhand Is Singing is inspired by all these varied and ancient Eastern European legends of vampires, and combines them them to make a new retelling.

Sedgwick writes with a concise precision that still allows for poetic expression, such as this:

There was nothing for Tomas now.
Not the singing.
Not the square.
Not the dead.
Not even Sultan.
Just the sword, that flew so fast that the air itself was cut in two.
But the hands grasped and grappled and there were too many. He was pulled from Sultan's back landing clumsily in the mud.
From a seemingly vast distance, he heard a cry.
'Father!'
Peter. It was his son, Peter, sprinting to be beside him in a moment. Dimly, Tomas saw Peter snatch the sword from the ground and begin to swing it wildly about him. The hostages [vampires] faltered, shocked by the fluid energy of the boy, by his strength.
Tomas' eyes were closed, but in his mind he could see Peter twisting and stroking the blade from side to side.
'That's it,' he whispered. 'That's it. Feel it.'
In his heart, he hread Peter's reply.
'Yes, Father. My swordhand is singing.' (pp. 187-88)

Sedgwick doesn't waste words as he paints a chilling Gothic picture of the fight between good and evil. My Swordhand Is Singing is tense, unnerving and beautifully structured so that every element is woven into the tale in a seamless manner. This tale features love, courage, regret, loss, and redemption, plus a strong dose of the supernatural. This is definitely one of the best books I've read this year.

Flushed Away movie review

One of my local cinemas was previewing Flushed Away the new Aardman Animation/Dreamworks CGI movie this weekend, so I snuck away from the Cybils longlist for a couple of hours to go and catch the last preview before the film opens on Friday. And as I'd expected of the Oscar-winning Aardman, this film was a joy to see. The movie tells the story of pampered pet rat, Roddy (Hugh Jackman), who is flushed down the toilet of his palatial Kensington home by smart sewer-rat, Sid (Shane Richie) and ends up in Ratropolis. There Roddy meets Rita (Kate Winslet), an enterprising scavenger who works the sewers in her faithful boat, the Jammy Dodger. Roddy immediately wants out, or rather, up; Rita wants to be paid for her trouble; and, speaking of trouble, the villainous Toad (Ian McKellan) - who royally despises the rats - and wants them iced... literally. The Toad dispatches his two hapless hench-rats, Spike (Andy Serkis) and Whitey (Bill Nighy), to get the job done but when they fail, the Toad has no choice but to send to France for his cousin - that dreaded mercenary, Le Frog (Jean Reno).

I hardly stopped laughing from start to finish whilst watching this film. From the opening, where Roddy is looking in the wardrobe for an outfit to wear and discards a wizard's outfit (referencing The Lord of the Rings in which Ian McKellan played Gandalf), a blue and yellow shirt (worn by Wolverine, played by Hugh Jackman in the movies, in the comic), and a shirt and green knitted sleeveless sweater (as worn by Wallace in the Wallace and Gromit films made by Aardman), through the orange fish who asks Roddy: "Have you seen my Dad" (referencing Finding Nemo, made by rival animation company Pixar), to the Toad opening his freezer full of enemies and do-gooders encased in blocks of ice, including a rat dressed as Han Solo (referencing Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back). Then there are the amazing singing slugs, who provide sound effects, spooky horror-style music, and emotional ballads as appropriate - and which promoted the last line of the credits to read "No slugs were a-salted in the making of this film."

Then there are the various chases, including one which features the Toad's hench-rats riding egg-beaters down the sewer, one of whom is stopped by a packet of Instant Whip...

The Beasts of Clawstone Castle - Eva Ibbotson

Eva Ibboton's The Beasts of Clawstone Castle is a ghost story with a difference. Madlyn and Rollo are sent by their parents to stay with their Great Uncle George and Great Aunt Emily at Clawstone Castle. Despite their reluctance to leave London, the children soon fall in love with both the Castle and its rather eccentric, penniless inhabitants. Sir George is rather grumpy and limps; his sister Emily is a rather mousey, timid woman, whilst Cousin Howard is positively reclusive and won't talk to anyone whom he has not known for at least 20 years and he hardly ever leaves his library anyway. But, the children are most enchanted by the Cattle of Clawstone Park, a herd of rare and beautiful beasts, who are pure white and completely wild. No one knows where they originally came from, but the owners of Clawstone Castle have always protected them - it's their family duty, even though it's very expensive. Whilst the castle continues to crumble away, Madlyn and Rollo devise a money-raising scheme that will ensure far more visitors on Open Days. The pair, along with Ned Grove, the son of the housekeeper at the Castle, they interview a number of ghosts who include a Bloodstained Bride, Mr Smith the one-eyed skeleton, an aristocrat whose heart is constantly being gnawed by a rat, an Indian girl who was accidentally sawn in half for real as part of a circus magic act, and a disembodied pair of dancing feet. Together they turn Clawstone into a genuine haunted house, but, as the money begins to roll in, the ruthless Lord Trembellow, who was hoping to see Clawstone Castle go out of business so that he could buy the land for building houses, is plotting to carry out a sinister scheme. Trembellow's own place, Trembellow Towers, becomes less popular as the popularity of Clawstone Castle increases, so he puts in motion his plan which threatens the very existence of the fabled Beasts of Clawstone Castle. It's up to the three children and their new ghostly friends to save them, if they can...

The Beasts of Clawstone Castle is also available from Amazon.com.

Cybils - the SF & Fantasy long list

It occurs to me that I've been remiss in not yet posting the full long list of the Cybils nominations for the SF and Fantasy category. So here it is:

A Darkling Plain by Philip Reeve
Abadazad: The Road to Inconceivable by J.M. DeMatteis, Mike Ploog
Agent Boo: The Littlest Agent by Alex De Campi
The Amazing Flight of Darius Frobisher by Bill Harley
Anatopsis by Chris Abouzeid (My Review)
Artemis Fowl: The Lost Colony by Eoin Colfer
AutumnQuest by Terie Garrison
Avielle of Rhia by Dia Calhoun
The Beast of Noor by Janet Lee Carey
The Beasts of Clawstone Castle by Eva Ibbotson (My Review)
Beka Cooper: Terrier by Tamora Pierce
Bella at Midnight by Diane Stanley
Blue Bloods by Melissa de la Cruz
The Book of Story Beginnings by Kristin Kladstrup (My Review)
Braced2Bite by Serena Robar
Changeling by Delia Sherman
Charlie Bone And The Hidden King by Jenny Nimmo
Corbenic by Catherine Fisher (My Spoiler Review)
Death of a Ghost by Charles Butler (My Review, My Spoiler Review)
Devilish by Maureen Johnson
Dream Spinner by Bonnie Dobkin
Endymion Spring by Matthew Skelton (My Review)
Enemies by Christopher Golden and Ford Lytle Gilmore
Erec Rex: The Dragon's Eye by Kaza Kingsley
Evil Star by Anthony Horowitz
The Eye Pocket: The Fantastic Society of Peculiar Adventurers by E J Crow
Fablehaven by Brandon Mull
Fairest by Gail Carson Levine
The Fetch by Chris Humphreys
The Floating Island by Elizabeth Haydon
Gideon: The Cutpurse by Linda Buckley-Archer (My Review)
Gilda Joyce, and the Ladies of the Lake by Jennifer Allison
Golden by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
The Good Fairies of New York by Martin Millar
Gossamer by Lois Lowry
Hellbent by Anthony McGowan
Here Be Monsters by Alan Snow (My Review)
Here, There Be Dragons by James A. Owen
High School Bites: The Lucy Chronicles by Liza Conrad
Homefree by Nina Wright
Horns & Wrinkles by Joseph Helgerson (My Review)
Horse Passages by Jennifer Macaire
Into the Woods by Lyn Gardner
The King of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner
Larklight by Philip Reeve (My Review)
Last of the Wilds by Trudi Canavan
The Last Days by Scott Westerfield
The Last Dragon by Silvana de Mari
The Legend of Zoey by Candie Moonshower
Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer (My Review)
London Calling by Edward Bloor
The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor
The Lurkers by Charles Butler (My Review)
Magic Lessons by Justine Larbalestier
Monster Blood Tattoo: The Foundling by D M Cornish
New Moon by Stephenie Meyer
Peter Pan in Scarlet by Geraldine McCaughrean
The Pinhoe Egg by Diana Wynne Jones
Privilege of the Sword by Ellen Kushner
The Prophet of Yonwood by Jeanne Duprau
Ptolemy's Gate by Jonathan Stroud (My Review)
Pucker by Melanie Gideon
Quest for the Dragon Stone by Ami Blackford
The Ranger's Apprentice: The Burning Bridge by John Flanagan
River Secrets by Shannon Hale
Samurai by Jason Hightman
The Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan (My Review)
Septimus Heap #2: Flyte by Angie Sage
Shadow in the Deep by L B Graham
The Shadow Thieves by Anne Ursu
Silver City by Cliff McNish
Sir Thursday by Garth Nix (My Review
The Sisters Grimm: The Problem Child by Michael Buckley
The Softwire: Virus on Orbis 1 by PJ Haarsma
Stones of Abraxas by K Osborn Sullivan
The Summer King by O J Melling
Sword of Anton by Gene Del Vecchio
Temping Fate by Esther Friesner
The Tide Knot by Helen Dunmore (My Review)
Travels of Thelonious by Susan Schade and Jon Buller
Undine by Penni Russon
Voices by Ursula Le Guin (My Review)
Wabi by Joseph Bruchac
The Wall and the Wing by Laura Ruby
Wintersmith by Terry Pratchett (My Spoiler Review)
Wolfproof by Maureen Doyle McQuerry
Wuthering High by Cara Lockwood

You can definitely expect reviews of the following books (so long as the review copies arrive !): Devilish, Evil Star, The Fetch, Flyte, Here, There Be Dragons, Into the Woods, Peter Pan in Scarlet, Silver City, The Stones of Abraxas, Temping Fate, and Wolfproof.

Larklight - Philip Reeve

Despite the popularity of his "Hungry Cities Chronicles", I'd never read anything by Philip Reeve until this week when I picked up Larklight subtitled: "A Rousing Tale of Dauntless Pluck in the Farthest Reaches of Space." Art Mumby and his older sister, Myrtle, are proud citizens of the British Empire, which in 1851 has extraterrestrial territories such as the Moon, Mars and Jupiter, who live with their father in Larklight, a large rambling house that is on an orbit in remote space. On the morning the story starts, a letter arrives informing Art's father that a Mr Webster is arriving. Unfortunately, Mr Webster is an outsized white spider who, with his spider horde, sets in motion an adventure that takes the squabbling siblings across the universe to battle the forces of evil. The spiders, who are the First Ones (the first sentient beings of the universe), want the key to Larklight so that they can use it to destroy the Empire and return to power across the universe. Art and Myrtle, believing their father to have died at the claws of the spiders, escape their home, only to be rescued by the notorious space pirate Jack Havock. His ship sails across the lunar sea with its crew who include a human-sized blue lizard named Ssilissa (Sil for short), a gigantic land crab named Nipper, two be-tentacled twin beings, Squidley and Yarg. Art narrates this tale, but when he and his sister get separated, readers are regaled with Myrtle's prim and proper diary entries.

Reeve's prose has a cinematic quality that describes his fantastic universe whilst also conveying the Victorian sensibility. There are also some very funny references to famous authors, such as Dickens, and a line that is pure Star Trek: "I cannae do it, Captain. I'm an alchemist, not an engineer." (Echoing both Scotty's "She cannae take any more Cap'n" and Bones' "I'm a doctor, not a ..." !)

Larklight is available from Amazon.com, and apparently Warner Brothers are going to adapt the book into a film, according to this April news story.

Poetry Friday 25: Remembrance 4

This is the final Poetry Friday devoted to poems of Remembrance. The first is Siegfried Sassoon's rather bitter, post-War poem:

Aftermath

Have you forgotten yet?...
For the world's events have rumbled on since those gagged days,
Like traffic checked a while at the crossing of city ways:
And the haunted gap in your mind has filled with thoughts that flow
Like clouds in the lit heavens of life; and you're a man reprieved to go,
Taking your peaceful share of Time, with joy to spare.
But the past is just the same-and War's a bloody game...
Have you forgotten yet?...
Look down, and swear by the slain of the War that you'll never forget.

Do you remember the dark months you held the sector at Mametz-
The nights you watched and wired and dug and piled sandbags on parapets?
Do you remember the rats; and the stench
Of corpses rotting in front of the front-line trench-
And dawn coming, dirty-white, and chill with a hopeless rain?
Do you ever stop and ask, 'Is it all going to happen again?'

Do you remember that hour of din before the attack-
And the anger, the blind compassion that seized and shook you then
As you peered at the doomed and haggard faces of your men?
Do you remember the stretcher-cases lurching back
With dying eyes and lolling heads-those ashen-grey
Masks of the lads who once were keen and kind and gay?

Have you forgotten yet?...
Look up, and swear by the slain of the war that you'll never forget!

March 1919.


Carola Oman was seventeen when the First World War began and, on leaving school at eighteen, she joined the Voluntary Aid Detachment as a nurse, serving on the Western Front from 1916 to 1919. The majority of the poems in her 1919 collection, The Menin Road and Other Poems, are documentary and elegiac in character, with many of them focused on methods of travel. The ship and the troop train, as agents of departure, are powerful symbols for many women war poets, with the movement of new recruits and soldiers on leave, or the transit of the wounded, providing a strong contrast to the troops entrenched in the stalemate of the Western Front.

The Lower Deck

Into the harbour now the boat has come.
                 They bawled for passports from the smoking-room.
Darkness upon the lower deck lay dumb
                 While a few elbowed through the crowded gloom.

The canvas flapped, and a blank face or two
                 Fathomed a laugh; till through the silence came
A thresh of waters; and thick blackness drew
                 Away . . . and a bright boat passed like a flame.

Rowdy music, song and shout,
'It's the leave-boat goin' out
Passin' us they are,
Goin' 'ome,
Goin' 'ome'. . . .

The murmur drifted like a dream
Mouth to mouth - - a sudden gleam - -
Till the voices died afar,
                 Till the thresh of waters drowned
All the sounds to a single Sound.

Boat passed boat. And then again
Came sudden vision, splendid pain.
These were my sons. Ah, who shall know
Into what night I watched them go,
How each blank face was dear to me,
How kindly fell the evening rain ?
And I could see - - and I could see.

Night Duty at the Station

                                   I

Slowly out of the siding the troop train draws away,
Into the dark it passes, heaving straining.
Shattering on the points the engine stutters.
Fires burn in every truck. Rich shadows play
Over the vivid faces . . . bunched figures. Some one mutters
'Rainin' again . . . it's raining.'
Slammings - a few shouts - quicker
Each truck the same moves on.
Weary rain eddies after
Drifts where the deep fires flicker.
Into the dark with laughter
The last truck wags . . . it is gone.

                                   II

Horns that sound in the night when very few are keeping
Unwilling vigil, and the moonlit air
Is chill, and everything around is sleeping -
Horns that call on a long low note - oh, where
Were you calling me last ?
The ghastly huntsman hunts no more, they say
The Arcadian fields are drugged with blood and clay
And is Romance not past ?

                                   III

The station in this watch seems full of ghosts.
Above revolves an opalescent lift
Of smoke and moonlight in the roof. And hosts
Of pallid refugees and children, shift
About the barriers in a ceaseless drift.
Forms sleeping crowd beneath the rifle-rack,
Upon the bookstall, in the carts. They seem
All to be grey and burdened. Blue and black,
Khaki and red, are blended, as a dream
Into eternal grey, and from the back
They stagger from this darkness into light
And move and shout
And sing a little, and move on and out
Unready, and again, into the night.

                                   IV

The windows in the Post Office are lit with olive gold.
Across the bridge serene and old
White barges beyond count
Lie down the cold canal
Where the last shadows fall;
And a transparent city shines upon a magic mount.

Now fired with turkis blue and green
Where the first sunshine plays
The dawn tiptoes between
Waiting her signal from the woodland ways. . . .

Carnival of Children's Literature 9: Thanksgiving edition

The ninth Carnival of Children's Literature, the Thanksgiving edition is up over at A Readable Feast. If you can tear yourself away from family and friends, food and football, do take the time to take a look at Anne-Marie's work.

Carnegie award longlist

As a slight diversion from the shock of finding 86 (yes eighty-six) books have been nominated in the SF&F section for the Cybils, I've just been looking at the Carnegie longlist, which is a mere 38 books long (lucky judges ! I think I'll volunteer for the Cybils Judging Committee next year, especially as I'll be writing a non-fiction book of my own this time next year and won't have time to read an extra 86 books !) I was pleased to discover I've read, or am about to read, seven of the Carnegie award longlist:

BUCKLEY-ARCHER, Linda Gideon the Cutpurse (Simon & Schuster) (Review here)
COOPER, Susan Victory (Bodley Head) (Review here)
DUNMORE, Helen The Tide Knot (HarperCollins) (Review here)
GOLDING, Julia The Secret of the Sirens (Oxford University Press) (Review here)
SEDGWICK, Marcus My Swordhand is Singing (Orion)
WEBB, Catherine The Extraordinary and Unusual Adventures of Horatio Lyle (Atom) (Review here)
WINTERSON, Jeanette Tanglewreck (Bloomsbury) (Review here)

The trouble is, I want at least three of those to win - and probably four once I've read Marcus Sedgwick's My Swordhand is Singing, given how much I enjoyed everything else he's written so far !

Happy Thanksgiving

To all my American readers - I hope you have a good holiday (and plenty of time to read !)

Gideon the Cutpurse - Linda Buckley-Archer

Linda Buckley-Archer's Gideon the Cutpurse has been on my radar for some time, thanks to the LoveReading for Kids website where I read an extract of the first chapter. This book is the gripping start to a trilogy, which ends on an absolute cliff-hanger !

This first book tells the tale of two British teenagers, Peter Schock and Kate Dyer. Kate is the eldest of several children and comes from a happy family home. Peter is an only child, whose parents both have high-powered jobs (his mother is a film director and is currently working on a film in LA). It's almost Christmas and the day Peter has been for so long has finally arrived. Today his father is going to take him out for a day to belatedly celebrate his twelfth birthday (3 months late). However, Peter's visions of sledging on the dry ski slope, lunch in London and a Premiership football match are dashed when his father breaks the news that he has to go to an important work-related meeting. Instead, Peter will be going to Derbyshire for the weekend with his au pair, staying with the Dyers. Peter is desperately upset at his birthday treat being postponed yet again and yells after his retreating father "I hate you!"

He and Margrit arrive in Derbyshire before lunch and Kate's dad takes the two of them to the science lab where he works in order to see his colleague Tim's antigravity machine. Kate and her father show Peter their "party trick", which involves touching a statically charged metal dome. Unfortunately, Kate's dog Molly leaps into the room through the ground floor window and when Kate touches Molly, she races away in sheer terror. Kate, Peter and Dr Dyer give chase, and the next thing that Peter and Kate know, they're waking up in a Derbyshire valley. What they don't immediately know is that they've been accidentally transported through time by the antigravity machine, and it's now 1763 !

Fortunately for the pair, they are befriended by a kindly young gentleman named Gideon and the upper class family by whom he has recently been employed. Before very long they're off on the adventure of a lifetime intending to get back the antigravity machine, which has been take by the utterly creepy yet dangerously powerful Tar Man (whose name was born out of his tragic youth), whilst struggling all the while to adjust to living in the 18th Century. Back in the 21st century, a massive police hunt has been launched for the missing children, but Dr Dyer and his colleagues aren't helping the police with their enquiries as they're desperate to keep to themselves what the antigravity machine can do. However, their plans are thwarted time and again by the children re-appearing, in 18th century dress, at intervals, usually in odd situations, and often in a fairly transparent state ! What is going on ? And will Peter and Kate ever get back to their families and the 21st century ?

Gideon the Cutpurse is also available from Amazon.com, and if you want to know more, check out the Gideon the Cutpurse website.

The Machine Gunners - Robert Westall

Continuing the on-off theme of WW2 books (a mere accident of library borrowing), I've just read Robert Westall's excellent The Machine Gunners. Chas McGill is in his early teens in 1940 and lives in a small Tyneside town, in the industrial north-east of England, a town which is subjected to terrifying bombing raids by the Germans. Chas has the second-best collection of war souvenirs in town and he's desperate to have the best one. Then one night, a German plane crashes onto the local disused laundry, but its tail ends up in the nearby wood. Chas discovers it and when he sees the machine gun is still in place and intact he just has to have it. Climbing up to see if he can detach it, he gets a shock, however, when he finds the rear-gunner still in his seat, but quite definitely dead. However, he overcomes his horror and persuades his friend Cemetary Jones (the son of the local undertaker) and Audrey, a tomboy who's "as good as a boy", to help recover the machine gun. They hide it away and then soon afterwards comes another dreadful air raid, and Chas decides he's going to use the gun against the invading Germans. He and his friends look for somewhere to position it and they discover the perfect spot, in the garden of Chas' school fellow, Benjamin Nichol, known to everyone as Nicky. They begin building a machine gun emplacement there, despite the house being full of ratings billeted there with Nicky and his mother.

Nicky's home takes a direct hit from a bomb, but he had woken during the night suddenly overwhelmed by the smell of the sea, and he has a premonition that gets him out of the house before the bomb hits it. So the children turn their machine gun spot into a proper fortress, enlisting the help of a local man who is a bit simple but very strong, to do the digging for them. The children are able to spend most of their days at the Fortress, and Nicky and Clogger (another of Chas' friends, who lost his mother and whose father is in the Navy) live their permanently. Then one day, they attempt to shoot down a German aircraft that is sneaking into the harbour. Although they don't hit it, the local gunners do, but Rudi, the rear gunner in the aircraft escapes and eventually finds himself in the custody of the Chas and his friends. Although the children are armed, Rudi is sick and unable to escape them. By the time he recovers, he has become a father figure to them all, especially Nicky and Clogger. He persuades them to find him a boat (Nicky's father's boat) in return for fixing the machine gun, which had been taken apart by one of the boys. He sets during what everyone in Garmouth thinks is the German invasion, leaving the children behind, although Nicky has begged to be allowed to go with him.

This is a fascinating and engaging account of what life was like for a group of children in a seaside town that's being bombed on a regular basis, leaving the adults as helpless as the children, as Chas realises:

Ever since he was little, Dad had meant safety: large, solid, bristly-faced, smelling of tobacco. His thumb always grew in three segments, where he had hit it with a hammer while he was an apprentice.

But could any grown-up keep you safe now? They couldn't stop the German bombers. They hadn't saved Poland, or Norway or France. Or the battleship the German submarine torpedoed in Scapa Flow itself.

Their own air-raid shelter at home - it wasn't as safe as the Fortress. It was only covered with a foot of soil. Couldn't Dad have done better than that?

He looked at his father, and saw a weary, helpless middle-aged man. Dad wasn't any kind of God any more. (p. 95)

Firefly Quote of the Week

Kaylee: Captain seem a little funny to you at breakfast this morning?
Wash: Come on, Kaylee. We all know I'm the funny one.

("Heart of Gold", season 1)

Maddigan's Fantasia - Margaret Mahy

Margaret Mahy's Maddigan's Fantasia is a tie-in book for the TV series Maddigan's Quest, which has aired worldwide.

The story is set in a future time when a colourful group of travellers brave the twisting, unpredictable landscape of a world that is trying to remake itself several years after near-destruction. The travellers are the trapeze artists, clowns, magicians, tumblers, knife throwers and musicians of Maddigan's Fantasia, who are healing the damaged land with wonder and laughter. Garland Maddigan, is the 12-almost-13 year old daughter of the Fantasia's ringmaster, Ferdy. She has been on many journeys with the Fantasia before; it's her life. But she soon realises that this journey is going to be a very different one when three mysterious children join the Fantasia - the children have uncanny abilities and a secret past. And they bring with them powerful enemies who will stop at nothing to hunt them down and take them back to wherever it is they have come from. Garland soon finds herself embroiled in a series of terrifying adventures that will take her through perilous underground tunnels, through the land of the Witch-Finder, and eventually across time itself.

I have to confess to finding this book rather slow-going until nearly the end. It seemed very episodic and to not flow well, which was a surprise after reading Mahy's The Changeover. Despite that, it's an interesting tale and Garland is an intriguing character, as are Eden and Timon, the two older children who join the Fantasia with their baby sister, Jewel.

The Work-Life Balance: A Writer Speaks

There was an amusing piece by Meg Rosoff on the Guardian website the other day. She begins:

So far this year I've toured in Holland, Germany, the US and Italy. I've travelled around England signing books. I've contributed articles to tomes with titles like The Best Teenage Book Guide in The Universe, EVER! I delivered a lecture on The Crossover Novel, judged a first novel prize, wrote an introduction to Black Beauty, spoke at literary festivals, secondary schools, and teacher conferences. I signed 2,000 books in a warehouse in Rugby.

I also squeezed in writing a book. I would like to write another one. If I don't write another one, no one will be interested in asking me to do all those things that get in the way of writing books. Which means I'll end up in the publishing gutter: penniless, friendless and agentless, churning out magic unicorn bodice-rippers for tweenies under an assumed name.

This is, at the moment, how I see my future.

Do go and read it; Rosoff is quite bitter about Jeanette Winterson's "Room of her own", but in a light-hearted way.

Cowards - Marcus Sedgwick

Marcus Sedgwick's Cowards is subtitled, "The True Story of the Men Who Refused to Fight". It's the story of Howard Marten and Alfred Evans, just two of the several hundred young men who refused to join the army during World War 1. They, together with fifteen other Conscientious Objectors are sent to the Front Line in France, having been conscripted into the Army once the Military Service Act was passed in 1916. They were told that they would have to obey their military orders or face the firing squad, but each one refused, over and over again, to go against their principles.

This is a brief, but very thought-provoking book. It's well written in a direct, simple style that clearly explains what the men believed and why they refused to fight. Adults will find it as interesting as children. I highly recommend the book to those who are looking for something to give to children who are wanting to discuss the rights and wrongs of armed conflict in any era and any arena. Cowards is also available from Amazon.com.

Meme: 50 Children's and YA Books

Kelly over at Big A, little a posted Time magazine's list of 100 best English language adult books and 100 best English language children's books the other day, and I revealed I hadn't managed to read even 20 in either category. So Kelly challenged me to come up with a list of fantasy books - she reasoned that I'd beat the world that way ! So after a few days of cogitating, I've compiled a list of 50 children's and YA books (note, they're not ALL fantasy books !) that I think are really good or very memorable. Some are very new indeed, and quite a lot more are considerably older as they're books I thoroughly enjoyed as a child, being so memorable I can still remember the details of the plots 25+ years later.

So the usual "rules" apply: Mark the selections you have read in bold. If you liked it, add a star (*) in front of the title, if you didn't, give it a minus (-).

The list is sorted alphabetically by author surname as I didn't want to get into fights over how I could put X higher than Y in the list ! And yes, I did choose more than one book by some authors - it's my list, so I made the rules...

* The Chronicles of Prydain - Alexander, Lloyd
* Carrie's War - Bawden, Nina
* Death of a Ghost - Butler, Charles
* Ender's Game - Card, Orson Scott
* Summerland - Chabon, Michael
* King of Shadows - Cooper, Susan
* The Dark is Rising sequence - Cooper, Susan
* Stonestruck - Cresswell, Helen
* Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Dahl, Roald
* Matilda - Dahl, Roald
* Ingo - Dunmore, Helen
* The Sea of Trolls - Farmer, Nancy
* Madame Doubtfire - Fine, Anne
* Corbenic - Fisher, Catherine
* Inkheart - Funke, Cornelia
* The Thief Lord - Funke, Cornelia
* The Owl Service - Garner, Alan
* Happy Kid! - Gauthier, Gail
* Stormbreaker - Horowitz, Anthony
* Whale Rider - Ihimaera, Witi
* Finn Family Moomintroll - Jansson, Tove
* Fire and Hemlock - Jones, Diana Wynne
* The Phantom Tollbooth - Juster, Norton
* The Sheep Pig - King Smith, Dick
* Stig of the Dump - King, Clive
* A Wizard of Earthsea - Le Guin, Ursula
* The Voyage of the Dawn Treader - Lewis, C S
* The House at Norham Gardens - Lively, Penelope
* Goodnight Mister Tom - Magorian, Michelle
* The Changeover - Mahy, Margaret
* The Stones are Hatching - McCaughrean, Geraldine
* The White Darkness - McCaughrean, Geraldine
* Beauty - McKinley, Robin
* Sabriel - Nix, Garth
* The Borrowers - Norton, Mary
* Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH - O'Brien, Robert
* Z for Zachariah - O'Brien, Robert
* A Dog So Small - Pearce, Philippa
* Life As We Knew It - Pfeffer, Susan Beth
* A Hat Full of Sky - Pratchett, Terry
* His Dark Materials sequence - Pullman, Philip
* How I Live Now - Rosoff, Meg
* Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - Rowling, J K
* Holes - Sachar, Louis
* The Foreshadowing - Sedgwick, Marcus
* Marianne Dreams - Storr, Catherine
* When the Siren Wailed - Streatfield, Noel
* The Bartimaeus Trilogy - Stroud, Jonathan
* The Hobbit - Tolkien, J R R
* Charlotte's Web - White, E B

And I make no apology for the Britishness of the list - or for the fact that I've included an entire series on occasion. If you don't like the list, go and create one of your own ! *grins*

Horns and Wrinkles - Joseph Helgerson

Joseph Helgerson's Horns and Wrinkles is an All-American fantasy tale, although set in the real world of the Mississippi River.

This story starts with a nasty boy named Duke dangling his cousin Claire off the Steel Girder Bridge just outside the town of Blue Wing. Claire's been the victim of Duke's bullying for a very long time, but on this day something changes. The next moment Claire is sailing serenely down the Mississippi River with a nice, orange tennis-shoe-wearing, old lady and Duke has a horn growing out of his nose. Everybody in Blue Wing, Minnesota, knows that if something weird happens, it's probably related to the Mississippi River as this part of the river causes all sorts of odd things to happen. Everything from fairy-sightings to incidents involving river or rock trolls, something that is no end of trouble to the town's residents. Shortly after Duke acquires his horn, his family is turned into stone and Claire finds herself in the company of some fast-talking nylon bicycle-suit-wearing river trolls. So Claire and Duke find themselves helping these odd creatures on their peculiar quest to ensure that Duke's family don't remain stone forever. Not that Duke cares - he loves having a horn and is desperate to become a member of the river troll "gang". So when Duke's horn gets bigger every time he bullies someone, he's happy.

One of the things that's nice about this book is how realistic it seems, even to someone who's never seen the Mississippi. There's a funny bit in the book involving the local sheriff, a man who's seen everything that's river-related and treats the fact that some people have been turned to stone as perfectly unsurprising. He says, "There's folks in this town that choose not to believe in fortunetelling catfish, or low-flying buffalo, or whatever ... I'll tell you straight out, I'm not one of them." A wise man !

There are some lovely descriptions in this tale: "Tree branches remained bare but you could smell spring cooking inside them" and, when a river troll is threatened with a most gruesome punishment, "And if there's any funny business, I'll turn you into books. Thick ones with no pictures and tiny print.", which gave me the giggles.

The characters are believable too. Duke is totally nasty. He's nasty on page 1, he's still nasty on page 101, and even on page 301 he's not managed to give up being nasty. But Duke isn't a one-note villain. He's a coward, and a liar, but he's also one hundred percent believable.

I also liked the river troll trio with whom Claire and Duke get involved; they're far deeper characters than I expected at the beginning of the story, especially Stump, for whom Claire develops some affection during the course of her adventures.

Do read this book - it's great fun, but also very thoughtful.

Horns and Wrinkles is also available from Amazon.com.

The Dark Flight Down - Marcus Sedgwick

The Dark Flight Down is the sequel to Marcus Sedgwick's The Book of Dead Days.

Sedgwick left several plot threads untouched at the end of the first book, particularly those relating to Boy's past, but he ties them up in this compelling, sometimes chilling, story. Boy is now working for the scientist Kepler, who sends him on an errand to the Yellow House, Valerian and Boy's former home. Whilst there, he's captured by Imperial soldiers and taken to the palace, where the dying, mad emperor Frederick is waited on by a group of power-hungry courtiers. Frederick is single, and he decides that he wants to become immortal so that he can rule forever without needing an heir. His right-hand man, Maxim, hopes to use Boy, whom he knows was Valerian's famulus (assistant) to somehow find the Book of Dead Days, so that he can make Frederick immortal.

To make things worse, the bloodthirsty Phantom is still loose in the city and Boy soon discovers that it dwells in the palace, deep underground. Boy is surrounded by treachery and Machiavellian lies, and his only hope lies with his friend, Willow, with whom he had planned to run away on the day he was captured. But then Boy learns the horrific truth behind the Phantom and the emperor - and what connection they both have to his past.

There's rather less magic and rather more mystery in The Dark Flight Down, compared to The Book of Dead Days. The titular book only appears in the story occasionally as the focus is mostly on Boy's attempts to escape Maxim, and to find out his true identity. Since the horror is all human, it's far more frightening than demons.

Sedgwick does a good job of wrapping up his story, revealing Boy's mysterious past and the identity of his family. The identity of the Phantom was a complete shock to me, a shock that was fairly horrific. The character of Boy is developed a great deal in the second book as he realises that it's not your name or parentage that defines you, but who you are and what you do that matters.

Poetry Friday 24: Remembrance 3

I am continuing my theme for November of poems for Remembrance and would like to offer you the following poems.

Battalion-Relief

(from Counter-Attack and other Poems)

'Fall in! Now get a move on.' (Curse the rain.)
We splash away along the straggling village,
Out to the flat rich country, green with June...
And sunset flares across wet crops and tillage,
Blazing with splendour-patches. (Harvest soon,
Up in the Line.) 'Perhaps the War'll be done
'By Christmas-Day. Keep smiling then, old son.'

Here's the Canal: it's dusk; we cross the bridge.
'Lead on there, by platoons.' (The Line's a-glare
With shell-fire through the poplars; distant rattle
Of rifles and machine-guns.) 'Fritz is there!
'Christ, ain't it lively, Sergeant? Is't a battle?'
More rain: the lightning blinks, and thunder rumbles.
'There's over-head artillery!' some chap grumbles.

What's all this mob at the cross-roads? Where are the guides?...
'Lead on with number One.' And off they go.
'Three minute intervals.' (Poor blundering files,
Sweating and blindly burdened; who's to know
If death will catch them in those two dark miles?)
More rain. 'Lead on, Head-quarters.' (That's the lot.)
'Who's that?... Oh, Sergeant-Major, don't get shot!
'And tell me, have we won this war or not?'

Siegfried Sassoon


The next two poems are by one of the women poets of the First World War, Helen Hamilton. Her poems have much in common with Sassoon's, for all she did not experience life in the Front Lines. Little appears to be known about Helen Hamilton, beyond the fact that she was a school teacher. Her poetry, wryly observed and sharply satirical, may be compared without detriment to that of Sassoon - most of her poems are about the hypocrisy of those At Home, who were one of Sassoon's targets in his satirical poems. Her poem 'The Ghouls' is reminiscent of many poems by trench poets in its condemnation of the old men left At Home, but it also has a strong, anti-patriarchal note. The other civilians whom Hamilton attacks ferociously are the women who organised mass recruitment meetings prior to the introduction of conscription in May 1916 and who also handed out white feathers to young men who were not in uniform. In 'The Jingo-Woman', Hamilton not only attacks these women, but defends the young men, pointing out that it is easy for women to attack men for not enlisting when women are not called on to fight themselves.


The Ghouls

You strange old ghouls,
Who gloat with dulled old eyes,
                  Over those lists,
                  Those dreadful lists,
                  To see what name
                  Of friend, relation,
                  However distant,
                  May be appended
To your private Roll of Honour.
Unknowingly you draw, it seems,
                  From their young bodies,
                  Dead young bodies,
                  Fresh life,
                  New value,
Now that yours are ebbing.
                  You strange old ghouls,
Who gloat with dulled old eyes,
                  Over those lists,
                  Those dreadful lists,
                  Of young men dead.

The Jingo-Woman

Jingo-woman
(How I dislike you !)
Dealer in white feather,
Insulter, self-appointed,
Of all the men you meet,
Not dressed in uniform,
When to your mind,
                  (A sorry mind),
                  They should be,
                  The test ?
The judgement of your eye,
That wild, infuriate eye,
Whose glance, so you declare,
                  Reveals unerringly,
Who's good for military service.
Oh ! exasperating woman,
I'd like to wring your neck,
                  I really would !
                  You make all women seem such duffers !
                  Besides exemptions,
                  Enforced and held reluctantly,
                  -Not that you'll believe it -
                  You must know surely
Men there are, and young men too,
Physically not fit to serve,
Who look in their civilian garb
                  Quite stout and hearty.
And most of whom, I'll wager,
Have been rejected several times.
How keen, though, your delight,
                  Keen and malignant,
Should one offer you his seat,
                  In crowded bus or train,
Thus giving you the chance to say,
In cold, incisive tones of scorn:
                  'No I much prefer to stand
                  As you, young man, are not in khaki !'
Heavens ! I wonder you're alive !
                  Oh, these men,
These twice-insulted men,
                  What iron self-control they show,
                  What wonderful forbearance !

But still the day may come
For you to prove yourself
As sacrificial as upbraiding.
So far they are not taking us
But if the war goes on much longer
                  They might,
                  Nay more,
                  They must,
When the last man has gone.
And if and when that dark day dawns,
You'll join up first, of course,
Without waiting to be fetched.
But in the meantime,
Do hold your tongue !
You shame us women.
Can't you see it isn't decent,
To flout and goad men into doing,
                  What is not asked of you ?

Both of these poems appear in Catherine Reilly's excellent collection of WW1 poetry by women poets, Scars Upon My Heart. You will find the poems by Sassoon which I have quoted in his collected War Poems.

Cat Among the Pigeons - Julia Golding

Julia Golding's Cat Among the Pigeons is the second book in her historical Cat Royal series. In this adventure, Cat's friend Pedro, a violin-playing slave boy, is wanted by his former owner, the nasty Kingston Hawkins. Hawkins claims that Pedro was sold by a man with no ownership rights over him, and therefore Pedro's apprenticeship to Signor Angelini is invalid. He wants Pedro back and isn't interested in what Pedro wants. Cat steps in to attempt to save her friend, telling Hawkins that the boy he's just seen playing Ariel isn't Pedro at all because Pedro died of a fever the week before. The celebrated actor, Mr Kemble arrives and backs up Cat's story, but Hawkins doesn't believe them. He threatens them with the law before stomping off. Cat and Pedro go to their friends Frank and Lizzie, the children of the Duke of Avon, for assistance and are introduced to the local Abolitionists. They decide to get the public who go to the Theatre Royal on Pedro's side, and print fliers for just that reason. In the meantime, Cat is sent to Brook's club with some tickets and finds herself trapped by Hawkins and his cronies. They put her up on the billiard table and start inspecting her as if she was a slave too. Cat escapes, but in doing so she causes a lot of havoc and soon she finds herself wanted by the Law.

Will Cat escape a prison sentence ? Will Pedro be dragged back to Jamaica by Kingston Hawkins ? And where do three sisters from the Society of Friends fit into everything ? Read this book and find out !

Golding has created some lively and engaging characters who will keep you entertained with their wild adventures. This book is highly recommended.

The Book of Dead Days - Marcus Sedgwick

It's entirely thanks to Kelly at Big A, little a that I began reading Marcus Sedwick's books, as she sent me his The Foreshadowing to read and review for The Edge of the Forest. I looked him up online and then went rushing to the library for other books by Sedgwick. His duology
The Book of Dead Days and The Dark Flight Down is very popular.

Can a Faustian pact ever be avoided? And if it can, what will be the cost? The Book of Dead Days is an historical fantasy novel in which a nameless boy, known as Boy, searches for a way to help save his master Valerian from his Faustian bargain, and for clues to his own past.

Valerian is a stage magician in Korp's Theatre. There he presents many illusions, with Boy as his assistant. But their lives change irrevocably during the Dead Days, that strange period between Christmas and New Year. Valerian is desperate to find an ancient and very powerful book which he believes contains the answer to avoiding his fate. Boy, and his friend Willow, go with him in search of the book, which Valerian believes is hidden in the grave of one Gad Beebe. Whilst they're in the largest of the city's graveyards, Valerian is attacked by graverobbers and his arm is broken. Boy and Willow get him home with some difficulty, and Valerian tells them his story: fifteen years ago, he made a Faustian bargain in order to win the heart of the woman he loved. Will Boy, Willow and Valerian find the book in time ? Where has Valerian's friend Kepler disappeared to ? Just who or what is The Phantom, the being that is going around killing the City's inhabitants ?

The Gorgon's Gaze - Julia Golding

Julia Golding's The Gorgon's Gaze is the second book in the Companions Quartet.

Mallins Wood is under threat from developers as the Axoil company wants a new, faster access road to its oil refinery. However, unknown to everyone but the members of the top secret Society for the Protection of Mythical Creatures, Mallins Wood is the home of the last gorgon, the creature so deadly she can kill just by looking at you. The gorgon's Companion (ie. the human that has a special bond with the gorgon) is Col's mother, and she's determined to save it. So determined is she, that she is willing to take aid from the evil shape-shifter Kullervo, even if it means having to sacrifice her son to him. But Col's mother doesn't realise that Kullervo wants more than to just help the gorgon - he also wants universal power, and to achieve that he needs Col's best friend, Connie.

In the meantime, Connie has her own troubles. Her parents have heard about Connie's escapades regarding the Axoil refinery nearly a year ago and they've decided that Connie's membership of the Society is endangering her. They send Connie's Great Aunt Godiva and Great Uncle Hugh to look after her, instead of her aunt Evelyn (who's a Companion to Banshees). Godiva is determined to "stamp out" the nonsense (shades of the Dursleys, methinks !) and claims that the Society is some sort of cult that has brainwashed Connie into thinking she hears voices. Connie thus finds her intended training as a Universal Companion won't be taking place as she is locked up at Lionheart Lodge (Godiva and Hugh's old home). But there's something more to Godiva than she's admitting. Why are there no wild plants, trees or wild animals in her garden ? Why does she know so much about the highly secret Society ? And why won't she have anything made of wood near her ?

The Book of Story Beginnings - Kristine Kladstrup

Kristine Kladstrup's The Book of Story Beginnings is a book with an intriguing premise.

When young Lucy Martin moves into the house in Iowa that her father has inherited from his Aunt Lavonne, she hopes to solve the mystery of the disappearance of Lavonne's 14 year old brother, Oscar, back in 1914. Lavonne claims that he rowed away from the house in a boat on an ocean that magically appeared out of nowhere to lap at the garden gate. When Lucy finds the "Book of Story Beginnings" and writes in it about a girl whose father was a magician, her father suddenly becomes a magician who has invented a transforming potion. He turns himself into a crow and flies away from the stray cat who has been lurking around the house since they moved in. The cat laps up the spilled potion, then turns into Oscar, the long-lost boy. Lucy and Oscar then have to find a way to cross the magical ocean in order to bring back Lucy's father who, in the meantime, has flown away to the land created by Oscar when he wrote one of his story beginnings in the magical book.

These characters are interesting and Oscar's plight when he is transformed back into a boy and discovers that his entire family is long dead is portrayed realistically and sympathetically. This is an interesting investigation into the power of writing and story and Kladstrup is good at going into the nature of what a story is and how authors must sometimes feel when their characters take on lives of their own. Just what makes a good piece of fiction ? Why does one story beginning work better than another ? The book takes the idea of creating magical worlds to its logical extreme, but the imaginings that Oscar and Lucy come up with, like a king who loves cats and a queen who loves birds, are not really detailed enough once the characters actually encounter them. We're told how shocked Oscar is that his written world is as detailed and elaborate as it is, but the world isn't actually detailed very clearly to the reader. Whilst it's interesting to think about how real a fictional world that you have created is, this book doesn't do very well at showing that.

The convenience of the magical objects in this book also strains credulity - they're definitely Macguffins (to borrow Hitchcock's term). For example, Lucy's Great Aunt Lavonne was able to construct everything from transforming potions to a travelling talisman in her laboratory and these objects work without a hitch when employed by Lucy, her father and Oscar at various points, but they were apparently never used by Lavonne herself to find her long-lost brother. Which I find just a little incredible !

The Book of Story Beginnings is also available from Amazon.com.

Life As We Knew It - Susan Beth Pfeffer

Susan Beth Pfeffer's Life As We Knew It is tense, gripping, page-turning book. Be warned, if you're going to read it, don't make any other plans before you begin !

A meteor is going to impact with the moon, and 16 year old Miranda, like the rest of her family and most of her neighbours in rural Pennsylvania, is intending to watch it from the front garden of her house. But the impact is far more serious than was predicted and the moon is knocked closer to the Earth, which sets off a chain of horrific natural disasters: massive tsunamis, earthquakes where there aren't usually earthquakes, then later on, volcanic eruptions that on such a wide scale that the air becomes permanently grey and there's no sunlight or rain. The story is told in the form of Miranda's diary entries and depicts her family's struggle to survive in a world where food, warmth, and good health can disappear in the blink of an eye. Thanks to frantic preparations by her incredibly quick-thinking mother, Miranda's family is in better shape than many as the town's utilities and public services break down, but wild storms bring extremes of temperature, and outbreaks of disease, both familiar (flu) and unfamiliar (West Nile virus) turn the hospital into a dead zone.

Fortunately, in Miranda's journal entries, Pfeffer keeps nearly all of the death and explicit violence offstage, choosing to focus instead on the stresses of spending months huddled together in increasingly confined quarters in an attempt to keep warm, watching the supplies dwindle, and wondering whether there will be any future to make their efforts worthwhile. This is a nail-biting tale that will inevitably be compared to Meg Rosoff's Printz Award-winning book, How I Live Now which I read and reviewed in August. Pfeffer's setup isn't quite as smooth as Rosoff's - after all, why didn't the astronomers predict the possibility of the moon's orbit being altered by the meteor's impact ? But Miranda and her family seem more familiar than Rosoff's characters and somewhat easier to engage with than Rosoff's. This book is filled with events both exhausting and terrifying yet I found it nigh on impossible to put down; indeed, it kept me reading until long past the time I normally switch off the light because I had to know how it ended.

Life As We Knew It is also available from Amazon.com.

Firefly Quote of the Week

Simon: This may come as a shock, but I'm actually not very good at talking to girls.
Zoe: Why, is there someone you are good at talking to?

("The Message", Season 1)

Carrie's War - Nina Bawden

Nina Bawden's Carrie's War is probably the most famous of her books, thanks to the Carrie's War film.

Albert Sandwich, and Carrie and Nick Willow are evacuated to Wales during the Second World War. Carrie and Nick are billeted with old Mr Evans, who is a mean, cold, bullying man, and his timid mouse of a sister, Lou. Their friend Albert is luckier; he lives in Druid's Bottom with warm-hearted Hepzibah Green and the slightly strange Mister Johnny, who can talk to animals but not clearly to people. Carrie and Nick visit Albert whenever they can because Hepzibah, whom Albert tells them is a witch, makes life exciting and enticing with her stories and delicious cooking. Gradually they begin to feel more at ease in their war-time home. However, when his estranged older sister dies, Carrie gives Mr Evans a message from her, and he flies into a terrible rage. But the next day Mr Evans goes to Druid's Bottom and comes back quite calmly. Albert and Carrie suspect that he has destroyed whatever will his sister had made in favour of giving Hepzibah and Mister Johnny a home for the rest of their lives, (as she told Carrie she had done). In an attempt to save Druid's Bottom, Carrie does a terrible thing which then haunts her for thirty years until she returns to the area as an adult, and tells the story to her own children.

What intrigued me about this book, initially, is the way that Carrie's children aren't ever named. The story opens and closes with them, but they are just referred to as (for example) the oldest boy, or the youngest boy, etc. I eventually realised it's because they're only important to Carrie's tale as an audience (along with the Reader), therefore who they are doesn't really matter.

The Revenge of Samuel Stokes - Penelope Lively

Penelope Lively's The Revenge of Samuel Stokes is akin to her The Ghost of Thomas Kempe (review), but also different. Here the ghost is Samuel Stokes, who was a landscape gardener in the 19th century. He created Charstock Park which has now been built over and turned into a new housing estate where Tim Thornton and his family have recently arrived. However, Stokes resents the building of the housing estate and does his best to get rid of the residents via supernatural means. Walls begin sprouting up in odd places, a cedarwood greenhouse becomes a Greek temple overnight, then the estate is mysteriously flooded.

There are also odd smells, such as roast venison coming from the washing machine, and peculiar interference on the television, which seems to show a bewigged gentleman with a pipe where no such person should be. Tim and his new friend Jane Harvey, and Tim's grandfather (who has a passion for cooking) try to discover a way to placate Stokes and get him to leave Charstock.

Tim suspects that the land itself resents the presence of the housing estate:

Tim, on the other hand, was looking at the landscape. They were walking down the hill from Great Maxton to Charstock and the estate lay just below and in front of them, with the houses wheeling out from the shopping centre which was in a dip in the middle. Beyond and around were fields dotted with grazing cows and lined with trees. There were a lot of trees; some of them, Tim noticed, were neatly grouped. They seemed to have been arranged, rather than just to have grown. He though again about houses being dumped down - or mushrooming up, whichever way you looked at it - where no houses had been, ousting cows and trees or other houses or anything else that had been there before. Of course, that happened all over the place, and always had done, for ever and ever. It was interesting, when you thought about it; perhaps, occasionally, what had been there before might resent being wiped out like that. (p. 32)

Such an idea ties in with Lively's great interest in landscape history, as I mentioned in my review of The Driftway.

This is an amusing book with some interesting ideas that would be most suitable for children.

An Introduction to Terry Pratchett

Terry Pratchett is the astonishingly popular author-creator of the Discworld (TM) series; reportedly 1% of every book sold in the UK is written by Pratchett — that's all books, not just fantasy ones. He has also written some non-Discworld books as well, of which more later. First a brief explanation of Discworld for those who are unfamiliar with it. As suggested by its name, this is a flat world carried on the back of four large elephants, which are themselves standing upon the back of the giant, space-faring world turtle, Great A'Tuin, who endlessly swims through space.

For readers new to Discworld, a good starting place is Pratchett's marvellous "Discworld for children" series featuring the apprentice witch, Tiffany Aching: The Wee Free Men, A Hat Full of Sky, and Wintersmith. Tiffany is the kind of child who, reading in her book of stories that Jenny Greenteeth has eyes the size of soup plates, measures a soup plate to check the size; she knows the meanings of lots of words (no one has ever told her that you're not meant to read the dictionary like a novel); she's the kind of child who, hearing stories about the "wicked old witch", wonders "Where’s the evidence?" In The Wee Free Men Tiffany encounters Jenny Greenteeth and this leads her to taking on the Queen of the Faeries herself (and this being Terry Pratchett, we’re not talking Tinkerbell fairies !); she also finds herself temporarily the Kelda (leader) of the Wee Free Men (aka the Nac Mac Feegle), 4 inch high blue men with an over-aggressive attitude (they love fighting, stealing and drinking, preferably all at once !), but astonishing loyalty. In the sequel, A Hat Full of Sky, Tiffany goes to stay with Miss Level to learn to be a witch. Unfortunately, just before she leaves the Chalk (where she lives), she attracts the attention of a "hiver" a bodiless creature that likes to inhabit minds until the minds’ owners go mad and die. The manner in which Tiffany chooses to deal with this frightening and threatening creature is remarkably mature and unselfish, and the book itself is a compelling look at the power of storytelling (something which Pratchett discusses again and again in his books). In Wintersmith, Tiffany encounters the wintersmith, who has mistaken her for his counterpart, Lady Summer, after Tiffany listens to her feet and leaps into the Dark Morris, the dance that's done every year to greet the winter. The wintersmith is intrigued by Tiffany and sets about wooing her with, amongst other things, Tiffany-shaped snowflakes and Tiffany-shaped icebergs. When she tells him that she isn't interest in him, he decides to try to become a man. The consequences of Tiffany's impulsiveness in leaping into the dance are far-reaching and she must learn how to deal with the wintersmith, although she does not do so alone; she is aided by the senior witches Granny Weatherwax (whom Tiffany spent quite some time with in A Hat Full of Sky) and Nanny Ogg (whom she only briefly met at the end of The Wee Free Men).

Other books by Terry Pratchett that are written for children but which serve as a good introduction to his books for readers of all ages is The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, a Discworld parody of the tale of "The Pied Piper of Hamelin"; and non-Discworld books that include the Bromeliad trilogy (Truckers, Diggers and Wings) about a race of Nomes (beings akin to Lilliputians, but with far more advanced technology), and the YA Johnny Maxwell trilogy (Only You Can Save Mankind, Johnny and the Dead and Johnny and the Bomb), featuring the sensitive and thoughtful teenager Johnny Maxwell, and his various misfit friends.

If you enjoy the stories above, you may like to try some of the "Discworld for Adults of All Ages" book, with which Pratchett made his name as a comedy fantasist. The Discworld books consist of a handful of stand-alone novels, and several character series. My personal favourites are those featuring the Witches (the aforementioned Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg, and various colleagues) and the Ankh-Morpork City Watch (Commander Samuel Vimes and his various officers).

Granny Weatherwax is a tough-as-nails witch who has an advanced knowledge of psychology (known as "headology" on the Discworld), her friend Nanny Ogg loves a drink, a smoke and the company of men; she has a number of sons, daughters-in-law (whose names she can never remember), and grand-children, plus an evil-tempered, one-eyed, smelly cat named Greebo. The two are aided, or more often hindered, by various younger witches: Magrat is a soppy, New Age-ish witch, who suffers much from her misspelled name (her mother didn't know how to spell Margaret), yet nevertheless overcomes her various "handicaps" after a series of adventures in Wyrd Sisters (a humorous parody of Macbeth), Witches Abroad, Lords and Ladies and Carpe Jugulum (which, given the title, unsurprisingly features vampires). A new younger "third witch", Agnes, is introduced into the series to take Magrat's place (after she moves onto other things), appearing first in Carpe Jugulum and then in Maskerade (the Discworld version of The Phantom of the Opera).

The City Watch series begins with Guards! Guards! (in which the twin city of Ankh-Morpork (a Discworld version of New York) is invaded by a dragon), Men At Arms, Feet of Clay, Jingo, The Fifth Elephant, Nightwatch and Thud. The City Watch is initially portrayed as old, incompetent and/or a huge joke to the rest of the city, but the City Watch is revitalised in Guards! Guards! by the arrival of Carrot, a 6+ foot young man who has been raised by dwarves in the distant mountain mines, and who believes great things of the Watch. which they somehow find themselves striving to live up to.

Another of my favourite Discworld characters is Death, the 7 foot tall animated skeleton, who rides a pure white stallion named Binky (!) and TALKS IN CAPITALS LIKE THIS. The Death series consists of Mort, Reaper Man, Soul Music (which sees the introduction of Rock and Roll to the Discworld), Hogfather (in which Death takes over from the Discworld equivalent of Santa Clause), and Thief Of Time.

The final character series features the wizards of Unseen University. This series seems to have been merged with the Science of Discworld Series, as the wizards have featured in all three SoD books so far. The series consists of The Colour of Magic (the very first Discworld book), The Light Fantastic (which is a fairly direct sequel to The Colour of Magic), Sourcery (that's not a typo !), Eric, Interesting Times, The Last Continent, and the three Science of Discworld books: The Science of Discworld, The Science of Discworld II: The Globe and Darwin's Watch: Science of Discworld III.

Stand-alone Discworld novels include Moving Pictures (a satire on Hollywood), Small Gods (probably Pratchett's best ever novel - don't let the title put you off !), The Truth (the Discworld invents newspapers and tabloid journalism), Monstrous Regiment, and Going Postal (in which the Ankh-Morpork postal service is revived).

Carnival of Children's Literature 9 - Giving Thanks

A Readable Feast is hosting the Ninth Carnival of Children's Literature on the theme of "Giving Thanks" - specifically "What are you thankful for in children's literature?". If you want to submit, do so at the Carnival site.

Personally, I'm thankful for such children's authors as Charles Butler, Susan Cooper, Catherine Fisher, Alan Garner, Ursula Le Guin, Diana Wynne Jones, Penelope Lively, Robin McKinley, Terry Pratchett, Philip Pullman, Rick Riordan, J K Rowling, Marcus Sedgwick, Jonathan Stroud and Jane Yolen (to name just a few) for writing fascinating and engaging books that have made my reading thoroughly enjoyable this year alone.

I'm thankful for my Dad, who taught me to read at such a young age I have no recollection of learning, and in process turned me into a voracious reader and incurable bookworm !

I'm thankful for the teachers who introduced me to Norton Juster, Clive King, C S Lewis, Mary Norton, Philippa Pearce, Catherine Storr and J R R Tolkien when I was a child - all of whom have written books whose plots have stuck in my head for 25+ years.

And I'm thankful for children's literature Blogging for introducing me to some marvellous people, who are becoming good friends; I'm not going to name people for fear of leaving anyone out - or causing major embarrassment - but I hope you know who you are - thank you !

An Introduction to Charles Butler

Charles Butler started writing fiction long before he became a lecturer. He wrote his first full-length book when he was eighteen, the summer before he went to university. He says it was "a horrible example of Tolkien-Lite, complete with a faux-mediaeval secondary world, obscure prophecies, epic journeys across The Map, and many other fatty lumps from the fantasyland stew pot." By the time the third book Butler wrote was accepted for publication, in 1995, he had been working at a university for several years, teaching Renaissance literature and it was a few years before he realised he could bring the two sides of his life together, by teaching children’s literature as well as writing it. Butler says that his work has been influenced by the work of three British fantasy authors: Susan Cooper, Alan Garner and Diana Wynne Jones; for those readers who are familiar with the works of these three authors, the marks of their influence on Butler's books are visible, particularly their treatment of time as non-linear. He says that his novel, Death of a Ghost, was influenced by Garner's Red Shift, particularly by the way in which "Garner dispenses with the usual fantasy mechanisms for handling the relationship between different historical periods"; and the conclusion of The Fetch of Mardy Watt has the kind of multiple revelations and changes of identity he likes in Diana Wynne Jones' titles, such as Archer’s Goon. Butler also says that the novels of New Zealander author, Margaret Mahy, especially The Changeover, has influenced his own writing. (All quotes from Charles Butler come from my interview with him for The Edge of the Forest.)

Butler has so far published six stand-alone novels: The first, The Darkling (NB this is a spoiler review), was published in 1997. Since childhood, 15 year old Petra has loved to scare herself with the Darkling, a make-believe creature created from night time shadows on the wall. But what happens when the Darkling takes on a life of its own and when it reveals the tragic secret of nearby Century Hall and its elderly owner ? And why does Mr Century insist on giving Petra gifts ? No one, not even Petra, could guess at the terrifying events that will be unleashed by the Darkling, or the way they will change her life.

The second novel, Timon's Tide, was published in 1998. It focuses on 16 year old Daniel, whose elder brother Timon, was drowned six years ago. His body was found near the Bristol docks, bound with plastic cords. Or so Daniel has always believed. Yet Daniel does not doubt that the down-and-out who accosts him in the street is Timon. Daniel already finds his complicated family life, with a step-father and a step-sister, difficult enough, without the unnerving presence of Timon, and the guilt Daniel feels over his brother's death, which he is now uncertain took place.

The third book, Calypso Dreaming (NB this is a spoiler review), was published in 2002. The story is set on Sweetholm, a small island out in the Bristol channel, which is best known for its seal and seabird colonies. When Geoff and Hilary Robinson are offered the opportunity to look after a house there for the summer, they see it as a good opportunity to work at patching up their disintegrating marriage. Tansy, their teenage daughter sees it as a chance to put behind her the unnerving experiments she and her best friend Kate have been making in magic. Unfortunately trouble is not so easily outrun and Sweetholm is far from the idyllic retreat it appears to be.

The fourth book, The Fetch of Mardy Watt (NB this is a spoiler review), was published in 2004. Something is haunting Mardy Watt. It's been in her room, it's fooling her friends, and it's upsetting her home life. And the trouble is, nobody realises what is happening except Mardy herself. Exactly why the Fetch is picking on her, Mardy doesn't know – but she does know that she has to find out, before it takes over and replaces her completely. But whatever spell had been put on her is growing stronger. And suddenly, rather than fear, she feels a rush of burning anger. How dare anyone do this to her ! How dare anyone steal her life !

You can download a PDF extract of this book from Butler's publisher's website and read it for yourself. Personally, I was reminded of Alan Garner’s Elidor when I was re-reading The Fetch of Mardy Watt, with Uraniborg overlying Mardy’s everyday world, yet also lying separate from it.

Butler's fifth book, Death of a Ghost (NB this is a spoiler review), was published in early 2006. It is a timeslip ghost story. When 16 year old Ossian returns to Lychfont House from America with his artist father, he finds things are both familiar and yet oddly different. He reacquaints himself with the Frazer family, who live at Lychfont, and finds himself questioning the accuracy of certain of his childhood memories and wondering just why the place seems to hold such power over him. Of one thing he is sure, however: the ghosts are still haunting him. Whilst Ossian is puzzling over his existence, a Celtic goddess is searching for her lost love. Sulis calls in the scryer to track down her lover, wherever he may be, for their wedding must go ahead. After all, she and Ossian were made for each other ! But which Ossian is which ? There's the 15th century apprentice to a goldsmith/alchemist, the latter having a sideline in torture for the government of the day; there's the Iron Age son of a priest of Sulis; and then there's the 21st century son of an artist. But for whom of these three is Sulis searching ? This is a supernatural thriller that grabs the attention from the first page and refuses to let go. The twist in the tale is quite astonishing and chilling. Death of a Ghost reminded a little of Diana Wynne Jones' The Time of the Ghost, although Butler's "ghost" moves across a far greater time span than does Jones' ghost.

Butler's latest novel, The Lurkers was published in late 2006. It is a disturbing tale of a group of strange and dangerous beings who have no physical presence in our world, apart from one, named Galder, who is only half in our world. When Verity sees a weird semi-visible figure near her brother John, one day he tells her that it is a harmless Lurker. He likes Galder, who gives him everything he wants whether it's a bigger bedroom, Bristol Rovers winning a football semi-final 6 - 1 against Chelsea, or a host of school friends visiting and praising John. However, the Lurkers are far from harmless; they feed on the human imagination and Galder is using John's brilliant young mind to become more solid and independent. Galder and his fellow alien beings intend to take over the minds of humanity, so they starting infecting people with the belief that the End Is Nigh in order to take control of them. Only Verity can stand against the Lurkers, because she cannot lie, even to herself, as her name belies her nature. But is Verity's knowledge of what the Lurkers intend sufficient for her to save not only her brother, but everyone else as well ? You can read the first chapter at the Usborne website but be warned, one chapter will not be enough.

Butler writes totally believable characters and tense, intriguing narratives that make me want to sit and read non-stop. If you enjoy supernatural tales, be sure to read Butler's books.

You may also be interested in Butler's book Four British Fantasists: Place and Culture in the Children's Fantasies of Penelope Lively, Alan Garner, Diana Wynne Jones, and Susan Cooper, which is a very readable scholarly study of the four fantasists of the title.

An Introduction to Juliet E McKenna

Juliet E McKenna is one of my favourite living writers of fantasy for grown ups who has so far written two series of fantasy novels. The Tales of Einarinn is a series of five novels - the first, third and fifth are told from the point of view of Livak, a fiery, independent young woman who's a gambler and occasional thief (of the rich, like Robin Hood) by trade; the second and fourth novels are told from the point of view of Ryshad Tathel, who is a swordsman to a noble and who eventually becomes Livak's lover. They are forced to battle invaders from a group of islands far off to the east of the Einsamin mainland where they live - each book features a different aspect of the on-going battle. The Tales of Einarinn series consists of The Thief's Gamble, The Swordsman's Oath, The Gambler's Fortune, The Warrior's Bond and The Assassin's Edge.

The Aldabreshin Compass series is a series of four books (the final one is out in September) told from the point of view of Kheda, former warlord of the Daish domain (a series of islands in the Aldabreshin Archipelago) and now warlord of the Chazen domain. The Aldabreshin people despise magic and believe it interferes with the natural order of the world; they practise a sophisticated form of fortune-telling, including reading the stars, reading entrails and reading nature - and they feel they cannot rely on such things where magic has taken place. Unfortunately Kheda finds himself increasingly involved with mages from the mainland (where most of the Tales are set) and he starts to lose his faith in his people's practices. The Aldabreshin Compass series consists of Southern Fire, Northern Storm, Western Shore and Eastern Tide.

In addition, McKenna has published a short novel - actually a series of linked short stories, called Turns and Chances which relate to the on-going Lescari Civil War (which is referred to at intervals throughout the Tales), and she is planning to eventually write a series set during this period of her fictional history. McKenna is also publishing some short stories that tie together the five Tales of Einarinn - these are appearing in PS Publishing's Postscripts magazine.

In addition to all of this, McKenna has joined forces with five other authors of fantasy fiction to form The Write Fantastic (which has its own LiveJournal) - a collective to promote fantasy for adults in order to bring back lapsed readers and encourage new readers. In order to do this, they attend conferences, and give book talks up and down the country. McKenna also has her own LiveJournal.

I recently had the privilege of interviewing Juliet for the Orbit e-newsletter. The interview was then picked up by SF Crowsnest.

The Devil's Footsteps - E E Richardson

One in fire, two in blood,
Three in storm and four in flood,
Five in anger, six in hate,
Seven fear and evil eight.
Nine in sorrow, ten in pain,
Eleven death, twelve life again.
Thirteen steps to the Dark Man's door,
Won't be turning back no more.

It was supposed to be just a bit of fun, a local legend tells of the Devil's Footsteps: thirteen stepping stones in the woods – whichever one you stopped on whilst reciting the rhyme could predict how you would die. It seemed like a harmless game for kids – but Bryan knows differently. He knows the terrible truth. He saw the Dark Man take his older brother Adam five years ago. Although he's tried to tell himself, over and over again, that it was just his imagination, that the Devil's Footsteps are just a set of thirteen stepping stones, and that the Dark Man doesn't really exist, he knows he is lying to himself. He think it doesn't matter whether people believe in the local legend or not, Adam is missing anyway.

Then one day, Bryan is approached by another boy in the school library; Smokey thinks that he stepped around the corner of the railway station just in time to stop his little sister, Nina, from being taken by the Dark Man. They head to the local public library to see if they can find out anything about the town's history, and whilst they're at the library, Bryan notices an older boy, Jake, who is also researching local history; he has a long list of children who have disappeared in the town and a map marking the spots where they've disappeared. Between them they realise that someone or something is after the town's children and they decide that it's up to them to try to find out more, and if possible, stop it happening again.

E E Richardson's first book, The Devil's Footsteps is a supernatural thriller for young adults. It's a remarkably assured debut from a young writer (Richardson was 20 when he published it); gripping, alarming and almost impossible to put down, this book will haunt you after you read it.

An occasional series

Back in June, I wrote a guest column for Susan over at Chicken Spaghetti that was An Introduction to Terry Pratchett for the uninitiated. Since then, I've recently promised to write an occasional series of "An Introduction to..." pieces on children's/YA authors for The Edge of the Forest, and it occurred to me that I could usefully gather all the links together here, over in the sidebar of my Blog, and I could also write some similar pieces on other authors, including some authors who write for adults, for those readers who are new to particular (fantasy) authors.

(Quite how I'm going to fit in writing these pieces with all my reviewing for The Edge of the Forest and Write Away, the CYBILS nominations committee, and my critical work, I'm not quite sure - but there's a saying that if you want something done, give it to a busy person... And besides, how much sleep does one person really need ?)

Poetry Friday 23: Remembrance 2

Continuing my theme for November of poems for Remembrance, I'd like to offer the following poems.

Break of Day in the Trenches

The darkness crumbles away.
It is the same old druid Time as ever,
Only a live thing leaps my hand,
A queer sardonic rat,
As I pull the parapet's poppy
To stick behind my ear.
Droll rat, they would shoot you if they knew
Your cosmopolitan sympathies.
Now you have touched this English hand
You will do the same to a German
Soon, no doubt, if it be your pleasure
To cross the sleeping green between.
It seems you inwardly grin as you pass
Strong eyes, fine limbs, haughty athletes,
Less chanced than you for life,
Bonds to the whims of murder,
Sprawled in the bowels of the earth,
The torn fields of France.
What do you see in our eyes
At the shrieking iron and flame
Hurled through still heavens ?
What quaver - what heart aghast?
Poppies whose roots are in man's veins
Drop, and are ever dropping;
But mine in my ear is safe -
Just a little white with the dust.

- Isaac Rosenberg


Isaac Rosenberg was the least privileged of the British First World War poets. He was born in 1890, into a working-class Jewish family which had emigrated from Russia and eventually moved to the East End of London. Although Rosenberg's working-class origins and financial circumstances prevented him from attending either Oxford or Cambridge University, he was a talented artist and enrolled in evening classes at the Art School of Birkbeck College, part of London University. He hoped to make a living as a portrait artist and had moved to South Africa to pursue his career when the First World War broke out. He returned to England in 1915, enlisted in 1916, and was killed at the front on April 3, 1918.


The Rear-Guard (Hindeburg Line, April 1917)

(from Counter-Attack and Other Poems)

Groping along the tunnel, step by step,
He winked his prying torch with patching glare
From side to side, and sniffed the unwholesome air.

Tins, boxes, bottles, shapes too vague to know;
A mirror smashed, the mattress from a bed;
And he, exploring fifty feet below
The rosy gloom of battle overhead.

Tripping, he grabbed the wall; saw some one lie
Humped at his feet, half-hidden by a rug,
And stooped to give the sleeper's arm a tug.
'I'm looking for headquarters.' No reply.
'God blast your neck!' (For days he'd had no sleep,)
'Get up and guide me through this stinking place.'

Savage, he kicked a soft, unanswering heap,
And flashed his beam across the livid face
Terribly glaring up, whose eyes yet wore
Agony dying hard ten days before;
And fists of fingers clutched a blackening wound.

Alone he staggered on until he found
Dawn's ghost that filtered down a shafted stair
To the dazed, muttering creatures underground
Who hear the boom of shells in muffled sound.
At last, with sweat of horror in his hair,
He climbed through darkness to the twilight air,
Unloading hell behind him step by step.

- Siegfried Sassoon


Siegfried Sassoon was born at the family home of Weirleigh in Matfield, Kent, in 1886. He was the second son of Alfred and Theresa (née Thornycroft), who subsequently separated when Sassoon was just five years old. Alfred had been disowned by his mother on his marriage to Theresa because she was not a Jew, and Alfred was the first of the Sassoon clan to marry outside the family faith. Alfred died of TB when Sassoon was nine. Siegfried was educated at Marlborough College (a private boarding school in Wiltshire), then at Clare College, Cambridge. He studied both Law and History at Cambridge, before leaving without taking a degree. After he left Cambridge, Sassoon lived the life of a sportsman, hunting, riding point-to-point races and playing cricket until the outbreak of the First World War. He enlisted on 2 August 1914, two days before the British declaration of war, and initially joined up as a trooper in the Sussex Yeomanry. However, after a riding accident whilst doing some field-work (he had put his horse at a fence blind with summer vegetation, and a hidden strand of wire brought the horse down on top of him, leaving Sassoon with a badly broken right arm), Sassoon was commissioned in the Royal Welch Fusiliers in May 1915. Between November 1915 and April 1917 he served as a second lieutenant in both the First and Second Battalions, Royal Welch Fusiliers. (There's a longer version of this biography on my Counter-Attack website.)

Random Thoughts

Normally at this time of year (my natal anniversary), I get all gloomy and start wondering what on earth I think I am doing, trying to make a career out of writing scholarly non-fiction (a notoriously poorly paid trade !), and then I wonder if I can go back to just reading books; although last year I did wonder if maybe I should just stick to subjecting my Blog readers to my rambling thoughts on books, instead of spending humungous amounts of time and energy in researching and writing lengthy essays on books I adore. This year, though, my birthday has come and almost gone, and I've not even vaguely entertained the idea of giving up my writing.

Why ?

Well, there are two reasons - and I'm afraid they're both pretty shallow. The reasons are money and fame (or notoriety if you prefer). You see, this year I shall be getting paid actual spendable currency for writing ! And, people are starting to know my name, and are starting to approach me for the knowledge/expertise that I hold in my head and have been building up for the last five years.

It's not a vast amount of money - and it's no one really famous - but they're both an acknowledgement of what I've spent the past five years working really hard at. For those who haven't yet guessed or realised, almost all of my spare time when I'm not doing my "day job" or sleeping (and I don't do vast amounts of the latter), is spent in reading primary material (novels and short stories), writing, researching secondary material (in print and online), corresponding with authors, critics, fans, and publishers, and thinking; I do a lot of my thinking whilst doing my household chores - Sunday mornings are particularly good in that respect !

Some people with whom I work or talk, but who have little or no idea about what a writer does, have accused me of having a dull life. And I guess that compared to their endless diet of drinking, watching TV, going out and socialising, my life must look very dull indeed. But you know what ? I'm actually happy with it, thank you. Sure, I could use a bit more cash so I can afford to move out of my tiny, book-filled-to-almost-overflowing attic, but otherwise, this year, I've no regrets at taking up the writing life.

Dark Horse - Marcus Sedgwick

Marcus Sedgwick is turning into one of my favourite YA fantasy authors. His output is astonishingly diverse, in terms of settings for his novels. Dark Horse, for example, is often harsh and unflinching. The story plunges the reader into a pivotal moment in the life of a small, apparently Nordic tribe, called the Storn, who are largely isolated from other peoples except through its irregular contact with itinerant traders. Rumors of a vicious, horse-riding people, known as the Dark Horse, are troubling the Storn's lonely lifestyle, and the appearance of a strange man with white hair and black palms brings death into their closed society. Sedgwick creates rounded and complex characters who are weak and strong, venial and high-minded. He weaves a double tale - a third-person narrative that is set in the story's present, when the violence and disruption of the Storn's life are first imminent and then present, and then a series of first-person flashbacks recounted by 16 year old Sigurd, the tale's protagonist. He begins his account several years earlier, explaining how he comes to have an adopted sister, named Mouse, from an unknown people, who has the ability to communicate with animals, then moving forward from there until both narrations coincide in time.

Mouse's identity becomes central to the novel's events and even explains the marauding of the Dark Horse. Sedgwick employs a lean narrative voice and writes in short chapters that encourage the reader to keep turning the pages, and he draws the reader along, allowing them to make sense of the unexplained connections, to puzzle out the characters' motivations, to decide who is a hero and who is a villain. Sedgwick does not make any concessions to moralising or romanticising, regarding the harsh life of the Storn, but this tale is rich, involving, and lively.

Victory - Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper's Victory is a mixture of historical and realistic fiction. Sam Robbins is an 11 year old farm boy in Kent whose uncle takes him to earn a living at the ropewalk in Chatham as the Royal Navy prepares for a renewed war against France. He and his uncle are press-ganged into becoming sailors, and Sam becomes a powder monkey aboard H. M. S. Victory, the ship on which Lord Nelson will die a hero's death at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805.

Molly Jennings is a present-day English girl whose mother and step-father have moved her from London to America, to start a new life after her step-father Carl is moved to his American homeland through work. Molly is fighting a battle of her own against homesickness and loneliness.

This extraordinary adventure tale tells the interwoven stories of Sam and Molly, who are linked by a mystery. At first Sam is terrified and seasick aboard Victory, but gradually he is transformed into a sailor. In the rowdy, dangerous world of a warship enduring the Napoleonic Wars, he faces cruelty and kindness, and survives a fearsome battle whose echoes reach through the years to involve Molly as well. On a trip to Mystic Seaport, Molly, who is a great reader, finds an old copy of Robert Southey's The Life of Nelson. When her step-brother Russell's friend is teasing her and faking a Cockney accent, Molly loses her cool and throws the book at Jack. This knocks loose the cover and she finds inside a handmade envelope with two notes and a tattered piece of material. The material turns out to be a piece of Victory's flag that had belonged to Sam Robbins. Sam had given it to his daughter before making his final sea voyage, from which he did not return. Sam's grandson Edward has hidden the piece of flag inside the book after his mother gave it to him. The flag links Sam and Molly together, although Molly doesn't learn exactly why until almost the end of the book. In the meantime they both struggle through fear and excitement to the Battle of Trafalgar, which terrifyingly tests the courage of them both.

There's a beautiful bit in this book, which reminded me strongly of Cooper's other recent historical tale, King of Shadows. Molly is in the bookshop at Mystic Seaport where the family has taken refuge from a sudden heavy rain shower. She goes to speak to the shop owner, who is bent over paperwork

He looks up from his papers, startled, and for a moment does not see her. She has the feeling that inside his head he was a long, long way away, and is having trouble coming back. Being a reader, Molly knows such feelings well [...]. (pp. 22-23)

This is an amazing tale - I love the way Cooper uses the piece of the flag that Molly finds. She doesn't travel through time with it, she just catches echoes, some of them terrifyingly strong, of Sam's experiences, which then touch her own life in powerful ways. The ending of the tale is emotionally powerful, yet deeply satisfying too. A book I can recommend.

Firefly Quote of the Week

Zoe: Jayne. This is something the Captain has to do for himself.
Mal: No! No, it's not!
Zoe: Oh.

("War Stories", Season 1)

Does being a reviewer affect my reading ?

I've been thinking about this quite a bit since Jen Robinson posted about it on her Blog last week. An intense discussion has taken place in the comments on the post, which you can read if you follow the link above, but here's what I said

Jen mentioned, in her remarks, that she marks passages in books with post-it notes:

I, too, have taken to marking good passages with sticky notes to include in my reviews. I like to include such passages as proof that I'm paying attention to the writing style as well as the actual narrative, so that no one thinks that my sole object is to read as many books as possible ! Just because I read fast doesn't mean I don't pay attention. (Unproofed copies of books get their errors marked up in pencil, too !)

Otherwise, the way I read hasn't really changed since I took to writing regular reviews for my Blog. I've always been one to discuss books passionately, but now I do it on my Blog, instead of boring my non-reading friends with my ravings (well OK, I do rave occasionally to friends !) - which was the main reason for starting my Blog in the first place since the reading friend to whom I raved passed away.

In the discussion that followed, Jen also mentioned that book reviewing has taken away some of her enjoyment of the books she reads as she doesn't get as lost in them as she used to do, or she doesn't get as lost so often. Jen also mentions the need "to come up for air" in order to make a note of something she's read. Here's what I said in response:

I've mentioned this before in various places, but since I did my English degree 5 years ago, I have acquired the facility to read on two levels at once (98% of the time), as a critic and as a child. My inner 6 year old just wants to know what happens next and does everyone live "happily ever after" ? My inner critic looks at the point(s) of view, the narrative structure, use of language, style, voice, etc., etc.

This has, in fact, *increased* my enjoyment of the books I read, not decreased it... But apparently, I'm luckier than some/most in that respect !

I confess that it was doing a degree in English that changed the way I read. When I started my degree, I did worry that my favourite books would be spoilt by studying them in detail, but the opposite was, and still is, true. I can appreciate books, and what their authors have achieved, more by studying them - close reading, analytical comparison, and the "dissection" of books have taught me to appreciate the art of story telling that is being practised in the books I read. I feel I am a more intelligent and engaged reader now, than I was back in 1998, before I started my degree. Does that make me a "better" reader ? The answer to that depends on what you mean by "better", of course. Is it better to be able to spot themes, recognise symbolism, observe when the narratorial point of view switches between first and third person as well as between characters ? I think so. Why ? Because it means that when I talk to authors, I have a better understanding of their art and the work that goes into making a good story, which makes my conversations with authors more interesting to me, as a reader and as a writer. But that doesn't mean I disdain anyone who reads simply and purely for pleasure. Far from it. Analysing books isn't for everyone - I know that. So I'm a better reader for a given value of better. But that doesn't mean that readers who don't analyse books are somehow worse readers. There's no elitism implied in my use of the term "better reader". The desire to be a better reader is purely personal, and it's not a goal that every reader will have, and of course, that's OK. I want people to read and to enjoy reading - I don't care what they read or how they choose to read, I only care that they read because I believe that reading makes the reader a better human being. Reading opens up minds, shows us what it's like to be other people in other places living other lives - which can only be a good thing as it breaks down barriers and helps to overcome prejudice. Which is not to say that I disdain non-readers. I feel slightly sorry for people who don't enjoy reading, simply because I get such pleasure from it, but I know very well that not everyone loves books as much as I do.

* * * * * *

Jen's comments from her post are reported with her permission.

EDITED to add - there was an interesting and thought-provoking article by American novelist Paul Auster in the Guardian yesterday. He says:

art is useless, at least when compared, say, to the work of a plumber, or a doctor, or a railroad engineer. But is uselessness a bad thing? Does a lack of practical purpose mean that books and paintings and string quartets are simply a waste of our time? Many people think so. But I would argue that it is the very uselessness of art that gives it its value and that the making of art is what distinguishes us from all other creatures who inhabit this planet, that it is, essentially, what defines us as human beings.

To do something for the pure pleasure and beauty of doing it. Think of the effort involved, the long hours of practice and discipline required to become an accomplished pianist or dancer. All the suffering and hard work, all the sacrifices in order to achieve something that is utterly and magnificently ... useless.

Fiction, however, exists in a somewhat different realm from the other arts. Its medium is language, and language is something we share with others, that is common to us all. From the moment we learn to talk, we begin to develop a hunger for stories.

Do take a look and then feel free to come back and discuss Auster's thoughts here.

Dawn of Fear - Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper's Dawn of Fear is a fictionalised autobiographical account of what it's like to be a child in WW2. The only real fictionalisation, however, is that the main character of the story is a boy, rather than a girl.

The story is told from the point of view of Derek and his best friend Peter, and their friend Geoffrey, and recounts how they don't take the war very seriously for quite some time. When the air raid siren goes off whilst they are at school, the three boys are far more interested in watching the planes dogfighting overhead, than in getting into the air raid shelter ! So used are the children to the air raids that at one moment, as they are sheltering in the Anderson hut, Derek's mother says that they should stop talking lest they wake up Derek's baby brother, Hugh - the little boy has already learned to sleep through the sound of air raid sirens and bombs, but talking is less normal. It's interesting to see the adults' agonising over the upbringing of their children during the war. Derek's parents clearly want their children to act with caution, but they don't want them to live in fear either.

There's a moment when the family are making their way into the Anderson one night when a raid has already started. Derek is again watching the sky and his father has to roughly grab him and push him into the shelter. As the planes begin bombing the street Derek realises

The guns everywhere were hammering the sky in an uneven thunder, and close together there were several great blasting crashes as more bombs fell. [...] Derek sat down suddenly on the bottom bunk and burst into tears.
His father say down beside him and held him tightly. "I'm sorry, Derry. Are you all right?"
Miserably Derek nodded, unable to speak for the sobs that were sending his chest up into his throat. He pressed his head into his father's arm and clutched at his hand.

It's at this point that the huge danger they are all in becomes real to Derek. But being young, he soon gets over it. Derek and his friends are, for the most part, more interested in the act of creating their own camp, inspired by the ancient fortifications of the Chiltern Hills and the Thames Valley. To Derek and his friends, it's just a secret camp, but gradually the role of such forts in the past comes to haunt them as everything they have built is threatened, then destroyed by a gang of children from another street who had objected to Derek, Peter and Geoffrey stopping them from hurting a cat. After their long hours spent building the camp, they take an older boy named Tommy, who is shortly joining the Merchant Navy, (which takes boys younger than the regular Navy, or the Army or Air Force) to see it. When they arrive at the camp however, David Wiggs and his friends have utterly destroyed the camp, and left a "calling card", so that Derek and the others know who was responsible.

Outraged, they wonder how to get their own back, and Tommy comes up with a plan to ambush the gang in a nearby field. Derek and his friends carry out their ambush and the "enemy" is routed, until finally Tommy Hicks and David's older brother, Johnny, whom Tommy hates as a shirker, engage in a one-on-one fight. Tommy Hicks has signed up with the Merchant Navy, even though he knows this is by far the most hazardous service, as the fatalities are highest amongst its men. Tommy believes that Johnny, on the other hand, engages in black market profiteering, so their fight is not only about the destruction of Derek, Peter and Geoffrey's camp, but also about bravery and doing one's duty during a war.

Cooper is quite subtle in her suggestion that all the boys will be touched by death: Geoffrey proudly tells Tommy that his uncle is serving on the destroyer, HMS Hood, little knowing, as her readers do, that this ship and most of her crew are doomed. Tommy also talks a great deal about Churchill's Dunkirk speech; he makes it quite clear that he expects the boys to know exactly what Churchill said; he, himself, can recite it.

When death finally comes to Derek's group, it is not Tommy who is killed. I won't tell you who dies or how they died - it was a shock to me and very moving. I freely admit that I wept through the final chapter - this close to Remembrance Sunday and Armistice Day, I was remembering the many young men who had died in the First World War, as well as those who gave or lost their lives in the Second World War.

New books I want to read

One of the painful pleasures of reading other people's Blogs is finding out about new books that are either (a) not yet out in the UK, or (b) the library hasn't got around to buying yet ! Sometimes, some generous Kidslit Blogger will send me a copy of the book (as Kelly, of Big A, little a, and Jen, of Jen Robinson's Book Page have both kindly done in the past), but mostly I just have to politely badger the library into buying it so I can read it ! This week I will be asking for the following three books, reviews for which caught my eye last week on two Blogs.

The Book of Story Beginnings by Kristin Kladstrup was reviewed by Sheila over at Wands and Worlds - apparently it came out in March this year.

Sheila also reviewed Here, There Be Dragons by James A. Owen and came out in September. It's set during WW1, which immediately got my attention, and Oxford seems to be featured as well - which was also attention-grabbing !

Finally, Jen Robinson, of Jen Robinson's Book Page reviewed a non-fantasy book, which looked very interesting, Jumping the Scratch by Sarah Weeks. I don't often read non-genre books, simply because keeping up with genre books is pretty time-consuming, but Jen's review made this one sound very appealing. According to Amazon, this one came out in May. I'm hoping the library is already in the process of buying these three books, if not, I shall encourage them heartily !

Finding Forrester - Movie Review

It's not often I review a movie here that's not either Fantasy/SF or for children, but the coming-of-age movie from Gus van Sant, Finding Forrester is suitable for teens and especially aspiring writers !

William Forrester is a writer who has remained reclusive after writing a Pulitzer Prize winning novel some forty odd years earlier. Living alone whilst battling his own inner demons, he hides out in a changing Bronx neighborhood where he makes the acquaintance of Jamal, an intellectually gifted inner city kid, who plays basketball and loves to write, and does both very well.

One night Jamal sneaks into "the Window's" apartment (the kids' name for Forrester as they often see him at his window, hiding behind the net curtains) and discovering that Forrester is not asleep after all, makes a panicked escape, leaving his backpack behind. Forrester taunts Jamal by hanging his backpack from the sash window, then, after hearing that Jamal gave a history lesson on BMW to the guy who runs all Forrester's errands, he throws the backpack out of the window into the street. Back home Jamal takes his notebooks from his backpack and discovers that Forrester has "red penned" them all, critiquing his work. Jamal goes to see Forrester, and a mentoring relationship springs between the two. Under Forrester's secret tutorship, Jamal blossoms. When Jamal's scholastic test scores come to the attention of a local (private) prep school, the officials there offer him a scholarship to attend and, if he chooses to do so, play basketball on the school team.

At the school, Jamal encounters racism, which is all the more insidious because it is covert. F. Murray Abraham plays a failed writer, Robert Crawford, who became an English teacher. Abraham oozes racism as he contrives to destroy Jamal, whom he accuses of plagiarism, clearly believing him to be just another inner-city, black basketball player who cannot be capable of anything more. However, Jamal is actually just that - a gifted writer, who just also happens to be a gifted basketball player. Truly scholarly, he shows up Crawford in class, which only further increases his enmity. Finally Crawford's dislike and covert racism manifests itself in the exclusion of Jamal's entry in the school's prestigious annual writing competition. The situation comes to a head when the teacher's racism is exposed for exactly what it is in a stunning, surprising climax.

Jamal, however, is not the only one to have a moment of redemption in the movie. Forrester, too, has such a moment as he comes to grips with his past, the past that has made him shut the world out for forty years. It's his friendship with Jamal that eases his return to the world from which he had withdrawn so long ago.

Finding Forrester is also available from Amazon.com.

Scholar's Blog Spoiler Zone Update

There's a review of Scott Westerfeld's Blue Noon over on the Scholar's Blog Spoiler Zone.

The Snow Walker Trilogy - Catherine Fisher

I waited to review Catherine Fisher's The Snow Walker Trilogy all in one go because the three books are relatively short (under 200 pages each), so if you've been wondering at the lack of book reviews this week, here's a large part of the reason why (the other part being the Carnival on Tuesday, of course !).

The Snow-Walker's Son

Young Jessa is horrified when she learns that the Jarl (the king-chieftain of her people) is exiling her and Thorkil, because their dead fathers supported Wulfgar instead of him for the role of Jarl. They are exiled to Thrasirshall; there Kari, the son of the Jarl and his cold, evil witch of a wife, Gudrun, lives in isolation apart from Brochael, his carer. Kari is rumoured to be a monster as Thorkil tells Jessa:

He has a pelt of fur like a troll. He tears his skin with his teeth in his fits. Others say he has eyes like a wolf. There are plenty of stories. Who knows which is true?

But when Jessa and Thorkil arrive at Thrasirshall after a long and dangerous journey through the snow-bound countryside north of their coastal village, they find that Kari is not a monster, just a lonely young boy, but one with the power to destroy his scheming sorceress mother, so he has been isolated to protect Gudrun's power and position. Kari, like Gudrun, is a Snow Walker, one of the white people of the far north who possess the power, amongst other things, to create fire, enter people's minds (subduing them to their will) and to leave their bodies to walk in spirit form.

Gudrun is ruling the Jarlshold through her husband, controlling the minds of the people so that they will accept Ragnar as the Jarl, instead of Wulfgar, who was the rightful heir. Jessa and Thorkil join Brochael, Kari and a skald named Skapti, in searching out Wulfgar, so that he can become the Jarl instead. But their task will not be easy: Kari's powers are largely untried, and Gudrun appears to be far too aware of what's going on with her enemies, and Jessa begins to suspect that Gudrun is using someone in the group to keep track of them. Who is it, and how has Gudrun gained their compliance ?

The Empty Hand

After the death of the Jarl, Gudrun vanishes, and the new Jarl, Wulfgar, begins his rule. Meanwhile, to Jessa's disappointment, Kari and Brochael go back to Thrasirshall in the north for a few years, so that Kari can learn to master more of his magic abilities. Kari fears becoming like his evil mother, Gudrun, whilst others fear his dark magic. Even Wulfgar, who owes his role as Jarl to Kari, begins to doubt him, especially when Kari is accused of bringing danger to the Jarlshold via a prophecy given by a priest whom Wulfgar trusts.

But then Kari find himself with more than just accusations to survive. A monstrous, bear-like creature is coming to the Jarlshold, with Wulfgar as its target. Will Jessa and the others survive in their hunt for it and will Kari be able to overcome it before it destroys the Jarl ?

The Soul Thieves

This book recounts the final conflict between Gudrun and Kari. They are identical but opposite, and therefore bound to each other with a link that Kari wants broken for all time. Gudrun hates and fears her son, but she cannot leave him alone, despite the fact that she has retreated to her palace in the land of the Snow-Walkers, which lies far to the north, beyond all natural knowledge of those of the Jarlshold. She continues to watch Kari and the people of the Jarlshold, and waits for her chance to persuade Kari to join her.

Loathing Wulfgar, Gudrun has promised him that she will take away from him that which he loves the best. As he prepares to celebrate his marriage to Signi, Gudrun's plan becomes shockingly clear:

Around them the mist closed in. Shapes moved in it; they thought they say huge men, tall as trolls, creatures from nightmares. A fog-wolf with glinting eyes snarled under the table; the legs of distorted, monstrous beings waded past them through the hall. Frost was spreading quickly across the floor; it crunched under their feet and nails; they breathed it in and the pain of it seared their throats, clogged their voices.
'Getting cold,' Hakon's voice whispered, close to her.
'Me too.' She struggled to say, 'Keep awake,' but her lips felt swollen, her tongue would not make the sounds.
Cold stiffened her clenched fingers.
'Hakon ...' she murmured, but he did not answer. She felt for him; his arm lay cold beside her.
Around them the hall was silent.
Now the white grip of the ice was creeping gently over her cheek, spreading on her skin. With a great effort she shifted a little, and the fine film cracked, but it formed again almost instantly, sealing her lips with a mask of glass. She couldn't breathe.
Crystals of ice closed over her eyelids, crusting her lashes.
Darkness froze in her mind.

Whilst the people lie enchanted in the Jarl's great hall, Gudrun steals Signi's soul away and leaves her in a death-like state. There is only one way to get Signi's soul back: Kari will have to go north and confront his mother. He isn't sure if he has the power to overcome since he has not devoted his life to the study of evil sorcery, but unless he can beat her now, he will never be free of her, nor will the people of the Jarlshold.

The journey to the land of the Snow-Walkers is dangerous and terrifying, going beyond all maps but one, an ancient almost unreadable map that Kari takes with him on his journey to the land of the Snow-Walkers. But he does not journey alone; his old friend Jessa, his guardian Broachael, Skapti the poet, and the former thrall Hakon accompany him on his quest. And it is not merely Signi's soul that is at stake. Gudrun's spell has been designed to eventually overcome everyone in the Jarlshold, so that eventually there will be nothing but soulless shells left behind.

Catherine Fisher's writing is descriptive, poetic, and tense. Her descriptions of magical beasts and phantoms are totally spellbinding, and the narrative pace matches the movement of her characters through the snow-bound landscape.

Poetry Friday 22: Remembrance 1

Since this year is the 90th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme, I'm devoting November to Remembrance and will be posting poems of the First World War. I shall start with two by my favourite WW1 poet, Siegfried Sassoon.

Attack

(from The Old Huntsman)

At dawn the ridge emerges massed and dun
In the wild purple of the glow'ring sun,
Smouldering through spouts of drifting smoke that shroud
The menacing scarred slope; and, one by one,
Tanks creep and topple forward to the wire.
The barrage roars and lifts. Then, clumsily bowed
With bombs and guns and shovels and battle-gear,
Men jostle and climb to meet the bristling fire.
Lines of grey, muttering faces, masked with fear,
They leave their trenches, going over the top,
While time ticks blank and busy on their wrists,
And hope, with furtive eyes and grappling fists,
Flounders in mud. O Jesus, make it stop!

Does it Matter?

(from Counter-Attack and other Poems)

Does it matter? - losing your legs?...
For people will always be kind,
And you need not show that you mind
When the others come in after hunting
To gobble their muffins and eggs.

Does it matter? - losing your sight?...
There's such splendid work for the blind;
And people will always be kind,
As you sit on the terrace remembering
And turning your face to the light.

Do they matter? - those dreams from the pit?...
You can drink and forget and be glad,
And people won't say that you're mad;
For they'll know you've fought for your country
And no one will worry a bit.

Gothic! Ten Original Dark Tales

The ten "original dark tales" in Gothic! Ten Original Dark Tales (which is edited by Deborah Noyes) are as follows:

"Lungewater" – Joan Aiken
"Morgan Roehmar's Boys" – Vivian Vande Velde
"Watch and Wake" - M T Anderson
"Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slave in the Nameless House of the Night of Dread Desire" – Neil Gaiman
"The Dead and the Moonstruck" – Caitlin R Kiernan
"Have No Fear, Crumpot is Here!" – Barry Yourgrau
"Stone Tower" – Janni Lee Simner
"The Prank" – Gregory Maguire
"Writing on the Wall" – Celia Rees
"Endings" – Garth Nix

I read Neil Gaiman's and Garth Nix's first since they were the only two authors with whose works I'm familiar. Gaiman's "Forbidden..." is a tale about a flamboyant young novelist who's in search of a subject more compelling than his own eerie existence - and contains a typically Gaimanesque twist to the tale.

Garth Nix's "Endings" is a quite moving tale of sorrow and joy with alternate endings.

Gregory Maguire's very contemporary offering, "The Prank" is about a female teenage delinquent who is forced to spend a weekend with an elderly aunt who looks as mild as milk but has a sinister secret locked in the attic.

M T Anderson's "Watch and Wake", is very chilling from the moment that young Jim arrives in town, there's a feeling that something is not quite right and it's a feeling that doesn't go away even after the dreadful twist at the end.

Celia Rees' "Writing on the Wall" is about a house that holds within its peeling walls a grotesque secret. It reminded me strongly of E E Richardson's The Intruders (which I reviewed here), which is probably just the result of them both being about a haunted house - and I've so far read very little supernatural/horror fiction, so that Richardson's book has stuck in my mind like a burr !

There's also an excellent introduction by Deborah Noyes that explains the differences and similarities between Horror and Gothic tales.

100 Things about me

1. I did a degree in computer programming in my 20s.
2. It took me 5 years to get a job as a programmer – and 2 years later I gave it up.
3. And did a degree in English and History instead in my 30s.
4. I'm not planning to do a degree in my 40s, but who knows what will happen in the next 2 years ?
5. I am planning to write a book (literary criticism) in the next 2 years. Not any more.
6. I read very fast – without any interruptions, I can read 100 pages of fiction in an hour.
7. I'm a proof-reader by nature as well as by employment.
8. I'm a pedant – and unashamed of it !
9. I spent the first 6.5 years of my life living in different countries because I'm an Army brat.
10. I enjoy Star Trek and Doctor Who, but I'm not a big fan of Science Fiction.
11. I prefer magic to advanced technology.
12. There doesn't seem to be much difference between the two these days – can you explain how email works ? I can't and I'm a former programmer !
13. My favourite dead fantasy author is J R R Tolkien.
14. But I don't speak or write Elvish.
15. My favourite living fantasy author for adults is Juliet E McKenna.
16. I've read The Lord of the Rings nearly 30 times in 23 years.
17. I once read it three times in the same year,
18. I haven't read it at all during 2006.
19. I always carry a pen with me when I leave the house.
20. I love cats.
21. My black cat, Shade, lives with my parents and brother in Gloucestershire.
22. I've got two younger siblings. My sister lives in Bristol.
23. Both my siblings write fan-fiction based on TV shows.
24. I can't write fiction worth a dime.
I now write "Doctor Who" fan-fiction - but no one pays me a dime for it.
25. I love poetry.
26. I founded the Siegfried Sassoon Fellowship in 2002 and was President for 2 years.
27. I never watch broadcast television.
28. I prefer the radio and listen to Classic FM for roughly 18 hours a day.
29. I'm single.
30. When I was 14 I vowed never to get married and no one has persuaded me to change my mind.
31. If David Tennant proposed, I'd seriously consider it.
32. Ditto Johnny Depp !
33. I've spent the last 31 years living in two adjoining English counties: Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire.
34. I've been living in Oxford for 5 years but still consider Gloucestershire my home.
35. I suffered from depression for 2 years when I was in my early 20s.
36. I spent 9 months working at the University of Oxford. I should have left after four.
37. I have to read for at least 10 minutes before sleeping, no matter how late I get to bed.
38. I have to write something every day or I get withdrawal symptoms and become physically & mentally twitchy.
39. I go to the local library at least once a week (usually twice).
40. I'm very shy.
41. I started my Blog on what would have been the birthday of my late friend Margo; she was my best friend for 6.5 years.
42. I would love to visit New Zealand.
43. And New York.
44. I have to wear two different pairs of glasses.
45. I could never wear contact lenses and would not consider laser eye surgery.
46. Men do make passes at women in glasses ! ;-D
47. I hate hospitals but I've been hospitalised for surgery four times, including an operation to "fix" my left shoulder which I dislocated regularly during my early 20s.
48. I dislocated it a few days before my 21st birthday party.
49. I've visited Scotland and Wales, and lived in Northern Ireland, but never set foot in the Republic of Ireland.
50. I would like to live in Middle-earth.
51. I love watching animated movies of all types (CGI, stop motion, claymation).
52. I'm very proud of the success of Aardman Animation.
53. The Back to the Future trilogy is my favourite film trilogy.
54. I love listening to movie soundtracks.
55. I prefer the Harry Potter movie soundtracks to the actual films.
56. My first published paper was an undergraduate paper on Harry Potter.
57. I went to the Lord of the Rings Symphony Concert at the Royal Albert Hall in September 2004.
58. I'm a fan of the TV shows created by Joss Whedon.
59. I love the films of Julia Roberts, Judi Dench and Johnny Depp.
60. My music teacher told me I was tone deaf when I was 8.
61. My art teacher told me I couldn't draw when I was 16.
62. I'm good at drawing still life and landscapes but have little ability to translate a mental picture onto paper.
63. I don't "get" graphic novels.
64. Or audio books. I tend to tune them out as I do the radio. Big Finish have converted me into an audio book fan thanks to their "Doctor Who" range.
65. I read Macbeth at the age of 13 and scared myself silly.
66. So much so I still haven't watched the Judi Dench film version I have on DVD.
67. I can't stand horror films or books.
68. But I enjoy supernatural books by authors such as Charles Butler.
69. I'm not interested in Arthurian lore.
70. I love Diana Wynne Jones' Fire and Hemlock.
71. There are a small number of children's fantasy books whose plots have remained vividly in my head for 25+ years.
72. I'm asthmatic.
73. And allergic to dairy products.
74. I don't eat meat (although I do eat fish) on medical, not ethical grounds.
75. I have brown hair, but when I was little and we were in Hong Kong, I had blonde hair.
76. The Chinese used to pat my head for luck when my parents took me out.
77. I have hazel eyes.
78. I cut my chin open on a metal road sign when I was 11 after somersaulting off a borrowed bicycle.
79. I once blacked out whilst cycling up a nearby hill when I was a student.
80. I've since given up cycling as it's bad for my health !
81. I was a "born again Christian" for 6 years in my late teens/early 20s.
82. I lost interest in God when I became an intellectual.
83. My dad taught me to read when I was so young I have no memory of learning.
84. He bought my first set of encyclopaedias before I was born.
85. I used to read the dictionary and the encyclopaedias for pleasure when I was a young child.
86. I wanted to be an astronomer when I was 8.
87. I did Latin at school for 5 years.
88. I wrote my own Latin motto (Disco legendo libros; scribendo cogito. - I learn by reading books; I think by writing.)
89. My birthday is November 8.
90. My favourite month is September.
91. Despite living in Hong Kong, I can't stand the heat.
92. I don't drive.
93. I prefer coach journeys to train journeys.
94. I flew alone for the first time in 2002; I went to Sweden.
95. To present my first Harry Potter paper at a convention.
96. I'm scared of heights, and fire.
97. I live in a book-filled attic.
98. I wish I had learnt to play the piano.
99. I've never been interested in horses or ballet and was a tomboy as a child.
100. I used to do amateur drama when I was in my teens/late 20s, and once gave a performance of a Christmas play whilst suffering from laryngitis !

* * * * * *
I have to confess to shamelessly stealing this idea from Mother Reader !