Etiquette and Espionage, by Gail Carriger

Title: Etiquette & Espionage (Finishing School #1)
Author: Gail Carriger
Year of Publication: 2013
Length: 320 pages
Genre: YA steampunk
New or Re-Read?: New
Rating: 4 stars

I was super-excited to get my hands on Ms. Carriger’s latest novel, her first foray into YA fiction. I thoroughly enjoyed her Parasol Protectorate series, and I’m so glad that she’s decided to continue on in this world even though she wrapped that series up. Etiquette & Espionage did not disappoint me.

Sophronia, a fourteen-year-old youngest daughter in the 1850s, is unusual. She climbs dumbwaiters and gets herself into terrible fixes and is generally an embarrassment to her family, a socially-aspirant gentry . Little does her mother know that when she packs Sophronia off to finishing school, she’s actually giving the girl just what she needs. Her unusual new circumstances first become apparent when she chats with Dimity, also headed to Mademoiselle Geraldine’s Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality, and her brother Pillover, destined for Bunson and Lacroix’s Boys’ Polytechnique. As Dimity chatters cheerfully about evil geniuses, covert recruits, Picklemen, and Custard Pots of Iniquity, Sophronia begins to suspect something is odd. When her carriage is attacked by flywaymen, their escort goes into unconvincing hysterics, and Sophronia has to take command of the horses and rescue them all, her suspicions are rather confirmed.

It turns out that Sophronia has landed at a school designed not only to turn her into a lady but to turn her lethal as well. Or, rather, the Academy has landed at her — for it’s a floating school, suspended from enormous balloons. A werewolf named Captain Niall (!) serves as ship-to-ground transport and teaches combat, a vampire covers history and deportment, mechanical staff patrol the hallways as prefects, the students learn poisons and manipulation alongside powders and manners, and the headmistress has no idea that any of it is going on. Sophronia begins to settle in at the Academy and into an easy friendship with Dimity, though she has more trouble with the others in her dormitory. Sidhaeg (!) is prickly and recalcitrant, Agatha a shy wallflower, Preshea a snob, and Monique is none other than their escort, demoted back to debut rank for refusing to give up the whereabouts of the mysterious “prototype” which the flywaymen were after. Sophronia and Monique do not get on at all, and their rivalry drives much of the action in the book. Sophronia also uses her climbing abilities to sneak into the restricted areas, where she makes friends with the sooties who keep the ship running, including Soap, a London-born boy of African descent (and props to Carriger for including a non-white character in an English historical novel!). Sophronia, never having seen a black person before, is startled by him at first but gets over it quickly. The two become friends, and Soap introduced her to Vieve (!), niece to Professor Beatrice Lefoux (!) and a budding inventor. As the plot progresses, Sophronia finds them tremendously useful in her various schemes and maneuvers.

I felt as though the story bobbled a bit at the end of the first act and the beginning of the second. There’s a stretch where the sense of character isn’t particularly strong. It is interesting to have a leading character who is so introverted and private, but it also damages the narrative a bit, at least for me. When the POV character is not particularly reflective or emotive, I (a consummate extrovert) find it harder to engage with her. It was hard to feel emotionally connected to Sophronia, and sometimes her actions seemed very abrupt because there had been little build-up to them. I admire that Sophronia is such a practical and plain-dealing heroine, but I could’ve used a larger window into her soul.

The other problem that I had was that when Sophronia first arrives at the floating school, she has absolutely no idea what’s going on, and no one will tell her. Maddeningly, nothing gets explained for a very long time. After a while, this starts to frustrate me as a reader — and I recognise that not everyone may feel this way. It’s a valid literary trope and one frequently used in YA, but I personally struggle with it. I hate being left totally in the dark. It tends to make me rush, hoping I’ll get to the explanation, but then I end up having to go back and re-read chapters in case I missed something. I understand delaying gratification and teasing the reader, but some information in this book gets played a little too close to the chest.

There are still a lot of questions left unanswered at the end of the book, and I’m hoping we’ll get more information on them in future installments — I want to know why this extraordinary pair of schools exists. Right now, the answer seems to be “just because.” I find that unsatisfying. What need does England have for an elite cadre of female assassins and a coterie of admittedly evil geniuses? What role in society are they fulfilling? For what purpose? If the Headmistress has no idea what’s going on, who does? Who drives this whole thing? Who founded it? For what reasons? I love Carriger’s world-building, but I wish we’d gotten just a little bit more on this front at the outset.

I did think, though, that I saw a glimmer of potential for change in the school’s directives, one that I hope we’ll see expanded in future books in the series. Right now, the school seems quite competitive, designed to set these ladies against each other. Sophronia, though, sees more benefit in bringing her cohorts together, drawing on their disparate skills to achieve a communal goal. I would like to see that theme develop further. So much popular opinion, especially when it comes to teenage girls, likes to promote their potential for cattiness, sniping, and backstabbing; I would love to see more YA fiction promoting healthier ideas on what they’re capable of.

The second half of the book improves greatly, though, as a few things do finally get explained and as more action enters the narrative in the final act. Sophronia deduces that Monique must have hidden the prototype at Sophronia’s family home while collecting her, and so she determines to retrieve it with the help of her friends (and new pet, mechanimal dog Bumbersnoot). Sophronia’s skills really get to shine here, and the sense of action and excitement is wonderful fun.

For anyone who wondered why I (!)ed a few times in this review, it’s because there are several connections in Etiquette & Espionage to the Parasol Protectorate series. This book is set some twenty-odd years before that series begins, so there’s a lot of potential for crossover cameos. Even the MacGuffin of the book, the prototype, is a component of technology that becomes crucial by the time of the Protectorate series. Carriger also takes a few moments to poke fun at the steampunk world in general, through a clique of boys at Pillover’s school, the Pistons, who sew gears to their clothing for no reason but fashion, smudge their eyes with kohl, and like to crash parties and spike the punch. It’s a good-natured and, let’s face it, well-deserved ribbing.

Overall, I’m quite pleased with Etiquette & Espionage. There were a few bumps that kept it from perfection, in my opinion, but — that’s true of the first couple Harry Potter books as well. For a first foray into YA fiction, Carriger’s done a lovely job. I absolutely devoured this first installment, and I’m excited to see where the rest of the series goes.

Leviathan, by Scott Westerfeld

Title: Leviathan
Author: Scott Westerfeld
Year of Publication: 2009
Length: 448 pages
Genre: YA steampunk
New or Re-Read?: New
Rating: 3.5 stars

I hoped for more out of this book.

I like the story. It’s an interesting premise and a great use of steampunk themes to build an alternate universe. Leviathan re-envisions the start of World War I as a conflict between two pathways of technological development. The Darwinists, in England, France, and Russia, have gone into biodevelopment, discovering things like DNA coding a bit ahead of time, and using that knowledge to create fantastical new creatures. Airships made out of floating air-whales with other creatures grafted on, balloons out of jellyfish/blowfish type things, lizards who can memorise and deliver messages, wolf-dog-tiger hybrids for security or searching. The Clankers, in Germany/the Holy Roman Empire (still hanging on, apparently) and most of Eastern Europe, have chosen traditional mechanical technology, viewing Darwinist creations as hellish abominations.

The trouble is that, well… there sort of just wasn’t enough there. I know it’s a YA book, but that’s really no excuse. Plenty of authors manage to write YA novels and still use sophisticated storytelling devices. The later Harry Potter books are probably the most famous example, but the honest-to-goodness best example is probably Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. Westerfeld’s style is a bit slapdash for my preferences. The vocabulary is basic, the sentence structure largely unvaried, the characterisation fairly flat. This disappointed me, and it’s not just because I’m an adult reading a YA book — it would have disappointed me just as much at age 11. You don’t have to write simply to tell a story on a level that young people will understand. (Quite the opposite, I’ve always thought — half the point of reading is to stretch your brainpan out a bit, to introduce new things rather than just dumping in what it’s already familiar with, and that goes for the language itself as much as for the story).

I found myself wishing that the book either had a lot more illustrations — I think it would’ve worked brilliantly as a graphic novel — or a lot fewer, with a lot more verbal description. It seemed in many places as if the illustrations were serving as a crutch for insufficient description in the text. This is particularly true of the Darwinist creations, which I found a little confusing to follow. I can tell there are good ideas there, that the dynamics of how these things operate has been thought out — I just sometimes had trouble following along with exactly what those dynamics were. It became clearer with illustration, but still not perfectly so.

I still haven’t said anything about the actual plot yet, have I? Prince Aleksandr, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, is fleeing after his parents’ assassination (the event that, y’know, starts World War I). His path improbably collides with that of Deryn, a British common girl with aspirations of aviation, who has disguised herself as a boy in order to join the crew of one of the dirigible-creatures. And… that’s pretty much the plot. It doesn’t really get to going much of anywhere in this first book. We meet the characters, we learn about the world, the war starts, there are adventures on the ground and in the air. That’s not to say nothing happens. Quite a bit happens, in your typical adventure-story sort of way. But it’s all rather thin and entirely unfinished — this is clearly the first book in a series, and it doesn’t wrap up on its own in any significant way.

So, this was a sort of interesting read, but not a really gripping one. I imagine I’ll get the next book the series eventually, but I’m in no rush. And when it comes to YA steampunk, I’ll be anticipating Gail Carriger’s new series a lot more.

Catherine, Called Birdy, by Karen Cushman

Title: Catherine, Called Birdy
Author: Karen Cushman
Year of Publication: 1994
Length: 224 pages
Genre: historical fiction – young adult
New or Re-Read?: many, many times re-read
Rating: 5 stars

This is one of my all-time favourite books, and has been since I first read it at the age of 9. I return to it about once a year, just out of sheer joy.

Catherine, Called Birdy is the tale of a fourteen-year-old girl in England in the year 1290. To please her monk brother Edward, who thinks the exercise will make her more observant and thoughtful, she sets to writing down an account of her life. The reader follows Birdy through a transformative year. The major plot is her attempt to avoid marriage to one of many odious suitors, but there are dozens of smaller plot points as well, threaded in and out of the main story with a casual ease that very much gives the sense of day-to-day life. The best aspect of the novel, though, is Birdy herself. Quick-witted and short-tempered, she grumbles, fusses, and curses her way through her life with a delightful sort of unpolished charm. Sometimes pragmatic, and at other times incredibly soft-hearted, Birdy is above all strong-minded, aching for an independence her world cannot give her, beating her wings against the bars of her cage. She approaches her frustrations head-on, often acting first and thinking later, and her observations on her life, her family, and the villagers are often hilariously funny.

Cushman gives remarkable detail to the nuances, idiosyncrasies, and oddities of medieval life, particularly for a young adult novel. From holiday customs to the cycle of the year, from the tremendous lack of privacy to the mysteries of childbirth, Cushman draws the world out in a way that is educational without being didactic. I appreciate that she treats the period with a sensible perspective: neither doom-and-gloom nor idyllic. Yes, life could be hard, and yes, hygiene was still a few centuries off, and yes, death was a more constant companion than we typically think of it today — but people still celebrated triumphs, fell in love, reveled during holidays (and got hangovers), cherished their pets, and basked in the sunlight. Cushman blends the hardships with the joys magnificently. I also like the status she chose for her main character. Birdy is the daughter of a common country knight, a man with some land but no title, very much a large fish in a quite small pond. This position frees Birdy from the tedium of a serf’s life, but is not elevated enough to allow her true luxury — as she complains:

If I had to be born a lady, why not a rich lady, so someone else could do the work and I could lie on a silken bed and listen to a beautiful minstrel while my servants hemmed? Instead I am the daughter of a country knight with but ten servants, seventy villagers, no minstrel, and acres of unhemmed linen. It grumbles my guts.

Like most teenage girls, Birdy sees almost everyone else in the world as possessing a position more favourable than her own. She envies the villagers for the freedom they have to marry where they will and to be outside in the sunshine rather than stuck indoors, but eventually recognises that their labour is harder than hers, and that their freedoms are few, tied as they are to the land and to their feudal obligations. She envies ladies wealthier than her, but comes to learn that higher rank only brings more responsibilities and entanglements, not fewer. She envies men that they can have adventures, go on Crusade, spit and swear, and generally make their lives what they want them — but later realises that’s really the case for only a few of them, and that adventures are mostly dangerous, Crusades bloody, and responsibilities generally far more numerous than freedoms. She hates her father and eldest brother, but by the end of the book, has seen different sides of each, causing her to at least rethink her assessment and consider them from someone else’s perspective, even if she still doesn’t like them any better herself. Birdy yearns to be someone else — anyone else — a puppeteer, a Crusader, a peddlar, a songmaker, a bird-trainer, an outlaw maid — her fantasy life is rich and vivid, and she shares her daydreams with us without hesitation, then shares her awareness of their impossibilities just as frankly. The major lesson for Birdy is that she has to learn to be happy with who and what she is. As a Jewish woman (on her way out of England, thanks to the purge of Edward I — another interesting inclusion of historical reality) tells her, “‘Little Bird, in the world to come, you will not be asked “Why were you not George?” or “Why were you not Perkin?” but “Why were you not Catherine?”‘” It takes Birdy rather a while to grasp the meaning of that, but when she does, you can see her start to get more comfortable with herself.

There are some inaccuracies in the mix, but considering that this is a young adult novel, not a historical treatise, I really don’t mind. Yes, Birdy would have been an astonishingly unique character in 1290 England — but women like her did exist, even if they were few, far between, and rarely as successful in their rebellions. Cushman doesn’t cheat the typical experience of a thirteenth-century woman, and Birdy has to confront, again and again, what she cannot do. I think Cushman balances the historical reality nicely with the need to appeal to modern readers. Perhaps the greatest fiction is the premise of the novel itself — that anyone would have wasted paper and ink, expensive luxuries, on personal thoughts. But that’s not an anachronism that’s ever going to occur to the target audience, and the conceit allows the reader to enjoy Birdy’s fantastic voice all the way through.

I wish that, at some point, it had occurred to me to keep better track of my reactions to this book throughout my life. I know that from the start, I adored Birdy for being feisty, short-tempered, and impatient — all flaws I could easily relate to. As I said, I was 9 when I first read this (the year it came out), and then, fourteen seems so very far away. I remember re-reading it a year later, to the shock of one of the priggish girls in my class, who had taken great offence at Birdy’s realisation that she cannot run away and become a monk: “…with these apples on my chest, I would not fool even the most aged of abbots. Deus! Last year they were but walnuts and I might have gotten away of it.” Still far away from even walnut category, my prim classmate had been deeply uncomfortable with Birdy’s frank discussion of bodily changes. Well into apple territory already at age 10, early bloomer that I was, I appreciated Birdy’s honesty. Through the years of puberty, Birdy remained a friend, eminently relatable, someone who knew all about the awkwardness, emotional turmoil, and desperate confusion of that span of life. Her temper fits, her sulks, days of euphoric optimism contrasted with days of hopeless despair — What teenage girl doesn’t know precisely what that’s like?

I’m older now, and I look back on my early teenage years with no sentimental fondness whatsoever. Though I’m well past Birdy’s age (indeed, for someone who calls her mother old at thirty-odd, I would seem well and truly past my prime to her, I suspect), her struggles are still relatable, even if some are in hindsight now. Others, though, remain relevant. At 26, I’m still working out the question of how to be the version of myself I most want to be. How do I reconcile my dreams with my reality? How do I find joy in every day of my life? These are some of the questions Birdy tackles, and they’re ones I’m still exploring. And on this read, probably for the first time, I’ve started thinking about how I’ll someday share this book with my own daughters, and how I hope that they’ll find Birdy as true a friend as I always have.

Mockingjay, by Suzanne Collins

Title: Mockingjay
Author: Suzanne Collins
Year of Publication: 2010
Length: 390 pages
Genre: young adult – dystopian thriller
New or Re-Read?: New
Rating: 4.5 stars
Spoiler Warning: Armed and active for entire series

This book was not at all what I expected. And I sort of love it for that.

I knew right from the start that it wouldn’t be, that I wasn’t getting Return of the Jedi. District 13 is about as far from a utopian paradise as you can get. It’s a complete military state, to the extent that each citizen’s schedule for the day is temporary-tattooed on their arms when they wake up. Everyone has a place and a responsibility, cogs in a machine. Practical, but creepy — and it clearly rubs Katniss the wrong way. Fortunately, since she’s still classified as “mentally disoriented”, she can get away with not following orders all the time, but it doesn’t take her long to start finding out just how far she can push her new allies. They want to use her as the Mockingjay to unite all of the Districts in rebellion against the Capitol, but they’re having some trouble stabilising her moods, not to mention dredging her out of despair about Peeta. She’s pissed as hell that the rebel operatives chose to save her and leave him behind, and when she finds out he’s not dead but captured, controlled by Snow, she’s naturally pretty concerned for his safety.

So, a lot of the book is Katniss adjusting to life in 13, pushing her limits, and trying to come to terms with having to live up to the image the public has of her. What does it mean to be the Mockingjay? How can she be that and stay true to herself?

There’s something really beautifully subversive in this book, and I don’t just mean about that reversal of expectations. On the surface, this book seems to be so unlike the first two. The situations are entirely different. The characters have changed, some to be nigh-unrecognisable. But the mechanics are gruesomely similar. Katniss is still stuck in the Hunger Games. Only they’re playing for keeps now. The Games were, of course, always deadly serious to the 24 combatants, and to an extent to people in the Districts, but they were still so choreographed, so thoughtfully executed. War isn’t, even when you try. There’s no hope of begging aid from on high, of getting sponsors, just for being impressive. In war, reinforcements and supplies come only when you’ve planned for them, not dropped as if by magic out of the sky. Critical differences — but critical similarities, too. Collins, brilliantly, doesn’t harp on this theme much — but she lets it shine in tiny details (details that I’m wondering if they would be as apparent if I hadn’t devoured all three books in under 48 hours). Like when, during the mission in the Capitol, Katniss tries to reckon up who they’ve lost, repeats the list to herself, just as she did her list of opponents during the Games, to keep track — only now it’s not to keep track of who’s still a threat, but to remember who they’ve lost. Similarly, the Capitol broadcasts those suspected still alive (even when some are already dead), which echoes the projections of dead tributes during the Games. And then there’s how Katniss still has to play for the cameras, still has to put on a good show, not to win sponsors, but to keep up the spirits of the rebels in the Districts. She’s still styled, throughout the book, both in 13 and on the road, still putting on a show. Still accompanied by a camera crew (a rather morbid commentary, I feel, on our current 24/7 news cycles). Even down to those damn silver parachutes at the end, even down to what ultimately happens with Prim, so many details of this book echo the Games and the first book, but in such brutal, sadistic, horrifying ways.

I also enjoy how this book subverts so many expectations. Katniss doesn’t turn into a 100% badass warrior chick. The love triangle between her, Peeta, and Gale does not consume the story. The rebels are not necessarily the good guys. The story is not one of glory and triumph. It’s dark, definitely edgy, and occasionally hard to read. It’s a lot of psychological trauma for a young adult book to deal with, but I think Collins handles it pretty deftly. The subversion of the romance angle is particularly nice. Gale turns out to be just a little too violently inclined, a little too gung-ho about playing just as rough and mercilessly as the Capitol does. Katniss isn’t sure what to do about that, and she clearly struggles with what these revelations about Gale’s character, about the man he’s grown into, mean for any potential future between them. Meanwhile, Peeta has been brainwashed by the Capitol via a form of psychological poison. By the time the rebels retrieve him, he thinks Katniss is a genetically engineered abomination trying to kill them all, and he nearly strangles her. It’s a far cry from the contrived images of the happy couple they had to create earlier. Getting him back is a long, slow process, and with both Peeta and Katniss suffering some pretty severe PTSD, Collins isn’t shy about stating that neither one of them will ever come back completely. Part of them will always live in this dark world, in these terrifying circumstances. They will never be what they were before or who they were before. But that doesn’t mean they can’t salvage something out of the ashes. (Salvage is, incidentally, a pretty big although subtle theme throughout all three books).

There were some flaws. A couple of times the action jerked around so fast that I got a little lost and had to back-track to figure out just what had happened. A significant character’s death got sandwiched in a way that I nearly missed it entirely. And Katniss possibly spends just a little too much of the book out of it — either literally or psychologically. In some ways it’s effective, to display the effects all of this is having on her, but in some ways it’s just really frustrating to have your heroine and narrator continually knocked out of either consciousness or sanity.

This paragraph has an extra spoiler warning on it because it really is the granddaddy spoiler, since it’s about the ultimate endgame. So. Be ye warned.

I knew Katniss was going to have to kill Coin even before she knew it. Coin proved, so thoroughly, that she wasn’t any better than her opponent. Rule by 13 would have been no better than rule by the Capitol — just restricted in different ways. While the Capitol celebrates excess and indulgence, flinging human life away for entertainment value, 13 buckles everything down until there’s no room left to breathe. Individual life and choice don’t have any meaning there, either, but for completely different reasons. There, it’s all about serving the cause, being the well-functioning machine you’re meant to be. Each civilisation represents one end of the Evil Empire spectrum, but they’re both pretty horrific to consider.

What we come to learn is that, for District 13, this war was never about liberation, never about freeing the Districts from the yoke. President Snow was right about that — 13 could’ve helped them in the first rebellion, but instead they cut and ran. No, for District 13 and for Coin, this was about revenge and domination. She wanted her own empire to rule, larger and more satisfying than subterranean 13, and she didn’t care who she had to throw under the bus to get that. Individual life meant as little to her as to Snow; she would sacrifice whoever and whatever in order to win. With her out of the picture and someone saner at the wheel, there’s hope that Panem might yet turn into a functioning republic, as the District rebels hoped.

So. Overall, it’s hard to say I enjoyed this book, because so much of it was so painful. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t exquisite. Collins crafts a fantastic story in a complex world (a world that I’m sort of annoyed I still don’t know enough about, but that’s my own private obsession with dystopian world-building, there). Katniss is a remarkable heroine, who defies expectations at every turn — both of her handlers, her friends, and of the reader. She won’t be what anyone else wants her to be, and that includes us. I appreciate that. Collins has done something different, which is quite an achievement. I want more heroines like Katniss in the literary world.

Catching Fire, by Suzanne Collins

Title: Catching Fire
Author: Suzanne Collins
Year of Publication: 2009
Length: 391 pages
Genre: young adult – dystopian thriller
New or Re-Read?: New
Rating: 4+ stars
Spoilers: Armed and active for both this and The Hunger Games; I don’t know how to talk about this book without them, unfortunately.

The last time I felt this way about a series was starting Harry Potter, back almost a decade ago. Nothing else in recent memory has matched the sheer irresistibility of this series. I’m a little floored, honestly, by how much I’m taken with this series and how desperately I need to move on to find out what happens. But I thought it important to pause and capture my thoughts now.

Catching Fire ups the ante in a big way. It continues more or less seamlessly on from the end of The Hunger Games. Katniss and Peeta are expected to go on a Victory Tour around all of the Districts. The trouble is that unrest has been sizzling in some of them for a long time, and Katniss finds herself the inadvertent mascot of rebellion. No true uprisings have broken out yet, but you can feel them simmering, low-burning embers, all through this book. And that’s terrifying the living hell out of the Capitol. Enough so that the President himself feels compelled to visit Katniss and make a few well-placed threats against her family and friends.

This includes Gale, who was kind’a-sort’a Katniss’s boyfriend before she went to the Games, but who she’s had to treat as an amiable “cousin” ever since she got back, since her only thread of protection lies in being able to claim that love for Peeta made her act so defiantly. There’s a lot of emotional entanglement between the three of them, and I think it’s handled very well. It’s not overblown or made into the stuff of melodrama. Instead, all three act in the time-honoured manner of teenagers everwhere: with extreme awkwardness. They don’t know what to say to each other, how to act. And it doesn’t help that just as soon as poor Katniss is thinking she’s set her heart on one, the other will do something spectacular to sway her around again. And yet, all without turning her into just some pathetic chick.

Is it wrong of me to hope that Katniss will get to live polyamorously happy-ever-after with them both? Yes. Yes, it is. That would barely pass muster in fairly edgy adult fiction; it’s going to be another century or so before you could get away with that in young adult. What I then assume is that either Gale or Peeta has to die. So, then, is it wrong for me to hope that it’s Gale? Nothing against the guy at all, but he’s not the one we, the readers, have spent as much time with. My emotional investment lies far more in Peeta.

So. All of that’s going on, and then District Twelve has a really hard year. It’s partially to punish Katniss — law enforcement becomes really strict, the minor infractions (like hunting in the woods) that folk used to be able to get away with, they can’t anymore — and it’s partially just bad luck, from a really hard winter. Desperation’s sinking in, and even while Katniss feels the urge to rebel burning deep inside her… she can’t. Not with so many people relying on her. Not with so many innocent lives at stake.

And then the Capitol changes the rules on everyone again, and announces that for the 75th Hunger Games, they’ll be drawing only from a pool of prior victors — who are supposed to be exempt for life. The second half of the book deals with this. With no other female victor living, Katniss has to go for 12, and though their mentor Haymitch’s name is chosen, Peeta immediately volunteers to take his place. So they’re back, and have to quickly determine who among the other tribute-victors they might be able to trust at least long enough for a temporary alliance. The arena designed for the 75th Games is diabolical and utterly ingenious, and in some ways I wish they’d gotten to it earlier in the book in order to spend more time examining it.

Some other reviews I’ve seen charge that Catching Fire suffers from middle-of-trilogy syndrome and that it’s slow to get going, that too much time is spent on exposition in the beginning. I couldn’t disagree more. I think this book is superbly strong, and I don’t feel it has any of that lag. In fact, I sort of wish they’d spent more time on the Victory Tour, describing the various Districts — but that’s because I’m obsessed with world-building, especially in dystopias. I want to know everything. From what I can gather, District 4 is probably Gulf Coast (wherever the coastline actually is now), because their main industry is fishing. 3 seems like it might be Detroit-ish, as they focus on electronics and manufacturing. 7 seems like Wisconsin-Minnesota, timber country. 11 I can’t quite place, because it might be either the South or the Midwest. I’m guessing Midwest because the agriculture seems a bit more wheat-and-corn, though in Book 1 Rue does talk a lot about orchards — but also because, if part of the cataclysm leading to this world setup was rising waters, most of the agricultural south is probably under the Atlantic Ocean now. Anyway — I wish I knew more. I want to know about all the Districts, where they are, how many people, how they got to be the way they are. What we do learn along the way is that District 11 is much more strictly controlled than 12 has been, and that the people there seem to be getting sick of it.

So. This book is fabulous, the series is fabulous, I’m moving on to Mockingjay as fast as may be — and it looks like it’s going to have pretty much my favourite thing over. Not just a dystopia, but a dystopian rebellion. I am aquiver with excitement.

The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins

Title: The Hunger Games
Author: Suzanne Collins
Year of Publication: 2009
Length: 374 pages
Genre: young adult – dystopian thriller
New or Re-Read?: New
Rating: 5 stars

It has been a long, long time since I tore through a book as quickly and as avidly as I tore through this one. The word for The Hunger Games is, absolutely, “compelling.” This is a book that grips you by the throat and doesn’t let go.

The book takes place in a dystopian future — which gets me right there. I love a good dystopia. North America as we know it has fallen to pieces, thanks to what the heroine vaguely describes as “the disasters, the droughts, the storms, the fires, the encroaching seas that swallowed up so much land, the brutal war for what little sustenance remained.” The civilization that replaces America is called Panem, a cluster of districts ruled by the Capitol. There were once Thirteen Districts; now, after a failed rebellion, there are only Twelve, with the Thirteenth having been obliterated in the war. As a reminder to the Districts of its power, and to prevent further rebellions, the Capitol holds the Hunger Games each year. Each District sends two tributes each year, a boy and a girl between the ages of 12 and 18.

In coal-mining District 12 (probably situated in what was once West Virginia, based on the descriptions), Katniss Everdeen volunteers to take her sister’s place when twelve-year-old Prim is chosen. The “reaping”, as the ceremony is grimly called, is a stark look at how the government can so easily manipulate poverty. A twelve-year-old has his or her name entered once, a thirteen-year-old twice, and so forth — but, you can also choose to enter your name more times in exchange for tesserae, allotments of grain and oil. This is a frequent occurrence in District 12, impoverished and struggling. Katniss has been her family’s provider since she was 11, when her father died in a mining accident and her mother slipped into a deep depression. She’s now sixteen, with her name put in 20 times; her friend Gale, with more siblings to support, has his name in 42 times. And yet it’s Prim, with her name only in once, because Katniss wouldn’t let her take on any more risk, who gets called.

And this is all just in the first few chapters.

Katniss goes to the Capitol to prepare for the games, along with Peeta, the male tribute from her District — a boy who once threw her bread when she was starving, near-death, before she learned to hunt and trap. They’re up against others like themselves, unwilling tributes who’ve never had a full belly in their lives, but they’re also up against tributes from wealthier Districts, where the Games are not a punishment but a chance for honor and glory, who’ve trained their whole lives for this moment. Katniss experiences the shock and confusion of being treated like a pampered pet even though she’s really a beast for slaughter, and through her eyes, we see the horrific, casual cruelty of a society that places enormous monetary value on her life but no spiritual or moral value on it whatsoever. Because the Hunger Games are entertainment, televised and trumpeted.It’s the Olympics as bloodsport. (It’s no surprise that everyone in the Capitol seems to have a Roman name — Flavius, Octavia, Cinna, Portia — because there’s certainly a smack of the Colosseum about the whole thing). The tributes have to compete not only against each other in the field, but also for sponsors, who can send them life-saving gifts during the Games — and the tributes who put in the best show during the opening ceremonies, training, and interviews. Katniss, both feisty and sullen, unable to conceal her resentment, is saved from making a total mess of things partially through her own audacity and partially through the machinations of the District 12 handlers, who manipulate circumstances so that Katniss and Peeta look like star-cross’d lovers. The burden for that is on Peeta (and for a long time Katniss isn’t sure if he really has feelings for her or if he’s just playing the game), but Katniss reaps some benefits of it, and eventually learns to work the angle herself.

The strength of this book is in the relentless way that Collins builds suspense. Even when Katniss is on something resembling “downtime”, healing from wounds, feeding herself, scoping out the lay of the land, it never feels as though the action slows down. There’s always another threat, always something else lurking on the horizon — and those things explode into action with magnificent force. The Games are a fascinating look at survivalism; the “Career Tributes” from the wealthy districts may know how to fight, but they don’t know how to hunt for food, find safe berries to eat, or bandage up their wounds. Eleven tributes are killed outright in the first battle, but from then on, it becomes a matter of playing advantages and covering for weaknesses. It’s gruesome, deeply troubling, heart-poundingly thrilling, and unexpectedly emotional. There was one moment that got to me, not because of who died or the way in which she did, but because of Katniss’s reaction to it — and the unexpected benefit that Katniss received afterwards. I don’t want to throw in a spoiler, but it’s a really poignant moment, and it made me tear up. And then it’s right back to breath-holding suspense.

So, this book is fantastic. Collins has created not only a fascinating dystopia, but also an eminently relatable heroine. I’m usually not a fan of first person narratives; they have to be done really well for me to like them. And this one is. Katniss’s voice is wonderful, practical and laced with sardonic humour, but you also get to hear her struggling with vulnerabilities she doesn’t want to admit to. She is not a perfect person, but she’s a tremendously engaging protagonist.

I know I’m late to the train, and I don’t know why. It wasn’t for lack of interest, I just somehow never got around to picking this book up. Probably no one actually needs my recommendation to read this book, as I suspect I was the last person in America not to have done so already. But if you do need it, here it is: Read this book. Immediately if not sooner. I’m off to get Catching Fire and Mockingjay right now, because I can’t stand not knowing what happens next.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, by J K Rowling

Title: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Author: J K Rowling
Year of Publication: 2005
Length: 768 pages
Genre: magical realism / young adult
New or Re-Read?: Re-Read
Rating: 4 stars
Spoilers: for the series

I haven’t re-read this book as many times as the others. Next to Chamber of Secrets, it’s my least-favourite book of the series. Which is not to say it doesn’t have its moments — it does, some spectacular ones, and I actually like it a lot better when read in conjunction with Deathly Hallows. As a prelude to Book 7, it does a decent job. As a book on its own, though, I have trouble enjoying it — not least because I feel it’s a step back from Order of the Phoenix in a lot of ways. I’m not sure if this was maybe intentional — a sort of “calm before the storm” — but it feels odd. To have all the intensity of OotP, the ramp-up, the revelations… and then, in HBP, we lose so much momentum.

For example, it will never not bother me that the DA stops having meetings. What sense does that make? Just because Umbridge is gone? There is now actually a war on, and yet Harry stops dispensing his wisdom to the people who looked to him for support and guidance. I think the DA was also incredibly useful as a method of inter-House bonding, for forming networks and relationships. My heart breaks for Luna, when she obliquely calls Harry out on his dropped interest: “It was like having friends,” indeed.

And then there’s the amount of time this book spends on the fluctuations of teenage hormones. With a war on, with people disappearing and dying, with the near-deaths at Hogwarts itself… and yet our main characters spend far more of their energy on snogging, or arguing about snogging. Now, I realise this is entirely realistic. I remember being sixteen, and so I know that sixteen-year-olds do not always have the most appropriate priorities. But, to me, it doesn’t make for entertaining literature.

It is nice that we get to see more of Hogwarts-as-Hogwarts in this book. In a lot of ways, this is the least disrupted year since Harry’s first — what with the Chamber of Secrets, patrolling Dementors, the Triwizard Tournament, and then Umbridge’s reign. I always wanted to see more of just what goes on in the classrooms (and am hoping for some more of that on Pottermore), and Half-Blood Prince delivers. (Except, oddly, in Defence Against the Dark Arts, of which we see comparatively little, considering that Snape’s in charge of it now). We also get to see more Quidditch, which makes me happy. I know JK got tired of writing it, but Quidditch is about the one sport I would actually follow, so I enjoyed it.

I also remember this book throwing me for a loop right from the start, the first time I read it. In the previous five books, anytime we got information that wasn’t from Harry’s point of view, it was still because he was “seeing” it somehow — through a dream, or a vision, or the Pensieve. Half-Blood Prince opens with not one, but two chapters detailing events that Harry knows nothing about. And I’ve never been quite sure how to feel about that. On the one hand, it’s great information to have. (Spinner’s End, incidentally, is one of my favourite chapters in the entire series, largely because a friend and I had that exact conversation between Bellatrix and Snape while RPing, long before this book was ever released. It was nice to feel so thoroughly validated in our views on the characters). But on the other hand, it’s a jarring derivation in style, this far through the series. It changes the narrative rules.

One development I do think is interesting is that Harry spends this entire book being 100% correct about Draco Malfoy, and yet… no one listens to him. Everyone, including his friends, dismisses it as a product of their long rivalry. (There’s also an interesting parallel there, with Bellatrix and Snape at the beginning of the book — Bella is, of course, 100% correct about Snape, and she damn well knows it, even if she doesn’t know why and can’t prove it). It’s frustrating to read, and I can understand Harry’s lack of patience with the whole mess — Dumbledore spends half his time treating Harry like a grown man who not only deserves but needs to know crucial information, and the other half still telling him to blindly trust and not to question.

So, overall, this is not among my favourites of the HP series — but, as I said with Chamber of Secrets, even one that’s weak in comparison to the others is still a sight better than a lot of books out there. It improved on re-read, and it improves read in conjunction with Deathly Hallows.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, by J K Rowling

Title: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Author: J K Rowling
Year of Publication: 2003
Length: 766 pages
Genre: magical realism / young adult
New or Re-Read?: Re-read, many times
Rating: 5 stars
Spoiler Warning: For the whole series

It is exactly no secret that this is my favourite of the Harry Potter books.

I love a good rebellion. I love the sensation of fighting against incredible odds, of using subversion, of righteous indignation bubbling over into furious action. And so my favourite part of this book is towards the end, when the students launch a full-scale insurrection against Dolores Umbridge. (Umbridge, by the way, is one of the most successful villains of all time. She’s hateable in a way that’s so much more real than Voldemort, at least prior to Deathly Hallows — I remember just wanting to reach into the book and throttle her fat little neck). The scene where Fred and George take their leave of Hogwarts is one of my favourite moments in the entire series, and I laugh my way through the entire section where J K describes how the students (and other professors) are undermining Umbridge’s reign. From Lee Jordan levitating Nifflers into the office, to the vast outbreaks of illness thanks to the Skiving Snackboxes, to the firework resolutely spelling “POO”, to McGonagall telling Peeves that the chandelier unscrews the other way, I just love every little bit of it. And J K builds to this point magnificently — so much of the book up till that point is so frustrating. As a reader, you feel Harry’s sense of being boxed in, headed off at every turn, every opportunity for relief nipped in the bud — and so the emotional release, the sense of triumph, is augmented, greater for its contrast to the stifling atmosphere that came before.

But I also love the overall idea of the Order, and it’s mirror in the DA. Even as Sirius reminds us that the world isn’t split into good people and Death Eaters, we do see the lines of battle emerge. And I love the glimpses we get into the First War. Anyone who’s read the fanfiction I wrote during the height of my involvement in HP fandom knows that my fascination lies in those years — I wish we knew more about them, and I love to explore them myself. So I love the information we get about it in OotP, from the family entanglements, all the information on the House of Black, to the composition of the Order the first time around, as we see them in that picture of Mad-Eye’s. It also makes me wonder where the Ministry stood during the First War — How involved were they? Did the Order have to be as much of a secret? After all, we know that Mad-Eye and the Longbottoms were Aurors and in the Order, which wouldn’t necessarily mean as much, considering Kingsley and Tonks playing double-duty the second time around, except that we’re also explicitly told that the Aurors were responsible for bringing in many of the dark wizards associated with Voldemort. So I wonder if the Order was quite as taboo as it had to be, thanks to Fudge’s thickness, the second time around.

And then I love what J K does with the DA, not least because it brings out the potential in so many characters. Neville Longbottom starts to show the flicker of badassery that we see from him in Deathly Hallows. Some of the students who might otherwise be dismissed as frivolous, like Lavender, Parvati, etc, show real aptitude and concentration, devoting their energy to these practices. It’s a great display of inter-House unity, excepting the total absence of any Slytherins — but at least it brings in the Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs, showing that Gryffindor House does not have a monopoly on fighting the good fight (or on talent, for that matter). The greatest transformation, though, is that of Harry into a leader and a teacher. He starts to find out just what he can do, how he can inspire, encourage, and correct. I love when he gets a set of practical defensive magic books for Christmas from Sirius and Lupin and, rather than seeing them as more homework, gets excited to look through them and find ideas for new lessons. I know that J K tells us that Harry goes on to become an Auror and all of that, but I sort of hope, once he’s starting to be a bit long in the tooth for that profession (not to mention that I don’t know what Aurors do when there isn’t a wizarding war on), that he comes back to Hogwarts to teach Defence Against the Dark Arts. (I also hope that he went and played Quidditch professionally for a while before becoming an Auror, because, c’mon, the guy has earned a break — but that’s a different theory entirely).

So, I love this book.

But this is also the book that broke my heart. The first time I read it, I sobbed for ages over Sirius’s death. Ran wailing to my mother in the next room, actually, and then sniffled my way through the remainder of the book. Because it’s just so unfair. After all he went through, and after a year of frustration, of all his energy and vitality chained up, given no outlet… and then he just dies. For so long I was one of those who refused to believe it. I knew, after all, that every hero’s journey includes a visit to the Underworld, and I was certain we’d be seeing Sirius again. As it turned out, I was right about that, though not quite in the way I’d hoped. I don’t think it was until after I finished Half-Blood Prince that I accepted that nothing was going to bring him back.

I blame Harry, Dumbledore, and Snape in equal parts for Sirius’s death. I blame Sirius for it a bit, too, because of how he treated Kreacher, which was definitely wrong — but given the tragedy of his life, the thirteen years of Azkaban leaving him emotionally arrested in so many ways, I don’t know that he psychologically could have treated Kreacher any other way. (I admit a bias, of course, with how positive I am on Sirius). The other three, though — okay, maybe I’m being a bit unfair to Harry, who is only fifteen himself (and I generally cut him a lot more slack in this book than many readers have — I think CAPSLOCK!HARRY is completely understandable to anyone who remembers being fifteen) — but his refusal to even look at the communicating mirror bewilders me. That would have saved so much trouble right there. Dumbledore should’ve known better in how he treated both Harry and Sirius. I still can’t bring myself to believe there was nothing Sirius could have done to help the Order, that there was no way to get him out of that house (or that there was no one who couldn’t have moved in with him, so at least he wasn’t brooding and alone there). Knowing both of those personalities, Dumbledore should have known that ignorance and inaction were not the way to achieve the desired ends. And Snape has no excuse for his complete failure to teach Harry Occlumency. I know Harry was being recalcitrant, but Snape, you’re a professor, this is not new to you, and he really doesn’t do a damn thing to help Harry learn. Telling the kid to empty his mind clearly was not an effective strategy and man do I empathize with that — it’s the reason I’m crap at any kind of meditation and can’t do yoga. It doesn’t come along that easily for some people, especially those whose passions run high and hot. Snape didn’t teach. He just expected Harry to figure it out himself, which was totally unhelpful. It also might’ve helped if either Dumbledore or Snape had warned Harry that Voldemort might’ve been trying to plant false images; then Harry wouldn’t have assumed that his vision of Sirius was as true as his vision of Arthur had been. He could’ve been on his guard, even if he was seeing things.

And all of that is what breaks my heart about Sirius’s death more than anything — it was so needless, so wasteful, so avoidable. Which is a harsh truth about life, really, but of anyone that J K could’ve killed off, especially so early, she picked exactly the one person I would have begged her to save. I expect she knew what an impact it would have on her readers — that, like Harry, we’d come to see Sirius as a font of hope, as someone who would treat Harry more like an adult, give him the information others held back, protect him like a father, and maybe, someday, give Harry the home and family he’s yearned for his whole life. She builds up Sirius’s potential so much, reminds us how handsome and vital he was in his youth just to underscore the damage the years have done to him, shows us how he’s been fettered, how much he strives against being chained in, how much his passionate nature needs freedom, and she makes us hope that there will be a better life out there for him in the future — and then she cuts it off. It’s brutal.

There’s also some brilliant, though really sad, foreshadowing in this book. It anticipates Deathly Hallows in a lot of subtle ways that I might not have picked up on so strongly if I hadn’t been listening to the DH audiobook. Take, for instance, Mad-Eye Moody’s paranoia over getting Harry out of Privet Drive, which most of the other members of the Advance Guard sort of roll their eyes at and treat as a joke. Well, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you. By the time we get to the Seven Harrys in DH, no one question’s Mad-Eye’s plans. It’s also interesting to mirror Fred and George’s decision to leave Hogwarts with Harry, Ron, and Hermione’s imperative to skip their seventh year. (It’s sort of an interesting message for  J K to send — that education is important, but can only take you so far, and that the institutionalized program of education isn’t necessarily for everyone). Or take the flip-flops in the Ministry (a commentary on the general instability of politics if ever there was one). The MoM goes from adoring Harry in PoA to despising and ridiculing him in OotP, then to protecting him in DH, down to Rufus Scrimgeour’s ultimate sacrifice, all the way to working as a branch of Voldemort’s operation, declaring war on Muggleborns and hunting Harry down as Undesirable #1. There’s so much that goes into the transition of the war from underground to explicit. The characters also have to deal with the absence of Dumbledore in both books, though in very different ways: in OotP,it’s first his emotional absence from Harry’s life, his detachment and lack of engagement; in DH, it’s his death, the true, permanent loss. I wonder if all of these parallels between the two books were intentional, if J K thought them out and structured them into the greater shape of the series, or if they just sort of blossomed along organically with the story.

I think this may be the longest review I’ve yet written on this blog, which speaks to how much this book means to me and how much of my brainpower and creative energy I’ve devoted to it over the years. I suspect it’s no coincidence that OotP is the book where I got really deeply not just into the series, but into the fandom — and so this book, and so many of the details revealed in it, have a powerful emotional attachment for me. There are so many memories pressed within the pages, and each time I re-read, I get to revisit the discussions and arguments I had with friends, the RP threads exploring ideas, the effort and planning that went into my fanfics, and the glorious sense of accomplishment when I wrote something that I thought really nailed it — all the wonder of building a little place for myself inside this magnificent universe.

Thanks for that, J K. It’s been priceless.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, by J K Rowling

Title: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Author: J K Rowling
Year of Publication: 2000
Length: 734 pages
Genre: magical realism / young adult
New or Re-Read?: Re-Read, many times
Rating: 4.5 stars
Spoiler Warning: In effect for the whole series

It’s strange, because everyone remembers this as the book where Voldemort returns, where Cedric dies, where the horror really begins. And yet, reading it this go-round, what struck me most is how funny this book is. I think it’s the funniest of the whole series, up until the end. There are just so many brilliant jokes in it — and, for the first time, the humour’s starting to become a bit more adult in some places. I mean, this is where we first hear about…

“An excellent point,” said Professor Dumbledore. “My own brother, Aberforth, was prosecuted for practicing inappropriate charms on a goat. It was all over the papers, but did Aberforth hide? No, he did not! He held his head high and went about his business as usual! Of course, I’m not entirely sure he can read, so that may not have been bravery.”

Ahh, Aberforth. (In light of what we see of him later, though, Albus’s disdain seems a bit unfair — but that’s a discussion for Book 7). So much of the humour in Goblet of Fire is also so dry and subtle — she’s not playing for the laughs here, she’s just letting the wit take over. As in:

Just then, Neville caused a slight diversion by turning into a large canary.

Or the bit about Professor Flitwick “whizzing resignedly past” the group while they’re practicing Banishing Charms. And then even at the tail end of the book, even after the worst has happened, JK lightens the load a bit, when everyone hexes Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle on the train. There’s comic relief throughout this book, and I wonder if that’s part of the books maturing — when things start to get heavier, you need more of the lightness to balance it all out.

The story also starts to feel so big here — in part because we start getting the international angle. Actually, one of my major complaints about the series is that JK never did as much with that as I had been hoping she would. I was so hoping that Fleur and Krum were going to end up being really significant for bringing in foreign allies as support against Voldemort… but, nada, most we got was Fleur marrying Bill (which, admittedly, I do enjoy — just not quite as politically important as it might be) and Krum getting a personality transplant. I also love that it took so much longer just to get to Hogwarts in this book, because you start seeing so much more of the rest of the Wizarding World. The World Cup is magnificent for that — this glimpse into what wizarding culture is like outside of Britain. Or, really, just what adult wizards are like when they get together. And even if I don’t understand why adult wizards have so much trouble dressing themselves, it did give us another hilarious moment, with Archie and his love for a healthy breeze. This is also where the Ministry gets introduced properly — I know we first meet Fudge in Book 2, we get a little more in Book 3, but this is the first time we find out more about how it really works, and we start meeting so many more Ministry officials. It sets things up nicely for actually seeing the Ministry in Order of the Phoenix.

At the same time, though, this definitely is the real beginning of the darkness. You get just a taste of it in Prisoner of Azkaban, but here, it becomes real. Voldemort is back. The title of the last chapter, “The Beginning”, is perfectly fitting. This is the beginning of the Second War, right here, even though it doesn’t become open war until much later.

I remember the chills I got the first time I read the end of this book, too — the first time reading:

“Sirius, I need you to set off at once. You are to alert Remus Lupin, Arabella Figg, Mundungus Fletcher — the old crowd. Lie low at Lupin’s for a while. I will contact you there.”

That excited me so goddamn much. Because it may be dark and terrible and scary, but there’s that glimmer of hope — there are still people who will fight. And they can be brought back together. It’s the sense of camaraderie, of banding together, of being the happy few standing against all odds — there’s something, forgive the term, magical about that. I also love the revelation towards the end of the book that Sirius and Dumbledore have been in contact all year. I would love to read that correspondence. (Or I might just, y’know, fic it for my own benefit).

This book, much as I enjoy it, isn’t without plotholes. It’s sort of a stretch to believe that Barty Jr couldn’t have found some way to get Harry to Voldemort way earlier on — the whole “it has to be at the third task” plot doesn’t really hold up to a lot of scrutiny. I would say it’s hard to imagine that the Triwizard participants would be placed in so much real danger, dragons and sphinxes and acromantuale and the like, but… given what we see of wizarding education, no, that part actually makes complete sense. The spacing of the tasks across the year doesn’t make much sense, though. Barty Jr’s escape from prison stretches credulity.

Overall, Goblet of Fire is a really solid bridge book in the series. It really does straddle the line between the lighter half and the darker half of the saga. It’s probably my fourth favourite out of the seven, but that’s only because the three I rank above it are just so out-of-the-park amazing in my opinion. This book is, as its 4.5 stars indicate, really amazing. And it’s a magnificent launching pad. I’m having to force myself to alternate projects before I start on Order of the Phoenix — which is, full disclosure, my very favourite of the HP books, so I’m quite excited to return to it.

The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, by Catherynne M Valente

Title: The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making (Fairyland #1)
Author: Catherynne M Valente
Year of Publication: 2011
Length: 247 pages
Genre: fantasy-folklore / young adult
New or Re-Read?: Brand New!
Rating: 4.75 stars

This book is so thoroughly charming.

I love the way Valente weaves stories. I adored her style in The Orphan’s Tales (which I will eventually re-read and review here, but in the meantime, I’ll just say: if you haven’t read them yet, do so, immediately), and it’s just as delightful in The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making.

September is one of the Ravished, invited into Fairyland by the Green Wind and a Leopard. Given this chance, she jumps at it, without a second thought or even waving goodbye to home as she departs — and, as the narrator tells us, in the moment that made me know I was going to be passionately in love with this book:

One ought not to judge her: All children are heartless. They have not grown a heart yet, which is why they can climb tall trees and say shocking things and leap so very high that grown-up hearts flutter in terror. Hearts weigh quite a lot. That is why it takes so long to grow one. But, as in their reading and arithmetic and drawing, different children progress at different speeds. (It is well known that reading quickens the growth of a heart like nothing else.) Some small ones are terrible and fey, Utterly Heartless. Some are dear and sweet and Hardly Heartless at all.

And this idea of the heart traces through the rest of the book. As soon as September makes it into Fairyland (after passing through customs), she has to choose which path to follow: to lose her way, her mind, her life, or her heart. And she reasons that, of the four options (with losing her way being the direction she just came from), losing her heart seems the least perilous option. Pretty soon, she meets some witches and accepts what seems like a very small quest — but, as is the way of things in Fairyland, it spirals into a much larger one. She also encounters a Wyverary (the son of a Wyvern and a Library), who knows everything there is to know about anything, as long as it begins with the letters A-Through-L; the Marquess, a rather nasty piece of work; her panther, Iago; a Marid, a djinn of the sea, named Saturday; a herd of free-range bicycles; several proper Fairies; a pooka and her mother; a golem made of soap; graduate students in alchemy; a land where it’s always Autumn; houses and villages which get in the way; and a whole host of other fascinating personages and places.

The whole story is enchanting. September may be Somewhat Heartless, but she has a strong moral compass and demonstrates tremendous loyalty to her friends. The narrative voice hits just the right balance, childlike wonder mixed with wry humour and a fair few sophisticated jokes, invoking the sense of old-fashioned fairy tales without crossing the line into too terribly twee. Valente indulges in enough description to evoke the otherworldliness of September’s surroundings and encounters, without losing the story. The world itself is whimsical, but with a very definite underlying structure. Fairyland is not pure chaos, not entirely random. Though characters and events may seem, at first, to exist in a vacuum, independent of other parts of the story, there are tenuous threads connecting them, and I imagine more will come to light in future books (and can I just say how excited I am that this is the first of a series?).  I can easily understand why Neil Gaiman contributed a cover blurb: The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland… reminds me of Stardust and his poem “Instructions” more than anything else, though I’ve seen other comparisons to Alice in Wonderland. (Not having read that since I was a very small thing, I can’t comment on similarities there).

What I like best about Valente’s writing, though — and this was true of The Orphan’s Tales as well — is that the writing gets into your head. For a while after reading, the world just seems a bit more magical. Your thought patterns take a subtle shift and seem to echo the graceful, explorative prose. At least, mine do, anyway. This is a story that sticks with you. It doesn’t stay locked up inside the books, even though Valente tells us that is the whole purpose of books:

…no one may know the shape of the tale in which they move. And, perhaps, we do not truly know what sort of beast it is, either. Stories have a way of changing faces. They are unruly things, undisciplined, given to delinquency and the throwing of erasers. This is why we must close them up into thick, solid books, so they cannot get out and cause trouble.

I don’t know if the Fairyland books will cause so much trouble, but they’re certainly not staying safely in their pages. This is the sort of story that lingers, that follows you around, whispering its little truths and revelations to you long after your eyes have left the printed word. And I find that so magnificent.

I knock a quarter-point off simply because September doesn’t seem like she’s 12. More like 9 or 10. She just doesn’t have that cusp-of-puberty feel, and it distracted me a couple of times. I wonder how that will progress through the rest of the novels.

Overall, though, this book is nearly flawless. It’s a wonderful celebration of imagination and a gorgeous venture into Fairyland. This is meant to be a children’s or a young adult novel, and I’m sure I’ll read it to my own small ones when I someday have them, but there’s absolutely no reasons for adults not to enjoy it themselves, on its own merits, as well. The tale is, as all the best are, thoroughly transporting. I eagerly await the next installment.