Imperial Purple

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.

Maya Slater
Mr Darcy’s Diary
Phoenix 2007

It is a truth universally acknowledged that all right-thinking readers believe Pride and Prejudice is a wonderful book. It has spawned biographies, sequels, detective stories, fan fic and slash fic. There is probably even a vampire novel out there somewhere (what big fangs you have, Mr Darcy) although I have never been able to find it . Slater continues this fine tradition by producing the previously lost diary kept by Fitzwilliam Darcy during the period covered in the novel.

Slater has taken on a tough job here as all the action must necessarily occur off-stage. It must cover the long period of estrangement between Darcy and Elizabeth (and Bingley and Jane of course) and still maintain interest. There are places where it meanders a bit but on the whole she succeeds admirably.

Particularly well handled is the period following Darcy’s famous and spectacularly inept first proposal of marriage. Over the course of about a week we see Darcy go from incandescent rage and outraged pride, to niggling doubts about his own rightness, to grudging humility and finally to an acceptance that he behaved like a total prat and may well have ruined all chance of future happiness.

Yet we also see the other side of Darcy, the one that makes him beloved of all his dependents. He insists upon his injured and aging valet travelling his coach while Darcy rides alongside. He is generous with his tenants and good to his friends. His friendship with Byron is an inspired touch and shows how Darcy is able to accept the good in people, even such an erratic and depraved genius as his lordship.

The only real plot quibble I had was the device of the letter from Lydia to one of the regimental officers which Darcy believes came from Jane. From this he gets an unfavourable picture of Jane and so removes Bingley from the scene. It is unnecessary. It is quite clear that Darcy’s concern for pride and position is an adequate motivation and it should have been left at that.

Otherwise a good three and a half star read. A must for all fans of Jane Austen. If you are reading this and haven’t (god forbid) read Pride and Prejudice go away and do it now and then read Slater’s book.

Narrelle M. Harris
The Opposite of Life
Pulp Fiction Press, 2007

Having complained in my previous post that all vampires seem to be a cross between Mr Darcy and Mr Spock it is perhaps to be expected that in the very next book I read I encounter Gary. Gary is a vampire. Gary wears a ghastly bright tropical shirt, has no social skills and spends his days pottering around his late parents’ house reading engineering textbooks.

Harris has come up with an excellent take on vampires. Eternal life is the promise but it is a cheat - sure you live for ever but you are caught in a time warp of the date you died. Your brain has difficulty learning new things and you slowly sink into a sort of lethargic boredom where only fresh blood makes you feel anything at all. Gary makes an effort - he was studying to be an engineer when he was ‘turned’ in the sixties - but he finds the going tough.

Mostly vampires keep to themselves and suck small amounts of blood from volunteers in one of Melbourne’s more exclusive underground night clubs. But now a vampire is apparently running amok and blood-drained victims are appearing everywhere. More specifically they keep ruining Lissa Wilson’s attempts at a social life - dead bodies keep turning up wherever she goes. As a librarian and geek girl who has just been dumped by a weasel of a boyfriend she needs all the social life she can get.

With considerable reluctance on both sides she teams up with Gary to try and find the killer and get life (and unlife) back to normal. Between coping with the undead and her mother Lissa does it pretty tough.

I liked this book. There is no romantic denouement but Gary and Lissa find a sort of friendship. It is a good vampire novel and a good detective cosy. There is clearly another book waiting where we will find out more about Gary and Lissa - how he copes with being undead and how she copes with him. Three and a half stars.

Lilith Saintcrow
Working for the Devil
Orbit. 2005

‘Lilith Saintcrow’ is such a great moniker. I love it. Working for the Devil is the first in a series of books (five at latest count) starring Dante Valentine, tough girl and necromancer. The ‘Awakening’ has happened and a few people such as Dante (Danny to her friends) have become psychic in one way or another. She summons up the spirits of the dead - usually to settle disputes over wills or criminal cases. It’s a living (sorry).

When the devil (old Lucifer in person) makes her an offer she can’t refuse she takes off in pursuit of a psychopathic demon who murdered (among others) her best friend. To aid in her quest she is assigned a tall, dark handsome demon who is one of the big D’s assassins.

This is my first quibble with the book. You could virtually substitute ‘vampire’ for ‘demon’ and we would have another vampire novel. Vampire novels are ok I guess but why do the vampires always end up as a cross between Mr Darcy and Mr Spock? To be fair, at least sex with a demon has historical antecedents. Sex with vampires has always struck me as being a bit yucky and who would want an ice-cold phallus anyway? I suppose you could dip it in hot water for ten minutes before you got underway. But I digress.

Accepting Darcy/Spock as a given we get into the chase proper and the build-up of the gang of intrepid adventurers. The most realistic of them is a seriously annoying ex-lover of Danny’s. He is far and away the most rounded character - the others are a bit formulaic.

I won’t go through the whole story in detail (I hate reviews that do that) but I’m probably not giving too much away when I say that the fiend eventually cops it and Lucifer turns out to have not been telling the complete truth. The Darcy/Spock character does end up in an unexpected state so full marks for that.

I had a little trouble grading this one. Certainly I had no difficulty in getting through it - it bubbled along. It was good fun in parts but I felt unsatisfied at the end. Still it is first in a series so maybe it gets better. More than ‘fans only’ but not fabulous. Three stars.

Pamela Freeman
Blood Ties
Orbit 2007 (Aust) 2008 (USA/UK)

Disclaimer: the author is a good friend of mine - this review may be biased.

Blood Ties is the first volume of a new three-volume fantasy novel - The Castings Trilogy. Freeman has a significant body of work as a writer for children and young adults (17 books at the latest count) but this is her first foray into the adult market.

The novel is set in the Eleven Domains, a loose confederation of provinces ruled by warlords. A thousand years earlier the country was invaded across the mountains by a race of fair-haired warriors (the precursors of the current warlords) known only as “Acton’s People” after their eponymous warleader and hero. The indigenous population was displaced and forced into a peripatetic existence as “Travellers”. Like gypsies everywhere they are despised by the mainstream population.

The Travellers are the focus of the book. The main story arc follows the fortunes of three of their number.

Ash is a young man born to a family of travelling musicians. Unfortunately his voice is so appalling that it would disturb the dead (literally we later find out) so his family apprentices him to a “Safeguarder” - essentially thugs for hire.

Bramble is a young woman whose family has “settled” - the term for Travellers who forsake the road and try, usually with limited success, to fit in with the rest of society. Bramble is something of a throwback and she runs wild, never happy with her settled existence. When an encounter with a warlord’s man leaves her shaken and him dead she is obliged to take to the road anyway in order to protect her family.

Saker is a Stonecaster whose village was massacred by the warlords while he, as a traumatised young boy, hid in a tree. Years later he discovers how to raise the dead and brings Traveller ghosts back to take revenge on Acton’s people. Although his story is the shortest of the main strands, he is the pivot about which the whole book turns and he remains a powerful presence even when offstage.

The most unusual and original aspect of this book lies with a series of short stories interleaved with the main plot. These are the stories, all told in the first person, of the common people whose lives are influenced by the great events going on around them. Their stories are not of heroes and conquerors but of the simple things that affect their lives - love, rivalry, family and neighbours.

These stories bind the book together and give the sense of a complete world not just the two-dimensional tapestry upon which so many fantasy works play out. Although they periodically interrupt the overall story they do not detract from it. On the contrary, you return to the main narrative feeling enriched and even inspired by the small events interwoven with the great ones.

Overall an emphatic four star read. I hesitated over giving it four and a half but I think the second volume is going to be even better so I have to leave some space for it. Recommended.

Ken MacLeod
The Execution Channel
Orbit 2007

The Execution Channel is an odd mixture of thriller, spy story and science fiction. Mostly it is a thriller set in the very near future. An apparent tactical nuclear explosion destroys a military base in Scotland; simultaneously (for reasons that were never completely clear to me) sundry motorways and bridges across Britain blow up; an Englishman working as a spy for the French (sacré bleu!) goes on the run; his daughter is arrested by a sinister secret service; and shadowy conspiracies er shadow everything.

Jolly good fun with thrilling chases across country and dastardly deeds behind closed doors.

Then there are the odd bits.

There is an alternate history element. Apparently Gore won the 2000 election not Bush. The 9/11 attacks were a bit different. The bit of the middle east that got clobbered was slightly different. Otherwise everything seems pretty much the same or at least could reasonably develop that way. There didn’t seem to be a lot of point to it.

The final chapters appear to have been taken from a SF novel and have only a tenuous connection with the rest of the book. I can only assume the MacLeod was simultaneously working on a piece of full-on techno-futuristic science fiction and the final pages got unfortunately mixed up with this one. I understand that these accidents can happen but I really think the structural editors at Orbit should have picked it up.

Oh yes, and there is a saccharine postscript where all the characters live happily ever after and the evil step-mother gets her just desserts. Oh, hang on - I’ve got the wrong novel again. Maybe it was the big, bad wolf.

Despite this it deserves three stars. The thriller bit was excellent and kept me reading. It was just that I kept finding myself in the wrong book which detracted considerably from what might otherwise have been a four star experience.

Naomi Novik
Black Powder War
Harper Voyager 2006

Another novel in the Temeraire series which portray the Napoleonic Wars but with an air force of dragons. If you haven’t read Temeraire, the first of the series, you need to read it before attempting this one.

Becalmed in Macau, Laurence and Temeraire (the dragon) receive orders to return immediately to Europe and collect three valuable dragon eggs from the Ottoman Empire. They decide to make the difficult journey overland along the Silk Road accompanied by a guide of dubious loyalties.

If this hard road is not enough they must deal with treachery in the Sultan’s court when they do reach Istanbul. Having dealt with this they then get caught up in Napoleon’s invasion of Prussia. Getting back to England is a tough gig.

Like the others in this series I have read I enjoyed it but I had a few quibbles. It felt a bit of an in-between novel. Previously Temeraire had learned how well dragons were treated in China and, comparing this with their treatment in England, decided that Something Must be Done.

This is setting up what should be a fascinating social struggle when they get back to England and I am looking forward to it. This novel seems to be mostly about getting there rather than having any inherent story to tell.

The individual episodes work ok in and of themselves although I wasn’t very convinced about why they should stay and fight in Prussia when they had strict orders from the Admiralty to get the eggs back to England as soon as possible. This was particularly urgent as one of them was a fire-breather - a breed of which England was in dire need.

I’m giving it three stars. It was a good read and fills in a gap in the greater story but it still needed more purpose of its own.