Touchstone Trilogy, by Andrea K. Höst

Did you know it's Science Fiction Month? At least, it is according to the bookish folk over at Oh, The Books and Rinn Reads. They're hosting a month full of blogs and events that sounds like a sci-fastic idea, and I would definitely sign myself up to participate if I wasn't going to Morocco for three weeks.

But in the spirit of celebrating Science Fiction in all its mutations, I offer you this awesome alternate world science fantasy trilogy which you should definitely read this month, if not sooner.

Stray, Lab Rat One, and Caszandra are the diary of Cassandra Devlin, Australian girl who accidentally ends up on another planet and has to deal with what she finds there. There's lots of cool plot and setting details, but the strength of these novels is Cassandra's voice and character. Normal, practical, stoic but not immune to panic and despair, with a great self-deprecating sense of humour—it's the way she deals with everything the plot and setting throws at her that riveted me to the page.

I debated whether to say anything about the plot in this review. I read it without really knowing what I was in store for, so I got the fun of discovering all the surprising things that happen right along with Cassandra, and I really enjoyed that experience. So if you don't want any spoilers at all, then stop reading this blog, take my word for it that you'll like these books (and if you don't believe me, believe Sherwood Smith and Rachel Neumeier), and go start reading Stray.




Okay, you still need a little more convincing?

Stray begins with Cassandra walking home from school in Australia and accidentally walking out of the world.* I think we all (all of us who read Narnia, anyway) secretly wish that would happen to us, but  Höst takes that trope and gives it the realistic treatment it deserves: how would an average Australian girl figure out how not to die on a strange, unpopulated planet with only the supplies in her school knapsack? I was completely sucked into the story and probably would have kept reading even if the whole story was just Cassandra alone vs planet.

(If it's sounding good to you then stop reading now!)

But then she gets picked up by some patrollers and taken to the safe planet where people actually live, and injected with a nanotech interface in her brain so she can learn the language and figure out how to live in this completely alien (but human) society. And that was pretty cool, and I would have kept reading even if it was all just adapt-to-new-technology-and-social-norms-and-make-friends-and-come-to-terms-with-never-going-home-again.

(Last chance. Don't make me tell you what happens next. Just go get the book now!)

But it turns out that a lot of people here have various crazy psychic powers, and Cassandra discovers that she enhances people's powers when they touch her. So off she gets whisked to the psychic ninja warrior training facility, because this planet is constantly fighting off monsters from non-real planes of existence, and someone who enhances psychic powers would come in really handy.

That is definitely all I'm going to tell you. No mention of really hot warrior guys in way cool form-fitting nanotech suits will cross my lips.

These books were a lot of fun, and they made more than five hours of travel time fly by. They also had so much substance, all kinds of interesting ideas, such fascinating world-building—that I know I'll be rereading them.

Something chocolate and chewy . . . oh! the dessert we shared when I took my daughter out for dinner in Ottawa: chocolate brownie tart with peanut butter mousse. Mmmmm. Yes.



*That sentence suddenly reminded me of a book I remember loving when I was young: A Walk Out of the World by Ruth Nichols. I don't remember anything about the plot, but just seeing the cover again when I googled it brought back intense happy feelings. This book obviously impacted me greatly; I should try to get my hands on a copy and reread it.

Conjured, by Sarah Beth Durst

I guess it must be the season subconsciously influencing me to pick spooky books. Or maybe there's a dark magic spell influencing all the authors I like to write spooky books. The last Sarah Beth Durst book I read was Vessel, which was a great desert adventure fantasy. Conjured is something entirely different, and I couldn't put it down.

First line: "Your name is Eve. Remember that."

Main characters who have forgotten everything about their past are always fun. The mystery of identity has to be the central mystery of everyone's life. So a character trying to piece herself together from a very few clues and dreams is always compelling and sympathetic. Said character instantly becomes more interesting when she can do odd magical things without knowing why. Suspense is added when she doesn't know who is telling the truth or who she can trust, and when everyone around her seems pretty terrified of something awful happening to her.

Conjured has all these excellent building blocks and out of them Durst creates a fascinating, terrifying, heartwrenching, living, breathing tale of love and freedom and what it means to be a person. Eve doesn't know how to undo a seatbelt, can't remember that she licked jelly donut off her fingers last week, doesn't know why the agent she's supposed to call Malcolm makes her feel safe and the one called Aunt Nicki doesn't like her. But out of all her emptiness her personality shines. She is creating herself before our eyes with every choice she makes. She chooses to cooperate, to pretend to be normal, but as "Malcolm" and "Aunt Nicki" introduce her into the world, her choices broaden. Particularly when she meets Zach at the library. (I really liked Zach.)

The visions that may or may not be pieces of her past are excellent creepy carnival scenes, textured with colour and scent and emotion. At first they're so cryptic they make no sense, but as the images build they start to hint at their own story. Like Eve, we're given all the puzzle pieces but it's hard to put them together without knowing what they're supposed to look like.

I just went to Goodreads to get the link for this book, and I was surprised by some of the negative reviews, but I can understand them. You have to be patient with this kind of narration: it's frustrating to spend half the book not knowing what's going on—but that's the frustration Eve is living through, so for me it created empathy and suspense.

The writing is beautiful. Durst uses all her senses in her descriptions, and she has surprising and apt metaphors. I love how her magic is wondrous and beautiful even when it's underlain with horror.

Another excellent Halloween read, and I guess that's why pumpkins seem appropriate. Maple pumpkin pie, I think, another invention of my daughter's that I didn't get to try because I'm a five-hour flight away.

DWJ Month: Let's celebrate Diana Wynne Jones!

It's Diana Wynne Jones month, you say? Who says? Who decides these things? Well, in this case it's Kristen at We Be Reading, who is going to have a DWJ post EVERY DAY this month. I salute her boundless energy and ambition! My ambitious plan is to read all Kristen's posts so that I can be reminded of DWJ books I haven't read for a while (or at all), and then read as many of those books as I can this month. And I might post once or twice about them.

This is great fun because I love rereading books when it's been long enough that I don't remember what happens in them. That was the case with Time of the Ghost and House of Many Ways.

House of Many Ways is a sequel to Howl's Moving Castle. Sophie and Howl show up as supporting characters in several very amusing scenes, but the heroine is the quietly stubborn Charmain, who would really rather be reading a book, thank you very much, but if she absolutely has to go take care of her great uncle's house while he is being treated by elves for a strange illness, then fine, at least it gets her away from her annoying parents. Little does she know what she's getting herself in for! I love the house, which similar to Howl's castle in its space-bending magic, but with its own personality and rules. I love Charmain's relationship with the unexpected apprentice who is rubbish at magic. (Charmain echoes Sophie's way of dealing with magical disasters: you just have to tell things very firmly what you want them to do!) I have a special spot of affection for the well-meaning King and Princess, who are doing their very best even though they have no idea what's going on under their very noses. I don't think it's too spoilery to say that the villains get a very satisfying comeuppance at the end!  A bit quieter and lighter than Howl's Moving Castle, but the same world, the same magic, the same fun.

Time of the Ghost has an entirely different feel to it: spooky and twisty, more like Fire and Hemlock or Hexwood, except for a slightly younger audience. It's a book that I don't want to spoil by revealing anything about the plot, because nothing is as it seems and you figure things out at the same time as the narrator does. I will say that DWJ gets the experience of being a ghost down perfect.* And I'll also say that this book convinced me never to participate in a seance or pretend to worship an imaginary ancient being: you never know what you might inadvertently awaken! (Reminds me of Verdigris Deep, by Francis Hardinge: better not wish on a wishing well, either!) There's some beautiful landscape description in this book, and it's also very interesting to read it after reading DWJ's autobiography, since many aspects of the family are taken from her own childhood (a rather terrifying thought).

*Because I totally know what that's like.

Diana Wynne Jones' Magid Series

I'm doling out the Diana Wynne Jones books I haven't read yet, saving them as treats for myself, knowing there won't be any more. (Although there is one coming out this year, The Islands of Chaldea, which she had left unfinished on her death and was finished by her sister.)(It's an interesting story—the story of its completion, I mean. I look forward to reading the book.)

I read The Merlin Conspiracy when it first came out (in 2003), not realizing that it had a prequel. (They call it a companion novel: the plots are entirely separate, but the events in Deep Secret happen first, and the character of Nick Mallory makes a lot more sense in Merlin if you get to know him first in Secret.) Deep Secret (1997) was re-released last year by Harper Collins with a cover to match the rest of their Diana Wynne Jones editions, and I bought it for myself at Christmas, happy to discover another book set in the Magid universe. (They'll probably come out with a matching paperback of Merlin, which I'll want but won't be able to justify, since I already have the hardcover. Sigh.)

Deep Secret was a lot of fun. I'd say the universe of the Magids is a grown-up version of the Chrestomanci universe. The Magids are like a bunch of Chrestomancis trying to maintain the balance of magic among the worlds, only they're a little less omniscient and more hapless. Deep Secret is told from the point-of-view of the youngest Magid, Rupert, who, of course, is given the least pleasant magid tasks, and he keeps screwing them up. His attempts to get things unravelled end him up at the Hotel Babylon where a sci fi convention is going on, and doesn't Jones just have fun skewering that world! (Very lovingly, though!) As with the Chrestomanci books, the forces of good in the universe work through the bungled messes everyone makes of things and the tangled plot threads get tied up very neatly despite Rupert's worst efforts. (If you enjoyed Gaiman's Stardust, you'll appreciate this different take on the How Many Miles to Babylon nursery rhyme.)

The Merlin Conspiracy is set in an alternate British Isles, with a lot more magic than our world. There are some nasty people conspiring against the King, and only Roddy, Grundo and Nick (and the really annoying twins Isadora and Ilsabil) have any chance of stopping them. First they each have to learn how their own magic works (a common theme for Jones: if you think you're not talented, it's because your talent doesn't work the way everyone expects it to, so be patient and don't listen to them. Your talent might just be what saves the world.) It's a book crowded with magic, myth, elephants and salamanders, and a confusing number of plot threads that all affect each other in weird ways (that's what it has most in common with Deep Secret). (They also both have really odious bad people—but then all Diana Wynne Jones books have really odious bad people. She doesn't do grand villains like Sauron or Voldemort, which are actually easier to defeat because of how grandly villainous they are. Odious people are another matter entirely.)

I liked Deep Secret better than I liked The Merlin Conspiracy, but when I reread Merlin after reading Secret, I enjoyed it a lot more than my first reading. I had always felt that I was missing something about Merlin, and Secret gave me the background I needed to put it in context. (Plus, you never get all of a Diana Wynne Jones book on one read—I should know that by now!) Deep Secret is considered an adult book (I guess because the protagonist is an adult, and she mentions sex one or two times), and The Merlin Conspiracy is a children's book (because it has children protagonists), but that didn't make a difference to me. I would say Secret is funnier—it's more overtly satirizing our own world—, whereas Merlin is more absurd: funny because it juxtaposes more and more random things, but potentially annoying if you want everything to just line up and make sense.

Deep Secret is one of those layered desserts people like to call Sex in a Pan, where you basically pick all your favourite desserty things like pudding and whip cream and nuts and cakey bits and caramel and shortbread and layer them on top of each other. Or, better yet, throw them all in a bowl and call it trifle. And Merlin Conspiracy is a one-pot meal where all your favourite vegetables and meat cook together to make some sort of delicious soup or stew. They both have lots of the best ingredients, apparently randomly thrown together, and they're both more than the sum of their parts.

These might not be the first books I'd recommend if you've never read Diana Wynne Jones. (Start with Howl's Moving Castle, Charmed Life, or The Dark Lord of Derkholm.) But they are satisfying meals for fans who want to spend more time in a DWJ universe.