Shaun Tan
Tales from Outer Suburbia
Allen & Unwin 2008
In a previous review I gave Shaun Tan five out of five for The Arrival. Tales from Outer Suburbia does not quite achieve such heights but it is still an excellent book.
It contains fifteen stories, all set more or less in the suburbs of an unspecified city and all told in Tan’s gentle and often surreal style. The off-beat nature of his vision serves to increase rather than diminish the humanity of his subjects. His artwork is, of course, superb.
In any book of stories there will be some you like more than others. Some, such as Broken Toys and Stick Figures are downright creepy. Some, like Our Expedition and Grandpa’s Story are little slices of life - not perhaps completely within what we would call normality but insightful. Eric is a beautiful, poignant little story and I loved The Water Buffalo.
There are lots of others to love but there were a few I felt didn’t work so well. When he strays into satire with The Amnesia Machine and Alert but not Alarmed he loses his sure touch although I did like what people did with their ICBMs in the latter. With Wake he lets anger take over and for me this did not work as well as his normal oblique approach.
Because of these (for me) little glitches I can only (!) give it four stars. I do recognise that others might disagree with me and think it should have been four and a half and I wouldn’t object at all. It is not the work of genius that is The Arrival but it is a damn fine book. A worthy addition to any library.
Diana Wynne Jones
House of Many Ways
Greenwillow. 2008
House of Many Ways is set in the same world as Howl’s Moving Castle and is described as a sequel to it. It isn’t really a sequel although Howl, Sophie and Calcifer do appear in it. I enjoyed seeing Calcifer again - I have missed him.
The central character Charmain is a young girl who is a chronic bookworm. She is sent to look after the house of Great-Uncle William (aka Royal Wizard Norland) while he is away being cured of sickness by the elves. She has led a privileged existence until then and has to cope with her ignorance of matters domestic.
Unexpectedly someone called Peter, the Wizard’s new apprentice, appears. He too has manifest areas of domestic imcompetence with which they must cope. They must both also cope with the Wizard’s house where doors lead to unexpected places and with a bunch of recalcitrant blue kobolds.
The story winds along with Charmain working in the Royal Library part time. There she meets Howl et al who are looking for the Elfgift (although no-one knows what it is) to stop the kingdom falling apart and coming under the iron fist of Prince Ludovic.
It has all the elements and is well written as Diana Wynne Jones always is but I found it a bit disappointing. The story sort of meanders along with no particular sense of tension. Every so often there are dangerous encounters but they just sort of happen. Calcifer seems a lot less dangerous than he was, using his undoubted powers cheerfully to help out with problems.
So it’s readable and pleasant enough but it doesn’t compare to Howl’s Moving Castle or to many of her other excellent books. A three star read but could have been better.
Justine Larbalestier
How to Ditch your Fairy
Bloomsbury 2008
Well, the Advance-Copy-Of-Brilliant-Books fairy has struck again. In a manner most mysterious I have found and read a copy of Justine Larbalestier’s latest literary foray (due out in September) and I saw that it was good. In fact, it is her best novel to date.
It is set in a world where, like this one, our destinies are controlled by fairies. For many years when I was younger my life was made miserable by frequent visits from the Fuck-up Fairy resulting in disasters ranging from backing my parent’s car into a tree to drenching my girlfriend while trying to fix the toilet. Fortunately the FuF eventually moved on and my life improved.
Larbalestier’s heroine is cursed with the Parking Fairy. Many of us would, if not kill, then at least commit GBH to have a fairy that gives us perfect parking spots whenever we want them. But Charlie is still at school, can’t drive and is really tired of being bundled into cars for other people’s convenience. Why can’t she have the Shopping Fairy or the Fabulous Hair Fairy or something useful?
There’s only one thing to do. She has to ditch her fairy. But, as I know only too well from my time with the FuF, this is easier said than done.
I don’t want to say too much more because I’ll end up spoiling it for you. Suffice to say that Charlie’s increasingly desperate attempts to ditch her fairy are both touching and hilarious. And, as so often in life, things have to get much, much worse before they get better.
The only bad thing about this book is it’s not due out for another three months. Thank you Advance-Copy-Of-Brilliant-Books fairy. You’ve made my day.
Jennifer Rardin
Once Bitten, Twice Shy
Orbit 2007
I’m in two minds about this one. It’s another vampire book - I seem to be surrounded by them at the moment - and it’s quite well written with a well-paced story. On the other hand, it has many of the usual things that irritate me in vampire stories and I think the central character needs some extra work.
The central character, Jaz Parks, is a CIA assassin. Her partner is a super-powerful 300 year old vampire. The only downside to being dead and all-powerful is that he has to sleep during the day. Big deal. Countless shift workers can say the same thing and all they get is their pay packet and Vitamin D deficiency.
This is a bit of a personal thing but I’m very tired of vampires being essentially nocturnal supermen. There must be more to it than that. See, for example, Narelle Harris’ The Opposite of Life for a more thoughtful and interesting approach. Yet I am aware that countless vampire-novel fans disagree.
Anyway, the other thing I would like to have seen addressed is Jaz’s character. She is feisty, opinionated, loud and (as our American cousins describe it) ‘kick-ass’. I have no quarrel with this. She also kills without any remorse or consideration of the effects of her actions (other than the victim’s demise, of course). This is a characteristic of psychopaths. I have no quarrel with novels about psychopaths either but her motivations really need to be filled out.
I’m not a great fan of the these people are bad so just kill them and who cares school of diplomacy, however much support it may have at the moment. Either Jaz feels something and we should know what it is, or she should feel nothing and we should know why.
I think I’ll have to give up reviewing vampire novels. My personal tastes seem to deviate too far from those of the fan base so this review is hardly fair. Go ahead and read it - you’ll probably enjoy it a lot.
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