Imperial Purple

Terry Pratchett
Nation
Doubleday 2008

Terry Pratchett has achieved such a reputation now that his latest book - Nation - does not even have any blurb. It is assumed that you will buy it just because it is by Pratchett, never mind what it is about.

Well, it worked for me. I bought it and did not regret doing so. It is one of Pratchett’s best books to date.

The setting is, more or less, our world during the Victorian era on a small Pacific island. Its inhabitants refer to it simply as The Nation. Their idyllic existence is brought to an abrupt conclusion by the arrival of an enormous tidal wave. The only survivor is Mau, a boy on the edge of manhood, who is at sea when the wave arrives.

A European ship, the Sweet Judy, is wrecked on the island at the same time and here too there is only one survivor - a young girl named Ermintrude who prefers, quite reasonably, to be known as Daphne. She is also 139th in line to the throne of England. As her ghastly grandmother once informed her "it only needs one hundred and thirty-eight people to die and your father will be King!"

What we have is a wise and charming coming-of-age story. Mau and Daphne must learn to cope with language, a steady trickle of refugees from other islands, and the distant but worrying threat of the Raiders. Mau must come to terms with the failure of his gods - what good were they when they let the entire population be wiped out? His struggle with belief is one of the strong elements of the book.

The point of view of the book switches between Mau and Daphne but very smoothly, without the need for specific chapters for each. We get a different world view in each case and can see the same events from two completely different perspectives. It is the work of a clever and mature writer.

I’m not going to say any more about the story elements. You will find them out for yourself when you read the book and I don’t want to ruin it for you.

If, by some chance, you fail to read Nation you are missing out on something very special.

Robin McKinley
Chalice
Putnam 2008

I have been a great fan of Robin McKinley since discovering the Damar books (The Blue Sword and The Hero and the Crown) more than twenty years ago. A new book by her is always a reason for celebration.

McKinley has two levels of writing - slightly fey fantasy (such as the Damar books) and frankly coruscating works such as Deerskin. The latter is a wonderful book but it left me feeling scoured and wrung out. So I was (perhaps because of some character flaw) hoping for Chalice to be one of the fey fantasies and was happy to find it so.

Chalice goes straight for the classic fantasy trope of "the health of the king is the health of the land". It is good to see the theme addressed directly rather than floating nebulously in the background. The ‘King’ in this case is called ‘Master’ and he has a circle or court of whom the Chalice is the most important. The Chalice is the person responsible for maintaining harmony both of the court and of the land itself.

The book is told from the point of view of Mirasol, the newly appointed but completely untrained Chalice. Her actual training is as a beekeeper and bees and honey are interwoven throughout the story.

The previous Master (a ‘bad King’ - unresponsive to the needs of the land) and his Chalice have both perished in a fire. The old Master’s brother is appointed in his place but this brother has been training as a Fire priest. Fire priests work directly with elemental fire and, as their training progresses, slowly lose their humanity. The new Master has not completed his training but is nevertheless only borderline human.

The new Master and Chalice must work together and find, despite their ignorance of their proper roles, a way to heal the land, Fire, honey and love must all work their magic before this healing can happen and the way is not easy.

I loved this book. It captures for me the wonderful feeling of otherness that first drew me into Damar. The central character, Mirasol, is uncertain of what she needs to do but has the courage to try anyway. She is a warm and very human character and the interplay between her, the new Master and the old Seneschal make for a great story. Four and a half stars.

Garth Nix
Illustrated by Sholto Walker
One Beastly Beast
Allen and Unwin 2008

One Beastly Beast is a collection of four children’s stories by Australian author Garth Nix. Only one (The Princess and the Beastly Beast) is actually new, the others being first published in 1998 to 2000 but since I have never read any of them before this is not an issue for me. Nix fans who already have the stories in their libraries may feel differently.

The first story is about Captain Blackbread (sic) and his gang of scurvy pirates who have stolen young Peter’s DVDs. Fortunately Captain Erasmus Rattus of His Majesty’s Royal Ratship Tumblewheel arrives and takes Peter to Neverworld where, with the help of a giant cheese, they defeat Blackbread and get the DVDs back.

The second story (containing the eponymous Beastly Beast) is of Princess Chlorinda who is bored in a castle where nothing ever happens. She sets out to search for adventure but without success. As she is trudging home in the dark she suddenly encounters a very strange monster.

Bill the Inventor is a young orphan in the O’Squealin Home for Lost Children. Bill is an inventor and his inventions (and some friendly mice) help to save him from being adopted by (in order) pirates, a wizard and a witch and aliens. The fourth set of potential adopters are a much better proposition.

Serena and the Sea Serpent is about a little girl who is very, very clever due to an unfortunately accident with a super-computer and a bolt of lightning when she was a baby. A sea serpent has been menacing the coast and sinking local shipping. The only way to keep it away seems to be sacrificing a young girl to it. Serena volunteers and uses her bulging brains to sort things out.

I’m something of a fan of Nix although it has mostly been his work for older children and young adults that I have read. These stories for younger readers are lots of fun and well up to standard. Walker’s illustrations are excellent and he is particularly good at rats and mice. Murex junior is still too young but when he is eight or nine I shall bring the book out again and I’m sure he will enjoy it.

Naomi Novik
Empire of Ivory
Harper Voyager 2007

Earlier this year, I reviewed Black Powder War - the book before this one in the Temeraire series. I had reservations about it and gave it three stars. This one is better although not perfect.

Temeraire and Laurence have returned to England with the precious fire-breathing dragon. Unfortunately, while they were away a dragon plague has struck and the great creatures and dying in droves. With Napoleon camped across the channel with a hundred dragons, desperate for a chance to invade, the situation is serious.

They are dispatched to Africa where, by slightly tenuous logic, they believe a cure might be found. A few sick dragons are sent with them as test cases. It is Britain’s last hope - a cure must be found before Napoleon realises how thin the aerial defenses are.

But Africa is not called the Dark Continent for nothing. With slave traders, hostile natives and wild dragons the hunt for the cure is anything but simple and things go very, very wrong for the British adventurers.

The book ends with Laurence having to make the most difficult moral choices of his career where duty and humanity are in direct conflict. The book ends with the consequences of his choices left hanging - we must await the next installment.

There were a couple of practical difficulties I had problems with. I had difficulty believing that an almost complete absence of aerial defense could be kept secret from Napoleon for the better part of a year. He would surely have had spies working like industrious train-spotters, plotting the movements of the British squadrons. I also wasn’t convinced that the African savannah eco-system could sustain as many voracious dragons as it apparently did.

These are mostly quibbles I guess. The other problem Novik has is that there are only so many ways that you can describe an aerial combat and in this, the fourth book, she is running out of them. I tend to flick through these combats pretty rapidly because I know what they are going to say.

As I said, this book is superior to its predecessor. It confronts some difficult moral choices and reminds us that abhorrence of the slave trade was by no means universal in the early 19th century. Indeed more than fifty years after this book a bloody civil war was fought over the matter in the United States of America.

I am looking forward to the next one which promises a difficult time for Laurence, Temeraire and the people and dragons of Britain. It has become pretty clear that Britain treats its dragons worse than just about any other nation. It is a state of affairs which cannot endure and I am keen to see what the resolution will be.

Lilith Saintcrow
Night Shift
Orbit. 2008

Earlier this year I reviewed Saintcrow’s Working for the Devil. For me, Night Shift is a slightly better book although there are aspects which are not to my personal taste.

It is the story of Jill Kismet, the resident demon hunter in the city of Santa something-or-other. I know the name was mentioned in the text somewhere but I can’t find it again. Not that it matters. Jill deals with (in her own words) nonstandard exorcisms, Traders, hellbreed, rogue Weres, scurf (don’t ask), Sorrows, Middle Way adepts and anything else the nightside can throw up.

Like Dante Valentine in Working for the Devil she is very competent at fighting and she kills lots and lots of things in the course of the book. Fortunately they are all evil so that’s all right. And she’s very fond of children.

I’m falling into sarcasm again which is unfair because the book doesn’t pretend to be anything other than what it is - a jolly "kick-arse" (or "kick-ass" if you prefer) story of a girl who kills demons and saves the city. The old town-tamer story that drove a thousand westerns and none the worse for that.

Jill has made a bargain with a powerful demon named Pericles. He has given her demon-like powers but in return she has to give him a couple of hours of her time per month. The sessions are bad but could be much worse and the demon is continually playing mind games with her. She finds this even worse than the monthly sessions. This aspect of the book is good and raises it above Working for the Devil.

For the rest it is non-stop action as Jill fights off a succession of nasties while trying to find the truth behind the rogue Were and the demon lady who are terrorising the city. On her side are some good monsters (were-thingies - mostly feline), a white magician who keeps her house as a Sanctuary, and a supporting cast of police and forensics who are there mainly to make sure the bodies are dealt with in a tidy and timely manner. The aforementioned Pericles may or may not be on her side - he is rather ambiguous.

If this sort of story appeals to you it’s not a bad example of the genre. I don’t much care for the genre myself which may mean it is better than I give it credit for. I don’t think fans will be disappointed. Three stars.

Liz Williams
Snake Agent
Night Shade Books 2008 (original edition 2005)

Inspector Chen is a police detective in "Singapore Three" - one of a series of artificial islands. His special responsibility is for crimes involving the supernatural and for liaison with Hell. His wife is a demon who has a pet badger-spirit disguised as a teapot.

Young girls are dying and their spirits are not ending up in Heaven as they should be but are cropping up in some very strange places in Hell.

Enter Zhu Irzh, a demon officer with Hell’s Vice Squad. Some influential characters in Hell have caused him to stop promoting vice and work out what is going on with these young girls. He and Chen must work together and fight their way through the labyrinthine bureaucracies of Hell and back.

I enjoyed this book in parts. Williams’ vision of Hell as warring bureaucracies of mind-boggling inefficiency is entertaining and amusing. The ill-matched buddy story of Chen and Zhu Irzh works quite well also.

However, I wasn’t completely convinced by the Chinese cultural aspect although I am no expert here. The sinister demon hunter didn’t really go anywhere and in any case lost a certain credibility when the teapot bit his ankle and Chen’s wife pushed him into the harbour.

The supernatural part had a slightly pasted-on feel. The story could pretty much have been the same if we were talking the criminal underworld rather than the demonic one although the chrome would have been different. Substitute kidnapping for spirit-stealing, rival gangs for rival bureaucracies, weapons and lockpicks for magic and there you are.

Nevertheless not a bad read for train, plane or rainy day. Williams has written lots of other stuff since this book was first published in 2005 and I suspect that subsequent Inspector Chen outings will be better. I’d certainly give them a try. Three stars.

Pamela Freeman
Deep Water
Orbit. 2008

Disclaimer: same as for Blood Ties

Deep Water is the second volume of Freeman’s Castings Trilogy following Blood Ties. I gave Blood Ties four stars and Deep Water is better. The Australian edition is available now - the rest of the world must wait until September.

It continues the stories of the four main protagonists - Ash, Bramble, Leof and Saker - but their paths have diverged and each follows his or her own destiny. Clearly their paths will converge again but it will be in the third volume (Full Circle) for which we will have to wait another year.

Saker, the enchanter, continues to bring back the ghosts of the original inhabitants who were massacred by the invaders. As he gains in strength, purpose and knowledge the attacks become more dangerous and the major town of Carlion is invaded and many of its terrified citizens killed. As for book one, most of Saker’s actions occur off stage but his influence on the stories of the others is even stronger in this one.

This is the book in which we learn about Acton, the man who led the invaders through Death Pass a thousand years earlier, causing the formation of the eleven domains and the system of warlords which has controlled the domains every since. In Deep Water he is no longer the shadowy, larger-than-life legend of Blood Ties. Bramble is forced to re-live parts of his life seeing him always out of the eyes of his companions. She sits uncomfortably inside the minds of others, unable to communicate but seeing and feeling all that they see and feel. As more of Acton’s life unfolds she is forced to confront that fact that one-thousand-year-old legends are not a reliable guide to what really happened.

The first book ended with Ash and Bramble about to see Safred, the Well of Secrets. It is Safred, to whom the gods regularly speak, who informs them the key to dealing with the enchanter lies with Acton whose ghost must make reparations to the ancient dead. They reluctantly agree that they must do something and Bramble agrees to try and find Acton’s bones. Safred believes that Ash knows the songs that can raise Acton’s ghost but he has never heard of them. Ash sets of to find his father and discover why he was never taught them.

Leof, meanwhile, struggles with his conscience as he continues to serve the rapacious warlord, Thegan. Thegan is planning to become warlord of the entire eleven domains and doesn’t much care what he has to do to get there. Saker’s army of the dead throws his plans awry but, with the cunning of a true opportunist, he tries to turn it to his own advantage. By the end of the book he discovers that defeating the dead is harder work than defeating the living.

Unlike many epic fantasies we have not left world-building behind with the first installment. We continually learn new things about the world and the unseen forces which hold it together. The local gods are not, we find, all-powerful and all-knowing. There are greater powers that barely acknowledge their existence.

Enriching the world are more of the short stories of the common people, interspersed with the main narrative. These were one of the main strengths of Blood Ties and once again give the sense of a larger world around the main narrative - a world inhabited by real people, not just a backdrop of trees, villages and a cast of extras.

Deep Water ends on more of a “cliff-hanger” than Blood Ties. Major issues are left tantalisingly on the edge of resolution leaving the reader impatient for the final volume. It should be a cracker but we will have to wait until next year to find out. Four and a half stars.

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.