Paranormal

Lady Helen and the Dark Days Club

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This year at Sydney Writers Festival I attended my first TeenCon.

As we filed into the room, volunteers handed each of us a calico bag containing six books. Yes, six. Not three years old, let’s-chuck-‘em-out books, but ones published within the past year, many within the past six months. The first one I read was by Alison Goodman.

Lady Helen and the Dark Days Club was already on my radar,
as I love Alison Goodman’s writing.

However, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Descriptions in some reviews, including “Jane Austen meets Cassandra Clare”, sounded to me a lot like a Regency version of Clare’s prequel novels (The Infernal Devices). Instead I found a meticulously researched story with a heroine who is gutsy but consistent in her era.

The protagonist, Lady Helen, understands and complies with the proprieties of the time, believing in the limitations women have been socialised to accept, but though she resists the call of her growing knowledge, she steps up when it counts.

The Dark Days Club is best described as an urban fantasy
in Regency era London.

27074515The Dark Days Club begins in 1812, the second year of the Regency. Lady Helen lives with her aunt and puritanical, oppressive uncle as her parents, the Earl of Hayden and Lady Catherine, died a decade before. Rumours persist that her mother betrayed England to Napoleon.

When Lady Helen attends the palace to be presented before Queen Charlotte with other young ladies of genteel families, she is introduced to Lord Carlston, who reputedly murdered his wife three years past, though it could never be proven. So begins her entrée into the world of the Dark Days Club and the hidden perils from which it protects all of Britain.

Goodman has managed to walk a fine line.

She presents Lady Helen as a product of her age rather than an anachronistic modern feminist, while still portraying her as a strong character who doesn’t shrink from the difficult role she is being called to fulfill. Her initial reticence is a common part of any hero’s or heroine’s journey, serving only to underline her later determination.

26066905The story builds gradually, layer by layer, well-paced and well-crafted, and though this is the first in a series, provides a resolution that doesn’t leave the reader hanging.

This isn’t just a story with a Regency backdrop. Neither is it a Gothic novel, though it contains some Gothic elements. It’s a story of a Regency young woman, faced with secrets and responsibilities she’d rather not have, coming to terms with who she is in a society that has little tolerance for female non-conformity.

It’s also got some kick-ass action scenes.

I had high hopes for Lady Helen and the Dark Days Club, and it didn’t disappoint. I’ll be watching out for the second instalment, The Dark Days Pact, in January 2017.

Details
Lady Helen and the Dark Days Club
Angus & Robertson
ISBN: 9780732296094)
Pub: Dec 2015

Links
Alison Goodman’s webpage

AUSSIE-AUTHOR-2016Aussie Writers Challenge

 

 

 

image-200x300Australian Women Writers Challenge

Boo, by Neil Smith

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What if heaven was divided up by age and country? What if kids went to their own categorized afterlife until they’d lived out the number of years they should have had on earth?

cover63816-mediumOliver is a nerdy thirteen-year-old living in 1979 who’s always been picked on. When he wakes up in the hereafter it’s obvious he died from too much excitement for his defective heart, because he’d just succeeded in reciting the whole periodic table of the elements for the first time.

Life after death is not what Oliver expected. To start with, he didn’t think it existed, but if he had he wouldn’t have expected it to be in a large town with unscaleable concrete walls where everyone is American, thirteen years old and doesn’t grow older. He adjusts though, and begins making friends in a way he wasn’t able to before he died.

Then in the middle of the night, Johnny Henzel arrives. A classmate, he was one of the few who treated Oliver as a person. Johnny has been in a coma, but his sister talked to him as she sat at his bedside so he knows how they both died. They were shot by a ‘Gunboy’.

Boo* is an original and engaging story. It’s narrated by Oliver, who was given the nickname ‘Boo’ at school because he’s so pale he looks like a ghost. It’s a nice word play with the premise and themes of the story, which include fear, revenge, the impact of trauma and mental illness, forgiveness and friendship, as well as death, loss and bullying that are obvious at the beginning of the book . The voice of Oliver shines through the language, being written as though to his parents in the hope that one day he might deliver it via the fabled portals back to the pre-deceased world.

Oliver is a well-drawn character, who was obviously on the autistic spectrum in life while having high intelligence, much higher than his peers. In the Town of the thirteen-year-olds’ afterlife he finds that while his IQ may not be as high as pre-death, his ability to relate to others improves and he ponders his own response to the trade-off. Author Neil Smith uses the character’s observational abilities to good effect, allowing the reader to draw conclusions about the people around Oliver, even if he doesn’t always understanding them himself.

Of the secondary characters we get to know Johnny Henzel best, and he provides a contrast to the cerebral, withdrawn Oliver. Johnny is emotional, artistic and magnetic; he was well-liked in life, and is colourful in the afterlife. He and Oliver become friends even as he becomes obsessed with finding ‘Gunboy’ in the Town. The story of the book is really the contrasting arcs of Oliver and Johnny.

Thelma, a black girl who was murdered by racists, and Esther, a little person, round out Oliver’s friends. Thelma provides nurturing, having been in the afterlife nineteen years, and Esther has a cynical realism that Oliver relates to. As they embark on an extended journey around the Town in search of Gunboy, they provide emotional support and common sense and try to stop it from all going wrong.

Boo is clever, entertaining, and emotional without sentimentality. It explores dark themes without being macabre or offensive, and finishes with a satisfying conclusion. It may be too old for many pre-teens, as it’s an emotionally complex story, so I’d advise those looking for books for the younger end of the YA spectrum to check it out first and see if it works for the kids you know. Even if you don’t pass it on, you’ll get a really good read.

Netgalley badge* I received an e-copy of this book for review via Netgalley.

Details
Boo by Neil Smith
Random House
ISBN: 9781473518025
Published: May 2015

Deadly Novels with Bling

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dead actually finalMy first encounter with Kaz Delaney was at the inaugural Newcastle Writers Festival in 2013, and she left an impression of a bubbling personality and a flair for bling. Also writing as Kerri Lane, she had over fifty children’s and YA books published, and her YA novel Dead, Actually was garnering awards. As I got to know her a little better at writing events, her warmth and generosity outshone the bling.

So, when I finally opened Dead, Actually, I wanted to like it. I was a volunteer at the National Young Writers Festival last year (though I’m many years past the target audience) and was baby-sitting a room with a computer where festival-goers could come and write a contribution to the festival website. Without a lot to keep me busy, I bought Dead, Actually.

After a few pages, I sighed with relief. The lovely lady who was so encouraging, who wanted to foster children’s and YA authors and was so gracious to beginners could also tell a great story. It might seem obvious that such a well-published writer would tell a great story, but how often do you read a book by a well-known author and find you don’t like their work? So much about what we love in books is subjective; if it wasn’t, everyone would agree on what the best books are, we’d all read the same genres, and very few writers would find an audience. In this case, though, I could tell Kaz that I loved her book – and mean it. At this year’s Newcastle Writers Festival, I bought the sequel, Almost Dead.

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Image: http://goo.gl/gu78DW

Dead, Actually is about Willow, a teen who finds herself a magnet for the ghost of a classmate. JoJo is just as obnoxious dead as she was alive, and harasses Willow into investigating the mysterious circumstances around her death. Willow needs to convince her best friend, Macey, and Macey’s brother, Seth (who she’s crushed on for years), that she’s not crazy. She also has to deal with JoJo’s shallow and vindictive friends, who are clearly hiding something. Then the whole thing starts to get dangerous.

Almost Dead  follows Macey after Willow has gone off on a long holiday in Europe. Since the JoJo incident, Macey has become sensitized to ghosts and they’ve been turning up in her bedroom with alarming regularity. She’s worked out how to get rid of them, but when a new guy her own age turns up he doesn’t take the hint. With no one to help, Macey has to work out this by herself. Then she discovers that he’s not dead – not yet.

almost dead index pageBoth stories are set in the world of privileged Gold Coast society. These kids are rich. They live in huge houses, have their own cars, designer clothes and anything they want, but both girls struggle with dysfunctional families. In both novels the girls’ relationships with their parents are integral to the plot, and provide a depth to the characters that the paranormal and romantic elements play against.

The romance in each story is secondary to the paranormal/mystery elements, but is handled well to give a satisfying resolution in each. It’s kept PG, erring on the G-rated side, but there’s enough emotional intensity to keep it interesting. It’s the mystery that drives each story forward, though, and keeps the pages turning when you should be doing something else.

Kaz writes in a style that’s easy to read (I finished each book in two sittings) and well paced. She’s captured the way teenagers talk and behave in a way that isn’t tied to a particular place or is likely to date quickly, and her heroines and heroes are smart, courageous and flawed. They’re the sort of people you’d like to have as friends if you’re a teenager, and it wouldn’t hurt that they’re rich, have great cars, and you could hang out at their houses.

Dead, Actually won the Aurealis Award for Best Young Adult Novel in 2012, and the Favourite Paranormal in 2012 in the Australian Romance Writers Association Awards. It was also long listed for a Davitt Award for Best Children’s/YA.

Update: Almost Dead is long-listed for the Sisters in Crime Davitt Awards – Young Adult Novel, 2015.

Details:
Dead Actually, by Kaz Delaney
Allen & Unwin
ISBN: 9781742378183
Published: March 2012

Almost Dead, by Kaz Delaney
Allen & Unwin
ISBN: 9781743313268
Published: January 2014

 Links: