The Peculiar, by Stefan Bachmann--a murder mystery/alternate history/faery steampunk/brave brother/unwilling hero/utterly gripping story

I like the cover of The Peculiar, by Stefan Bachmann (Greenwillow, Sept 2012, middle grade)  very much--it is a most intriguing clockwork bird, and the feathers add a nicely mysterious touch.  What the cover does not convey is that this is a book about a 19th-century England in which the gates to the land of faery opened, and a vicious and bloody war resulted--the Smiling War, so called because of all the grinning skulls that covered the fields.   But fairy magic proved to be no match for the British military, and with the gate now closed again, the faeries had no choice but to remain in the human world...constrained both by laws and by the inimical effects of iron and church bells.

Yet some humans and some faeries found each other not unobjectionable....and Changeling resulted--Peculiar children despised by both races.  Bartholomew and his little sister, Hettie, are two such children, confined by their mother for their own protection to the inside of a rundown home in a marginal area of war-torn Bath, now a predominantly faery town.   Bartholomew can pass as human, from a distance; Hettie, with branches growing from her head instead of hair, is much too Peculiar...

But danger finds the two of them, nonetheless.  Nine changelings have been horribly murdered...and all unwillingly, and rather unwittingly,  Arthur Jelliby, a gentleman of means and a junior member of Parliament, finds himself embroiled by conscience and coincidence in keeping the tenth changeling alive.

And Barthlomew might be that child.  Or perhaps Hettie...little branch-haired Hettie, with her raggedy handkerchief doll, who can never play with other children...

Oh gosh, how to describe this murder mystery/alternate history/faery steampunk/brave brother/unwilling hero/utterly gripping story?

Perhaps it would give you some idea of the taste and texture of it if I said it reminded me at times of Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, and Jonathan Stroud, with a generous dash of Diana Wynne Jones, but you have to add steampunk-ness.

I could tell you that Mr. Jelliby becomes lost in passageways that cannot exist, chases a mechanical bird across the streets of London, and is almost eaten by his furniture...and would much rather be sleeping late and drinking tasty drinks than actually doing anything forceful, but that makes him sound too absurd--he is a true hero.  I could say that Bartholomew is a boy scarred by loneliness and poverty, whose one sure place in the world is at his sister's side--almost pitiable, but without self-pity.   I cared, very much, for both these heroes...pitted against an enemy much more powerful, knowledgeable, and capable than either of them.

Because in this world where monsters and magic (beautiful and grotesque) and the steam stink of industry live side by side, there is a dangerous plot afoot that might bring about an even more destructive conflict between humans and faeries than the previous war.  With Bartholomew and Mr. Jelliby the only ones trying to stop it.

Short answer:  this was a truly excellent, gripping read that should utterly knock the socks of 11 to 13 year old readers, and if no one else nominates it for the Cybils (why has no one done so yet?) I will. 

Thank you so much, Maria, for passing on your ARC to me!!!

This week's round-up of middle grade sci fi/fantasy from around the blogs (10/7/12)

 Good morning, and welcome to another week's worth of my middle grade sci fi/fantasy blog reading!  If I missed your post, please let me know.

First: Nominations for the Cybils are open till October 15; if you haven't nominated your favorite eligible mg sff book (one published between Oct 16, 2011 and Oct 15, 2012 in the US or Canada) please do so!  I say "middle grade," but this category also includes elementary--so it's anything above easy readers/short chapter books but below YA (so the Dragonbreath books, for instance, go into this category).  YA sci fi/fantasy has c. 120 books so far;  mg/elementary has only about 80, in large part, I think, because it relies more on gatekeepers to nominate its books.

To jog people's memories, I've put together two little lists of books published in the first half the nomination year--here, and here.  Last year, for the record, this category had c. 150 books.  (The nonfiction, poetry, and book apps. categories also need more love!)

And here's a Cybils related question for those of you who have read The One and Only Ivan to ponder--typically, talking/sentient animals go in the fantasy category (The Cheshire Cheese Cat, for instance, won last year).  Is Ivan a real guerrilla, or a fantasy guerrilla?

The  Reviews:

3 Below, by Patrick Carman, at Book Nut

The Bridge of Time, by Lewis Buzbee, at Time Travel Times Two

The Brixen Witch, by Stacy DeKeyser at Random Musings of a Bibliophile 

The Castle in the Attic, by Elizabeth Winthrope, at Quirky Bookworm

The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls, by Clairat Presenting Lenore

Cold Cereal, by Adam Rex, at Semicolon

Cosmic, by Frank Cottrell Boyce, at Maria's Melange

The Death of Yorik Mortwell, by Stephen Messer, at Akossiwa Ketoglo

The Demonkeeper Series, by Royce Buckingham, at Musings of a Book Addict (the last two, Demoncity and Demoneater, are Cybils eligible)

Down the Mysterly River, by Bill Willingham, at 300 Pages

Ever, by Gail Carson Levine, at Read In a Single Sitting

The Ghost of Graylock, by Dan Poblocki, at Fantasy Literature

The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There, by Catherynne M. Valente, at Good Books and Good Wine and The Book Smugglers

Keeper of the Lost Cities, by Shannon Messenger--this one is on a blog tour with lots of stops; you can find a nice list of them here; other reviews at In Bed With Books, and Carina's Books

The Key (Magnificent 12), by Michael Grant, at Book Dreaming

Mira's Diary: Lost in Paris, by Marissa Moss, at Good Books and Good Wine and The Write Path

Monsters on the March (Scary School), by Derek the Ghost, at Imaginary Reads

Mr. and Mrs. Bunny: Detectives Extraordinaire! by Polly Horvath, at Semicolon

Operation Bunny, by Sally Gardner, at Nayu's Reading Corner and Fantastic Reads (more elementary than middle grade)

Ordinary Magic, by Caitlen Rubino-Bradway, at Semicolon 

Professor Gargoyle, by Charles Gilman, at Jen Robinson's Book Page and Now is Gone

Renegade Magic, by Stephanie Burgis, at Semicolon

The Seven Tales of Trinket, by Shelley Moore Thomas, at My Brain on Books 

The Sinister Sweetness of Splendid Academy, by Nikki Loftin, at Presenting Lenore

The Spindlers, by Lauren Oliver, at My Precious and My Favorite Books

Splendors and Glooms, by Laura Amy Schlitz, at Semicolon

Unlocking the Spell, by E.D. Baker, at Cracking the Cover

The Unwanteds, by Lisa McMan, at Back to Books

The Voyage of Lucy P. Simmons, by Barbara Mariconda, at Ms. Yingling Reads

The Wednesdays, at Puss Reboots

The Wikkeling, by Steven Arnston, at Novels, News, and Notes

Authors and Interviews

Philip Pullman (Grimm Tales) at The Telegraph

Lois Lowry (The Giver, and now Son) at Story Snoops

Catherynne M. Valente on "Looking Glass Girls" at Good Books and Good Wine and on "Childhood and Growing Up" at The Book  Smugglers (giveaway) and as "the Big Idea" at Whatever

Shannon Messenger (Keeper of the Lost Cities) at Bookyurt

Lisa McMann (Unwanteds: Island of Silence) at The Enchanted Inkpot

Grace Lin (Starry River of the Sky) at The Enchanted Inkpot
Jama's Alphabet Soup , Pragmatic Mom, and Charlotte's Library

Stephanie Burgis (Renegade Magic) at Templar Publishing--the third, and final, book in her trilogy is coming out this month in the UK

Margaret Peterson Haddix at A Thousand Wrongs (giveaway)

Morgan Keyes (Darkbeast) at Avery Flynn

Jenn Reese (Above World) at The Writing Nut


Other Good Stuff

100 YA books with characters of color, at Pinterest.  I might have to try doing this for mg, although I think it would be hard to come up with 100.  However, check out this paperback cover for Claws, by Mike and Rachel Grinti (my review)--I just saw it at my son's Scholastic Book Fair.  You can also note how the "cut off face trend" extends to the cat.

A director's cut of the Harry Potter books??? at BBC News

A new fairy tale reimagining, revisiting, retelling blog/literary journal--Unsettling Wonder

It's always fun to buy a sci fi/fantasy book for a needy library serving kids who needs books badly--so here's your chance, at the Guys Lit Wire book fair for Ballou Sr High School in D.C.

Ray Bradbury's final, beautifully inspiring, essay, at LitStack 

So this newly discovered worm is supposed to look like Yoda?

I don't see it.  However, I am glad to know what is being shown on the cover of this book (A Love Episode, by Zola Aemile), or perhaps it's something else...but what? This is just one of the many mind-shakingly awful book covers from Tutis Digital Publishing, whose ability to create incomprehensibly horrible covers is unmatched (thanks to the Guardian, for bringing this to my attention.  Seriously, if you have five minutes, check these covers out).

The Indigo Pheasant, by Daniel Rabuzzi

The Indigo Pheasant (ChiZine, Oct. 2012) is a multi-cultural historical fantasy, with a complicated alternate history/religious bent, written for grown-ups, but with YA appeal.  Here are my thoughts, with a Bonus Question regarding "muscular fantasy" at the end.

On Thursday I had the pleasure of welcoming Daniel Rabuzzi, author of The Choir Boats, and its sequel, The Indigo Pheasant, to my blog--if you haven't visited his post on historical fiction, do!  At the time of posting, I had not yet finished The Indigo Pheasant, which arrived just before I went to New York for Kidlitcon.   So I am reviewing it today.

To briefly summarize: In the first book, The Choir Boats, we are introduced to Yount a place thrust out of normal space, and reachable only by traversing seas full of places that aren't of Earth.   It is the early 19th century.  A family from Scotland has the gifts of music, math, and dreams to restore Yount to its proper place in time and space... but in this imagining of reality, there are malevolent fallen angels who will use that fluctuation in reality to seize control of Earth, and Yount.

The first book is primarily the story of this family's journey to Yount and the dangers that beset them, and focuses on Sally, daughter of mercantile privilege and brilliant mathematically.  In the second book, Sally and her family return to London, to build the great ship (to be called the Indigo Pheasant) that will, through a marvel of music and math, sing Yount home again.   But for this project to succeed, another girl, perhaps even more mathematically brilliant, is essential.

She is Maggie, whose mother escaped with her from slavery in Maryland.  Despite her life of poverty, Maggie is even more extravagantly self-taught then Sally.  But unlike Sally, whose loyalties become torn, Maggie has the clear-eyed fierceness to impel the Indigo Pheasant to completion.   And Maggie has visited the Goddess in her dreams...the Goddess who must wake if order is to be restored.

On the downside, hideous demonic entities are working against them, both supernaturally, and through more mundane financial and political channels (it was a nice mix!), and the bounds of family loyalty are strained.  It is all very tense (but in a less adventuresome, dramatic way than the tenseness of book 1).

Now, as readers of this blog know, I read lots of children's books, and almost never read adult sci fi/fantasy.   So it was a rather different experience, reading these two books--they took longer, the typeface was smaller, the narrative point of view was more distant than I'm used to (more time spent floating above the characters, rather than living inside their heads).  

But that being said, The Indigo Pheasant was a checklist of things I appreciate in my fiction:

1.  strong and interesting protagonists, for whom I can care.  The books have a fairly large cast of characters, but the focus was on Sally and Maggie--teenage girls (hence YA appeal) who are good at math ftw.   A third protagonist, another teenage girl (this one from China) was kind of stuck on at the end in a rather sudden way, which felt a tad awkward--I would have liked to have had her come on to central stage sooner.

Bonus points here for being a book about family--not just biological relationships, but the bonds between people that make them kin.   I like this sort of book.

2.  interesting world building (aided, in the case of this book, by the inclusion of miscellaneous side matter, like newspaper clippings and letters).   Geography, religion, and politics were all important, and deserve their own sentences:
   --the  geography of Yount and the seas around it was haunting.   Really, truly, memorable and gripping descriptions of strange islands and oceans.
   --I wasn't ever fully convinced by the religious restructuring that Rabuzzi asks us to accept, not because of any conflict with my own convictions (the existence of a Goddess, along with an absent God, doesn't phase me), but because I don't think the Goddess actually did enough to be worth making a big deal about waking her.  Rabuzzi draws considerably on the Old Testament, but it's definitely a reworking of basic Judeo-Christian monotheism that might make some readers unhappy.   I myself liked the inclusion of spiritual entities/saint type people from religions and cultures outside Christianity in Maggie's Paradisical dreams.
   --This is historical fiction, and Rabuzzi knows his stuff.  The politics of the burgeoning world system of the early 19th century are a large part of the story; characters reflect and comment, and act, as a result of an accurately presented global reality.

One issue I had with the world-building is that Rabuzzi has perhaps too much fun with vocabulary--his early 19th-century people use many words (some of which I need to check out in the OED to see if they are really real) that were outside of my ken.  It got a bit distracting.

3.  Authorial tricksy-ness.  The cards are not laid out on the table all at once.  People's motives are not clear right at the beginning, and one character in particular is a really toothsome example of someone who appears one thing, but is really another.
And under this heading of tricksy-ness I'll put the fact that Sally's family knows the Gardiners (from Pride and Prejudice) and corresponds with Lizzy Darcey....

So, to summarize, I enjoyed these books just fine and would happily recommend them to a reader (YA or Adult) who wants something a solidly entertaining and thought-provoking, multi-cultural, historical fantasy, which is just one small step down from Loving them and desperately wanting all and sundry to read them.

That concludes the review portion of this post; and now, a question.

Question:  a review of The Choir Boats called it " a muscular, Napoleonic-era fantasy."   I am not exactly sure what "muscular" means.  Does it mean a really complicated, yet firmly-constructed plot? Do you have to have lots of things happening to be "muscular"?  Or does it mean a really confident, strong authorial hand?  (Choir Boats fits all three definitions).

The opposite of "muscular" I guess would be a "timid" or "weak" fantasy, which implies that no risks are taken, the stakes are low, and everyone, including the author, just vacillates like crazy.  Or it could be one that is simply more cerebral, or spiritual, in which the character development is internal.   If you are a muscular fantasy, are you a less thought-provoking and intelligent book?

My own conclusion is that I will continue to eschew "muscular" as a descriptor of books. 

Thanks, ChiZine, for sending me copies of these! 

MG SFF eligible books from Jan, Feb, and March, 2012

Continuing my quest to make sure that no one forgets to nominate a middle grade science fiction/fantasy book for the Cybils that they loved, and to make the long list of nominees as good as it should be, I am reading over my new release posts (which I don't do any more because of the site I was getting my info. from closing down).

So these books, which haven't been nominated yet, aren't one's I've necessarily read, or liked, just ones that I think might be worthy of nomination, or ones that I might, myself, like to read! (And of course since my opinion is just my own, please do visit the lists for yourselves if you wish to see what else is on them that's eligible! They have the "new releases" tag).

MUNCLE TROGG by Janet Foxley

SEEDS OF REBELLION: BEYONDERS by Brandon Mull

THE STAR SHARD by Frederic S. Durbin

 BLISS by Kathryn Littlewood
 
THE CROWFIELD DEMON by Pat Walsh

FAIRY LIES by E. D. Baker


THE WHISPER by Emma Clayton

 THE BOOK OF WONDERS by Jasmine Richards (now nominated)

 PRINCESS OF THE WILD SWANS by Diane Zahler

STEALING MAGIC: A SIXTY-EIGHT ROOMS ADVENTURE by Marianne Malone

(here are some books from November and December)


And then there are these lovely books-- Darkbeast, and The Golden Door, and Claws, and The Serpent's Shadow, and The Adventures of Sir Balin the Ill Fated, and The Wishing Star and........

and here's a third list, that I gleaned during a happy time spent browsing at Kirkus...

Cybils nominations--looking back at eligible books from 2011

So nominations for the Cybils are chugging along, and sixty some books have been nominated in the middle grade sci fi/fantasy category, and over ten mg sci fi/fantasy books have been nominated in other categories....but still there are important and interesting books missing.

Now, I am not a fiercely, desperately competitive and neurotic person and I don't every year get saddened by the fact that more YA sci fi/fantasy books get nominated than middle grade ones and I don't write frantic posts saying ACK! These books haven't been nominated and I don't obsessively check just about every hour to see if any new books have made it onto the mg sff Cybils list.  (Kidding.  I am and I do).

This year some of the pressure is off me because publishers get to do a bit of filling in the blank at the end.  So this is not a frantic, hysterical post; it is a calm and reflective post, in which I look back at November and December of 2011 to see what books came out then that haven't been nominated yet.

It used to be that there was a great website that listed books by their release date, and I used to go through these lists and cull the middle grade and YA sci fi/fantasy books into lists I shared here.  But it went dark in March.   Still, the November (part a and part b) and December lists (part a and part b) are there....So if you haven't nominated, take a look and see if you are reminded of a beloved book, and if looking back at those lists reminds you of a YA title you want to nominate, I guess that's ok too.

I didn't actually read as many of these as I would have thought I might have, but here are some that look interesting to me personally, and some I read and liked:

MOUSENET by Prudence Breitrose

BESWITCHED by Kate Saunders (now nominated!)

THE FUTURE DOOR: NO PLACE LIKE HOLMES by Jason Lethcoe
 
THE GRAVE ROBBERS OF GENGHIS KHAN: CHILDREN OF THE LAMP by P.B. Kerr 

 LITTLE WOMEN AND ME by Lauren Baratz-Logsted 

MADAME PAMPLEMOUSSE AND THE ENCHANTED SWEET SHOP by Rupert Kingfisher

THE OUTCASTS: BROTHERBAND CHRONICLES by John Flanagan

 SNOW IN SUMMER: FAIREST OF THEM ALL by Jane Yolen (now nominated)

 THE TWILIGHT CIRCUS: WOLVEN by Di Toft

(and here are some books from Jan-March) 

Starry River of the Sky--review and interview with Grace Lin

Back in 2009, it was my very great pleasure to be part of the Cybils panel that shortlisted Grace Lin's Where the Mountain Meets the Moon (before it won its Newbery Honor!).   It was also a pleasure to welcome Grace to my blog as part of Mountain's blog tour.

 So I have been looking forward to Starry River of the Sky (Little, Brown, Oct. 2012, middle grade), the just-released companion novel, very much, and I was awfully pleased to find that I liked it even more than I did Mountain!

Starry River of the Sky tells of a young boy named Rendi, who we meet running away from home in the back of a wine merchant's wagon.  In a village in the middle of nowhere, Rendi is discovered...and forcibly evicted.   His only option now is to work as the chore boy at the village's inn, until he can somehow make it to the big city.  And he is not happy.

His days are spent scowling at the world, but gradually, sharing stories with the odd-ball collection of inn patrons (all two of them), and the innkeeper and his daughter, he begins to reflect on his life, and the choices he made...and to see outside his own unhappiness (and there are good reasons for that unhappiness.  Magistrate Tiger, who readers of Mountain will recognize, plays a huge role in Rendi's story).

But outside the inn all is not well.  In the night, the sound of crying disturbs Rendi's sleep, and the moon has gone missing.   The world is out of balance...and it won't be righted until the truths inside all the stories of myth and magic that Rendi has been hearing at the Inn come together, and the moon is free again.

Although I like a good questy journey, like Minli's story in Mountain, as much as the next reader, I really love stories that stay in one place and make it a home.  And that's what Grace Lin does here--the external dangers are less important that the internal path that Rendi must follow.  On a more personal note, ever since I've been the mother of boys, I've had a soft spot in my heart for unhappy fictional boys who have lost their own mamas, and so Rendi appealed greatly!

Starry River is full of stories within the story, which sometimes irks me, but not here Perhaps because I was expecting it, but mostly I think it's because they were good stories in their own right, as well as holding the threads to the final resolution.  I felt that the ending brought all these threads together beautifully--it certainly required suspension of disbelief, but I felt very well primed to do so.

So in short, I found it a lovely book, word-wise, made even more so by Grace's utterly lovely pictures.

Now it's my pleasure to welcome Grace Lin!

Me: Both the words and the pictures are beautiful-- which gives you the most joy

to create?  Which comes most easily, or does it depend on variables outside

your control?

Grace: Hmm, that is a hard question to answer. To be honest, I get more joy from the process of painting  then the process of writing, but I get the most joy from hearing from readers and they are usually responding to the words. So, in the end it's about even! It's also hard to say which comes easier--it really depends on the book. I dislike the first draft stage of both writing and illustrating so I can't really say

either comes easy, both feel difficult.

Me: Starry River is your first novel with a boy as a main character.  Does writing from a boy's point of view feel different?  Were you conscious of it, or did Rendi just come out on the page in the same way that a girl character would?

Grace: Yes, this is my first novel with a boy protagonist. In some ways he

did just come out on the page. When I began to form the story, it

seemed to demand a boy character even though I am much more

comfortable writing a girl (I have two sisters!). But it did feel

different; I tried very hard to make sure Rendi felt like a true boy

and used my husband a lot to vet him during the revision process.

Me: And speaking of boys, I know from my own first hand experience with my two

sons that boy readers love Where the Mountain Meets the Moon; they haven't

read Starry River yet, but I'm sure they'll enjoy that one too.  My sample

size is limited (just the two of them)-- have you gotten much positive

feedback from boys?

Grace: For Where the Mountain Meets the Moon I most definitely have, which

is very gratifying (too soon for Starry River of the Sky!). I think

when it was first published, there were worries that it would be seen

as only an Asian book or only a girl book, or even worse  only an

Asian girl book--all of which limits the readership considerably. But,

most likely because of the Newbery Honor, that hasn't happened. Boys

and girls of all races have read and loved the book and I have the

letters and e-mails to prove it! The Newbery can erase the perceived

marginal appeal of a book to show its mainstream potential.  I only

hope Starry River of the Sky can gain a similar readership even

without the shiny sticker.

Me: And my fourth question is the really obvious, but very interesting one--what

are you working on next?  Will you take us back to your fantastical China

again (please)?

Grace: I have one more companion novel that I'd like to do. The storyline has

not been figured out yet, though I do have some ideas flitting in and

out of my brain. I really want to do one more because I have this whim

in my head about these books correlating to the Chinese elements.

Where the Mountain Meets the Moon is linked to sky, Starry River of

the Sky is link to earth and the next one would be linked to water.

This might not happen, of course, but that is what I'd like to do if

the writing muses are willing!

Thank you, Grace!  And thank you Little, Brown, for 

a. publishing the books 

b. sending me a review copy 

c. bringing Grace down to Kidlitcon to talk to us

and

d. sponsoring everyone's dessert (as reported here).  (The fact the dessert display was utterly sumptuous has, of course, inspired fond feelings in my dessert-loving heart toward Little, Brown, which I will, of course, not allow to influence any of my future reviews in the least little bit).

Guest Post--Daniel A. Rabuzzi (The Choir Boats and its sequel, The Indigo Pheasant) on writing historical fantasy

For a number of years, The Choir Boats, by Daniel Rabuzzi (Longing for Yount, Book 1, ChiZine Publications, 2009) sat on my wish list.   So when I was asked if I'd be interested in participating in a blog tour to welcome the second book, The Indigo Pheasant (released this October),  I said, yes please, I want to read them both!

Yount is a place that exists uneasily in the same space as our own world, thrust into a strange convergence with Earth through a great convulsion long ago.   And now Yount and its people are imprisoned in their liminal enclave...waiting for the right person to use the key that will unlock the final door that will free them.   Emissaries from Yount have ventured to England, to find the destined person to whom they will give this key, and their choice is a surprising one--a prosperous merchant, Barnabas McDoon.  They promise him that if he takes the key to Yount (a voyage across the southern ocean, where science and mysticism must combine to make the crossing happen), he will find his heart's desire--his lost love.  But Barnabas hesitates...

Then the jailer of Yount, the mysterious and scary Cretched Man, kidnaps Barnabas' nephew, Tom, promising to take him to Yount and there exchange him for the key.  So Barnabas, his business partner, and Sally, Tom's teenaged sister, set fourth on the ship that will take them to Yount...  And Tom is making his own way there (under compulsion), listening to the Cretched Man tell him the other side of the story that Sally is hearing.  If the door were to be unlocked, and Yount were to be freed before the time was ripe, Hell would be unleashed on both Yount and Earth.

Sally begins to dream...of places in Yount she has never seen, of a broken temple at the heart of the island.  Her ship is lost in a  surreal and horrible sea that is no place on Earth, but a song comes to her from her dreams that opens the way.  Back in London, a black girl named Maggie, daughter of a slave who escaped from America, hears Sally, and joins her in song across the miles...and together, they might save both Yount and Earth.  (It's important, and very pleasing to me as a reader, that both these girls are avid readers who are brilliant at math).

So that's the gist of the story of The Choir Boats.  It is a book to savor, with appeal for both adults and younger readers.  At first the story seems simple, the characters pleasant, almost gently risible, the setting familiar.  But gradually more and more complexity appears, more dark notes are sounded, more questions are raised...the dissonance and the magic grows, and the resolution becomes more uncertain.  And so I was eager to plunge into the second book of the series, to see how everything worked out!

I haven't finished The Indigo Pheasant, so I'll be writing a more comprehensive review of both books on Saturday.  But in the meantime, it is my great pleasure to welcome Daniel Rabuzzi to my blog, to talk about historical fantasy!

Daniel studied folklore and mythology in college and graduate school, and earned his doctorate in 18th-century history, so he is a writer who knows his stuff (and it shows!).  His wife is the artist Deborah A. Mills (who illustrated and provided cover art for both Daniel's novels).

And now, the Guest Post:

I write historical fantasies: for me, getting the history right is harder than making the fantastical believable.  After all, we know how giants speak and witches behave, right?   But we most likely do not know how in, say the England of 1815, a vicar speaks or a merchant’s daughter behaves.  Such things have changed in the intervening two centuries, and they will be doubly estranged for readers who are not English. 

So my first task as the author is to immerse myself in that vanished time and place, as foreign to me as Faerie, and bring back enough material to guide both story and reader.  As I have written recently elsewhere (see “A Picture-Show in theNight-Kitchen,” in Layers of Thought, September 26, 2012), I am an “imagist,” not a “plotter.”  My novels spring from scattered images, sounds and words that bake up in the middle of the night.   For The Choir Boats and The Indigo Pheasant, where the action starts in London in 1812, I found myself haunted by visions of tall-case clocks with ornate hands and the moon chasing the sun on the face, of winsome portraits revealed within a delicate locket, of carriages grinding over cobblestones, of bold patterns on porcelain tea cups, and equally vibrant patterns on colorful waistcoats.   

These artifacts, which I spend many hours looking at in museums and in books, literally set the scene.  My wife and artistic partner, Deborah Mills, has rendered many into the illustrations for The Choir Boats and The Indigo Pheasant.  Some of her illustrations are interspersed here, side by side with the originals that inspired them.*

And then my actors start to drift in, one by one, sometimes in groups.  So like us, and yet so different.

Their language, for starters, is not wholly ours.  Not that the words are different, not for the most part, though certainly some of their words have disappeared for us, and many of our words cannot be known to them.  No, it is more that they use our common vocabulary with a different sensibility (now there is a proper Regency word to be sure!), with small but important distinctions from our usage.  For instance, “artificial” and “condescending” had a more positive import for Regency ears than they do for ours, while “enthusiasm” for them was a negative, as it had a different definition then.

Individual words can be deceptive enough...the deeper challenge is diction, style and syntax.  Well-educated Britons of that era constructed sentences in a very different manner from ours today, among other things, they attempted to emulate the models of rhetoric inherited from Classical Greece and Rome, and they were conversant with the King James Bible and Milton’s Paradise Lost.  (Modern Americans may feel more at home with the vivid similes and brash banter recorded among the less-educated Britons of that time!).  We understand their meaning but simply don’t talk like that today.

Hence the problem: creating dialogue that rings true to the period without bogging down the modern-day reader.  Frankly, the challenge is nearly impossible to overcome, so I have in my novels opted for a transparently extravagant approach, i.e., the dialogue is intended to call attention to itself, as if it were the chanted spell that transports the reader back to the earlier time.  Call it an open trickery on the surface of the hidden trickery that is the writing of fiction.

 I am very interested to hear what readers of Charlotte’s Library have to say about the challenges, and satisfactions, of historical fiction generally, and historical fantasy specifically.  Regency clocks ticked seconds as ours do...but we can never be entirely sure how those seconds sounded in the ears of Regency people.

*the image of Sally's locket (the central one) and the Pheasant Clock are reproduced here with all rights reserved, (c) Deborah A. Mills.  The copyright to the bottom locket picture is held by ßlϋeωãve, and the original can be found here.


Thank you so much, Daniel, and Deborah! I'll be picking up the threads of the conversation on Saturday, when I write my full review, but in the meantime, those who wish to say something viz historical fiction here, please do so!

More information can be found at these places:

Book Previews:

The Choir Boats: http://chizinepub.com/media/choir-boats/TheChoirBoats-Preview.pdf

The Indigo Pheasant: http://chizinepub.com/media/indigo/indigo_preview.pdf

Book page links: 

The Choir Boats: http://chizinepub.com/books/choir-boats.php

The Indigo Pheasant: http://chizinepub.com/books/indigo-pheasant.php

Daniel's web site: www.danielarabuzzi.com

Daniel at Facebook:   http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Choir-Boats/67307451458

Daniel's Twitter: @TheChoirBoats

Deborah's web site: http://www.deborahmillswoodcarving.com/

And here are the other stops on The Indigo Pheasant's Blog Tour:

Sept 11 - Small Beer Press/Not a Journal

Sept 14 - Civilian Reader

Sept 17 - Fantasy Book Critic

Sept 18 - Bibliophile Stalker

Sept 24 - That Artsy Reader Girl

Sept 26 - Layers of Thought   Book & Yount greeting cards giveaway.

Sept 27 - Dark Wolf's Fantasy Reviews

Sept 28 - So Many Precious Books, So Little Time   Book giveaway.

Oct 3     - Bull Spec's new Wednesday feature "The Hardest Part"

Oct 4 -     Charlotte's Library

Oct 4 -     World in a Satin Bag

Oct 5 -     The Cozy Reader

Oct 11 -   Jess Resides Here

TBS -      Disquieting Visions

TBS  -     Grasping for the Wind

Waiting on Wednesday--Earth and Air, by Peter Dickinson

So a long time ago, Robin McKinley and Peter Dickinson, who are married, decided it would be a nice thing to create four books of short stories together, one book for each of the elements.  Water came out, and Fire came out....and Robin McKinley found that her short stories had a tendency to want to become novels.  Three such novels later, the stories Peter Dickinson had written for his contribution to Earth and Air were languishing....until now.

Perusing the program notes for Kidlitcon, I saw an advertisement from Small Beer Press announcing forthcoming books, and, being very fond of Small Beer Press because of their Joan Aiken book, The Serial Garden, I stopped perusing to actually read all the details.  And there was the announcement for Earth and Air--Peter Dickinson's stories gathered in one volume, coming out this month.


I must confess that I bought Water and Fire because of being a McKinley fan, but I was very impressed by Dickinson's stories in those volumes, impressed enough to both make a happy "Oh" sound, and to do Earth and Air the penultimate compliment (?) of placing it in my Amazon cart (the ultimate compliment being to stand outside the bookstore on release day) with the expectation of either buying it for myself in the near future, or asking for it for Christmas.

From the publisher's website:

"In this collection, you will find stories that range from the mythic to contemporary fantasy to science fiction. You will find a troll, gryphons, a beloved dog, the Land of the Dead, an owl, a minotaur, and a very alien Cat. Earth and Air is the third and final book in a trilogy of shared collections connected by the four classical elements. It follows previous volumes Water: Tales of Elemental Spirits and Fire: Tales of Elemental Spirits, written by both Peter Dickinson and Robin McKinley.
Ridiki is Steff’s beloved dog, named after Eurydice, whom the poet Orpheus tried to bring back from the dead. When, like her namesake, Ridiki is bitten by a snake and dies, Steff decides that he too should journey to the Underworld to ask the King of the Land of the Dead for his dog back.
Mari is the seventh child of a family in which troll blood still runs. When her husband goes missing in a Scottish loch, she must draw upon the power of her blood to rescue him. Sophie, a young girl, fashions a witch’s broomstick out of an ash sapling, and gets more than she bargained for. An escaped slave, Varro, must kill a gryphon, in order to survive. A boy named Yanni allies himself with an owl and a goddess in order to fight an ancient evil. A group of mind-bonded space travelers must face an unknown threat and solve the murder of a companion before time runs out."

So anyway, thanks again Small Beer Press for The Serial Garden, thanks for your support of Kidlitcon, and thanks for publishing this one!

Waiting on Wednesday is a meme hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine

My son is being forced to read banned books

It's Banned Books Week, and it has occurred to me that all the books that my son is reading for 7th grade English class have shown up on lists of banned or challenged books.

The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros, can actually still be taught in high schools in Arizona, having survived the debacle that occurred when the Dept. of Education went into classrooms and removed the books used for Mexican Studies.  But it wasn't clear at first, when it showed up on the list of books being challenged and removed, if it was going to be approved by those in power or not.

The Outsiders, by S.E. Hinton, is "ranked #43 on the American Library Association’s Top 100 Most Challenged Books of 1990-2000 and has been banned from some schools and libraries because of its portrayal of gang violence, underage smoking and drinking, strong language, slang usage, and exposé on family dysfunction." (from Banned Books Awareness).  My son just finished this one, and is not smoking, drinking, or swearing (much), nor is he more a dysfunctional member of the family than he was before.

Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi, has been denounced by the religious leaders of Iran and banned in that country.

To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, is going to expose my son to the "n" word 48 times.   But I think he's going to be a better person for having read it.

Macbeth is going to expose him to graphic violence and witchcraft.  Shoot.  He took part in a production of it last year, so it's too late.

In short, I'm glad my son is going to this school.  They have lots of banned books in their library too.

The Many-Colored Land, by Julian May

For Timeslip Tuesday today, I have an old favorite--The Many-Colored Land, by Julian May (1981).   The cover at left is the cover I have.  All other covers are wrong.  This one is so much a favorite that I am on my second copy, having read the first to death; I think my mother might be on her second copy as well, which just goes to show. Even my husband enjoyed it [edited to add: the even is because he has very high standards]. It was marketed to adults, but I think it has lots of teen appeal (I was a teen when I first read it), and as well as being a darn good story, there's a generous sprinkling of paranormal romances (lots of people get to have romances.  Some happy, some less so).

So.  Imagine that in the future, various alien races with psionic powers have made contact with Earth, Earth having reached a critical mass of psionic inhabitants of its own.  Earth is now part of a galactic milieu of calm order; more and more humans are being born with mental gifts, war is over, all is happy.   Except that there are some people who still aren't--the deviants, mystics, misfits, eccentrics, criminals, those whose souls are out of step somehow with a galaxy of good feeling.

Then imagine that a French professor invented a machine that allows one way travel back to the Pliocene (six million or so years ago).   He dismissed it as worthless, and his widow was just about to dismantle it, when the first would-be time traveller begged to pass through, wanting the chance to explore an unpeopled world.   And more and more travellers came...some willing travellers, some pushed back in time because they were too troublesome to be allowed to stay.

Time travel becomes organized; the travellers equipping themselves with what they need for life they'll imagine they'll have (I love reading all the lists of what people are taking back to the past!).   They are sent back in groups, after a brief period of bonding.  One such group (our main characters in this first book--men and women, old and young) is about to pass through....a group whose members are going to change the past, and in so doing, make the future what it's going to be.

It's not a walk in the park, back in the Pliocene. There are surprises (you know that paranormal romance thing?  that's a hint).  What the time travellers find will blow their minds (some to the point of insanity).  And the reader (if the reader is at all like me) will be riveted. 

I don't generally like books with multiple main characters, and story lines of great complexity and fantastical-ness going of hither and thither.  My first time through, lo these many years ago, I might have found myself uncertain during the introductory period--there are a lot of characters, and we meet them all individually, and there's a lot to keep track of.  But May makes it all work in a masterpiece of plotting and characterization and exuberant imagination.    For those who like the mental powers and the paranormal, there's that.  For those that like the survival in a strange land, there's that.  For those that like their characters put through various emotional ringers, and/or their characters finding love and friendship, there's that too.  Magic. Sex. Death. Flying on the wings of the mind.  Extinct mammals (so few fantasy books do as nice a job with extinct mammals).  Crafting of beautiful things.  Generous splashes of humor.  Tragedy.

In short, I really cannot recommend this too highly to anyone who wants a sci fi/fantasy adventure of epic proportions, set on a very different earth.    But I've read it so many times I can't be dispassionate about it...this first book, and the three that follow it, are and integral and much loved  part of my mental map.   However, since my mother and my husband, both of whom are less emotional thinkers than me, and both of whom read grown-up books, enjoyed the series as well, I feel pretty confident in my recommending.

(I also don't feel like writing a thoughtful review, because that would be full of spoilers.  I hope I haven't spoiled it too much as it is!)