There is a Door in This Darkness, by Kristin Cashore

I was immediately interested in Kristin Cashore's new novel, because she's a wonderful writer,  and I loved her fantasy novels Graceling, Fire and Bitterblue. (I have not yet read the last two in the series, because Bitterblue was a little heavy, and I've been looking for lighter novels for a few years now. Since 2020, in fact.) 

The title of this one gave me pause, and the premise even more so. Was I ready to read a book set during the pandemic? It turns out the answer was yes, if the book was this one.

The blurb for this book is accurate but doesn't in any way do it justice. It's much more than "magic-tinged," and it's a lot more wise, hopeful and whimsical than it sounds. Wilhelmina is such a real, relatable character, and so are all the members of her family and her friends, and their relationships—all the relationships—make this book glow. I use the word deliberately, because light is a theme and a motif running through the book—if there's a door in the darkness, light is what's coming in.

I'm not sure magical realism is quite the right way to categorize this book. In my own less-than-rigorous definition, magical realism doesn't have any explanation for the fantastical elements. In this book, the fantastical is random and quirky, involving birds and doughnuts and obelisks, [ever-so-slightly spoilery] but there is also mention of tarot, and grandparents who are "practitioners of the craft." I wouldn't say this book is about witches or Wicca or any particular mythology or spiritual tradition—more that it recognizes "there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio," and the fantastical elements are representative metaphors. (Which kind of aligns with magical realism; I think I'll stop trying to define anything!)

However you define it, the magic was fun: it worked as a beautiful metaphor but also to drive the plot in almost a treasure-hunt-y way. 

This is another book with three aunts (see A Sorceress Comes to Call), and I have to say I won't soon tire of this trope! Wilhelmina's aunts were just lovely. The narration alternates between present day (Oct 2020) and childhood summers spent at the aunts' big house in the country, and it really does feel like "her life was a string of lights, one for every summer she'd spent with them." Then there are the friends, Julie and Bee, and what an exquisite and realistic portrayal of friendship! The dips into the past allow us to watch the friendship form and develop and to fall in love with all three children as they grow up. We even get a romance, which I won't spoil! All the kinds of love (there are siblings and parents too) and all the ways love is hard, and rewarding, and all the ways the pandemic made love both harder and more rewarding.

If you think you might be ready to read a book set during the pandemic, at the time of the 2020 election, then this might be a good book to start with. It acknowledges the stress, fear, frustration, loss and utter weirdness of that time, specifically of being a teenager at that time, and it offers a way to process. It's not a particularly subtle book, but I think the theme of finding light in the darkness, of balancing realism with hope, is one we need to be hit over the head with!

The Mirror Season, by Anna-Marie McLemore

The Mirror Season is a stunning, devastating book. Big huge trigger warning for graphic sexual assault. But it's such an incredibly healing, affirming, cathartic, book.  I can't possibly recommend or not recommend it to anyone, since I don't have that trauma in my life to deal with. But I can say that she deals with it gently and ruthlessly, like a nurse picking broken glass out of a wound.

The writing is gorgeous. If you've read McLemore before you know her prose is vibrant and lyrical. In this book I think she is a little more spare, more precise. Every word exactly the right one in the right place. In her previous books I've enjoyed the colour and depth magic realism brings to her stories, but the connections, the metaphors didn't always land for me. In this one, metaphor and magic realism and allusions to The Snow Queen interweave so brilliantly to illuminate her themes and characters that when I wasn't sobbing about what was happening on the page I was crying with how beautifully it was all coming together. 

Probably the best book I've read all year. I love Ciela and Lock with all the pieces of my broken heart.

Also, I need to find a pastelería so I can try pan dulce in all its delicious-sounding variations! And I looked up a recipe for cazuela, and that's what we're having for dinner tonight (except I don't have any of the right spices or chilies, so it will be a pale imitation).

Cybils Awards Announced!

Ahem. Two days ago, actually. But in case you're as behind the times as I am, here's the link to all the winners. And the book we chose for YA Speculative Fiction is . . .

Illuminae, by Amy Kaufman and Jay Kristoff. I reviewed it last year when I first read it, and on a reread I still found it a lot of fun. We judged that it would have a ton of appeal to teen audiences, and we were impressed by the innovative format, which made the whole reading experience a little meta.

We did have a lot of debate before deciding on Illuminae, however, because we got a stellar short list to choose amongst. So I want to highlight the rest of the books, because they all deserve notice and recognition.

This Savage Song, by Victoria Schwab, is a dystopian Romeo and Juliet (sort-of, except they don't actually fall in love, so really not at all, but it totally has the "Two households both alike in dignity" thing going on) in the same vein as Marie Lu's Legend series. I really liked the monsters—the concept of how they're created, and the way the story questions what it means to be a monster. I liked the way music is used; I liked the way family relationships are explored. I loved both protagonists, their struggles with their own identities, and the prickly friendship they develop. The story comes to a satisfying close but definitely needs a sequel, which I will be eager to read.

Still Life With Tornado, by A.S. King. Brilliantly written book about an artist who can't do art anymore. Or about a family falling apart, or starting to heal. It kept surprising me, as King's books tend to do. It didn't seem like speculative fiction, except that it was definitely surreal. The protagonist is incredibly annoying at first, but just funny enough to put up with, until she breaks your heart. It's one of those books with lots of pieces that are interesting enough on their own, but when they finally all come together you have to gasp a little at how beautiful the final picture is. Not an easy book to describe, but a book you have to read.

When The Moon Was Ours, by Anna-Marie McLemore is gorgeous, lovely, luminescent, tender, and a little bit unsettling. Magical realism at its most magical, it's a love story between Miel, who grows roses from her wrist, and Samir, who has a secret that, above all else, the four Bonner sisters cannot find out. There are glass pumpkins and cures for lovesickness and paper moons, and it's really not like any other book I've read. It has important things to say about choosing our own identity, and it says them beautifully.

I'll highlight the other three in my next post!