The Sea of Trolls - Nancy Farmer

The Sea of Trolls is excellent; it makes Katherine Langrish's Troll Fell and Troll Mill look like Norse myth-lite. I love the fact that Nancy Farmer has included both an appendix, explaining the myths that are mentioned in the book (eg. Bards & Skalds, Ivar the Boneless, etc.) and a list of sources so the interested reader can follow up the book by reading Norse Tales, or reading about the Norse Myths and Gods, or the Vikings.

I liked young Jack the Saxon apprentice-bard, and Olaf One-Brow who, in spite of his reputation as a Viking Berserker, isn't all bad (Jack believes that there's a Good Olaf and a Bad Olaf, a nice Jungian conception). Thorgil is an interesting character, a shield maiden with a Berserker's blood, who's desperate to die so she can go to Valhalla and who hates Jack - but he saves her life anyway.

I highly recommend this book.

Reading must be a Virtue because Books Change the World

Two newspaper stories in two different newspapers, but with similar themes have caught my eye today. First, Nicholas Blincoe asks in The Daily Telegraph

Do you think reading makes you a better person? I read an enormous amount, but not everyone I know is persuaded of my superior qualities. Even some of those closest to me think that I am an opinionated loudmouth. Yet it is generally held in the study of literature that a reader is more virtuous than a non-reader. All those people who took engineering or economics at university and wonder why the literature students were so annoying: it is because they had joined a cult that constantly reinforced the idea that they were the best, the cream of the campus.

and he closes with But if readers are the best people in the world, what about writers? Salman Rushdie has said: "When you write, you write out of your best self." Which serves to complete a virtuous circle, I guess.

Then in a similar vein, Ian Burrell in The Independent reports that Melvin Bragg is claiming It is not army generals nor scientists nor inventors that direct the course of human history, but the books they write. And to prove it, Lord Bragg has announced a list of the Twelve Books That Changed the World, a four-part special that will be screened next April on 'The South Bank Show'. The full details are available via the link above, but the 12 books are as follows:

Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, 1859
Marie Stopes, Married Love, 1918
William Wilberforce, Speech to the House of Commons, 1789
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, 1792
Magna Carta, 1215
The King James Bible, 1611
Michael Faraday, Experimental Research in Electricity, 1855
The First Rule Book of the Football Association, 1863
Patent Specification for Arkwright's Spinning Machine, 1769
William Shakespeare, First Folio, 1623
Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776
Isaac Newton, Principia Mathematica, 1687

I confess I rather feel that Bragg has stretched the definition of "Book" rather thin to include a speech to the House of Commons (not that I doubt the importance of that speech !), a Patent specification and Magna Carta ! Why not include John Milton's Paradise Lost, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, H G Wells' The War of the Worlds, Samuel Johnson' Dictionary or the Oxford English Dictionary, or J R R Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings ? I can just imagine this list getting the purists up in arms ! (But perhaps that's why they've been chosen... ?)

Since I finished DWJ's Power of Three, I've started reading (and failed to complete) Raymond Feist's Faerie Tale - too great a tendency towards Horror, and Gwyneth Jones' Bold as Love - too many modern pop-culture references that are lost on me AND a young protagonist who ends up falling pregnant by her father at the age of 12 (OK, she didn't know he was her father, but even so), has the baby and then it conveniently dies shortly thereafter of pneumonia ! I'm not a prude, I know girls (and boys) have under-age sex and end up pregnant, but I was so annoyed at the way Jones casually killed the baby off, that I couldn't go on with it. I'm now reading Nancy Farmer's The Sea of Trolls which seems far more interesting - and I see that Farmer is bringing out a sequel in October in the UK, which according to Amazon, is called Sea of Trolls 2 (the note of doubt is because that seems like a rather unoriginal title !) Anyway more on the first book once I've finished reading it.

Diana Wynne Jones - Reprise

After I reluctantly laid aside Fire and Hemlock on Monday evening, I decided to read DWJ's The Tough Guide to Fantasy Land before involving myself in another of her fictional worlds. I'm afraid that I abandoned it at D, however, as the tone of it was getting on my nerves - although that may just have been the "thunder headache" I had last night, so I've not taken it back to the library yet as I want to try to finish it. In the meantime, though, I've raced through Diana Wynne Jones' Power of Three which proved to be as gripping as Fire and Hemlock !

This is an excellent book that looks in detail at the way groups of different people can make assumptions about others. Both the Dorig, who live in halls under lakes, and the Lymen, who live in mounds under the earth, believe the people of the other race are not to be trusted. And neither group are very fond of the Giants (who are actually human beings, but appear to be Giants, because both the Dorig and the Lymen are so small by comparison). The three groups find their homes are threatened by a plan to turn the hill-surrounded Moor on or under which they all live, into a reservoir. They eventually manage to lay aside their age-old differences and hatred for each other to come up with a plan to save all their homes. What's very interesting is that the coming together of the three groups of people is instigated in the first place by children from each of the three groups. Gair, Ceri and Ayna are the children of the chief of the Lyman clan in Garholt, they join forces with Halla and Hafny, the children of the Dorig King, and with Gerald and Brenda whose parents have homes on the Moor, and together they persuade the adults of each group to work together rather than fighting, although there is the small matter of a cursed gold torque to be dealt with along the way. This book is definitely a must-read, and I think children (and adults) who have enjoyed Harry Potter or His Dark Materials, would also enjoy Power of Three.

Propaganda in the Arts

I'm just listening to one of the soundtrack CDs from Gladiator and I was reminded of the scene in the film (funny that I remember this although I've not watched the film in ages) where a street theatre is being performed in which Joaquin Phoenix's character, Commodus, bests Russell Crowe's 'Gladiator', Maximus. The play is pure propaganda which is meant to diffuse the enthusiasm of the general populace for Maximus... This then reminded me of the play which Terry Pratchett's Fool gets Vitoller and his Players from Ankh-Morpork to write and act a play on behalf of his new master, the less-than-popular Duke Felmet in Wyrd Sisters. The play is meant to portray Felmet in a positive light and put over the "real" story of how Felmet's cousin, Verence, (whose throne Felmet has usurped) came to die.

The use of propaganda in plays (or indeed in poetry - during the early stages of the First World War several "senior" poets, such as Thomas Hardy, were invited by the Government of the day to write poetry for use as propaganda in spurring on the British efforts) or other branches of the Arts is not uncommon: Shakespeare's Richard III, for instance, was written to show that Henry was forced to kill Richard III because he was an evil king, with a hunched back and a tendency to kill off the rightful heirs to the throne. It may be true, as Hamlet said that art holds a mirror up to life, but it's also true that occasionally it's a distorting mirror that's being employed by someone in power to present the "facts" of a situation in a way that supports their actions and protects their reputation.

Fire and Hemlock - Diana Wynne Jones

I'd forgotten in the interval since I last read Fire and Hemlock, just how gripping this book is and how it buzzed around in my head for days after I read it. I really must buy myself a copy for the next time I want to read it. Polly is just ten years old when she meets Thomas Lynn (Tam Lin), having accidentally gate-crashed a "funeral". She and Tom become fast friends, and have some odd adventures together at intervals over a 5 year period and then she suddenly forgets about him. It's not until 4 years later, when she is idly reading a book before going back to Oxford for the start of her second year, that she suddenly realises she has holes in her memory, but it takes her some time to recall what caused the holes. Once she has realised, she decides to track down Tom again, and eventually (with a little help from her Granny and the ballads Thomas the Rhymer and Tam Lin) she manages to find Tom... This book is an interesting re-working of both ballads (in a combination) and I'm really looking forward to discussing it with others on the Child_Lit list in 10 days time.

Inkheart - Cornelia Funke

I finished Inkheart just after lunch today. It's an interesting book, and the pace certainly accelerates over the last few chapters, but some of the early ones seemed rather stodgy. I don't know if this is just the effect of it being an English translation since I can't read German, and therefore I can't check just how stodgy - or not - the original was in German. It's got some pointed warnings about the perils of getting too involved in a story: in this case Mo, the father of the book's heroine Meggie, possesses the power to bring the characters of a book out of the book and into the real world, which sounds delightful, but turns out to have terrible consequences.

I liked the chapter quotations from The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, Pete Pan, etc., although they didn't seem to have much relationship to the actual chapters' contents, except in the case where Tolkien's works were quoted, oh and one from (I think) The Borribles. However, I didn't think much of the villains - they were rather two-dimensional, and even the main character did not seem very 3-D, but Meggie's mother's aunt (!), Elinor, the book-obsessed spinster was great fun. Elinor cares only for her books, and does not much like people, and especially she does not like people to touch her books, except Mo, who is a bookbinder (or Book Doctor as Meggie prefers to call him). This trait of Elinor's reminded me irresistably of Terry Pratchett's Librarian, who dislikes people wearing out the words in his books ! For someone who is so disinterested in people, Elinor nevertheless manages to get very involved in the "adventures" that are forced on Mo, Meggie and (by default) Elinor herself.

I think this is a YA book for real bookworms - if the reader has never lost themselves in a book to the extent where they've been utterly oblivious to what's going on around them, then this book will be wasted on them. On the other hand if, like me, the reader is quite capable of being so immersed in a book, then they'll enjoy it a good deal.

Diana Wynne Jones

I made my usual raid on the library today - and of course, having taken back one pile of books, I went and borrowed another 4 to add to the ever-changing Tower of books... I just can't seem to break myself of the habit (not that I really want to, of course). Anyway I came back with a couple of Diana Wynne Jones books to go with the still-to-be-re-read Fire and Hemlock (which I'm going to read that one just as soon as I've finished Inkheart). Anyway the first DWJ I picked up was The Tough Guide to Fantasyland which is a dictionary of every fantasy novel cliche ever created. I've read and heard a lot about this book, so I thought I'd see what everyone has been talking about. I also picked up DWJ's Power of Three, which looked interesting. Here's the synopsis:

Gair spent his time gazing out onto the Moor and brooding. Ayna could answer questions about the future, Ceri could find things which were lost. Gair seems to have no Gift and knew he was a disappointment to his jovial, heroic father - who is Chief. Perhaps his feelings of not fitting in was what made him so curious about these other different sorts of beings who lived on the Moor - the Giants and the Dorig. Certainly it was because he believed he was ordinary that he did his best to become wise, and to learn as much as he could abou the three great Powers of Sun, Moon and Earth. And when the crisis came, Gair found the knowledge he had gained was to help save not only his own life but those of all his people.

Of course, I'll be Blogging both books (along with Fire and Hemlock) once I've read them. Whilst I was in the children's section of the library, I also picked up Nancy Farmer's Sea of Trolls, about which I've read a lot on the Child_Lit discussion list. Since I've been reading about trolls anyway lately, I thought it might be an interesting read. Here's the synopsis:

Jack is an apprentice bard and just beginning to learn the secrets of his mysterious master, when he and his little sister are captured by Viking chief, Olaf One-Brow, and taken to the court of Ivar the Boneless. Ivar is married to a half-troll named Frith, an evil and unpredictable queen with a strange power over her husband's court. Jack is sent on to the kingdom of the trolls, where he has to find the magical well and undo the charm he has cast on Frith. He is accompanied by Thorgill, a shield maiden, aged 12, who wants to be a berserker when she grows up. Together, they are set for a magical and exciting adventure.

It seems appropriate to be reading books with Norse settings, since the literature of Scandinavia had such a huge influence on Tolkien, whose work has in turn influenced fantasy in Europe and the Americas.

The final book I picked up today is the first in what appears to be a trilogy (but may be a longer sequence of books - I only found three in total when I looked at Amazon). Anyway, the first book is Katherine Roberts' Song Quest and this is the synopsis:

From the Isle of Echoes the forces of good and evil are held in harmony by those who hear and sing. When a mainlander's ship is wreaked and the Merlee half creatures are heard crying across the waves the lives of three novice Singers are changed forever. Rialle, the heroine, who hears the cry of the Merlee, is sent to calm them with Challa, her voice as sweet as sunlight. Frenn, her friend and protector, follows as a stowaway while Kherron, the rebel, allows his desire for freedom to take him into danger and a headlong clash with the enemy and their mysterious powers. All are caught up in a dangerous and sinister web, battling against the powers of darkness that threaten to destroy their world.

The sequels are The Crystal Mask and Dark Quetzal. I shall have to check the Oxfordshire Library OPAC and see whether the other two are in the system, assuming I like the first one enough to read the other two.

So my Tower of Books is again 10 books high, and I've still got the Mercedes Lackey trilogy to read. At least no one will ever hear me complain that I've got nothing to read !

Troll Mill - Katherine Langrish

I managed to continue my habit of reading a book a day by reading Katherine Langrish's Troll Mill yesterday. It's a good sequel to Troll Fell which I Blogged after I read it. Three years have passed since the events recorded in Troll Fell and this book concentrates less on the eponymous Trolls and more on Selkies, or Seal Folk. I confess that I hadn't really come across any references to these legendary/mythological (there's some disagreement as to which they are) creatures, so I looked them up, as is my wont. Selkies are creatures from Scottish and Irish mythology which can transform themselves from seals into humans. Selkie is simply the Orcadian word for seal, but stories exist that say that Selkies can become human by shedding their seal skins, and can then revert to their seal form by putting the skins back on. As a general rule Selkie stories are romantic tragedies: a human and a selkie fall in love, but after a while the selkie becomes restless, and chooses to return to the sea. Sometimes the human will not know that their lover is a selkie, and wakes to find them gone. But sometimes the human hides the selkie's skin, thereby preventing them from returning to their seal form.

It is this version of the romantic tragedy of the Selkies that Langrish deploys: Peer Ulfsson's friend Bjorn found a Selkie woman seven years earlier and he "captured" her (it's not as simple as that, but I'm not going to give away the whole story !) Now "Kersten", as Bjorn named her, having had a baby, has decided to return to the sea and her original mate. At the beginning of the story, Peer is returning from a fishing trip with Bjorn and he meets Kersten rushing down to the sea carrying her baby. She asks Peer if his friend Hilde's mother (Gudrun) is still breast feeding her own baby and then without waiting for an answer, thrusts Ran into Peer's arms and races towards the shore. Kersten throws herself into the sea and Peer takes the baby home. Much of the remainder of the book is giving over to discussing whether Kersten really was a Selkie and if she was, whether Bjorn had held her against her will. At the same time, Peer is infatuated with Hilde and longs to do something to win her interest as she prefers Bjorn's brother Arne to Peer. He comes up with a plan, to restore Troll Mill, which has lain decaying since his Uncles were turned into trolls and to become the Miller. Unfortunately the mill is already being used by others, as Peer discovers, and his ownership is disputed... I'm not going to spoil the entire novel for you, by telling you who wins the ownership contest or how, so I will just say that I enjoyed this sequel, and I recommend it. Like Troll Fell, Troll Mill is rich in atmosphere and the characters are well-drawn and believable.

September

The beginning of September is particularly important to me as it marks the anniversaries of the deaths of two men whose work I hold in great esteem and which has influenced not only my reading but the entire course of my life, particularly in the past 7 years. On September 1967, the First World War poet and memoirist, Siegfried Sassoon, died just a week short of his 81st birthday. This poem was written by Sassoon just after the end of the First World War, but I feel it is an apt commemoration Sassoon's life and work:

Falling Asleep

Voices moving about in the quiet house:
Thud of feet and a muffled shutting of doors:
Everyone yawning. Only the clocks are alert.

Out in the night there’s autumn-smelling gloom
Crowded with whispering trees; across the park
A hollow cry of hounds like lonely bells:
And I know that the clouds are moving across the moon;
The low, red, rising moon. Now herons call
And wrangle by their pool; and hooting owls
Sail from the wood above pale stooks of oats.

Waiting for sleep, I drift from thoughts like these;
And where to-day was dream-like, build my dreams.
Music ... there was a bright white room below,
And someone singing a song about a soldier,
One hour, two hours ago: and soon the song
Will be ‘last night’: but now the beauty swings
Across my brain, ghost of remembered chords
Which still can make such radiance in my dream
That I can watch the marching of my soldiers,
And count their faces; faces; sunlit faces.

Falling asleep ... the herons, and the hounds....
September in the darkness; and the world
I’ve known; all fading past me into peace.

And September 2 is the anniversary of the death of J. R. R. Tolkien, just 6 years after Sassoon died. His creation of Middle-earth and writing of The Lord of the Rings has continued to influence fantasy fiction in the 50 years since its publication.

Both men endured the horrors of the First World War and their work was influenced by their experiences of that war - and both have influenced me. I discovered the poetry of Siegfried Sassoon in 1992 when I heard his poem, 'The Grandeur of Ghosts' on a radio show and it spoke to me in a very visceral way. I began to study Sassoon's poetry and his life, intending (in a rather naive way) to write a biography of him. Unknown to me several others were already working on the same lines, and by the time I began my combined English and History degree in September 1998 in preparation for writing said biography, the first of them had been published. Having given up my career as I computer programmer to do the degree, I was not about to abandon my plans so I went ahead, and I wrote about First World War topics at every opportunity that came along for me to choose my own subject of study.

I first read The Lord of the Rings when I was in my early teens, and I've re-read it many, many times in the past 20+ years and although for a while I read little fantasy except LotR, I maintained an interest in the genre. During the time I was revising for my end of first year exams in 1999 I came across the first Harry Potter book and, indirectly, Tolkien redirected my life. I reached the final semester of my degree and I had one last English paper to write on a subject of my own choosing. I went to see my tutor and told her that I wanted to do a paper on one or more of the women poets of the First World War, and she suggested that just this once I might write about something different. I eventually agreed that I would write a paper on Harry Potter, little suspecting that it would get published in The New Review of Children's Literature and Librarianship, and that I would go on to spend the next (ie. the last) four years writing more papers: on Harry Potter, on Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings, on Juliet E McKenna's 'Tales of Einarinn' series, and that I would be in the position of having two papers appear in published proceedings in the space of only a few weeks: my paper on Tolkien's influence on women writers of fantasy fiction which I presented at the Tolkien Society Seminar 2004 is finally available, as well as the Nimbus-2003 proceedings. So I owe both these men quite a lot with regard to my current career; which just goes to show one should never underestimate the power of literature to change lives.

The Fetch of Mardy Watt - Charles Butler

I started reading Charles Butler's The Fetch of Mardy Watt during my half hour lunch break at work today - and finished it about an hour ago whilst a thunderstorm raged over my head (which somehow seemed appropriate !) It's a relatively short book, a little over 200 pages, but it's also rather hard to put down. I resented the fact that I had to put it aside at the end of my lunch break to continue working and I read it over dinner, putting off doing the washing up until the book was finished. In fact, I was surprised at how much I didn't want to put it down, given that I'm not very fond of supernatural books. I read Macbeth at the age of 13 and I'm not ashamed to admit that it frightened the socks off me - since then I've mostly avoided books like this one, although I was obliged to study Henry James' The Turn of the Screw during my English degree. Anyway I picked this up wondering just how spooky it would be, and was surprised it was less spooky than I had anticipated.

Synopsis: Whatever spell had been put on her was growing stronger. And suddenly, rather than fear, she felt a rush of burning anger. How dare anyone do this to her! How dare anyone steal her life!

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.

This is something of a supernatural thriller - there is a mystery relating to why the Fetch is trying to take over Mardy's life, and just who or what is Rachel Fludd. It's also a race against time - can Mardy's best friend Hal help her to reclaim her life before she is trapped forever in her horrible half-life ? And just who is the mysterious Mayor ? I'm not going to answer these questions, because then there would be no point in you reading the book, and I strongly recommend that you do read it. Charlie Butler's books may not be exactly to my taste, but I think they deserve to be far better known than they are at present. If you don't believe me, you can download an extract in PDF from Charlie's publisher's website and read it for yourself.

A Lecture and a Poem

This is a combination post as I'm newly returned from my trip to Gloucestershire and too tired to think too much, so I'm going to share a news item about a forthcoming lecture and a poem which I came across today...

'Lectures for All series' at the University of Newcastle on Tuesday 27 September 2005 at 5:30 pm in Lecture Theatre 1, Herschel Building (Opposite Haymarket Metro Station)

Philip Pullman: 'Strangeness and Charm'

The first Fickling Lecture on Developments in Children's Literature, in association with Seven Stories: The Centre for Children's Books. Master storyteller Philip Pullman will look at what he calls "the elementary particles of story - the quarks and mesons and leptons and gluons and so ons of which stories are made - teasing apart the fundamental forces that hold stories together.

Philip Pullman recently shared the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award the world's largest and most prestigious prize for children's and young people's literature - with Japanese illustrator Ryoji Arai. He will sign copies of his new book, The Scarecrow and his Servant, shortlisted for this year's Carnegie Medal, after the lecture. The lecture is free and open to all, but admission is by ticket only. Tickets are available from 12 September. For more information tel: 0191 222 6136

For general information, the Fickling Lectures will be sponsored annually by David Fickling Books (part of Random House) at the University of Newcastle. They are designed to explore the boundaries of children's literature from a variety of perspectives. David Fickling is Philip Pullman's editor and publisher and Philip Pullman is a patron of Seven Stories, The Centre for Children's Books in Newcastle, which jointly organises the series with the University of Newcastle's Children's Literature Unit. Anyone wishing to visit Seven Stories, which opened on 19 August, might like to combine that with this lecture.

I came across this poem "Dostoevsky," by Charles Bukowski (from Bone Palace Ballet © Black Sparrow Press) today and wanted to share it with you, as I thought it was an interesting expression of how one person's literary output can affect another person's life in a powerful way.

Dostoevsky

against the wall, the firing squad ready.
then he got a reprieve.
suppose they had shot Dostoevsky?
before he wrote all that?
I suppose it wouldn't have
mattered
not directly.
there are billions of people who have
never read him and never
will.
but as a young man I know that he
got me through the factories,
past the whores,
lifted me high through the night
and put me down
in a better
place.
even while in the bar
drinking with the other
derelicts,
I was glad they gave Dostoevsky a
reprieve,
it gave me one,
allowed me to look directly at those
rancid faces
in my world,
death pointing its finger,
I held fast,
an immaculate drunk
sharing the stinking dark with
my
brothers.

Northern Storm - Juliet E McKenna

Whilst it is not wholly necessary to have read Juliet E McKenna's The Swordsman's Oath in order to understand or enjoy Southern Fire and Northern Storm, there is no doubt that there is an added layer of interest to both of these later books for the reader who is familiar with the 'Tales of Einarinn'.

The novels Southern Fire and Northern Storm take the brief background of The Swordsman's Oath and add colour, depth, life and history in greater measure. They also show the reader the Archipelago from a native's point of view, instead of from an outsider's viewpoint, and this naturally gives the reader a different perspective on many aspects of life in the Archipelago, particularly the hatred of elemental magic that is felt by the Aldabreshin. Indeed one only has to consider the chaos caused by the wizard Azazir (who is regarded as a madman even by his fellow mages) in The Thief's Gamble, to understand that the disrupting influence of elemental magic on the patterns of nature would be abhorrent to the Warlords who read portents in earth, air, fire and water in order to guide the lives of themselves and their people.

The chief protagonist of Southern Fire and Northern Storm is an Aldabreshin Warlord, and Northern Storm opens with Chazen Kheda (formerly Daish Kheda) still struggling to come to terms with his forced assumption of the role of Warlord of the Chazen domain after the abrupt death from food poisoning suffered by Chazen Saril half a year ago.

Kheda is initially engaged in an attempt to round up the last of the barbarian savages who, the year before, had come from somewhere in the southern ocean to wreak havoc with a different sort of elemental magic to that used on the mainland to the north of the Archipelago. Kheda had been forced into an uneasy alliance with the unscrupulous northern mage, Dev (who had briefly appeared in The Swordsman's Oath as an agent of the Archmage). Dev is now acting (with the emphasis on 'acting') as Kheda's personal slave/bodyguard in order to ensure he gets paid for his assistance in getting rid of the savage wizards who had accompanied the southern invaders, and he and Kheda are visiting the pearl beds of the Chazen domain in order to assess what they will have to barter for the materials and goods that they need to continue the rebuilding of the Chazen domain.

Their plans to round up the last of the surviving savages and get back to normal life are abruptly interrupted by the arrival of a dragon created from elemental magic, a beast that has never before been seen in the Archipelago. Kheda thus finds himself and his domain under threat for a second time, and once again he is forced into an uneasy, but necessary, alliance with a northern mage in order to defeat and destroy the dragon. This time, however, the mage is a woman named Velindre (a character who briefly appeared in The Warrior's Bond) whom Dev suggests may know how to deal with the dragon.

Velindre knows that her mentor Otrick knew how to summon an elemental dragon, but he is dead, so she is forced to seek out Azazir (who also has this ability) in order to acquire the necessary magical knowledge to create a dragon of her own. Lest anyone think this mere altruism on the part of Velindre, who knows that if her nature is revealed she will killed to save the Archipelago from her corrupting influence, it should be pointed out that Velindre is still smarting from being passed over for the post of Cloud Mistress (Otrick's position before his death), and she hopes that mastering this magic will force Planir and the wizards on the ruling Council in Hadrumal to acknowledge that they picked the wrong mage for the job.

Northern Storm is an intriguing, even at times exciting, tale that grips the reader from start to finish, and possesses a twist to the tale that has surprised more than one reader. The only qualm I have about the Aldabreshin Compass quartet (and it is a very small one), is that the pattern of the tales seems to be closely following the pattern of the 'Tales of Einarinn': magic-wielding invaders from a previously forgotten/unknown land across the ocean arrive to cause death and destruction. There is a hint at the end of Northern Storm that, as in The Assassin's Edge (the final Tale of Einarinn), the fight will be taken to the invaders in an attempt to curtail their activities. However, the characters and their development, and the way of life that is under threat are sufficiently different and interesting in themselves, and the writing is more than sufficiently good enough, for this similarity to be of small importance in the development of the series.

[This review, in a slightly different form, first appeared on the Alien Online website.]

Southern Fire - Juliet E McKenna

Juliet E McKenna’s Southern Fire is the first book in a series of a four, "The Aldabreshin Compass". It is set in the same world as the "Tales of Einarinn" series, this time in the Aldabreshin Archipelago where much of the story of McKenna’s second novel, The Swordsman’s Oath took place, but further to the south than we have ventured before. In Southern Fire, Daish Kheda, the warlord of the Daish domain, finds himself facing the worst possible foes, wildmen encouraged by magic-wielders. Such wizards are unknown in the southern reaches of the Archipelago, so far from the wizard-infested unbroken lands that lie close to the northern domains. The wizard-led savages have come out of the southern ocean, where no one believed anything existed, and Daish, as near neighbour to the beset Chazen domain, finds himself compelled to find some way of fighting back against the magic. He heads north across the Archipelago until he reaches the domain of Shek Khul, where he learns that Khul had been forced to deal with northern magic some three years earlier (as detailed in The Swordsman’s Oath). Shek Khul gives him a paste that is known to inhibit the powers of wizards and advises him to locate a man named Dev, whom Khul believes to be involved with wizardry, if he is not a barbarian wizard himself. Kheda manages to locate Dev, with the aid of Rhisala, a poet from the Shek domain, who is far more than she seems. Together they persuade Dev to assist them in dealing with the southern threat to the Archipelago, but having seen off the last of the wildmen, and killed off their wizard leaders, Kheda finds himself rejected by his first wife because of his involvement with magic; she encourages him to become warlord of the Chazen domain, after the sudden death of Chazen Saril from food poisoning. Janne Daish is not a woman to be argued with when she sets her mind to something, and so Daish Kheda unexpectedly finds himself obliged to turn his back on his three wives and their children, to take up the role of Chazen Kheda instead. Little does Kheda know, however, that he has not seen the last of the wildmen and wizards of the south...

Maggie Furey's 'Artefacts of Power' series - reprise

I finished this "Sword and Sorcery" series last night. Maggie Furey’s ‘Artefacts of Power’ series features four Artefacts, one for each of the four elements. The grail (made from a fragment of the Cauldron of Rebirth) uses water to resurrect the dead, the Staff of Earth, the Harp of Winds and the Sword of Flame. These four Artefacts are wielded by different Magefolk who, at the outset of the story, are few in number – and even fewer in number by its end. Miathan, the Archmage, is slain, but as he’s more of a Saruman than a Gandalf, he’s no loss. Eliseth the Weather Mage wrests power from Miathan and wreaks even greater havoc with the grail of Rebirth than did Miathan, for she uses it to restore and control those whom she has slain, making them into puppets who do her bidding. Meriel the Healer goes mad when her soulmate is killed and causes the deaths of quite a few people before being killed herself. Davorshan tries to kill his half-brother D’Arvan, but is killed himself by his brother. D’Arvan discovers he is half-Mage and half-Phaerie and finds himself ruling the city of Nexis to protect it from the depredations of his father, the Lord of the Phaerie. Finbarr the Archivist is killed protecting others from the creatures which Miathan looses from the grail of Rebirth; the Nihilim (as their name suggests) leave their victims dead – they’re clearly ancestors of the Dementors. Bragar the Fire Mage is sacrificed by Eliseth to protect herself. Eilin the Earth Mage lives far from Nexis in a self-imposed exile after her husband is led to his death by the machinations of Miathan. Only Eilin’s daughter, Aurian, and her soulmate Anvar (who is half-Mage and half-Mortal, and Miathan’s unacknowledged son) accompanied by disparate groups of Mortals and a couple of telepathic great cats manage to successfully oppose both Miathan and Eliseth.

Aurian wields the Staff of Earth, whilst Anvar wields the Harp of Winds, both are powerful artefacts of the old high magic, like the grail of Rebirth. Aurian attempts to claim the Sword of Flame, for she has discovered that she is the One for whom it was created, but in order to claim and wield it, she must bond to it via the blood of a loved one, and she refuses to do so. Eliseth seizes the Sword, only to discover she cannot wield it and it is not until the final battle with Eliseth (after Miathan has been killed), that Aurian is able to claim it. Her first lover, Forral, was killed by Miathan’s Nihilim and as a consequence of actions of Eliseth, his spirit comes to inhabit Anvar’s body (Anvar’s spirit is inhabiting the body of a hawk). He uses the Sword to kill Anvar and bond it to Aurian, who is then able to use the grail of Rebirth to resurrect Anvar, after she has killed Eliseth with the Sword. Once Aurian has used to the grail to resurrect various people who have been killed, she gives it to Death to take to his realm, knowing that it is far too dangerous to leave it in her world where it might fall into the wrong hands in the future. She returns the Sword of Flame to the dragons who created it, being repulsed by its power for destruction, but she and Anvar continue to wield the Staff of Earth and the Harp of Winds, both of which have power for good.

Reading this series is akin to reading The Lord of the Rings, both use changing points of view and narratives that follow different groups of characters, and both move backwards and forwards across large landscapes. In addition, whilst there is one key character whose destiny will affect the future of the whole world. Furey’s characters are well-drawn and realistic in their behaviour and motivations, and I found myself caring about even the “minor” characters. I highly recommend this series (Aurian, Harp of Winds, The Sword of Flame and Dhiammara) if you like the "Sword & Sorcery" style of fantasy.

News

Just a brief note here - since theoretically I'm on holiday - I've been awarded a grant from the SF Foundation, which will enable me to travel to the University of Liverpool and spend a few days in the library accessing the SF Collection. If I can arrange some time off from work, I hope to go up in mid-to-late September - this means I'll be able to read some of the novels I've got on my reading list for a couple of my forthcoming writing projects. This, of course, is hugely helpful as I've been struggling to find some books I wanted to read (although I'm still stuck for access to Suzy McKee Charnas' The Bronze King and its 2 sequels - doesn't anyone possess this trilogy ? (Perhaps all copies have fallen into L-Space ?) Anyway I'm very grateful to the SFF - and hope to repay their generosity in due course.

Home to Gloucestershire

Though I was not born in Gloucestershire (like my brother) and though I no longer live there, for me going to Gloucestershire is going home. I love Oxford, have done ever since I first visited it to look at the old Polytechnic (now Oxford Brookes University), but Gloucestershire's hills are home to me because I spent so many years living there (from age 7 - 19 and then from age 22 - 33). So, going back there is definitely going home - and so I am off home for 5 days, to stay with my parents and brother over the long weekend (Monday is a public holiday here).

In anticipation of this visit, I'm currently listening to a Johnny Coppin album, The Gloucestershire Collection, which features the poems of various Gloucestershire poets set to music composed by Johnny. The album caught my attention because the opening song is 'In Flanders' by F W Harvey. Now my first specialisation (if you will) was the poetry of the First World War, so the song made a lot of sense to me. This is the poem:

In Flanders

I'm homesick for my hills again -
My hills again!
To see above the Severn plain,
Unscabbarded against the sky,
The blue high blade of Cotswold lie;
The giant clouds go royally
By jagged Malvern with a train
Of shadows. Where the land is low
Like a huge imprisoning O
I hear a heart that's sound and high,
I hear the heart within me cry:
"I'm homesick for my hills again -
My hills again!
Cotswold or Malvern, sun or rain!
My hills again!"

As you see, the poem is called 'In Flanders', but it's actually about the Gloucestershire countryside - which I know well. The album is full of similar pieces, full of love for the Gloucestershire & Cotswolds countryside, much of it written by poets long dead, who nevertheless manage to speak down the years to me in a very direct way. F W Harvey was a prisoner of war for 2 years during the First World War, but he managed to survive and lived until 1957, and continued to write poetry , mostly about his beloved Gloucestershire. Harvey's poems, like those of his friend and fellow poet, Ivor Gurney, are favourites of mine, and The Gloucestershire Collection CD is one that gets played whenever I'm missing my Gloucestershire hills - or, as now, in anticipation of a visit to them.

Buried in Books

As a continuation, of sorts, to my post yesterday, someone sent this article from the LA Times to the Child_Lit list, where we've been having a discussion about owning lots of books, and I thought I'd share it with all you bibliophiles and bookaholics !

For me, most of these problems aren't the issue - I simply don't have the space in this tiny attic, for hundreds of books - both my bookcases are overflowing, and the tower of books I was talking about yesterday actually sits atop the 2-ring cooker (there's a tin cover over the ring so the books aren't sitting on a dirty cooker !) There's a smaller pile, consisting of the three Watcher's Guides to Buffy, and a half a dozen other books, including my current read(s) alongside the computer, atop the cupboard which also holds the microwave (which gets used very rarely). Someone, when I mentioned the pile on top of the cooker recently, asked how I cooked dinner. Which earned the blankest of looks from me, and then response "I put them on the bed out of the way, and then move them back after I've done the washing up and the cooker has cooled down." (Seems perfectly logical to me) Of course this revelation caused jokes about "cooking the books" - and will probably earn me frowns from some folks, but when your living space is a tiny 8 * 10 foot room that's not even a rectangle and features sloping ceilings on which you bang your head if you stand up without moving sideways, there's not a lot you can do ! If anyone has a spare mansion they want to let me live in rent-free, apply here ! In the meantime, I juggle books about in order to live my life with my (relatively mild) obsession - at least I use my public library a lot, which saves me having even more books I can't house...

Tower of Books

I keep this pile of library books in my room - it's my pending pile - actually, it's more of a tower at the moment as I've some fairly hefty hardbacks in the pile. Aside from the handful on the Vale of White Horse that are background reading for my forthcoming piece for the Tolkien Encyclopaedia, I've also got Dhiammara, the fourth and final book of Maggie Furey's fascinating Artefacts of Power series: I'll Blog the series once I've finished reading it, as I'm too engrossed to be coherent at the moment. Then there's Diana Wynne Jones' Fire and Hemlock, the September Child_Lit 'group read' book. Gwyneth Jones' Bold as Love, which I'm feeling uncertain about since the title sounds rather romantic to me ! This is followed by Raymond Feist's Faerie Tale - someone recently recommended Feist to me and this appears to be a standalone novel, so I thought I'd give it a try. Below that is the epic-looking To Ride Hell's Chasm by Janny Wurts - her books caught my eye somewhere (although I don't recall where I saw them prior to picking up that one in the library !) At the bottom of the library pile is Sarah Micklem's Firethorn, another random pick-up at the library. Aside from this Tower of library books - and I'm still waiting on Troll Mill, the sequel to Katherine Langrish's Troll Fell, which has been "in transit" through the library system for so long I'm beginning to think they've sent it on the back of a snail ! - I have three books that I own that are waiting to be read: Cornelia Funke's Inkheart, the Mercedes Lackey trilogy 'Queen's Own' (thanks to the generosity of Suzi !) and finally, Charlie Butler's The Fetch of Mardy Watt. I suspect the latter will be somewhat supernatural, but I like Charlie, so I'm going to give it a go anyway (that sounds dreadful, but I don't mean it in a nasty way - I'm just not very keen on supernatural books - but Charlie may convert me yet !)

And of course, aside from that Pisa-ish pile of books, Juliet E McKenna's Western Shore is out at the end of next week so I shall be rushing out to get a copy - although before I read it, I'll need to re-read Southern Fire and Northern Storm, to remind myself of the little details I've forgotten in my immersion in other books !

Books at any hour

I love this idea that the Parisians have come up - it's a "Livre à toute heure" or a book-at-any-hour machine. Five of the have been installed in various locations across Paris, and they contain a selection of 25 books from Homer's Odyssey and Lewis Caroll's Alice in Wonderland, to 100 Delicious Couscous Recipes and The Wok Cookbook, the latter, together with a French-English dictionary, is apparently a top seller, and Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal is also popular. (I confess my mind is boggling at the thought of 100 recipes features CousCous - but that's another story !). All the books sell for just 2 Euros (about £1.35 or $2.45)

The first thing I thought of, when I read this story, was Jasper Fforde and his "Will Speak" machines (an animatronic bust of William Shakespeare that recites a famous portion of a play, such as Hamlet's 'To be or not to be' speech)... Apparently these book vending machines also exist in the US, but the Parisian ones have one major advantage over the American ones - the former don't drop the book into a slot, they deploy a mechanical arm that offers the book to the purchaser, which seems far less philistine somehow...

P-CON III

Well, well, this is my 50th post - and frankly I'm amazed I've managed to post 50 days in a row ! There have been days when I've been preparing to sit down and write, and I've wondered what I was going to talk about until my fingers hit the keyboard... With so many books (and other Blogs) to read and so many other demands on my time outside of my writing, I wasn't convinced I would manage to post 5 times, let alone 50, but here I am...

Anyway, enough of that. I wanted to give notice of a Convention next spring which people might want to attend, if they can get to Dublin in mid-March. The Con is The Phoenix Convention, or P-CON for short, and it's a science fiction, fantasy, and horror convention, with an emphasis towards the literary ends of the genres. P-CON III, the third Phoenix Convention, will be taking place at the Ashling Hotel, Parkgate St, Dublin 8 on March 11 & 12, 2006. The guests include: Susanna Clarke (Guest of Honour and Hugo 2005 winner for Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell), Paul Cornell (author of numerous SF/F TV related books as well as some SF fiction, and a genuinely nice bloke), Diane Duane (author of the Young Wizards (TM) series, amongst others), Maggie Furey (whose intriguing 'Artefacts of Powers' series I'm almost half-way through reading), Paul Kearney Ian McDonald Juliet E McKenna (whose books I never seem to stop recommending to fantasy fans everywhere !), Colin Smythe (Terry Pratchett's first publisher and now his agent), and others.

Details on how to join and where to stay are available on the P-CON III website. I'm hoping to go myself, but attendance will depend on whether or not I can find better paid employment before then (or buying a winning Lotto ticket, and frankly, I might as well save the £1 a week and use that money towards the cost of attending !)