Book Review: Song for the Basilisk by Patricia McKillip

Buy the book here.

So I just finished reading Song for the Basilisk, and once again, Patricia McKillip blew me away with her mastery of the English language. Her words wove a beautiful dream from which I never wanted to wake, even when that dream turned unnerving or heartbreaking in places.

The plot follows a young boy who is rescued from the ashes of a fireplace after witnessing a tragedy and spirited away to a rocky island to hide among the bards. He's given a new name, Rook Caladrius, and taught to forget the life he left behind. But though he's happy to hide from his past in the bards' school, the music sometimes rouses painful memories of fire and sorrow. When the danger he left behind begins to close in on him, Rook will have to face his past or perish.

This story starts with a bang, with a beautifully macabre and tragic scene unfurling that thrills and horrifies at the same time. From there, there is romance, music, magic, and adventure. What more could a reader ask for?

I will admit, I'm still mulling the ending. It was satisfying, but I can't decide if I didn't see it coming because it wasn't built to smoothly or because I just wasn't paying close enough attention. Either way, I'm still delighted to have read this book and chances are, I'll reread it again and find that I'm wholly on board with it. That's usually where I end up with McKillip's trickier endings. Regardless, I would recommend it to anyone who loves beautifully written, richly imagined fantasy novels.

Book Review: Wool by Hugh Howey

Get your copy here.

I had many reservations about reading this book. I'm not a huge fan of science fiction as a genre because it has a tendency to be painfully bleak. I read to escape the bleakness of reality, and when it resurfaces in my fiction, it better be freaking awesome or I'm jumping ship.

So when I started reading this book, I was instantly wary. The plot centers around a population of people driven to live in an underground silo by a disaster that has rendered the surface uninhabitable. Now it is forbidden to speak about the outside world. The punishment for expressing a wish to go outside is to get exactly what you asked for: they send you outside in a suit that will enable you to live just long enough to clean the camera sensors that let the silo see the world's surface. Then the toxic air eats away your suit and your flesh, and the oxygen runs out, and you become just another corpse decorating the silo's view of the surface. These executions are called "cleanings." 

Original image found here. 

After being introduced to the silo's preferred manner of justice and the tragedy unfolding in the first few pages of the book, I almost put it down and went on with my life. Maybe this genre just isn't for me, I thought. But I hate giving up on anything, so I decided to press on, to give it a little longer to prove to me that the brilliance of the writing was worth the gentle well of depression building up in the back of my mind. 

And in the next point-of-view section, I was utterly hooked. Even as the plot went trouncing along my feels in lead boots for a second time, I was too engrossed by the elaborate world of the silo to even think about giving up on the book. And then I met Juliette, and subsequently her star-gazing friend, Lukas, and I was at its mercy.

The world Howey creates is incredibly rich and imaginative, the details making it resonate with authenticity. For instance, in the silo, people who are apprentices learning a trade are called "shadows" and those who teach them are called "casters." When you train apprentices, it's called "casting shadows." The different levels are all engaged in varying trades, from the mechanics of the down deep to the farmers on the hydroponic farms all the way to the IT level with its mysterious hum of servers doing God only knows what. And up and down the winding staircase that conveys the inhabitants from one level to the next, porters run on strong legs to deliver goods and messages. 

The characters I met in the first half of the book captured my imagination and made me love them. Holston, Marnes, Jahns... I felt like I knew them, and I cared deeply about what happened to them. And Juliette, a mechanic from the down deep, was a triumph, in my mind. It's always refreshing to see a pretty female character who doesn't exist just to be a male character's eye candy. She was strong-willed and smart without being grating, and self-sufficient and independent without being too in-your-face feminist. In short, she was exactly the way I like my female characters, and so few authors do that type justice.

However, this review ends with four stars rather than five because, after a promising start and an engrossing middle, it was all I could do to make it through the end. Too many fatalities among the more interesting characters, with the plot then scattering survivors and taking away their more intriguing interactions. The relationship I was most interested in seemed like it was only being developed off-camera, which was incredibly frustrating, because I'd been dying to watch it grow and I never really got the chance to. The struggle became monotonous, and I ultimately ended up skimming to the end to see what happened.

Still, I stand by my four stars. If you look through my reviews, you'll see I tend to be stingy with my stars, and usually a so-so ending would leave me thinking that three stars is generous enough. But because the characters were so wonderfully developed, the world was so incredible, and the book captivated me for over 300 pages, it definitely deserves four stars. And I would still highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys the genre, or even to skeptics who, like me, don't normally think sci-fi is for them. Judging from all of the five-star reviews and Howey's enormous success, it may be that I am one of the few who was troubled by the ending, whereas you might think it was utterly fantastic. And regardless of how you feel about the final destination here, the journey is definitely worthwhile.

Conversations with Fictional Characters

Sipping my coffee, I spent the morning studying the scene that rambled out from my fingertips last night at 1:00 a.m. It wasn't as bad as I'd expected to be, given the hour and the fact that I was hastily thumbing it out on a smartphone so I didn't have to get out of bed. When I got to the final flourish of my male MC's thinly veiled unkindness towards my fictional princess, the following exchange played out in my head.

PRINCESS: "Why do we find it so hot when he's mean?"

ME: "I don't know. Clearly, we have issues."

PRINCESS: (rationally) "Well, my issues are your issues. So really, this is your fault."

ME: "I know. I spend a lot of time worrying that these books are going to be used someday as the basis for the wrong kind of class."

PRINCESS: (raises eyebrow inquiringly.)

ME: "Psych 101, not Literature."

PRINCESS: "Yeah, you probably should be."

Original image found here.

Writing Tip: Beware of Saggy Hats

As a child, my favorite book was “Go, Dog, Go,” by P.D. Eastman. The reveal in which the poodle appears in his spectacularly tall hat decked with spiders and pin wheels and all manner of random and fabulous things will live in my memory as a great moment in literature. 

And yet, when it comes to plots, sometimes adding that many flourishes makes the fabulous hat sag. When you get enamored with your own twists, or start piling on subplots with reckless abandon, or it requires half the book just to explain why a character would do what you want them to do, suddenly, you’re not a poodle that has won over a dubious Labrador with your amazing sense of style. You’re just a dork in a bent hat with a bunch of crap stuck to it.

Don’t make the hat sag.

An Excerpt from THE HUMBLE ABODE

Here is a brief excerpt from chapter two of THE HUMBLE ABODE, in which Evyn and Jior find themselves in trouble while trying to rescue Chit from the ghouls of the Lost Wood.

Evyn grabbed the Phlelf as Jior started to hurry forward to help her. "Don't move," he hissed.

"Why?" Jior blinked.

"Because, you ninny, we're now surrounded by banshees. And if you walk through the one in front of us, you will die before you come out of the other side. And if you provoke them, they will scream. Not even the lantern could protect us from that sound."

Jior peered around them. He could just make out thin, filmy gray shapes ringing them round, red eyes glowing maliciously as they peered back at him. "What happens if they scream?"

"We die."

"And if we just stand here?"

"Eventually they'll get bored and scream."

"And?"

“We die."

"Hmm. What if we make a break for it?"

"I told you, we'd pass through them."

"And die?"

"It does seem to be the trend."

Jior pursed his lips a second. "And Chit can't help us with the spirit lantern?"

"I told you, it doesn't block out the screams. It would just keep them from touching us."

"And Chit has twisted her ankle," the girl interjected shortly. "So Chit can't even get up."

"Chit's in the circle of the lantern, so Chit should shut up and be grateful," Evyn snapped.

Chit snorted at that and went back to spitting the residue of the ghoul slime on the ground.

"So..." Jior looked around at the looming banshees. "We're going to die."

"Looks like it."

"Any last words?" Jior asked hopefully.

Evyn sighed. "Shut up."

Original image found here.

Book Review: Ombria in Shadow

Patricia McKillip is one of those writers who, much like Peter S. Beagle, makes the rest of us lowly wordsmiths want to hang up our words and call it a day. Maybe it's sentences like "The river narrowed, quickened, its surface trembling like the eyes of dreamers" or phrases like "but in that house who could assume that even fire and water would not conspire?" that make me melt into a puddle of envy. Or maybe it's the fact that I loved her characters better in the first five pages than I've loved other characters after entire books spent in their company. Whatever the case may be, from those first few twinkling words in Ombria in Shadow, I was enchanted. I wanted to pour those gorgeous words on the floor and roll around in them like a dog, hoping their scent would rub off on me.

 The cover art for Ombria in Shadow, featuring the lovely Lydea.

Buy it here.

The story begins with the death of the Prince of Ombria as his mistress, beautiful flame-haired tavern girl, Lydea, mourns with the child heir, Kyel. One by one, the young prince's guards and servants are sent away as his great aunt, Domina Pearl, seeks to isolate him and appoint herself regent. After Lydea is cast into the streets like rubbish, no longer having her royal lover to protect her, the bastard lordling, Ducon Greve, is left as the only person in the castle looking after his cousin, Prince Kyel's, interests. As the claw-like grip of Domina Pearl closes over the kingdom, the city of Ombria looks to be in dire straits. 

And yet, there is a legend of a shadow city beneath Ombria, filled with the ghosts of Ombria's history. Lurking among those ghosts is an ancient sorceress named Faey and her precocious waxling, Mag. While Faey isn't normally interested in the affairs of the world above, Mag is drawn to investigate the unfolding events in the castle, fascinated by Ducon and Lydea and disgusted by Domina Pearl. But her meddling puts the two parallel worlds on a collision course that could change the city of Ombria forever. 

Fan art of Lydea. (No pun intended.)

Original image found here. 

There isn't a person in this book that doesn't evoke a strong response in the reader. Lydea has a strong, sad grace to her, obviously stricken by the tragedy of losing her beloved, but channeling her energy into bravery and loyalty rather than disappearing into grief. Ducon Greve is intriguing and seductive as a beautiful, mysterious man fixated on drawing shadows with his ever-present piece of charcoal, seeming to see something in the ruins that others cannot. Devoted to his young cousin, Ducon is as quiet and steady as a marble pillar as he tries to "hold up the sky over the young prince's head," as one character put it. 

Fan art of Ducon Greve. Original image found here.

Much like the castle laundresses, a reader finds herself thinking she wouldn't

mind a little charcoal on her sheets, for this fellow.

And Kyel. Poor Kyel. The embattled young prince is so vulnerable and forlorn that you want to hug him and hide him away from the Black Pearl's menace. And then there's Mag, who is beginning to suspect that she might be human and not just one of Faey's concoctions. She is so curious, quick-witted, and warm that you'll end up wanting to scamper through the shadows of the city with her, hiding in plain sight as you explore the city's secrets. Even relatively minor characters like Lydea's father, who suffered the sting of having been abandoned by his daughter for her royal lover, tug at your feels until you're trying to convince yourself that there's just something in your eye. 

When it comes to Faey, with her changing faces and casual magical prowess, I get an impression that she had a little scary Galadriel-under-the-influence-of-the-One-Ring lurking under the surface of her graceful reserve. Yet as arcane and mysterious as she is, there is humanity in her, as well as humor and practicality. She serves as an elegant counterpoint to Domina Pearl's potent malevolence. As villains go, Domina Pearl is the creme de la creme of baddies. She comes on like an aged Lady Vader, complete with impeccable helmet-like hair and mysterious powers. Such was her badassery that every time somebody shook a fist and railed against her, all I could think was, "Good luck, man. I hope that works out for you. But, you know, doubtful." 

Aside from her magical way with words, unmatched creativity, and engrossing characters, McKillip offers any aspiring writer a crash course in how to show rather than tell. I never needed to get a thinky inner monologue from Lydea as to how she felt about losing Prince Royce, because it sighed out hauntingly from her actions after his death such that I got tear-eyed over a love I never actually witnesses in its heyday. It's just one example, but I walked away from this book so captivated by her skill that I wanted to try some of these tricks, myself, and hope to be even half as good at them.

So, to sum, if you like beautifully written books that capture the imagination and make you fall in love with the characters, pick up a copy of Ombria in Shadow today!

Tamsin: A Book Review

If you happened to read my fangirl gushing about the wit, humor, and beauty of The Last Unicorn, then you're well aware that I'm a fan of Peter S. Beagle's writing. And given that my current"to read" list on Goodreads is pretty much everything he's ever written, it shouldn't surprise anyone that I've already found my way to another Beagle work. This time, it was Tamsin that thrilled me to the depths of my writerly soul, but in new and unexpected ways. 

Any illusions I had that this book would be filled with the same dignified elegance as The Last Unicorn vanished with the use of the word "period" on the very first page. And no, it was not in the context of a grammatical discussion. At first, I was so jarred by how different the voice of the main character, Jenny Gluckstein, was from anything I would have expected from Beagle that I had to take a minute before I could move on. But I'm glad I did. It was worth getting over the culture shock.

The voice of the main character in this novel turned out to be just as magical as anything in The Last Unicorn, but with a sense of sense of reality and tangibility to it. You see, the narrator is a 13 year-old girl from New York City whose mother, Sally, is getting married to an Englishman. Unfortunately for Jenny, this means that she is being uprooted from her life in Manhattan and transplanted with her new family to an ancient farm in Dorset, where her new stepdad has been hired to get the farm yielding crops again.

Nothing could have thrilled Jenny less. Awkward, pimply-faced Jenny had a hard enough time making friends in New York. She is apprehensive about moving to a foreign country, inheriting two stepbrothers she's never met, and has the general aversion that most children posses to seeing their parents change. Jenny recognizes that Sally is happier with her new husband than she's ever been and that she is doing everything possible to make things easier for Jenny, but she resists her mother at every turn. She is confused and overwhelmed, and it makes her behave badly. Her life in New York may not be perfect, but it's familiar and comforting and she doesn't want things to change.

But change it does, and in ways that Jenny could never have expected. The farm in Dorset has a rich history, you see, and that history isn't exactly lying dormant. Rather, it's rifling through the pantries at night, breaking the refrigerator, and sending a lingering smell of vanilla through the house. Led to investigate by her mentor in the study of coolness, Mister Cat, Jenny ends up coming face-to-face with ancient beings lurking in the secret world of Stourhead Farm, including a gentle, lovely ghost named Tamsin.

"An Ill Wind" by Dashinvaine

Original image found here.

Through the course of the story, Jenny finds her destiny linked to Tamsin's. If she doesn't figure out the connection between Tamsin's past and the eerie night world of Stourhead Farm, her new friend may be doomed to a fate far worse than death. 

I think the thing that struck me as most impressive in the beginning of the book was how believable and relatable Jenny was. For a grown man to inhabit the mind of a 13 year-old girl so ably and with such sensitivity is no easy thing, and Beagle pulls it off with more skill than some writers who actually once were 13 year-old girls. And the real feat is that, given her disgruntlement with the way her life is changing, Jenny says and does some unpleasant things to blameless people in the beginning and is not one bit less likable. Between the clear portrayal of what was so upsetting to Jenny about her circumstances and the fact that the story is  told by a 19 year-old Jenny with the regret brought on by hindsight, you understand where she's coming from and see that she did come to repent for her past transgressions. In fact, the way she uses her crankiness to hide her sadness and discomfort actually becomes endearing, an accomplishment that could only be pulled off by the same man who once made a unicorn's arrogance seem charming.

An artist's depiction of the Wild Hunt.

Original image found here.

And Peter S. Beagle does for English folklore what he did for the unicorn, and just as cleverly. It would be easy to read about boggarts and pookas and the Wild Hunt and to not be able to take them seriously, thinking of them as silly fairy tale beings with no weight or depth. But in Beagle's world, they have a reality to them, a seriousness and a grandeur that makes them both intriguing and intimidating. They feel almost historical, like details that the history books overlooked that truly capture the richness of English culture. So complex and wonderful was the world he created in the pages of this book, with it overlay of historical facts, that I was reluctant to finish it as I drew near the end. I didn't want to leave, to go back to my mundane life where a knock in my kitchen was just my dishwasher clicking to rinse and a storm was just a storm.

All of the characters are people you'd gladly spend time with, except where they're not meant to be. From good-natured stepfather Evan, to loving mother Sally, to quiet stepbrother, Tony (who is apparently quite the dancer), and that sweet bundle of curly-haired energy called Julian, you find yourself knowing and welcoming these people into your life, page after page. And Mister Cat makes me wish I had a creature in my life who could ooze unflappable competence that way, being more of a caretaker and companion than a mere pet.

And Tamsin. Oh, Tamsin. I don't wish to spoil you, dear reader, but prepare to fall in love. This whole book will make you fall in love, with the plot, the characters, and the vivid beauty of the writing, but Tamsin nestles atop this pile of literary achievements like a twinkling jewel.

So if you are looking for a beautifully written novel as relatable as a conversation with your best friend, but as surreal as waking up in the middle of a fairy tale, pick up your copy of Tamsin today. And I shall envy you the privilege of being able to read it for the first time as I go back for my second and third reads to soak in all the nuances!

This novel is mini beagle-approved!