The Apprentices, by Maile Meloy

The Apprentices, by Maile Meloy, begins two years after the end of The Apothecary.  It's 1954, with the threat of atomic warfare (a bit part of the first book) hanging over the world...but Janie, now 16, is distracted by other things. Like getting expelled from school on a false charge.  Like Benjamin, the companion of her first magical adventure who she hasn't seen since it ended, finding a way to communicate with her through alchemical telepathy.   Like being kidnapped, and held prisoner by a power-hungry millionaire who wants alchemical help developing new weapons of mass destruction.

Benjamin, in the meantime, has been spending his teen years in the jungles of Asia-- his idealist father, the Alchemist of book 1, is devoting his life to tending the victims of war.  But when Janie is kidnapped, he heads off to to the Pacific island where she's being held, travelling in the form of a bird.  And basically everyone else who played a role in the first book converges on this island, to confront the bad guys and free Janie.


After the slowish start of Janie's school difficulties, it's all very adventurous.  But I  liked the mundane beginning--the chemistry experiment, the school dynamics, etc.--much more than the magical happenings, and unfortunately the book as a whole didn't work that well for me, for a variety of reasons. 

The story is told from the multiple view points of the various characters travelling around the world.   There were some episodes that I felt didn't move the story forward much at all, and some that just seemed like awkward story telling, like a surprising chapter from the point of view of one of the bad guys at the end.  Because many of these points of view weren't those of the primary young characters, I had trouble sustaining any emotional connection to Janie and Benjamin.  And this disconnected was exacerbated by the fact that the kids, Janie in particular, didn't play quite as much of a role in the resolution of the plot as I'd been expecting--there was adult intervention that felt a bit like a swiz.

I could also have done without the encounter with Pacific Island cannibals (of a "now we'll boil the white person in a stew pot!") which seemed like an unnecessary and unpleasant cliche.

So no, not one I loved, and indeed, The Apothecary wasn't either.  But lots of people did like The Apothecary lots, and mine is the first unenthusiastic take on The Apprentices, so if you are the exciting magical adventure type, don't be put off by my opinion!

For instance, here's another review at A Reader of Fictions

And here's what Kirkus said.

Note on age of reader: the main young characters are now teenagers, and there is some developing romance.  It's perfectly suitable, though, for kids as young as ten or so.

Disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher

In the Shadow of Blackbirds, by Cat Winters

In the Shadow of Blackbirds, by Cat Winters (Amulet, 2013) is a page-turning mystery/horror/romance/ghost story of great riveting-ness.   Set in California toward the end of WW I, the Spanish Influenza is an overwhelming nightmare, boys are coming back from the war horribly maimed and shell shocked, and 16 year old Mary Shelley Black's father has just been arrested for helping boys dodge the draft.

Her aunt Eva takes her in--not an old fussy aunt, but a 26 year old working making battleships, grieving for her dead husband (tb) and her lost youth, and rather fascinated by the work of a young spirit photographer, Julius.   Who Mary hates.  Mary loved Julius' young step-brother, Stephan, and they had one all to short sweet bit of passion before Stephan went to war.....and now Julius is there, and Stephan isn't.

Mary's hopes that Stephen is still alive proof unfounded.  He is dead.  There is his coffin.

And then she gets struck by lightning, and all supernatural heck breaks loose.

Because Stephen begins to haunt her.  And Stephen is suffering the tortures of the damned.

Mary cannot find peace until she can help him, and so a dark unwinding of fact and spirit and treachery and death begins....

I would have read this in a single sitting even if I hadn't been reading it for the 48 Hour Challenge.   I am not sure if I blinked as much as I should have.   Huge emotional punch, huge emotional wrenchings, great characters, and fascinating plot.  At least I think there was all that, but I was so busy reading I wasn't thinking.  Just feeling.

I'll leave it at that.  

Hammer of Witches, by Shana Mlawski

Hammer of Witches, by Shana Mlawski (Tu, 2013, upper middle grade/YA).

Young Baltasar has grown up in late 15th-century Spain, a time when the Spanish Inquisition was going strong, listening to the stories told him by his uncle Diego--many of which were drawn from the Jewish heritage Diego and his wife ostensibly renounced when they chose to become nominal Christians (it was either that, or living in terrible fear of discovery--Ferdinand and Isabel did not want any Jews in Spain).    But of all his uncle's stories, Baltasar thrills most to those of the brave warrior Amir al-Katib, who fought for the Christian kingdoms of Europe, was betrayed by them, and ended his life fighting on the side of the Moors who were being driven from Spain.  Or so Baltasar has always believed.

But that's not actually how Amir al-Katib's story ended.  When a sinister oranization, known as the Hammer of Witches, dedicated to fighting witchcraft with any means deemed necessary, imprisons Baltasar, he is questioned under threat of torture about Amir.   And he intensively responds with a gift for magical storytelling he didn't know he had--and raises a golem, who carries him home.

Where, of course, the nice folks (not) from the Hammer of Witches know where to find him.

Now his aunt and uncle are dead, and Baltasar is on the run.  But he's not alone for long--his uncle has passed on a slim golden chain that belonged ot Amir al-Katib himself, and, much to Baltasar's wonder, it summons an Ifritah--a girl who is have spirit, half human, and full of magic.  And when the Ifritah, Jinniyah, takes him to Baba Yaga for advice, Baltasar finds that a great evil is about to head west from Europe across the sea...and that he might be able to thwart it.

And so Baltasar and Jinniyah sail off with Christopher Columbus....a journey wherein the little fleet is beset by magical enemies.   But Baltasar can answer each magical creature with one of his own; the real evil (obviously to the modern reader) doesn't come until land is reached, and the Columbian consequences begin.

So. It is tremendously exciting, what with magical adventures, the voyage of exploration, the fact that the Hammer of Witches has a spy embedded in the voyage, the mystery of Amir al-Katib (which plays a large part in the story), and Baltasar's own growing control of his storytelling magic.  In particular,  Baltasar's time spent with the Taino people, who are describe in rich detail, and who seem much saner than the Europeans, is worthwhile reading.

Just about any reader who likes excitement will appreciate the high-stakes, fast-moving story; those who are Readers to begin with will especially appreciate the strong link here between magic and storytelling.   It is a fascinating take on the story of Columbus' voyage, one that respects the Taino and gives them equal agency to the Europeans.  There is a strong young female character, too, to round things off gender-wise, and to my surprise it wasn't Jinnyah but someone else....

I didn't find it a perfect read, though, primarily because Baltasar is a very distant first-person narrator.  He's awfully good at describing (his words made beautifully clear pictures in my mind), but not so good at sharing enough of his feelings to make me care deeply about him as an individual.  And, in fact, at one point I actively disliked him--after the aforementioned girl character witnessed the rape of Taino women, it was creepy of Baltasar to kiss her uninvited, and then, a few pages later, jokingly say to her that "we both know you're dying for another kiss" (page 286). 

I was also disappointed by the fact that Jinniyah, the Ifritah, doesn't end up having much of a role in the story--I kept expecting her to be responsible for some major twist in the plot, but she never took center stage, and was often shunted off onto the sidelines. 

Still, there was much to enjoy, and it was refreshing to read a book whose main character not only embodies the clash of cultures in 15th century Europe between Judiasm, Christianity, and Islam, but offers an unflinching look at the horror Columbus' voyage unleashed on the native peoples he encountered.

For another perspective, here's the Kirkus review.

Note on age:  This one felt rather tween-ish to me, which is to say for readers 11 to 14.  Baltasar himself is fourteen (though, I think, a rather young 14), and a few specific instance of violence, including what happened to the Taino women, pushes this beyond something I'd give to a ten-year old.

disclaimer:  review copy received from the publisher

The Crowfield Demon, by Pat Walsh

The Crowfield Demon (Chicken House, middle grade, Feb. 2012 in the US--it came out in April 2011 in paperback in the UK, but I wanted the hardback). In a nutshell, this book is a nailbiting struggle of good vs. evil, verging on horror story, set in a vividly real medieval abbey with an endearing cast of characters (except of course the demon, who isn't).

I loved Pat Walsh's first book, The Crowfield Curse, a beautiful historical fantasy that throws an orphaned boy, William, into a dangerous mix of fay magic and angelic power. And so I looked forward with great forwardness to having the chance to return to the abbey where William is a servant, sharing his home with a friendly (and most endearing) hob, Brother Snail (a gentle monk), and Shadlok, the banished fey warrior whose is bound to him.

But, as the title suggests, things are not exactly going well in the abbey. In fact, it can't really be worse--a demon has awoken, hell-bent on destruction. Gradually its power grows, and the abbey begins to fall, the statues and paintings of the saints clawed and crumbled into shadows. And beneath the ruins William and the monks find the heart of the evil....and unwittingly free the demon.

And gee, it was hard reading for me! I am a weak reader, and the horror (not grotesque, blood in the face horror, but slowly inexorably growing Doom and Evil type horror making people I cared about lots and lots unhappy in an utterly terrified way) was almost too much for me. The suspense builds gradually but inexorably; the last thirty pages were a blur to me because I was reading very quickly indeed to make sure it would all work out. But because I did care, there was no way I could stop reading, and throughout the book there were small moments of light and humor and love between the characters that strengthened me.

Walsh fills her story with details, making both the mundane (the damp and nasty medieval March and the daily life of the abbey) and the extraordinary (the inexorably growing horror of the demon) brilliantly alive for the reader. It's the relationships between the characters, though, that I loved best--William, who lost his first family to a horrible fire, desperately needs the security of his second one, odd mix though it is, and the bonds of loyalty they have forged remain unbroken.

I hope there will be more about William and co.! The ending of this one shows a path toward a third book (and I saw some vauge rumors to that effect)...and in the meantime, Brother Snail has a blog....

Note regarding religion:

The mix of Christianity and the fey is both interesting and unusual. The demon is a fallen angel, and the good angel of the Crowfield Curse has a role to play in vanquishing it. The whole business with the demon seemed to me perfectly consistent with medieval Christianity (although the monks are not troubled with Lust, which, to the best of my knowledge, was a common demonic trick). Yet alongside this Christian part of the book is the wilder magic of the fey folk. It's part of the same creation, and not set in disrespectful opposition to Christianity, but it's clearly not standard doctrine!

Note regarding age:

It's middle grade--William is still a kid, and there's no teenage looking out and away from family. But it's scary. Almost nightmarish. A bit of scary can be good, sparking the imagination and making brilliantly clear pictures in the mind, but it might not be the right book for the sensitive reader.

Wild Talent: A Novel of the Supernatural

Wild Talent: A Novel of the Supernatural by Eileen Kernaghan (Thistledown, 2008, 257 pages)

In Scotland in the 1880s, Jeannie Guthrie, a sixteen-year-old girl raised by her school teacher father to love books, dreamt of being a famous author. This dream died with her father's untimely passing, and she was hired out as a farm girl. That life too came to an abrupt end, when, cornered in the barn by her lecherous cousin, Jeannie stabbed him with a pitchfork. Without picking it up.

"He clutched his shoulder and stared at the blood welling up between his fingers. "You've killed me," he said, and there was a kind of puzzlement as well as anguish in his look.
"I haven't," I cried. "I didn't." Something had happened, sure enough, and George without question was wounded; yet I felt it had naught to do with me.
"You're a witch," he said, and what I saw in his face now was hatred, and bewilderment, and fear."

Terrified that she has killed her cousin, and fearing that she will be accused of witchcraft, Jeannie flees to London. The fortuitous friendship with a free-spirited French girl, Alexandra David, leads Jeannie to a job as assistant/dogsbody to the formidable Madame Helena Blavatsky, a mystic seeker for spiritual truth, keeper of a salon frequented by the likes of Yeats, and a medium. Recognizing Jeannie's wild talent, Madame draws on her power to convince her audiences of her own spiritual abilities. And Jeannie meets Tom, a young, handsome, and skeptical student of zoology....

But when Madame's health fails, there is no longer a place for Jeannie in her menage. Jeannie's new position, assisting a charlatan in deceiving gullible audiences, is depressing, and, she fears, has alienated Tom. She flees to join Alexandra, who is now living a wild bohemian life in Paris, frantically seeking her own path to what lies beyond. When Alexandra goes too far, and actually enters the realm of spirits, it become clear that Madame's earlier warnings are true--that land is not inhabited by the the dear departed, but by much more sinister forces. Jeannie must follow Alexandra, or leave her trapped in a horrible otherworld.

In a book called "Wild Talent," I expected a lot more about Jeannie learning to live with her gifts, exploring their power, struggling with the how, the what, and the why of it all. There is a little bit of this, but the focus of the book is more on the historical fiction side of things--painting a detailed picture of life among the mystics of late Victorian London, and the artists and poets of Paris. The actual journey into the spirit world takes place late in the book, and only lasts 28 pages.

So if you enjoy well-written historical fiction, with particular reference to spiritualism, this is a book for you. Alexandra David and Madame Blavatsky were actual people, who led fascinating lives. Jeannie herself is a believable character within this historical context. On the other hand, if you are looking for wild magic, this might not be quite what you're looking for.

Wild Talent has been nominated for the Cybils Awards, in the Science Fiction/Fantasy category.