Book review: The Interrogation of Ashala Wolf by Ambelin Kwaymullina
As I mentioned back in June, whenever I attend a convention I always like to review something by one of the Guests of Honour. Last week my home con, Conflux, played host to Ambelin Kwaymullina, author of The Tribe series. The Tribe begins with The Interrogation of Ashala Wolf. An environmental catastrophe called The Reckoning has visited our world. 300 years on, society has reconfigured itself, striving to preserve the Balance with the natural world. However, some people argue the Balance is upset by the presence of individuals possessing special powers—those with the ability to heal, control the elements or see potential futures. These individuals are assessed and either granted an Exemption or deemed an Illegal and kept in Detention Camps.
Book Review: Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik
Spinning Silver first appeared as a novella in The Starlit Wood edited by Dominik Parisien and Navah Wolfe. It has been expanded into a novel that will delight lovers of fairytale retellings. The story is based on Rumplestiltskin. Miryem comes from a family of moneylenders, some more successful than others. Her father’s generous nature makes him one of the less successful. When Miryem’s mother grows sick from their impoverished conditions, Miryem takes over the family business. She finds she’s good at it. So much so that when her grandfather gives her a pouch of silver to help grow her business, she’s able to return the pouch to him full of gold. Unfortunately for Miryem, the snowy fae Staryk who haunts the woods hears her boasts. Craving gold above all else, the Staryk threatens Miryem: change his silver into gold or risk being turned to ice.
Book Review: Akata Warrior by Nnedi Okorafor
Keen fans of the Hugo Awards will be aware that 2018 marks the inaugural presentation of the World Science Fiction Society Award for Best Young Adult Book. The shortlist for this Hugo-adjacent award (which will, barring shenanigans at the AGM, henceforth be known as the Lodestar Award) includes Akata Warrior by Nnedi Okorafor. This is the second book in Okorafor’s series, Akata Witch. It tells the story of Sunny Nwazue, a teenage girl born in New York City whose Nigerian parents have brought her across the Atlantic to live in their hometown. Sunny is a Leopard Person, someone with an affinity for juju and thus able to work magic. In Akata Warrior, she develops these abilities under the strict guidance of her mentor Sugar Cream and the tried and true method of getting into mischief with her friends. However, it’s not all fun and games. Ekwensu, the masquerade responsible for murdering Sunny’s grandmother (and also the only other Leopard Person in Sunny’s family) is still on the loose. Sunny and her friends must track down the masquerade before Ekwensu brings about the apocalypse.
Retro Childhood Review: The Dark is Rising
There was an endless variety of faces — gay, sombre, old, young, paper-white, jet-black, and every shade and gradation of pink and brown between — vaguely recognizable, or totally strange… [Will] thought: these are my people. This is my family, in the same way as my real family. The Old Ones. Every one is linked, for the greatest purpose in the world. I was going to start my review of Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising Sequence with the first in the series, Over Sea, Under Stone, because it holds a certain place of nostalgia based on its similarity to other much loved childhood fiction like The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, both being about a group of absurdly normal siblings doing something important. But as I considered what I wanted to read to finish out 2017, a year full of darkness for so many people, the only book that seemed appropriate was The Dark is Rising. Because what’s more relevant than a book about how one person can fight back the darkness by finding strength in the love and support of family, friends, and a world that is fighting with him? Especially when it’s full of winter holiday cheer.
Book Review: The Dark Days Club by Alison Goodman
If you ever thought Jane Austen needed more demon hunting, The Dark Days Club by Alison Goodman is the book for you. In Regency London, Lady Helen Wrexhall is preparing for her presentation to the queen. Her parents died under mysterious circumstances no one talks about except to mention the shame Lady Helen’s mother brought to the family. This means that Lady Helen must be a paragon in order to avoid the stain of such an association and marry well. Which makes it very inconvenient when she starts to manifest unusual abilities. Having grown up being able to read the tiniest signs of emotion in people’s faces, she starts to find herself filled with a restless energy. When one of her family’s housemaids goes missing, Lady Helen sets out to investigate. She finds herself drawn into a shadowy side of the world she never knew existed and to the Earl of Carleston. Through him she learns the truth of her abilities and must choose between her duty to her country and her desire to lead a normal life.
Book Review: Buried Heart by Kate Elliott
All good things must come to an end, and with Buried Heart, author Kate Elliott brings to a conclusion the YA Court of Fives trilogy. Talking about plot developments in the third and final volume of a trilogy is difficult and perhaps foolish to try, so I will instead discuss the essential theme of this volume, one that has been slowly surfacing through Court of Fives and Poisoned Blade, but here gets its full fulminating flowering: Revolution. In Buried Heart, Efea’s oppressed status, something that the author has been delineating from the very first chapter of Court of Fives, comes out in full force. Of course within the potential revolution of Efea against the tyranny that holds it is the struggle of powers around it, and the struggles of the current royal occupants to hold the throne against kin and family. The first two novels, which suggested that Jessamy, the Spider, would be subsumed into that dynamic entirely, prove to have been a false flag. In the third volume, Jess finds herself caught between father and mother, her lover and her land, and must make often difficult choices as the people of Efea struggle to reclaim their freedom.
