Coming Attractions | Speak Easy by Catherynne M. Valente

As fine as the four Fairyland books have been, I've been keen for a period of years for Catherynne M. Valente to get back to the sumptuous standalone stuff that led me to love her work in the first. Happily, it looks like she's doing exactly that in her "fanciful" new novella. Readers, meet Speak Easy:

If you go looking for it, just about halfway uptown and halfway downtown, there's this hotel stuck like a pin all the way through the world. Down inside the Artemisia it's this mortal coil all over. Earthly delights on every floor. 

The hotel Artemisia sits on a fantastical 72nd Street, in a decade that never was. It is home to a cast of characters, creatures, and creations unlike any other, including especially Zelda Fair, who is perfect at being Zelda, but who longs for something more. 

The world of this extraordinary novella—a bootlegger's brew of fairy tales, Jazz Age opulence, and organised crime—is ruled over by the diminutive, eternal, sinister Al. Zelda holds her own against the boss, or so it seems. But when she faces off against him and his besotted employee Frankie in a deadly game that just might change everything, she must bet it all and hope not to lose...

Multiple-award-winning, New York Times' bestselling author Catherynne M. Valente once again reinvents a classic in Speak Easy, which interprets "The Twelve Dancing Princesses" if Zelda Fitzgerald waltzed in and stole the show. This Prohibition-Era tale will make heads spin and hearts pound. It's a story as old as time, as effervescent as champagne, and as dark as the devil's basement on a starless night in the city.

The cover art is an ornate affair, which is fitting, in that "ornate" is as apt an adjective as any to describe Valente's ridiculously pretty prose. It's what's inside that counts, of course, but it's nice, nevertheless, when what's outside also factors into the mathematics.

Now I have a confession to make before I say good day. When I saw Speak Easy mentioned in the Subterranean Press newsletter, my first thoughts were: What? Haven't I read this already?

I haven't. I have, however, read—and reviewed—a very similar story in recent years. Like Speak Easy, The Girls at the Kingfisher Club is a prohibition-era reimagining of The Twelve Dancing Princesses.

To maker matters worse, this is far from the first time I've mixed Catherynne M. Valente up with the author of The Girls at the Kingfisher Club, Genevieve Valentine. Why? My best guess is because their surnames make them shelf-friends in my lovely library, leading to a little confusion that Speak Easy's existence only exacerbates.

I won't hold that against it, though. Roll on Speak Easy's publication in the States this August!

Book Review | The Rabbit Back Literature Society by Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen

Only nine people have ever been chosen by renowned children’s author Laura White to join the Rabbit Back Literature Society, an elite group of writers in the small town of Rabbit Back. Now a tenth member has been selected: a young literature teacher named Ella. 

Soon Ella discovers that the Society is not what it seems. What is its mysterious ritual known as "The Game"? What explains the strange disappearance that occurs at Laura White’s winter party? Why are the words inside books starting to rearrange themselves? Was there once another tenth member, before her? Slowly, as Ella explores the Society and its history, disturbing secrets that had been buried for years start to come to light.

***

Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen proposes that places, like people, have particular interests. Some specialise in film; some in food. Others areas boast about an abundance of athletes, or artists, or authors. The small town of Rabbit Back "was known to have no less than six writers' associations, and that was without counting the most noteworthy writers' association, the Rabbit Back Literature Society, which accepted members only at Laura White's invitation."

Laura White is an almost mythical figure in the Finland of this baffling but beautiful English-language debut, which is fitting considering the contents of the Creatureville series:

The local ceramicists for the most part produced water sprites, pixies, elves, and gnomes. Laura White had made these creatures popular all over the world through her children's books, but in Rabbit Back in particular you ran into them everywhere you looked. They were presented as prizes in raffles, given as presents, brought to dinner as hostess gifts. There was only one florist in Rabbit Back, but there were seven shops that sold mostly mythological figurines.

To be taken under Laura White's wing is no little thing, then, and though she hasn't asked anyone to join the Society in some time—in forty-odd years, in fact—speculation about a potential tenth member remains a sensational subject, so when an invitation is unexpectedly extended to substitute language and literature teacher Ella Amanda Milana, Rabbit Back pretty much erupts.

Ella herself jacks in her job to focus on her fiction, but at the ball where she and her sponsor are meant to meet, the Lynchian mystery this book is about begins:

There was a party, then there was a snowstorm in the house and Laura White disappeared right in front of everyone's eyes, and the tenth member isn't going to be trained after all. That's it in a nutshell.

Book Review | The Outsorcerer's Apprentice by Tom Holt

A happy workforce, it is said, is a productive workforce.

Try telling that to an army of belligerent goblins. Or the Big Bad Wolf. Or a professional dragons layer. Who is looking after their well-being? Who gives a damn about their intolerable working conditions, lack of adequate health insurance, and terrible coffee in the canteen?

Thankfully, with access to an astonishingly diverse workforce and limitless natural resources, maximizing revenue and improving operating profit has never really been an issue for the one they call "the Wizard." Until now.

Because now a perfectly good business model—based on sound fiscal planning, entrepreneurial flair, and only one or two of the infinite parallel worlds that make up our universe—is about to be disrupted by a young man not entirely aware of what's going on.

There's also a slight risk that the fabric of reality will be torn to shreds. You really do have to be awfully careful with these things.

***

An affectionate send-up of the fairytale from the author of such sarcastic tracts as Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Sausages and May Contain Traces of Magic, The Outsorcerer's Apprentice features overlords and underlings, self-aware wolves and woodcutters, plus a prince from another world: ours.

Benny isn't a prince of anything hereabouts, however. Point of fact, he's in a bit of a pickle when the book begins. He has his final exams at Uni in a few weeks, and with his whole future before him, all of a sudden he doesn't have a clue what he's been doing. Studying to be a mathematician, maybe? In a moment of inspiration that some might mistake for laziness, he realises what he really needs is a good, long break to take stock of his situation. To that end, he borrows his Uncle's "omniphasic Multiverse portal" (p.137) and travels to a parallel reality where he can pretend to be a powerful person, because of course. Wouldn't you if you could?

The YouSpace XP3000, designed by Professor Pieter van Goyen of Leiden [is] capable of transporting you to any or all of the alternate realities that make up the Multiverse. Intuitive targeting software and state-of-the-art Heisenberg compensators mean that all you have to do is think of where you'd like to go, and you're instantly there. It's as simple as that. 

All you'll need to operate your YouSpace XP3000 personal multiverse interface is a dream—and a doughnut. (pp.136-137)

What Benny—pardon me, Prince Florizel—doesn't yet get, and won't for quite a while, is that his very presence in this innocent kingdom is destined to affect its host of fantastic inhabitants, including, but not limited to, dwarves, dragons, goblins, elves, etc.

Readers come to this conclusion somewhat sooner than fair Florizel; by way of Buttercup, a wily woodcutter's daughter waylaid with increasing frequency by wolves wearing old ladies' clothes. She grows so sick and tired of their charade that she starts worrying she may be single-handedly endangering the population—because of course Buttercup kills all the animals that attack her. She's had a lot of practice, and they'd eat her otherwise.

Book Review | The Girls at the Kingfisher Club by Genevieve Valentine

From award-winning author Genevieve Valentine, a "gorgeous and bewitching" reimagining of the fairytale of The Twelve Dancing Princesses as flappers during the Roaring Twenties in Manhattan.

The firstborn, Jo—The General to her eleven sisters—is the only thing the Hamilton girls have in place of a mother. She is the one who taught them how to dance, the one who gives the signal each night, as they slip out of the confines of their father’s townhouse to await the cabs that will take them to the speakeasy. Together they elude their distant and controlling father, until the day he decides to marry them all off. 

The girls, meanwhile, continue to dance, from Salon Renaud to the Swan and, finally, the Kingfisher, the club they come to call home. They dance until one night when they are caught in a raid, separated, and Jo is thrust face-to-face with someone from her past: a bootlegger named Tom whom she hasn’t seen in almost ten years. Suddenly Jo must weigh in the balance not only the demands of her father and eleven sisters, but those she must make of herself. 

***

Genevieve Valentine turns her intoxicating talents towards The Twelve Dancing Princesses in The Girls at the Kingfisher Club: a resonant reworking of the fairytale made famous by the Brothers Grimm which brings to mind the marvels of Moulin Rouge and the melancholy of Mechanique.

The dancers of Valentine's narrative are not literally princesses, as told in the old story. Rather, they are "the twelve failed heirs of Joseph Hamilton," (p.7) a morally bankrupt businessman who has basically locked his wife away, the better to bear baby after baby until she finally has some sons. But none come. Instead, Hamilton has ended up with twelve daughters, and he's ashamed of every one. To wit, he hides them from the world, and himself from them, in the labyrinthine passages of his mansion in Manhattan.

With their mother missing, the children, in their innocence, have no choice but to care for one another, and the lion's share of that responsibility falls to the oldest, Jo:

She sat on the edge of the bed and pressed her open palms into her grey skirt. She remembered sitting on the edge of the same bed before her feet touched the ground, quietly waiting for the governess to begin lessons, for their mother to visit, for the cook to bring dinner, for news that they had a little brother at last. 

She'd spent a lifetime waiting, powerless to do anything—except at night. At night, she had managed to build them a world. (p.80)

And what a wonderful world it is! A world in which they are princesses, after a fashion, because after dark, the hidden Hamiltons dance. They sneak out to the open secret speakeasies of the city, let their hair down, and wear their catalogue shoes through.

They dance as if their lives depended on it—and to be sure, their lives truly do.

Book Review | Raven Girl by Audrey Niffenegger

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"Once there was a Postman who fell in love with a Raven."

So begins the tale of a postman who encounters a fledgling raven while on the edge of his route and decides to take her home. The unlikely couple falls in love and conceives a child - an extraordinary raven girl trapped in a human body. The raven girl feels imprisoned by her arms and legs and covets wings and the ability to fly. Betwixt and between, she reluctantly grows into a young woman, until one day she meets an unorthodox doctor who is willing to change her.

One of the world's most beloved storytellers has created a dark fairytale full of wonderment and longing. Illustrated with Audrey Niffenegger's bewitching etchings and paintings, Raven Girl explores the bounds of transformation and possibility.

***

As oddly modern as Audrey Niffenegger's third novel-in-pictures is in many respects, the story at its core is as old as the 17th century aquatint technique she uses to illustrate it. Older, even. In the beginning, boy meets girl. They become friends... their relationship strengthens... and in due course, a strange babe is made. 

I say strange because it so happens that the girl the boy falls for is a bird: a fledgling raven who has fallen out of the nest. Seeing her, a caring mailman worries that she's broken, so he takes her home, cares for her as best he can. What develops between them then seems straight out of a wonderfully weird take on Aesop's Fables. 

“The postman was amazed by the intelligence and grace of the Raven. As she grew and lived in his house and watched him, she began to perform little tasks for him; she might stir the soup, or finish a jigsaw puzzle; she could find his keys (or hide them, for the fun of watching him hunt for them). She was like a wife to him, solicitous of his moods, patient with his stories of postal triump and tragedy. She grew large and sleek, and he wondered how he would live without her when the time came for her to fly away.” (pp.18-19) 

But when the time comes, the raven remains. As a matter of fact, she was hardly hurt in the first place; she stayed with the lonely postman for her own reasons. 

Time passes. Magic happens. 

In short, a child is born: a young human woman with the heart of a bird. Her parents love her utterly, give her everything they're able. Still, she longs to share her life with others like her. But there are none... she's the only Raven Girl in whole wide world! 

"The Raven Girl went to school, but she never quite fit in with the other children. Instead of speaking, she wrote notes; when she laughed she made a harsh sound that startled even the teachers. The games the children played did not make sense to her, and no one wanted to play at flying or nest building or road kill for very long.  

"Years passed, and the Raven Girl grew. Her parents worried about her; no boys asked her out, she had no friends." (p.36) 

So far, so fairy tale. But Niffenegger does ultimately capitalise on the aspects of the uncanny at the heart of her narrative. Later in life, the Raven Girl goes to university and learns about chimeras from a visiting lecturer, who says the very thing she's needed to hear for years. "We have the power to improve ourselves, if we wish to do so. We can become anything we wish to be. Behold [...] a man with a forked lizard tongue. A woman with horns. A man with long claws," (p.43) and so on. It only takes a little leap for us to foresee a girl with working wings. 

And so Raven Girl goes: right down the rabbit hole of body horror. 

It's a somewhat discomfiting turn for the tale to take, but soon one senses this is what the author hopes to explore: the book's beatific beginnings are just a way of getting there. Thus, they feel slightly superfluous—an assertion evidenced by the lack of artwork illustrating the opening act. At 80 pages, Raven Girl is the longest of the three picture books Niffenegger has created to date, but not out of narrative necessity. 

When Raven Girl finally takes flight, half its length has elapsed, but the half ahead is certainly superb. This may not be a fable for the faint-hearted, yet it stands a strangely beautiful tale all the same... of light glimpsed in the night, of hope when all looks to be lost. As the author attests:

"Fairy tales have their own remorseless logic and their own rules. Raven Girl, like many much older tales, is about the education and transformation of a young girl. It also concerns unlikely lovers, metamorphoses, dark justice, and a prince, as well as the modern magic of technology and medicine." (p.78) 

It is this last which sets off the plot of Niffenegger’s new novel-in-pictures: the idea of science as supernatural after a fashion. Together with the muted elements of the macabre aforementioned, Raven Girl feels like kid-friendly Cronenberg, and the artist’s moody aquatints very much feed into this reading. 

No doubt Audrey Niffenegger is most known as the mind behind The Time Traveler's Wife, but her latest emerges instead from the manifest imagination of the artist who produced The Three Incestuous Sisters, for instance. Like that dark objet d'art, Raven Girl is an insidious intermingling of words and pictures to be treasured: a beautifully produced, lavishly, lovingly illustrated fairy tale for the modern day—and very much of it, also.

***

The Raven Girl
by Audrey Niffenegger

UK Publication: May 2013, Jonathan Cape
US Publication: May 2013, Abrams ComicArts

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Book Review | The Crane Wife by Patrick Ness

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The extraordinary happens every day...

One night, George Duncan—a decent man, a good man—is woken by a noise in his garden. Impossibly, a great white crane has tumbled to earth, shot through its wing by an arrow. Unexpectedly moved, George helps the bird, and from the moment he watches it fly off, his life is transformed.

The next day, a kind but enigmatic woman walks into George's shop. Suddenly a new world opens up for George, and one night she starts to tell him the most extraordinary story.

Wise, romantic, magical and funny, The Crane Wife is a hymn to the creative imagination and a celebration of the disruptive and redemptive power of love.

***

Like George Duncan's daughter Amanda, who once managed, amusingly, to do the entire Louvre in less than an hour, I am not typically the type to be "Moved By Art" (p.152), yet The Crane Wife truly touched me. Which is to say—sure—I laughed, and I cried... but before it was over, I also felt like I'd lived another life, and died a little inside.

That's how powerful Patrick Ness' new novel is. And it begins as brilliantly as it finishes, with a minor yet monumental moment: a pristine prologue wherein we glimpse something of ourselves, alongside something utterly other.

Keenly feeling his advancing years, George awakens in the wee hours one night, naked and needing to pee. Whilst attending to his business in the bathroom, however, he is startled by an unearthly sound: "a mournful shatter of frozen midnight falling to earth to pierce his heart and lodge there forever, never to move, never to melt." (p.5) Curious, he follows this call to its point of origin, only to find that a crane has landed in his garden; a wounded one, with an arrow, of all things, shot through one of its wings.

Shocked and appalled, George—a good man through and through—attends as best he can to the bird's injured appendage... then, leaving a sense of unadulterated wonder in its wake, the crane flies away.

The next day, just as our amiable narrator is putting the finishing touches to a paper crane to commemorate, in his way, the dreamlike encounter from the previous evening, an enigmatic woman wearing "a hat that looked both ninety years out of date and a harbinger of the latest thing" (p.67) walks into the small print shop George operates. He falls head over heels for Kumiko before she's even introduced herself.

So begins an uncharacteristically passionate affair between gentle George and this ageless, graceful lady. And when Kumiko sees the plain paper crane he has made, she demands that they collaborate on matters of art as well as the heart.

"On its own, her art was beautiful, but she wouldn't stop insisting that it was static. The cuttings of the feathers woven together, assembled in eye-bending combinations to suggest not only a picture (the watermill, the dragon, the profile) but often the absences in those pictures, too, the shadows they left, black feathers woven with dark purple ones to make surprising representations of voids. Or sometimes, there was just empty space, with a single dash of down to emphasise its emptiness. The eye was constantly fooled by them, happening upon shape when blankness was expected. They tantalised, they tricked. 

"'But they do not breathe, George.'" (p.89)

Oh, but they do when Kumiko starts incorporating George's occasional cuttings into her feathered flights of fancy! In a sense, then, she completes him, and he her, thus—as their star rises in certain circles—they embark on a sequence of 32 plates telling, in totality, the tale of "a lady and a volcano who were both more and less than what they were called." (p.250)

These the author relates as very short yet deeply surreal and equally endearing stories, which work to punctuate the chapters we spend in George's calming company and those in which we're with his rather more fraught daughter.

"Although he was the hero of his version of the story, naturally, he was also a supporting player in this same story when told by someone else. [...] There were as many truths—overlapping, stewed together—as there were tellers. The truth mattered less than the story's life. A story forgotten died. A story remembered not only lived, but grew." (p.42)

Undeniably, The Crane Wife is a greater, truer tale because of Amanda's part in it. She offers an alternate angle on certain events, yes, but her perspective also serves to enlarge and enrich the overall narrative. Via Amanda, the reader comes to realise that Ness' novel is so much more than just a witty twist on a tale as old as time—which, given its clarity and quality, I warrant would have been enough.

But The Crane Wife is that, and then some. It functions, over and above, as a fable about family, friendship, memory, age and the ways in which we change, all of which subjects the authors approaches with disarming frankness, acute insight and such a wealth of warmth and compassion that each chapter made me feel like a more complete human being. Through character and narrative, Ness is able to evoke bona fide emotion—with such ease it has to be seen to be believed—such that from the fantastic first part through the beautiful denouement, The Crane Wife is a revelation for the reader.

It is a novel at its most transcendent, I would add, when the author engages in some way with the extraordinary... however it his devotion to more quotidian moments which makes these passages so commanding. Cannily, this is a contrast Ness makes much of over the course of The Crane Wife.

"If it wasn't a dream, it was one of those special corners of what's real, one of those moments, only a handful of which he could recall throughout his lifetime, where the world dwindled down to almost no one, where it seemed to pause just for him, so that he could, for a moment, be seized into life. Like when he lost his virginity to the girl with the eczema in his Honours English Class and it had been intensely brief, so briefly intense, that it felt like both of them had left normal existence for an unleashed physical instant. [...] Or not the birth of his daughter, which had been a panting, red tumult, but the first night after, when his exhausted wife had fallen asleep and it was just him and the little, little being and she opened her eyes at him, astonished to find him there, astonished to find herself there, and perhaps a little outraged, too, a state which, he was forced to admit, hadn't changed much for Amanda." (pp.11-12)

Patrick Ness' profile has been growing slowly but surely since he debuted with The Crash of Hennington almost a decade ago. Having written awesome genre novels for an all ages audience ever since—excepting a single short story collection—he has earned a whole legion of younger readers... to whom I fear The Crane Wife may not immediately appeal. But those who don't demand that the world end endlessly are likely to find the supernatural normalcy of Ness' acutely observed new book as affecting as any apocalypse.

With finely, frankly crafted characters and a slight yet satisfying narrative, as well as wit, warmth, and oh, such wonder, The Crane Wife is simply sublime: a story as strange, ultimately, as it is true.

***

The Crane Wife

by Patrick Ness

UK Publication: March 2013, Canongate

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Giving the Game Away | We Are Among Others

Hello again, everyone. I'm back!

Only briefly, I'm afraid. Predictably, I've returned home to deadlines aplenty, and as ever, the day job awaits, so I only have a few moments to devote to The Speculative Scotsman this afternoon. Luckily, that' should just long enough for me to blog about one of the very best books I've read in recent years: a multiple award-winner that (for once) deserves all the acclaim that's been heaped upon it. Namely Among Others by Jo Walton.

It's an extraordinary novel, with the most memorable narrator I've encountered in ages: Morwenna Phelps (or Mori to her friends... not that she has terribly many) is always charming and often disarming, but here's what really struck me about this marvellous character: she is undeniably one of us—which is to say an individual as inextricable from the fantastical literature she reads and reflects on throughout Among Others as any die-hard genre fiction fan—and wonderfully, one senses Jo Walton is as well.

If you've gone this long without reading Among Others already, you must know by now that you're missing something magnificent. But perhaps you aren't aware of what this novel is, and equally, what it isn't. Well:

"Think of this as a memoir. Think of it as one of those memoirs that's later discredited to everyone's horror because the writer lied and is revealed to be a different colour, gender, class and creed from the way they'd made everybody think. I have the opposite problem. I have to keep fighting to stop making myself sound more normal. Fiction's nice. Fiction lets you select and simplify. This isn't a nice story, and this isn't an easy story. But it is a story about fairies, so feel free to think of it as a fairy story. It's not like you'd believe it anyway."

The thing of it is... I did. Among Others came alive for me in a way truly few books do when I finally read it this past winter. Sadly, the review I wrote way back when—the review I had been sitting on ever since, waiting for this very day, I dare say—appears to have been eaten by Blogger, so you'll just have to take my word for it: Among Others is bittersweet, beautifully put... quite simply brilliant.

But wait! What am I talking about? You don't have to take my word for it at all, because even if you exclude the innumerable glowing reviews of the book my bloggery colleagues have written already—and why would you?—this post begins a whole week of awesome Among Others coverage.

Tomorrow, Civilian Reader will be chipping in; Dark Wolf's Fantasy Reviews welcomes Jo Walton on Wednesday; on Thursday, tune in to 2606 Books; then The Book Smugglers are due to do their inimitable thing on Friday. Over the weekend, Jan Edwards and Fantasy Faction will have the book's back, and a week from today, the blog tour concludes courtesy of Curiosity Killed the Bookworm.

Needless to say, it'll be a brilliant week, and all in honour of a good cause. Among Others really does merit such celebration. And to start us off properly, it's with immense pleasure—and many thanks to the fine folks at Constable & Robinson who are publishing the paperback this Thursday—that I say I have three copies of the beautiful new British edition of this book to give away to interested parties based in the UK.

All you need do to stand a chance of winning Among Others is to email me at thespeculativescotsman [at] gmail [dot] com with your name and address. Mark your subject headers 'We Are Among Others' and I'll announce the lucky ones next week, when I'm properly on top of the blog again.

It really is as easy as that.

Seriously, what are you waiting for? :)

We'll talk again shortly, all. In the interim, do stay tuned for a few more Short Story Reviews, including one of the piece I think should win the BSFA's award for the Best Short Story of 2012.

Book Review | The Brides of Rollrock Island by Margo Lanagan

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On remote Rollrock Island, men go to sea to make their livings — and to catch their wives.

The witch Misskaella knows the way of drawing a girl from the heart of a seal, of luring the beauty out of the beast. And for a price a man may buy himself a lovely sea-wife. He may have and hold and keep her. And he will tell himself that he is her master. But from his first look into those wide, questioning, liquid eyes, he will be just as transformed as she. He will be equally ensnared. And the witch will have her true payment.

Margo Lanagan weaves an extraordinary tale of desire, despair, and transformation. With devastatingly beautiful prose, she reveals characters capable of unspeakable cruelty, but also unspoken love.

***

On our first sight of the sea-witch Misskaella, who haunts the shore of Rollrock Island, she's "sat exactly halfway between tideline and water, as if she meant to catch the lot of us." (p.3)

So fantasise the fearful children, at least, to whom the haggard old crone at the broken heart of this bitterly beautiful book represents "the face of our night-horrors, white and creased and greedy." (p.5) That would be the exact reaction Misskaella, in her more maudlin moments, mean to elicit, but her position, perched on a boulder on this borderline - with a foot on the land and a fin in the froth - signifies something else. It speaks of a love lost, and a life divided: two of the core concerns of Margo Lanagan's hypnotic new novel.

Initially, admittedly, this prologue is almost incomprehensible. But return to it - as I did immediately after finishing The Brides of Rollrock Island's masterful last chapter - and its intent is resonant, as pure and cold and clear as the godforsaken sea.

Of course, the old witch was young once, and it is the tall tale of her horrid origins that properly sets off this year's best contender. To begin with, wee Misskaella is an innocent, but the last of the litter's little life takes a dark turn when her dying grandmam comments cruelly on her "miscast" (p.16) appearance.

"Her face was all dismay, looking at me. My hand came up to touch my nose and mouth, but they were only the same nose and mouth I had always had; there was nothing new or monstrous about them." (ibid)

Indeed not. Yet nevertheless, Misskaella knows now that something - some strange quirk of chemistry - sets her apart from the island's other young 'uns, and hot on the heels of this question, an answer, for it seems she has some of the seal in her. Some sympathetic power over selkie-kind. Out of blubbery sea-skins Misskaella can call beautiful, wondrous women, and so she does in later life, for a substantial sum — though this is a twisted sort of torture to her, still all ugly and utterly unloved.

"And now I saw a seal-girl's face, straight on and lamp-lit, for the first time. Not quite human, she was all the more beautiful for that. Her dark features sat in the smooth skin like a puzzle of stones and shells; I wanted to look and look until I had solved it." (p.126) 

In time, taking a sea-wife for a bride becomes a tradition on the island, as unspeakable as it is irresistible. This progressively gentles Rollrock's men, and drives away all other comers, frustrated and enraged. Cannily, Lanagan moves away from Misskaella at this stage, so that the reader may see the slope become slippery through the eyes of a number of neat narrators, including a woman blithely betrayed by her husband and son; a young man who abandons his fiery fiance for the "straightness and [...] strangeness" (p.160) of a submissive selkie temptress; and a boy whose love for his mam knows no bounds, and whose mam's love for the sea acknowledges no bond — a mother and son whose actions will change the course of many more souls than their own.

The Brides of Rollrock Island builds and builds and builds in this way, brilliantly I dare say, until it ends — and just as well, because by then my emotions were about to spill over. I've not been more moved by a book in years.

In part, that's thanks to its unsettling subject matter, which is to say the systematic corruption of those all too human ideals of beauty and purity... though the author is never so crass as to say so in such terms. In fact, very little of Lanagan's latest is explicit - The Brides of Rollrock Island's soaring success is all in the implication - such that one must work at an understanding.

This question of accessibility is a moderate obstacle - I fear Lanagan's lyrical language will be too much for some, and too little for others - but only then at the outset. Indeed, ease of entry into the folksy fairy-tale before us is mirrored by the opening up of Rollrock's initially forbidding front face, as espied by a lady from the mainland:

"The island rose from the horizon. It looked like nothing so much as a giant slumped seal itself, the head towards us and the bulk lumping up behind, trailing out northeast to the tail. Its slopes were greened over, its near side all cliffs and cliff pieces, chewed off but not swallowed by the sea. Every cove and cave looked alike inaccessible to me, most treacherous and unwelcoming.

"But we did not head for that rough bit of coast as we drew nearer; instead we bore westward and around the head there, and once beyond that I could see where the land lowered itself more gently, making room for a town, a small town only, on the slopes above the two long moles built out from the shore." (pp.279-80)

As above, so below. Certainly there is a peculiar poetry to Lanagan's prose: a power - all her own - over those who push through the opaque prologue, and with my every word I would urge you to do exactly that. Other than the lackluster cover, there's nothing not to love about The Brides of Rollrock Island. It's a wistful book, but wondrous. It will break your heart, and remake it.

Surrender yourself, then, to Margo Langan's mesmerising new novel. Allow it to surround you like a shimmering second skin... finer, fuller, and freer, finally, than the first. The Brides of Rollrock Island is all that and then some.

... 

This review originally appeared, in a slightly altered form, on tor.com.

***

The Brides of Rollrock Island

by Margo Lanagan

UK Publication: February 2012, David Fickling Books
US Publication: September 2012, Knopf Books

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Book Review | Alif the Unseen by G. Willow Wilson

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"I will tell you a story, but it comes with a warning: when you hear it, you will become someone else."

He calls himself Alif - few people know his real name - a young man born in a Middle Eastern city that straddles the ancient and modern worlds. When Alif meets the aristocratic Intisar, he believes he has found love. But their relationship has no future—Intisar is promised to another man and her family's honour must be satisfied. As a remembrance, Intisar sends the heartbroken Alif a mysterious book. Entitled The Thousand and One Days, Alif discovers that this parting gift is a door to another world—a world from a very different time, when old magic was in the ascendant and the djinn walked amongst us.

With the book in his hands, Alif finds himself drawing attention - far too much attention - from both men and djinn. Thus begins an adventure that takes him through the crumbling streets of a once-beautiful city, to uncover the long-forgotten mysteries of the Unseen. Alif is about to become a fugitive in both the corporeal and incorporeal worlds. And he is about to unleash a destructive power that will change everything and everyone—starting with Alif himself.

***

"G. Willow Wilson was living in Egypt when she started writing Alif the Unseen in 2010. The fictional revolution in the book became a reality in Spring 2011 when ordinary people across many Middle Eastern countries rose up against their rules."

So reads the press release that accompanied my copy of G. Willow Wilson's tour-de-force debut, giving great weight to this exquisite tale of tales wherein a young man from an unnamed emirate comes into possession of an ancient text long thought lost, codes from its pages a program that could change the way we see the world, and becomes, finally, a figurehead in the fight against corruption in the government — all in the name of love.

Love.

Love is at the heart of Alif the Unseen. Love is what makes it so very special. In the first, Alif's love for Intisar, a princess of sorts to his digitally literate street rat. They've been seeing one another for many a moon, as of the outset; courting, of course, in a clandestine sense. But when Intisar is promised to a man closer to her social stature than the grey hat (read hacker) who has fallen for her, their affair comes to a crushing conclusion.

In the aftermath, all Alif has left of the love of his life is the Alf Yeom, literally The Thousand and One Days: a book of stories that is "the inverse, the overturning" (p.96) of The Thousand and One Nights, purportedly written not by people, but magical creatures.

And in the margins, Intisar's fascinating annotations:

The suggestion that the Alf Yeom is the work of a djinn is surely a curious one. The Quran speaks of the hidden people in the most candid way, yet more and more the educated faithful will not admit to believing in them, however readily they might accept even the harshest and most obscure points of Islamic law. That God has ordained that a thief must pay for his crime with his hand, that a woman must inherit half of what a man inherits — these things are treated not only as facts, but as obvious facts, whereas the existence of conscious beings we cannot see - and all the fantastic and wondrous things that their existence suggests and makes possible - produces profound discomfort among precisely that cohort of Muslims most lauded for their role in that religious "renaissance" presently expected by western observers: young degree-holding traditionalists. Yet how hollow rings a tradition in which the law, which is subject to interpretation, is held as sacrosanct, yet the word of God is not to be trusted when it comes to His description of what He has created.

I do not know what I believe. (p.104)

Intisar's crisis of faith is but the impetus behind the majestic vision quest Alif embarks on thereafter: the outcome is still a ways away. And would that it were still further, for this is a fantastic first novel!

I should stress that G. Willow Wilson has been published in the past. In 2010, The Butterfly Mosque - a memoir about her conversion to Islam - attracted an array of acclaim, and her name will be fairly familiar to comic book fans: she scripted the late, lamented Vertigo series AIR, Mystic for Marvel, and her credits also include a couple of fill-in issues for Superman. So Wilson isn't averse to a little seeming silliness, nor to more inwardly meaningful matters, such as class, censorship, fear and belief. In Alif the Unseen, she takes the high road and the low, trading on both areas of expertise to create a story about stories that stands out from the first word.

That said, the Alif is both more and less than a word. It is the first letter of Sura Al Baqara in the Quran; it is the first line of code ever written; it is a state of mind, a suggestion, a symbol that our hero becomes - inasmuch as it becomes him - over the course of this remarkable fantasy narrative. Alif "had spent so much time cloaked behind his screen name, a mere letter of the alphabet, that he no longer thought of himself as anything but an alif — a straight line, a wall. His given name fell flat in his ears now. The act of concealment had become more powerful that what it concealed." (p.3)

Alif the Unseen, too, conceals a great deal. The initial simplicity of the Aladdin-esque romance with which it begins belies the book's more challenging aspects. Seductive as it is, this early section seems fleeting when set against the heady concoction of faith, torture and politics that fuels its unforgettable finale. Indeed, these ends are so at odds that one can only imagine the inevitable clash, yet instead, Wilson shapes a careful, character-driven commingling — a thing both beautiful and terrible to behold.

Speaking of which, as easy as our characters are to grasp at the outset, as Alif the Unseen progresses they resonate with both emotional depth and intellectual complexity. Particularly when Intisar's part is played, Alif and his childhood friend Dina develop majestically, and the people (and the creatures) they meet on their journey - both within themselves and outwith the world they know - are fantastic fancies, finely described.

Alif the Unseen is an extraordinary novel, written with a hypnotic naturalness that reminded this reader of Neil Gaiman, whose blurb adorns the front cover of Corvus' delightfully designed British edition. He writes that "G. Willow Wilson has a deft hand with myth and with magic," to which assertion I would append a few further words about the part of Alif the Unseen that left a lasting impression on me: namely its rightfully abiding interest in matters of the heart.

A book to treasure, truly.

***

Alif the Unseen
by G. Willow Wilson

UK Publication: September 2012, Corvus
US Publication: June 2012, Grove Press

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Comic Book Review | Memorial by Chris Roberson and Rich Ellis

So what if I were to tell you that there's a world where the folks from our favourite childhood storybooks live and breathe like real people? Would you be blown away?

No?

Well, nor was I. Though I had high hopes for Memorial: a six-issue miniseries - now a single gorgeous graphic novel - written by iZombie's Chris Roberson, complete with cartoonish art courtesy of comic book newcomer Rich Ellis, and lush covers by M. W. Kaluta. But it's basically another take on Fables.

That said, the great game that made Bill Willingham's name was for its part far from original, so I certainly didn't come to Memorial desperate to dismiss the thing as a pointless carbon copy based on a couple of conceptual coincidences. Sadly, however, this short series never really rises above its clear and present predecessors — and please, pay particular attention to that there plural, because other obvious influences are waiting in the wings. The Sandman, for example. At times, Memorial reads like a deleted scene from said, set in The Dreaming.

Roberson sets the bar hella high, then, and perhaps that's part of the reason why Memorial misses the mark. But make no mistake: several other factors contribute to its at best graceful failure, including lazy storytelling devices like the amnesia our heroine Em - named after the letter on her necklace - suffers from at the outset.

Another thing that annoyed me was how absolutely passive Em is as a protagonist. Throughout the series she stumbles from fantastical place to place, meets a overwhelming cast of characters, becomes drawn into a potentially crucial conflict... all the while without asserting her agency. Come the last act, even, Em's a pawn in someone else's play for power, and unsurprisingly, the path of least resistance she follows - and we with her - makes for a lackluster narrative.

In the final summation, Rich Ellis' art fares better than Roberson's writing, but I didn't find it particularly inspiring either. He deserves some applause for his attention to detail, but well developed backgrounds can only carry one so far, and I'm afraid Ellis' characters looked too much like cartoons for my liking. As ever, your mileage may vary — after all, beauty lies in the beholder's eyes.

So: the storytelling is twee, the cast never quite comes alive, and the setting - to put it politely - could be better differentiated. But putting aside my problems with Memorial in terms of narrative and character, as well as its telling resemblance, I don't actually doubt that there are interesting stories to be told in this world. Better Roberson had started with one of them than the six issues of insipid set-up this collection consists of, certainly, but even then, this book bears a small portion of potential.

Which is to say, Memorial is far from the home run I had hoped for, but it isn't entirely terrible either. It's muddled, derivative, and difficult to get into, but now that the worldbuilding's well and truly begun - if not done - and we've met the major players, it's got to get better. Or else... what was the point?

Book Review | Some Kind of Fairy Tale by Graham Joyce

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For twenty years after Tara Martin disappeared from her small English town, her parents and her brother, Peter, have lived in denial of the grim fact that she was gone for good. And then suddenly, on Christmas Day, the doorbell rings at her parents' home and there, disheveled and slightly peculiar looking, Tara stands. It's a miracle, but alarm bells are ringing for Peter. Tara's story just does not add up. And, incredibly, she barely looks a day older than when she vanished.

Award-winning author Graham Joyce is a master of exploring new realms of understanding that exist between dreams and reality, between the known and unknown. Some Kind of Fairy Tale is a unique journey every bit as magical as its title implies, and as real and unsentimental as the world around us. 

***

Twenty years ago, after a falling out with her besotted boyfriend, teenager Tara Martin went into the Outwoods to take solace in their special spot, and gather her thoughts. She could hardly have picked a more beguiling backdrop for a vanishing act if she'd tried.

"The Outwoods was one of the last remaining pockets of ancient forest from which Charnwood took its name. It nestled at the spot where the three counties of Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire almost  touched, and seemed neither to belong to nor take its character from any of them. It was an eerie place, swinging between sunlight and damp, flaring light and shadow; a venue of twisted trees, its volcanic slopes of ash and granite ruptured by mysterious outcropping crags of the very oldest rocks in Britain." (p.12)

When it emerges that Tara isn't coming back, suspicion falls upon her sweetheart, but Richie maintains his innocence to the hilt, despite some strictly circumstantial evidence to the contrary. Desperate to close the case, however, the police are dogged in their determination that Richie did it, pursuing him to the point that his close friendship with the whole of the Martin family - especially his best pal Peter - becomes too painful to sustain.

Twenty years later, the world has moved on — for everyone except Richie, whose loss has ruled if not outright ruined his life. So when Tara turns up on her folks' doorstep, aged nary a day and bearing a tall tale about fairies instead of an actual reason for her sudden disappearance, it's a shock to the system to say the least. Nobody knows what to think... not even her shrink.

"Clearly the narrative has been constructed to make sense of some overwhelming experience — but at the moment we have no clues as to what the experience might have been. Until we are able to locate any organic foundation for the amnesia and confabulation we will proceed with an psychological investigation underpinned by an understanding of the needs of the confabulator." (p.160)

Presented as journal entries composed for potential publication at a later date, Dr. Underwood's occasional perspective serves several purposes simultaneously in Some Kind of Fairy Tale. In the first, his sessions with "TM" function as a neat and natural way to tease out this two-pronged parable, because rather than frontloading the fiction with two worlds’ worth of exposition, the author best known for Memoirs of a Master Forger threads Tara's metaphor-laden vacation to fairyland through the entirety of a more practical framing narrative, concerned in the main with the real world repercussions of her return. In addition to generating meaningful momentum, this approach instigates a sense of tension that the novel is never again absent, as one can only wonder what happens next, and what, in the interim, has been withheld.

Not to mention why. Nor, crucially, by whom. Because from an early stage - in point of fact, from the first page - we're warned, though not actually informed, that "everything depends on who is telling the story. It always does," (p.1) and in Some Kind of Fairy Tale, there are no easy answers.

Which is not to say the narrative is unsatisfying. On the contrary, Joyce's habit of refusing obvious conclusions is one of his latest's greatest successes. By stopping just short of solving all the novel’s possible problems, the author invites us to read between the lines... to unpick the almighty puzzle of Tara's absence. In that respect Some Kind of Fairy Tale comes together wonderfully, presuming you're prepared to do a little of the lifting yourself.

Ultimately, uncertainty seems to be Some Kind of Fairy Tale's stock in trade, so it's fitting that both the form and the content of Underwood's aforementioned interludes work to compound this conception. As a man of science, of fact rather than fantasy, his quest is to systematically discredit Tara's increasingly unlikely account of the twenty years she's short. The effect of his scepticism, then, is to balance out her belief, thus the reader can't take anything on trust, from anyone — least of all the novel's narrator, whomsoever he - or she - may be.

It's a terrific touch, and perhaps the most satisfying aspect of the entire, after the fact, but Graham Joyce's hypnotic new novel has much more going for it than the slow burn of its seductive structure. On the sentence level, say, Some Kind of Fairy Tale seems simple - indeed, it makes for a few evenings’ easy reading - yet the prose boasts an ominous undercurrent: a suggestion, made ever so softly, that there’s more to the tale (and its telling) than we’re aware.

"You have no idea [...] None of you. There is a veil to this world, thin as smoke, and it draws back occasionally and when it does we can see incredible things. Incredible things." (p.190)

This short novel is a pleasure in terms of character, too. Richie is a classic case of arrested development, meanwhile Peter’s mature, and mostly level-headed. How these old friends relate to one another as after two decades as accidental enemies is immediately engaging, and uncannily convincing; as are Tara’s tragicomic struggles to grips with the modern world she’s returned to. Last, and perhaps least, as diverting as his perspective is, Peter’s moody but well-meaning son Jack has surprisingly little impact on the narrative, though his chapters offer a certain sideways insight into the novel’s most perplexing events.

In sum, Some Kind of Fairy Tale is fantastically formed, complete with a portentous premise, a marvellous cast of characters, and a narrative as smart and self-reflexive as it is at first old-fashioned. It’s a little slow in the going, I suppose, and its magic - its mystery - is essentially ineffable, but hold open your imagination for a moment and you'll fall under its spell as well. Enigmatic and intellectual, yet readily accessible and massively satisfying, Joyce’s latest is a joy.

...

This review was originally published, in a slightly altered form, on Tor.com

***

Some Kind of Fairy Tale
by Graham Joyce

UK Publication: June 2012, Gollancz
US Publication: July 2012, Doubleday

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Book Review | The Silver Bough by Lisa Tuttle

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Appleton is a small town nestled on the coast of Scotland. Though it was once famous for the apples it produced, these days it's a shadow of its former self. But in a hidden orchard a golden apple dangles from a silver bough, an apple believed lost for ever.

The apple is part of a legend, promising either eternal happiness to the young couple who eat from it secure in their love — or a curse, for those who take its gift for granted.

Now, as the town teeters on the edge of decline, the old rituals have been forgotten and the mists are rolling in. And in the mist, something is stirring...

***

It's been a long while since we last heard from Lisa Tuttle. After a prolific period in the nineties and early noughties, the award-winning author appears to have gone to ground, and though The Silver Bough has only recently been released here in the UK, it was made available in the United States six years ago. So it's not a new novel... nor does it feel especially fresh.

What The Silver Bough is, on the other hand, is beautiful — particularly this edition of it, with its gorgeous adornment. More notably, I suppose, The Silver Bough's setting is obscenely appealing. Meanwhile its premise is all poise; its characters are undeniably attractive; and Tuttle's prose is almost criminally pretty.

But beauty, as they say, is only skin deep, and beneath the surface, The Silver Bough is a disappointingly noncommittal novel: a modern-day fable about a magical apple that doesn't go far enough, or fast enough. It's perfectly pleasant - easy reading for a few evenings - but a touch overblown, and problematically paced, I'm afraid.

As to that last, the lion's share of the blame can be shared between the three main narrators, all of whom, oddly enough, are Americans living in - or in one case visiting - a remote village in the north of Scotland.

There's the librarian, Kathleen, whose interest in Appleton's history leads to some strange revelations. Then there's the granddaughter of the last Apple Queen: Ashley has come to the country to fill out her family tree, though she secretly hopes to meet a hunkish Highlander while she's here. Last but not least we have Nell, a lonely soul whose only goal is to turn her back garden into an orchard. Little does she know that the key to the village's uncertain future is growing on one of her trees.

Once upon a time - for so this story goes - Appleton was a place famous for the fruit from which it takes its name, but now "the old orchards are gone; the Apple Fair hasn't been held in decades, and everyone has forgotten the real reason behind it. But the magic is still here, deep in the land — and the land knows. Every so often, it offers up a magical gift. The last time, that gift was rejected, and things began to go wrong." (p.254-5) Unless events develop differently on this occasion, Appleton is apt to fall to ruin forever.

The Silver Bough's fantastic last act may be too little, too late for some readers, but for what it's worth, the tale itself resolves relatively well.

My problems, in any event, were with the telling. Kathleen, Ashley and Nell are all outsiders, to a greater or lesser extent, thus the angle they offer on Appleton and its interesting inhabitants is curiously askew. Never mind that their perspectives aren't remotely representative: oftentimes, they're too busy remarking on how wonderfully quaint rural living is to focus on more meaningful matters... for instance the narrative.

Entire chapters pass without incident. Then, when something of note does go down, it's almost always glossed over, the better to get back to what Tuttle is interested in above all else: idling. Which is to say calmly taking in the sights and sounds of what is, admittedly, a pleasant, picturesque place.

The Silver Bough is not a bad novel at all — only disappointing. Some memorable moments - foremost amongst them a creepy encounter with several generations of ancients - are sure to stay with you long after the last chapter. In the interim, the prose is powerful, and the setting is simply tremendous; if this beguiling book doesn't sell you on Scotland, I don't know what will. What frustrates, finally, is that The Silver Bough is only a good book, when it could have been - or should have been, given Tuttle's talents - a truly great text.

***

The Silver Bough
by Lisa Tuttle

UK Publication: July 2012, Jo Fletcher Books
US Publication: December 2006, Spectra

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Short Story Corner | To Be Read Upon Your Waking by Robert Jackson Bennett

The Summer 2012 issue of Subterranean Press Magazine (hallowed be its name) has a new novella by that rising star of speculative fiction Robert Jackson Bennett, author of The Troupe, The Company Man and firm TSS favourite Mr. Shivers. I devoured it in a single sitting the other day, and the story, though faintly familiar - very much the way with modern fairy tales, I'm finding - the story has had me thinking ever since.

"To Be Read Upon Your Waking" is an epistolary affair centered around the correspondence between one lover to another in the late 1940s — which is to say after the fact of World War II, but still very much in the shadow of that terrible time. James, our narrator, has abandoned his ailing life partner Laurence in London, the better to invest what remains of his savings in "a tangible, genuine part of God's green earth. [...] A piece of countryside, of wilderness, a secluded cabin to call our own," namely Anperde Abbey, in France.

Or else what's left of it, because as beautiful as perhaps it once was, the abbey has fallen to rot and ruin. James, then, has his work cut out for him restoring the property, thus his letters to his sickly lover are part apology, and part account of this torturous process. Evidently Laurence does write the occasional reply, but we never see these in "To Be Read Upon Your Waking." Initially, this seems an odd decision - giving us only one half of a continuing conversation to go on - but come the conclusion it's long since a solid call, because as the narrative progresses, and Bennett reveals exactly what otherworldly wonders he has up his sleeve, his rationale becomes abundantly apparent.

As to the plot's particulars, well... I wouldn't want to give the game away, especially when it's so much fun to figure out. Instead, read into this quote what you will:

"The tradespeople I bought my equipment from did seem quite interested to hear where I lived. When I told them I'd bought the old marquis's house, they asked very keenly if I'd had any callers. I wasn't sure what they meant — sales people, I asked, or visitors from the town? We bumbled over it a bit (wish my French was better) but I believe they said there were children whose families live in the forest (like gypsies or travelers, I suppose) who play tricks on nearby residents. Except no one really lives nearby anymore, so that would just leave me. I told them I hadn’t seen hide nor hair of them, and asked 'em why the police didn’t just go in and send all the bastards packing. That just confused them.

"I think they said children. Either way, I have seen no one in the forest.

"That's not the most interesting thing, though, darling — I was examining what I think might have been the inset for the dais when I found a hollow or gap in the floor behind it. It is not an unintentional hole, I am sure of it. It is a door. It goes somewhere. Perhaps a crypt? Not sure. It is filled up with hard, frozen mud, and I have a bad time of it, but sometimes I put my ear to the stone floors, tap on them, and hear something hollow. Maybe I am imagining things."

By which point, I was too!

At 20,000 words, there's room for Bennett to let his narrative and characters breathe — amongst them the marquis, a particularly memorable madman who may be able to answer some of the strange questions James raises. The setting, too, is terrific: in rural France, as magical as it is mysterious, one senses anything can happen, and at Anperde Abbey - beautiful, foreboding and all but lost to the forest - it does.

"To Be Read Upon Your Waking" is a sublime slow-burn of a story, about impossible shadows cast in the darkest part of the woods, as well as more standard suspects such as love, loss and life after death. Bennett only rarely writes short fiction - and at just shy of 20,000 words, this novella hardly fits the description - but I dearly wish he would take the time more often. Mileage may vary, but truth be told, I enjoyed "To Be Read Upon Your Waking" more than I did The Troupe, and you might, too.

Remember: you can, and you assuredly should, read it here for free.