The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley

Posted on December 23, 2024 by pagesofjulia

I received a special copy of this book from one of my very best friends. It was originally published the year after I was born – not new, but an important classic. The Mists of Avalon is a ~900 page retelling of the legends of King Arthur, his Companion Knights, including Sir Lancelot, and the Round Table – but from the perspectives of the women involved, including Queen Guinevere (here Gwenhwyfar), Arthur’s mother the Queen Igraine and her sisters, Queen Morgause and Avalon’s Lady of the Lake Viviane… and most centrally, Arthur’s half-sister and lover, Morgaine, who we have also known as Morgan la Fay or Morgaine of the Fairies, and Viviane’s sometime successor as Lady of the Lake. Among others. (Sorry. These name changes are a bit to follow. Lancelot here is Lancelet, etc.)

I generally stay away from books of this length in recent years – I don’t know when I last read a book of 900 pages. It took some adjustment around paid reviews and deadlines, but I’m grateful I was able to find time for this one. It took a little over two weeks, while crocheting a blanket (!) and spending days on an excavator in the woods! But was worth every minute. I enjoyed being able to sink into a story this sprawling, which does call for some in-depth engagement, as we follow generations and lifetimes, a quite convoluted family tree, and shifting allegiances (and names).

My own background with the Arthurian legends is weak, although I definitely loved T.H. White’s The Once and Future King when I was young (high school? earlier still? that one over 600 pages), and I remember an illustrated book of the tales of the knights of the Round Table at some point… I have a loose sense of the romance and idealism of Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, and Camelot, but brought no muddied plotlines to this reading. It seems The Mists of Avalon is understood partly as corrective to Morgaine’s reputation as evil sorceress from previous tellings.

There’s no question that Bradley’s is a big, complicated, engrossing story. Its prologue begins with a brief, italicized reminiscence of Morgaine’s from later in her very long life; these retrospective views will punctuate the book. Then we move (with book one, “Mistress of Magic”) to Igraine, who will be mother to both Morgaine and Arthur, when she is a teenaged bride to the much older and coarse Duke Gorlois of Cornwall. Igraine was raised on Avalon, that magical, misty island where an ancient, pagan, woman-centered religion has long been fostered. She has some priestess training and some of the Sight, but it’s been her duty to be a wife and a mother: her daughter Morgaine is Gorlois’s child, and she will later marry Britain’s High King Uther and have a second child who will become the fabled King Arthur. So we begin with Morgaine’s infancy and before Arthur’s birth. I will begin fast-forwarding here… much has been written about this book, and you don’t need my plot summary.

Morgaine will become a priestess of Avalon, and she will become very powerful indeed, but will have to serve the Goddess in ways that pain her deeply. In four parts – “Mistress of Magic,” “The High Queen,” “The King Stag,” and “The Prisoner in the Oak,” we see her play the role of the maiden, the mother, and the crone. She is fierce in her protection and promotion of the religion in which she is trained. It is central to the story of Arthur’s reign, in this telling, that (under Gwenhwyfar’s influence) he shepherds Britain toward a homogenous Christian faith, away from a diversity of indigenous traditions, including the goddess cult of Avalon, and Morgaine fights that transition mightily. Her story is, I think, a tragedy, and includes strong threads of that classic tragic element, hubris (a term Arthur invokes once).

Bradley has chosen to tell this story mostly in a series of close-third-person perspectives, so that the reader can see the thoughts and feelings of one character and then another (the exception being those italicized first-person moments with an older Morgaine), so that we understand that each is dealing with insecurities and ultimately, mostly, good intentions, which heightens the sense of tragedy: that both Arthur and Morgaine want the best for Britain, that Viviane knows she will hurt her beloved niece Morgaine but feels it necessary for the greater good. It is a very fine literary trick to set up no absolute villains or heroes, but rather to offer us flawed humans who try hard and fail. It is hard, though, not to sympathize with the side that wishes to preserve its tradition as one of several, rather than the one that wants to squash out all but one religion.

There are many plot threads, romances, love affairs, couples that produce children (all-important heirs) and those that don’t. There are many themes, a number of which involve women’s various roles in society: to bear children, to be chaste, to support their mates, to participate in political machinations (or not), to be involved in one religion or another. An important difference between the rites of Avalon and those of Christianity centers on sex, which is either a grievous sin in all contexts except strict (marital) reproduction, or a beautiful celebration of life, the natural world, the God and the Goddess coming together. [Same-sex encounters are not many, but also not absent. No surprise that Avalon and Christianity handle them in different ways.] Morgaine’s tradition is inherently feminist, and at odds with Christianity, in that it holds that women belong to no man and may take lovers as they choose and as serves their worship and their life’s work.

This is a work of fantasy (as in magic and sorcery), and a classic retold, as well as historical fiction, as Arthur’s legend offers a version of how the Great Britain we know today came to be. Bradley’s work offers another take, in which a brave woman undertakes to defend indigenous traditions in a time of political and religious upheaval. The outcome, I think, doesn’t change much, but the way we view the different players involved matters a great deal. It’s also, of course, about human relationships. Morgaine, Arthur, Gwenhwyfar and Lancelet go back to childhood together, and there is a refrain late in the book of recalling the few of them who had once been young together. There’s a pretty strong thread of sympathies between friends, lovers, enemies, and those who move between those categories, even when they wind up killing one another.

Bradley’s storytelling is absorbing. It was easy to fall into a world very different from my own here, in the details of women’s lives in royal castles – dark, monotonous, filled with gossip and spinning and sex that’s not entirely consensual, even for privileged women – and in the rapture of Avalon’s powerful priestesses. The mysticism of that religion, the spell of Goddess-blessed sex, and the strong feelings of characters willing to die for their beliefs are all evocatively told. The romance, intrigue and pathos of that famous love triangle between Arthur, Gwenhwyfar and Lancelet is powerful and discomfiting. Heavier scenes are as well written as the light-hearted and humorous ones; Bradley’s characters’ humanity is always present. It was a hell of a journey, and I’m glad to have made it.

Whew. Thanks, Liz.

Rating: 8 scabbards.

Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a comment »

The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door by H. G. Parry

Posted on December 13, 2024 by pagesofjulia

H. G. Parry continues to impress me deeply (see previous reviews here). I think this might be my favorite of her books, although The Magician’s Daughter was a feat. (This is not the first year I’ve given two books from the same author a perfect 10 rating: Alix Harrow, Stephen King, and Norman Maclean have each held this spot. Still.)

The book opens with a fateful meeting of the narrator, Clover Hill, with a person who will become one of the most important figures of her life. Chapter 2 rewinds to how she got there. “If it hadn’t been for the Great War, I would never have gone to Camford University of Magical Scholarship. I would never have known it existed.” Clover comes from a farm near a tiny village in Lancashire, a humble family background. She was very close to her older brother Matthew, despite five years of age difference, and it was Clover who helped convince their mother to let Matthew go to war, with some misgivings on Clover’s part. And so she carries the predictable guilt when he returns to them after four long years, alive, but scarcely recognizable. His homecoming is preceded by a visit from a fellow soldier who tells the family a wild and unbelievable story: Matthew’s is no ordinary war wound. He has been the victim of a faerie curse.

Families like Clover’s aren’t normally made aware of this fact, but magic is alive and well in the world she inhabits. Its study and practice, however, are reserved for select few magical Families (always capitalized), who possess great wealth and privilege as well as inherited, secret powers. Matthew suffers terribly. His life is in danger. And young Clover, already an ambitious girl who’d hoped to escape the family farm by way of teachers’ college, decides that she will pursue magic instead. A very, very tiny number of students are accepted to England’s university of magical scholarship, if their entrance exam scores are exemplary. Perhaps a tinier number of students even from the great Families are women. Clover will need to be very good indeed. But with the hopes of recovering Matthew’s health – even saving his life – to motivate her, Clover can do great things.

Camford University is located (as you might guess) in a mysterious space accessed by two enchanted doors in Cambridge and Oxford Universities, respectively. It’s a charmed and charming place, and upon first sight, Clover wants only to be a part of the place. Her desperation to save her beloved brother is quickly paralleled by her passion for magical scholarship (at which she excels, despite the oft-repeated claim that only members of Families should be so talented) and her desire to belong to Camford. Her heart leaps further when she clicks into place as part of a foursome of close friends: Hero Hartley, a lovely, glamorous girl, socially gifted and a serious scholar in her own right. Eddie Gaskell, awkward, shy, deeply devoted to plants and the natural world. And Alden Lennox-Fontaine, the golden boy of their year at Camford and beyond. He is physically stunning, impossibly wealthy, clever, graceful – “he was like a burning sun.” In Alden in particular, Clover finds a partner in the study of faerie spells and magic, which has been outlawed since the sensational wartime accident that changed Matthew’s life. The foursome make a project of studying what has been forbidden. Clover wants to save her brother. Hero wants to achieve the kind of academic success that will justify her career as a scholar so that she doesn’t have to marry a rich bore like her father intends for her. Eddie wants to please his friends. It’s not clear what drives Alden to study the fae.

The novel is historical fiction, in that it takes place just before, during and after World War I, reestablishing those events in a world with secret magic held by a chosen few. It’s about academia, the ivory tower that elevates and excludes, while offering a thrilling search for truth and self-betterment. It’s very much about friendship: the less-literal ‘magic’ of finding one’s people after a young life spent feeling alone – the magic of friendship, belonging, fellowship – is atmospheric and thick and real, evoked here in a way that it took me a while to realize reminded me of Tana French’s work in The Likeness or The Witch Elm or maybe The Secret Place. (There are also obvious parallels to the Scholomance series by Naomi Novik.)

As is often true in Parry’s work, there is metaphor available, if one considers that Clover is an outsider by gender, by class, and by not coming from a magical Family – England having a nuance of caring not just about class but about family and ‘breeding.’ We can think of the inherited ability to do magic as another manifestation of class or caste. And it is revealed late in the book (spoiler appears here in white text; highlight to read) that it is not Family at all that confers ease of magical learning, but the inhalation of magical pollen at the various universities of magic around the world. The Families know this, and purposefully keep that pollen to themselves, feeding it (as it were) to only their own, to keep alive an appearance of difference and superiority where there is none. It’s like giving multivitamins to your kids and then pretending they’re inherently better than those lousy malnourished kids down the street. That’s a whole ‘nother level of ugliness.

These issues of caste and injustice, and the idea of who is worthy and who is harmed by being kept out, are revealed and considered in layers as the story progresses. After a youth of yearning to be let in, to belong to Camford, Clover achieves what she seeks, more or less: in later, fast-forwarded sections of the novel, she is a PhD candidate and professor at her alma mater. But continuing injustices will eventually force her to realize that nothing has been resolved by her own promotion except her own personal success (which is tenuous). “The only difference was that the door had let me in, and so I hadn’t questioned who else it was keeping out and why.”

As you might be gathering, Clover and her friends and their secret work on faerie magic wind up involved in larger issues than they originally expect: not only Matthew’s fate but the very world around them are at stake. They must navigate split loyalties, major sacrifices, and big questions of right and wrong. Secrets also exist in layers: the magical world mostly a secret from the larger mundane one that Clover is native to; her studies with her friends on faeries, necessarily a secret from Camford and the magical world; and each of the friends, perhaps, keeping secrets from each other. There is heartbreak in the development and breaking of the friendship bond. More so in the possible breaking up of the world.

I think this is the most brilliant of H. G. Parry’s work yet.

Rating: 10 roses.

Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: , , | 1 Comment »

The Shadows Rule All by Abigail Owen

Posted on December 6, 2024 by pagesofjulia

The Shadows Rule All is the final installment in the Dominions trilogy, following The Liar’s Crown and The Stolen Throne. It continues the work of the previous two in an anticipated fashion, which is not a criticism. I was just talking with a friend about the expectations set up by a series, and what it means to meet or thwart them, and how much of the latter might be tolerated by a fan base. When I say Owen has met expectations with this one, I mean that in a good way. In the previous two books, she taught me to look for action; intrigue; humor; teenaged awkwardness; the challenges of split loyalties (both for teens and for monarchs, worse for teenaged monarchs); youthful navigations of romance and sex; familial love; loss and grief and magic and more. All of those elements were present, while leaving room for surprises in terms of plot. For the most part, I feel this upholds the contract set up by the first two books in a trilogy. It will be a rare series (let alone trilogy – perhaps a more tightly bound subset of series) that subverts reader expectations without pissing them off. And there was still plenty to keep me engaged and guessing.

Beginning here, a reminder: as I’ve done before with series reviews, this review will contain spoilers for the previous two books. Just one nice, vague one for this title.

As is probably appropriate for the finale in a trilogy, Owen goes big. The stakes are higher than ever. Some very big issues in Meren’s world must be resolved: various forces are working to release the goddesses who’ve been locked in the amulets for many generations; the Shadows that haunted Reven and now haunt Meren must find their final destinations; the dominion of Aryd which is Tabra’s (and/or Meren’s?) to rule must find its ruler and its peace. Eidolon will, hopefully, be dispatched. There will be a huge, pitched battle, with all the consequences, action sequences (including magic), and some serious losses. As much as it hurt to read, I applaud Owen for being brave enough to kill off a few characters who have been central and loved. That’s what a book like this calls for.

A love story has been brewing in previous books, between Meren and Reven, originally her kidnapper (who assumed she was her twin, Tabra), although he had his reasons. In the previous book they were “bound,” in a magical ritual that means they will always find each other even in later lives, and that they can communicate nonverbally and feel one another’s feelings, among other things. In this book, Reven returns from a terrible trauma without any memory of Meren. Most inhabitants of their world find this unprecedented for a bound couple, but assume as he recovers his memories they will come back together. Worse and stranger, the physical manifestations of their bond – lines that light up under the skin – are absent. Worst of all, Meren can still feel the bond, although she cannot access his mind and feelings. These are often the most powerful elements of fantasy or absurdist stories: literalizations of concepts we already know in our ‘real’ world. So: Meren feels the loss of her traumatized, amnesiac lover physically, as literal pain, while he is oblivious, or confused by an explicable magnetism. The Meren-and-Reven push-pull feels to me like the most important thread in the story, although there are many that matter, not least the rule of Aryd, the sisterly bond between Meren and her twin Tabra, the righting of the entire world via goddesses and climate, and various other love stories. Tabra has a sweet one of her own, and by the way, my previous concern that she was too sweet has been entirely corrected here: a dear friend to those she loves, yes, and good-hearted, but with her own priorities and stubborn points and a backbone of steel.

This novel and this series contains action, gore, and loss, hard decisions and monsters and deaths. For all that, it is still an upper YA or “new adult” book with coming-of-age themes: relationships, responsibilities, finding oneself. And it is a comfort read (for those of us who take some blood with our romance). I was surprised at what a fairy-tale, happily-ever-after ending Owen granted us in the end, not that she didn’t put us through some pain on the way there. I enjoyed every minute of it.

Rating: 7 petals.

Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: , | Leave a comment »

Somewhere Beyond the Sea by TJ Klune

Posted on December 2, 2024 by pagesofjulia

Here it is: the long-awaited sequel to The House in the Cerulean Sea, which I found lovely and transcendent. Somewhere Beyond the Sea continues in that vein in fine form. We pick up Arthur, Linus, and their endearingly and massively weird household with six magical children – originally an orphanage, but now building into a family and a home – more or less where we left them. Linus has left his employment with the Department in Charge of Magical Youth to be with Arthur, and the two men are working on adopting their six charges. Theodore, a wyvern with an obsession with buttons. Talia, a garden gnome, a lovely girl with a lovely beard and a way with plants. Phee, a forest sprite. Sal, the eldest, a shifter who spends some of his time as a Pomeranian and is developing strong leadership skills. Chauncey, a “biologically unique” green blob and bellhop. And Lucy, short for Lucifer, the seven-year-old son of devil, who has his murderous tendencies but also a pretty standard seven-year-old sense of mischief, and a good heart. These pages will add to the mix David, a teenaged yeti, who is slow to trust his new household but also inclined to fit right in. He’d like to submit that fear is not always a bad thing: humans watch scary movies for fun, right? What’s the harm in a little good-natured roar now and then?

Pitted against this evolving family, of course, is the government, in the form of the Departments in Charge of Magical Youth and Adults, who would like to see everyone involved put in their place, under lock and key and with what some less enlightened folks still feel is an appropriate amount of shame. Arthur, himself a former magical youth – he is a phoenix, possibly the last living one of his kind – has come a long way from his trauma at the hands of DICOMY and his defensive isolation with his six orphaned charges. With the love and support of Linus, their dear friend (and island sprite) Zoe, and Zoe’s girlfriend Helen, mayor of the nearby village, Arthur and the children now regularly venture into town and mingle with humans and magical folks there. And when the book opens, Arthur is set to testify before the government about the abuse he suffered as a child and his work with his own children; he is hoping to help build a better world, and through adoption, formalize his family. But the close-knit family is up against some truly formidable villains with all the power in the world.

Like Cerulean, this sequel plays in several registers. The antics of the kids are sweet, silly, hilarious; there is lots of good fun and humor and also wholesome good lessons about mutual love and support. The continuing romance between Arthur and Linus is equally wholesome and feel-good. In inviting David in to their family, the household faces some new challenges in how to build trust and honor the newcomer’s need for distance.

Trust, Arthur knew, was a treasure effortlessly stolen, often without rhyme or reason. And this particular treasure was a fragile thing, a piece of thin glass easily broken. But here was David, surrounded by strangers in an unfamiliar place, attempting to pick up his pieces and put them back into a recognizable shape. Whatever else he was, David’s bravery in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds proved yet again what Arthur had always believed: magic existed in many forms, some extraordinary, some simple acts of goodwill and trust, small though they might be.

I think this illustrates some of the book’s larger themes: trust, fragility, vulnerability, bravery, and how these elements can help form family and community. The concept that even those in power – in government or in families – need to have the ability to acknowledge when they have been or done wrong. Arthur must navigate a misstep when he encourages David to be whatever he wants to be, including a “monster”, while having told Lucy that he should be less monstrous. (David’s monstrosity is less threatening. But should Lucy’s right to self-realization be any less?) This is still and again about trust: how Lucy can trust a father whose rules change; how a father or fathers should trust their child’s judgment as they grow and mature. Change requires flexibility; growth can be painful. But this loving family is very strong, perhaps because they challenge each other. And the letting-in of the village has been a good move: under the influence of Arthur and Linus’s household, the human inhabitants have learned greater tolerance, and magical visitors (and their tourist dollars) have begun to transform what was a typically mistrustful community into a more welcoming one. It will take a whole village in the end to defend what’s right.

A beautiful novel about family, trust, community, recovery from abuse and trauma, and systemic ills, all leavened by mischievous humor and filial and romantic love. Same-sex couples abound in the book, and Klune’s Acknowledgements prioritize defending trans people’s rights, but I’d say the metaphor at work in this world – where magical people are hidden away, poorly understood, and discriminated against by a larger population which will benefit from their inclusion – works for any disadvantaged minority. It’s great reading, sweet and funny, with great messaging. I can’t wait for more like it from this fine author.

Rating: 9 fish named Frank.

Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: , , , | 2 Comments »

A Declaration of the Rights of Magicans by H. G. Parry

Posted on October 11, 2024 by pagesofjulia

A sprawling epic by one of my new favorites, A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians combines history–the 1770s-1790s Age of Enlightenment in England, France and Saint-Domingue–with fantasy. In this alternate history, magical powers are relatively common, but only permitted in Aristocrats. Commoners with a magical Inheritance must be registered and wear a bracelet that will burn them painfully if they use their forbidden powers. The idea of a more equitable world, “one whose Commoners could use their magic freely, not to steal to feed their children but for their own education and enlightenment,” fires the imagination of several reformers the novel will follow in both England and France; chief among these are real historical figures like William Wilberforce, William Pitt the Younger, and Maximilien Robespierre. The abolition of slavery (the recognizable, historical practice of stealing and trading in African people) is a parallel issue for many of the same men. Meanwhile, in modern-day Haiti, an enslaved woman named Fina learns that she holds extraordinary powers of her own, which she will use to advance the cause that is most important to her and her friends: their freedom to move and speak and act, let alone to use magic. In this world, slaves are spellbound by their so-called owners: fed a certain elixir, they are unable to disobey orders, unable even to move or speak of their own volition.

It is an important facet of this story that characters with great and noble values and aims must confront questions about what means are justified by what ends. There is an introduction of dark magic of a kind that has been outlawed – and supposedly eradicated – for generations. There are questions of sticking to one’s principles in the face of certain defeat, versus compromising in profound ways to achieve interim goals. This intersection, again, of fantasy with real history (and very real human struggles) is exceptionally well done.

In over 500 pages, the reader gets to know Pitt and Wilberforce and their friends in London; Robespierre and his in Paris; and Fina and her fellows, before and after Saint-Domingue’s famous slave rebellion. Parry’s setting and characters may be based on history, but she’s absolutely doing in-depth worldbuilding all the same; she has laid out not only the ‘rules’ of this world in terms of its realities (how magic works, who has it) but the laws to be obeyed or broken (who is permitted magic, how the bracelets work, how the court systems function). The relationships – in particular the friendship between Pitt and Wilberforce, which I found the most compelling of the book – are involved and engrossing. The personalities – especially poor, despicable, manipulated Robespierre – are complex. I found Fina to be the least developed of the lead characters, which is an absolute shame; to be clear, she gets the least screen time (cause or effect, chicken or egg?), but still concerning. (I have a vague impression this is somewhat corrected in book two of the duology.) The historical content feels right, and a few quick googles reinforce that impression, but by no means am I sufficiently up on my Enlightenment history to judge. The fantasy is intricate and satisfying. Parry’s greatest strength is in her characters. It only hit me after I finished reading that there is a shortage of women in this story; I am a bit sad about that, too.

I don’t often get excited about an expansive, wide-ranging saga, but if anyone can keep me page-turning for 500 pages, it’s this author. I’ll be reading book two. I’d be even more stoked for more of Uriah Heep or the Daughter, though.

Rating: 7 birds.

Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: , , , | Leave a comment »

The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep by H. G. Parry

Posted on October 4, 2024 by pagesofjulia

A booklover’s dream, this astonishingly great debut novel focuses on family and the power of story in a world of magic, imagination, and serious literary criticism. In Wellington, New Zealand, Rob Sutherland is a hardworking lawyer with a lovely partner, Lydia, and a trying younger brother, Charley, known to his colleagues as Dr. Charles Sutherland. Rob is longsuffering: Charley keeps calling him, often in the middle of the night, to come up to work (Charley teaches at Prince Albert University) and help him catch the characters he’s accidentally released from books so he can put them back. Rob has always had complicated feelings for Charley: he loves his little brother and wants to keep him safe, but he definitely stays annoyed with him much of the time, too. Though four years younger, Charley was a prodigy, who went off to Oxford University the same year that Rob went off to Prince Albert. Rob would have been considered intelligent in most families, but felt overshadowed by a child who read Dickens when he was two years old. One of this novel’s central threads is the challenge of an adult relationship between brothers, with a touch of sibling rivalry, many old wounds, and a persistent bond of love, loyalty, and protectiveness that runs in both directions.

So: Charley is a genius, of the scattered, distant, dreamy type, who keeps accidentally bringing fictional (and nonfictional!) characters out of books. It can get messy. Rob is the exasperated big brother who keeps helping clean up messes – not always in the best of humors. Then the messes get much bigger, beyond anything that Rob or Charley is prepared to deal with – out of their control, and, it eventually becomes clear, outside of Charley’s causing. But Charley, and eventually Rob, do decide that it’s within their responsibility to try to save Wellington, or the world.

This is a story filled with vibrant characters, and that plays with the layers of what ‘character’ can mean. Some are Parry’s (her characters’) interpretations of those written by others, including the title character, Uriah Heep, who comes from David Copperfield and is thus originally Dickens’s, now read by Charley (and Parry). Some are Parry’s originals but, within this book, credited to another (fictional) author. [The indomitable Millie Radcliffe-Dix comes from The Adventures of Millie Radcliffe-Dix, Girl Detective, which unfortunately do not exist in this world I’m out here living in.] And some, like Charley himself, are the inventions of this book. It quickly gets to be a lot, but gosh, in the most fun ways. Again: there was never such a booklover’s book.

The title of The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep refers to a character who is not even one of the top five or ten most important in the book – although he is the character at large in the opening scene, when Charley calls Rob in the middle of the night (again). He will reappear periodically. In some ways, Dr. Charles Sutherland is the main character of the book – he has the splashiest powers, and the central conflict rages around him; mysteries wreathe his past; he will have great choices to makes. But it is Rob who narrates the bulk of the book (with a few interludes as exception). In part, I think this is because there is a heavy emphasis, in this world and in this telling, on how one person’s “reading” of another impacts the person being read. Rob’s perspective on Charley matters a great deal. I think Parry’s choice of Rob as narrator is interesting; it shifts the reader’s reading, in similar ways. Whose stories do we matter in? As Dr. Frankenstein tells us: “What you need to understand about protagonists… is that we’re all busy with our own plots. We can’t help it; we’re not used to sharing our stories.” If that’s not a lesson for the real world, I don’t know what is.

I’m still reeling and will enjoy thinking about what this book has shown me as I move through my world and reading. I think it has the potential to be one of those that shifts how I think about it all – which is a big accomplishment. Also, everything Parry writes plunges me deeply and pleasurably into other worlds, which I love. I finished this book and dived directly into another big thick one of hers. Do recommend.

Rating: 9 doors.

Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: , , , | 1 Comment »

Heartless by H. G. Parry

Posted on August 23, 2024 by pagesofjulia

From memory, I’m going to say the Peter Pan story was sweet and heartwarming, with some good healthy ideas in it about always retaining a lovably childlike (not childish!) spirit and the magic of believing. We fly through the stars and have adventures! We help each other. And even when we have to (sigh) grow up, we can access that magic again through the power of imagination.

Then there was the movie Hook, which had Robin Williams and was therefore great, and (again in my possibly faulty memory) more or less followed those themes. We all have to grow up, but it wouldn’t be healthy to lose all the joy of childhood.

This is not that version of Peter Pan.

H.G. Parry, who I fell for hard with The Magician’s Daughter, takes us on a more realistic and darker journey with Heartless. Now the protagonist is neither a Darling nor a Lost Boy nor Peter himself, but an orphaned child in a Dickensian sort of London named James, who gives himself the fanciful last name Hook when he gets a chance at self-invention. James is a born storyteller, a skill which endears him to the only boy at the orphanage James really cares about, a careless but compelling child named Peter. For Peter, James tells stories: ones his mother told him or read him, ones he’s read himself, ones he’s made up. For Peter he makes up the child-king Peter Pan and his sometimes-antagonist the pirate Captain Hook, who inhabit a magical (and made up) island called Neverland. These tales keep Peter at James’s bedside until the night that Peter leaps off the orphanage’s high roof and flies into the stars: “second to the right, and straight on till morning.” James wants to follow his best and only friend, the boy who did not so much as look back. But when James leaps, he falls to the stone courtyard below.

From here we follow James Hook (his new identity) and his friend Gwendolen Darling (who takes the identity of James’s younger brother, George Hook) in their adulthood. James is forever chasing after Peter. He will eventually find what he’s looking for and find also that it’s not what he was looking for at all. This brief book (141 pages) is Peter Pan, yes, but retold with a different protagonist at its sympathetic center and a decidedly sinister twist; fairies are not sweet but uncaring. Captain Hook, of all people, is the one we feel for. And we are centered on the power not only of imagination but of storytelling – and like all of them, this is a power that can be used for good or ill. “[The fairies] didn’t understand that stories weren’t meant to be lived in forever; they were meant to be shared, passed on, questioned, to mingle with a thousand other tales and poems and experiences and be changed by them. They didn’t understand that stories, too, needed to grow. He hadn’t understood himself until recently.”

A retelling of a classic with rather more realism (especially in the London setting) and more darkness, but also still sweet and wholesome, with Parry’s absolutely lovely style; I’m going back for more from her.

Rating: 8 leaves.

Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a comment »

The Crescent Moon Tearoom by Stacy Sivinski

Posted on August 19, 2024 by pagesofjulia

This entrancing debut stars triplet witches who can see the future, but must work together and individually to grasp their own.

Stacy Sivinski’s first novel, The Crescent Moon Tearoom, is a sweet, wise balm of a story about family, change, and coming into oneself.

The Quigley triplets, Anne, Violet, and Beatrix, have always been close. Their beloved mother was a powerful Diviner, able to read the future in various signs. Her daughters put the same skill to use in the Crescent Moon Tearoom, where the three young witches sell magical teas and delectable baked goods and tell fortunes to hordes of Chicago’s women and witches. The tearoom (run out of the family home, itself an endearing character with a will and magic of its own) does a booming business, but all is not well with the Quigley sisters. A challenge comes from the Council of Witches: the younger three must help three older witches discover their Tasks, which is a witch’s very reason for existence and is imperative to complete before a witch passes, or she’s “doomed to linger as a spirit for all eternity.” If they fail, the Council will close their shop. The events entwine with a potential curse on the sisters, threatening to undo everything the sisters love.

Although nearly identical in appearance, the Quigleys are quite different individuals. Their mother used to say, “Violet has her head in the clouds, and Beatrix’s nose is in a book. But [Anne’s] feet are always planted firmly on the ground.” While Violet (the family baker) is volatile and in constant, foot-tapping motion, Beatrix is shy and dreamy. Anne is the caretaker, the brewer of teas, and has secretly been holding back her own magical powers so as not to surpass her sisters. They “had been locked in their web of affection and dependence for so long now. Their bonds had taken shape during childhood and seemed to be coated in bronze.” As they struggle with the ominous Council’s extraordinary demands, their differences are highlighted, even as each sister finds opportunities for new growth.

Sivinski’s droll telling details the lovable Quigleys with all their quirk and charm, each with their own moving emotional arc. Chapters are headed with signs and symbols, as one might find in tea leaves at the bottom of a cup, with brief descriptions of their meaning: a fan suggests flirting with temptation; a bat foreshadows a fruitless endeavor. Each line captivates: “As seers, the Quigleys had long ago accepted that questioning what they saw in the remnants of their customers’ tea was about as useful as trying to wash cherry jelly out of a silk blouse.” With its sweetness, realistic challenges, and satisfying resolution, The Crescent Moon Tearoom is a rare pleasure. Readers will miss the Quigley sisters at this novel’s end.

This review originally ran in the July 26, 2024 issue of Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade. To subscribe, click here.

Rating: 8 petals.

Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: , , , , , | 2 Comments »

The Magician’s Daughter by H. G. Parry

Posted on July 22, 2024 by pagesofjulia

Liz always recommends winners, but this one is the best of the year so far.

The Magician’s Daughter is a dream of a novel about magic, family, trust, coming of age, a changing world, and figuring out what’s right (or the closest we can come) and what’s wrong. I confess I am in danger of being suggestible by the Alix E. Harrow blurb on the cover of my edition, which reads in part: “a brand-new classic, both wholly original and wonderfully nostalgic.” I read that before I read the book, so there’s a danger there. But I think she got it right: there is both the tried and true and familiar here, and something fresh and new. I loved it so much. And this may be in part the right book at the right time, but I fell into it in ways I needed to.

Biddy has only ever known life on the island of Hy-Brasil, where she lives with her surrogate father figure, a mage named Rowen, and his familiar Hutchincroft, who sometimes takes human form but mostly lives as a golden-colored rabbit. She is now about sixteen, or seventeen: they can’t be sure, of course. She’s always known the story, that she was found shipwrecked alone in a small boat, which had been very unusually allowed to drift near Hy-Brasil. Off the coast of Ireland, beyond the Aran Islands, the magical island is only detectible every seven years; to accept the small craft that bought her there as an infant has always meant to Biddy (in her secret thoughts) that there must be something special about her. She might not have magic as Rowan does, but she hoped she was meant for big things.

And so in her teenaged years, it has begun to chafe that Rowan won’t let her leave the island. And he’s been leaving himself, more and more, in his form as a raven, out all night and sometimes even returning hurt. The outside world seems to be unraveling in some way, and Biddy is ill equipped to understand or help, being without magic and forbidden and unable to travel, but change is afoot…

Eventually Biddy and the reader learn that magic has been slowly leaving the world. The British Council of mages has seen upheavals in the last seventy years (mages live a long time, and this is all easily within Rowan’s experience), and those in power just now are not necessarily doing the kind of good work Rowan (and Biddy) believe in. It is now the year 1912, and Biddy is ready to step off her island for the first time in her memory, to take some serious risks. On the streets of London, she sees poverty and exploitation as well as overwhelming numbers of people (and intriguing fashion, which she’s always been curious about). She meets some looming figures from Rowan’s past, and the character of her beloved guardian gets somewhat complicated by these new perspectives. Especially in the Rookwood Asylum for Destitute Girls, she sees suffering and injustice like she’d never comprehended. There is much wrong in this larger world, and even all the magic one could dream of couldn’t fix it all, but with magic leaving the world things are worse than they should be. What can an orphan girl with no magic of her own possibly do? But with Rowan in profound danger, Biddy will have to try.

There is a touch of the fairy tale here, a dose of historical fiction, and lots of magical fantasy elements. Parry excels at world-building and realism. I love the sense that this could all be real, that there could be little hints and strains of magic in this real world that we regular folk are just not accustomed to noticing. Mages, like the rest of us, are susceptible to jealousies and the corruptions of power. There is a strong hint at the end that the world is about to see some larger problems – and again, this is 1912, so that is very believable foreshadowing. I desperately want the sequel to this lovely, absorbing novel! And will be investigating Parry’s backlist.

I needed the escape offered by this novel at this precise time that I picked it up, and am calling it the best book I’ve read this year. Thank you again and always, Liz. (I’m typing this review on your birthday although it won’t publish for some weeks.) Hugs and magic.

Rating: 10 hairstyles.

Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: , , | 4 Comments »

In the Vanishers’ Palace by Aliette de Bodard

Posted on July 19, 2024 by pagesofjulia

This fantasy novel(la) comes billed as a reimagined, queer retelling of Beauty and the Beast. Perhaps I’m just working at a great distance from that original, but it didn’t recall it strongly for me. There is definitely a young girl kept captive in a palace by a being that’s understood to be a monster, and their relationship changes. The palace itself may have some powers. I see the parallels, but would never have thought of Beauty if I hadn’t been told to.

All of which is neither here nor there and has no bearing, for me, on enjoyment of the book. (Novella? At almost 200 pages, it might be pushing novella-length – these things are so tricky to define! – but it felt that contained, to me.)

Yên and her mother live in a somber village in a post-apocalyptic world, in which creatures called the Vanishers have (yes) vanished, but their legacy lingers: mysterious viruses, illnesses, and spirits, dangers lurking everywhere. Yên has failed as a scholar; her mother has value to the village as a healer, but as her mother’s just-mediocre assistant, Yên’s future is not assured. It does not surprise her to be sold away to pay off the village’s debts, to a frightening dragon: everyone expects she will be tortured to death by her new master, Vu Côn, but it turns out that Vu Côn (who can shape-shift between human and dragon forms) has other needs. She is the mother of intelligent, willful twins. And Yên, who had been teacher to her village’s children (apparently this was not judged a value??!), finds herself with new pupils.

Vu Côn and her children live in an abandoned Vanishers’ palace, a place of disconcerting, Escheresque, physically impossible dimensions and movements. The twins, Thông and Liên, possess powerful magic, and being nonhuman, as well as the children of her master, they give Yên different challenges than she’s faced with the village children. But they are children, nonetheless, clever and respectful of their new teacher (if headstrong), and she does care for them. Her feelings for Vu Côn are more complicated, blending desire with fear and resentment, and it appears this conflict is mutual.

The dragon’s eyes were a light grey, the color of storm clouds gathering. She was looking at Yên with an expression that was half-irritation, half-hunger, as if she would gobble Yên whole, given half a chance.

And what scared Yên most? This might, in the end, be just what she longed for.

Yên is dissatisfied living in the frightening Vanishers’ palace. She misses her mother and fears for her mother’s safety in their village; she misses home and knows it is unavailable to her, as the village elders who sold her away would never allow her return. She doesn’t know where to turn. And the readers understand before Yên does that there are deeper, darker secrets in the Vanishers’ palace than she’s yet discovered. But there are opportunities, too.

It’s a curious fantasy world, offering familiar elements (as they do) of our human desires and conflicts, but always with a twist – shape-shifting dragons, sure, but also, for example: Vu Côn has a magnetic sex appeal for our protagonist, but where I’m accustomed to seeing this expressed as heat, Yên experiences Vu Côn’s dragon-body as cold, wet, briny, and very sexy in these elements. That’s a new one for me, and I don’t find it easily accessible: “sea salt and cold, tight air, and a faint aftertaste like algae,” “wet cold creeping up her skin like fingers” – slimy, even! It’s an interesting twist, and one where I have to just trust in Yên’s tastes for Yên. But that’s what fiction asks of us, in different ways, right?

This was a fascinating adventure for me, in the ways that it did and did not fit into my expectations. And in the end, it calls upon some useful universals: big thinking about right and wrong, the way we relate to lover, friend, family, and community, the yearning for self-actualization and belonging. Dragons? Sure. I find Aliette de Bodard a lively imagination and I liked this punchy tale.

Rating: 7 strokes.

Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a comment »

« Previous Page — Next Page »