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Why a Grandmother Reads Young Adult Fiction

Books

Why a Grandmother Reads Young Adult Fiction

June 11, 2016 by Sheree Leave a Comment
First, to clarify; I’m not that old.

Instead of a rocking chair, shawl and knitting, think professional, competent and cool—and ignore my family laughing in the background. A few years ago, the birth of my first grandchild brought home that I was approaching my mature years, but I didn’t see any reason why that should change my reading habits.

Since my age first hit double figures I’ve been reading books aimed at a wide variety of audiences, whether children, teenagers, adults, female and/or male. There were a few ‘adult’ novels I probably read a bit too early, but that’s what happens when books like that are left around the house and a voracious reader doesn’t have access to enough appropriate literature.

Since I was a kid, I never stopped reading books aimed at kids or teenagers.

I read all sorts of other things as well, but I don’t see any reason to give myself an arbitrary limit on reading material based on what publishers decide is their target readership. When I write I don’t stop writing a story because the protagonist is a particular age. I should probably re-evaluate if it’s a crap story, and that’s the same issue when I’m reading, but protagonist age, viewpoint or intended target audience don’t have anything to do with whether it’s a good story, reading or writing.

9781406311525Sometimes I read a YA book simply because it’s great entertainment, like much-lauded and much-maligned The Hunger Games. Other times they’re brilliant in every sense of the word, like Patrick Ness’s A Monster Calls. There are so many excellent YA books, including a huge and growing list of Australian titles, that there’s no way I can keep up with all I’d like to read. If I’d had these sorts of books around when I was a teenager I would have read a lot less inappropriate stuff.

Books with rich subtext and emotional truth abound on YA shelves.

15757486Melina Marchetta’s novels Looking for Alibrandi, Saving Francesca and On the Jellicoe Road are three excellent examples, as are Patrick Ness’s Chaos Walking trilogy. The stark realism of A.J. Betts’ Zack and Mia, or the ambiguity of Garth Nix’s Clariel give a lot of food for thought and discussion.

ClarielAmie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff’s Illuminae, written as found documents in a format which encourages reluctant readers, is a space science fiction epic which encompasses the ethical dilemmas of corporate greed, epidemics, quarrantine, and the lengths we will go to survive. Tristan Banks’ novel aimed at the younger end of YA, Two Wolves follows a boy on the run with his family and how he comes to terms with his origins.

23395680Guilt and grief are themes in Trinity Doyle’s Pieces of Sky, and it would be difficult to surpass the honesty and depth of David Burton’s memoir How to be Happy. Fleur Ferris’s Risk has authenticity 19392551and psychological sophistication far in excess of most adult novels of crime and loss I’ve ever read. There are so many more I could fill up pages, and already have.

The oldest of these books was published when I was more than a decade past the target audience, and several have been published in the past year or two, now that—let’s just say—I’m a long way past the 23603939target audience. Does that mean I should forgo the pleasure of such excellent reads?

25674284Besides, how else is a bookaholic, pop-culture loving grandmother going to keep in touch with what it’s like to be a teenager today? I have no illusions of fitting in to the teenage scene, or that the reading sub-culture represents all teenagers. On the other hand, no sub-culture represents all of them and diversity is improving.

Diversity in Australian YA books is emerging

It’s al24973955so the most accessible to me, except for Youtube and blogs, which I use but find a huge time sinkhole. The experience of reading, of seeing through a modern protagonists eyes, or even knowing what teenagers around you are talking about, helps keep perspective when the inevitable ‘this-generation-doesn’t-do-X-like-we-did’ discussions arise.

But I’ve also found that sometimes I can bring another perspective to YA books. Teenagers, naturally, read YA from the perspective of the teenage protagonists. Those of us who are older—much, much older—read with the protagonist’s perspective, but also with more life experience. One blogger I read recently talked about how her parental impulses when reading some YA books now are making her feel old, and at the time of writing she was the grand age of twenty-one (here). It’s true, though, that sometimes there are things in YA novels that are easier to see from an older, more experienced perspective.

While some teenagers may see things I don’t because they’re immersed in teen culture, sometimes I see things they miss.

I’ve come across quite a few articles disparaging adults who read YA novels. It’s strange. The arguments just seem silly. It’s like telling me I should watch Downton Abbey and trying to shame me for watching Tomorrow, When the War Began. They’re both excellent programs, so why shouldn’t I watch and enjoy both?

Sure, I read other types of books and enjoy them. As time goes on though, I’m finding that I’m getting impatient with some adult books. Not all, just some.

You see, YA novel authors have to be good these days—very good. Why?

  • Competition to be published is, as in all publishing, fierce.
  • There’s generally a limit of around 70-80,000 words, on the higher side for science-fiction or fantasy to account for the needs of world-building.
  • Stories tend to be complex (contrary to the belief of some) so there’s a lot to pack in. YA authors have to write tight.
  • Teenagers have highly tuned crap detectors. If a novel starts getting airy fairy with language that doesn’t convey a clear meaning, teenagers will call it. That doesn’t mean there isn’t beautiful writing—there is—but it also has to be rich in meaning. There’s no reading a line or paragraph three or four times to work out what it’s saying.

So, when I start a huge Booker-nominated door-stopper, and in sixty pages there’s been some lovely airy descriptions and a lot of musing, but I still haven’t reached the premise of the book… I might just use it as a door-stopper.

Once upon a time I would have ploughed on. Someone who’s supposed to know about literature thought this was a great book, so I should finish it and find out why.
Not anymore. I look ahead and realise that I have a finite number of books I can read in my life.

A boring Booker-nominated door-stopper will take up the time which could be devoted to two or three other books I could enjoy and learn from. One of them might be a different Booker-nominated novel that I love. Another will probably be a Young Adult novel.

Links
#LoveOzYa  for teachers, writers and readers of Australian youth-lit.
Inside a Dog  State Library of Victoria’s Young Adult Page (Home of the Inky Awards)

Posted in: Adult Fiction, Aussie books, Aussie setting, Australian Women Writers, Books, Children's books, Opinion, Personal, Reading, Young Adult Tagged: #aussieauthor, #aww2015, #LoveOzYA, Adult fiction, Books, Novels, Reading, Young Adult

Lady Helen and the Dark Days Club

June 5, 2016 by Sheree 4 Comments

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

Posted in: Aussie books, Australian Women Writers, Books, Fantasy, Historical fiction, Paranormal, Romance, Writers Festival Book, Young Adult Tagged: #aussieauthor, #aww2016, #LoveOzYA, Alison Goodman, Book review, Books, Fantasy, Paranormal, Review, Romance, Sydney Writers Festival, urban fantasy, Young Adult

Confessions of a Writers Festival Volunteer Co-ordinator

May 29, 2016 by Sheree Leave a Comment

The intriguing title. The shiny cover. The new book smell as you pick it up and read the blurb on the back.

You flick to the first few pages, run an eye over the first paragraph. Two paragraphs. You snap it shut, running your hands over the smooth surface. It promises so much. You look around, the new book clutched to your breast. So many to choose from; is this the one? Surely I can get two…

Hi, my name is Sheree, and I’m a biblioholic.

You’d think, knowing I have this problem, I should avoid bookshops and all places where writers congregate. Instead I was welcomed on to the board of the Newcastle Writers Festival a few years ago, and am privileged to organise the volunteers who do the bulk of our public interface during the festival weekend.

I lovNWF Logo rectange it. It combines organisational skills and personal interactions which revolve around books and writers. Apart from the buzz of the festival weekend – which is brilliant – I’ve met great people and made good friends. Our volunteers are an awesome bunch, whether students, editors, medical specialists, stay-at-home mums or business executives.

Being the volunteer coordinator naturally limits the number of sessions I can attend at the Newcastle festival. I’ve been to scattered sessions at other festivals, but this year I had the opportunity to attend Sydney Writers Festival for four days, Thursday 19th to Sunday 22nd May. It was the first time I’d had an opportunity to immerse myself in a writers festival with no responsibilities.

27429416It was amazing. More than ten sessions ran concurrently, five sessions a day, at the Walsh Bay area alone, with more in the evening and elsewhere in the city and  suburbs. The sessions I attended ranged from astrophysics and forensic photography of early 20th century Sydney to racial discrimination and fantasy in young adult novels.

One of the great things about writers festivals is discovering new authors.

 Kirsten Tranter discussed her novel, Hold, in which a woman finds a secret room in her new house which seems to have an unsettling will of its own. As I’m a lover of books that are strange and ‘unreal’, a copy of Hold happened to come home with me.

28452843I’ve been intending to get hold of an Emily Maguire novel for a while, so took the opportunity to get a signed copy of her latest, An Isolated Incident. I thought I’d read the opening chapters while sitting at the wharf at Circular Quay, just a few metres from where the ferry was to leave for the trip back to my niece’s house where I was staying. Unfortunately I was engrossed and didn’t notice when the ferry arrived, or when it departed. At least I had a good book to read while I waited an hour for the next one.

I discovered others, but there’s too much from those four days for one post. However, I have to confess to something.

I watched the volunteers. Does that sound creepy?

I also chatted to as many as I could without impinging on their jobs. Maybe there were pointers I could pick up. How were they rostered? What sort of training did they get? What motivates Sydney volunteers?

The results? SWF volunteers – at least, those in the non-representative, convenience sample I chatted with – are motivated by the same things as NWF volunteers. They love books. Some write, and love being around writers, most read voraciously, and all believe in the promotion of books and literacy, and the debate of issues which good writing stimulates.

Bridge1The vast majority of volunteers I had contact with at SWF were helpful and pleasant. At NWF we discuss how happy volunteers make a happy festival, and I enjoyed seeing that play out at SWF. Cheerful volunteers can make waiting in a line amiable rather than onerous. When someone smiles and asks if you wouldn’t mind finishing your coffee before you go inside it makes you feel so much nicer than if she’d snapped that drinks aren’t allowed.
I finished my coffee with a warm, contented glow, which wasn’t just the caffeine.

Okay, maybe it was partly caffeine, but it felt good to be treated the way we asked our Newcastle volunteers to treat festival attendees. It makes no rational sense, but I felt proud of the Sydney volunteers. I had no actual Love and literatureconnection to them, but I knew how hard they worked. Most of them would have been on their feet much of the day, and it’s surprising how much energy volunteer duties take. Near the end of the day they were still polite and smiling, and doing a great job.

I picked up a few ideas and, though SWF is huge compared with NWF, by the end of Sunday I was left with the same feeling I have at the end of Newcastle’s festival.

Booky people are awesome to hang out with.

I mean booky, too, rather than bookish, with its connotations of prudishness and myopia. Some booky people can be overly fond of debate, and some can be pains; you know the ones, who get up to ask a writer a ‘question’ and spend five minutes making-a-comment/giving-an-introduction/blowing-their-own-horn, etc, etc. But on the whole people who read, especially those who read widely, are great company.

I never fail to learn from booky people, even the occasional pain in the butt. Four days among volunteers, writers and festival attendees in Sydney was brilliant.

I’ve come home with ideas, and maybe a few too many of those shiny, smooth, new smelling books. Hey, they have author signatures, okay? And they’re beautiful…

Hi, my name is Sheree, and I’m a biblioholic.

Links
Newcastle Writers Festival
Sydney Writers Festival
Kirsten Tranter’s webpage
Emily Maguire’s webpage

Posted in: Aussie books, Books, Opinion, Personal, Reading, Volunteers, Writers Festival Tagged: Aussie books, Books, Newcastle Writers Festival, Reading, Sydney Writers Festival, Volunteers, Writers Festival

A Monster Calls, by Patrick Ness

May 13, 2016 by Sheree Leave a Comment

Later this year a movie will be released of Patrick Ness’s A Monster Calls.

I’m keen to see the movie, but reluctant at the same time.

Anybody who loves a book will know the feeling; excitement at seeing a great story brought to life, but anxious at the thought it could be ruined.

The trailer looks hopeful.

The story centres on Conor, who lives with his mother who has cancer. Her illness has made Conor feel isolated and alone, and he has been plagued with a recurring nightmare of darkness and screaming.

One night after midnight a voice calls to him outside his window. It’s the huge willow tree from the graveyard of the church he can see from his room, terrifying and stern, who insists it will come back and tell him three stories, and then Conor must tell his story to the tree. The yew does as it promises, each time returning after midnight. 

The consequences of the yew’s visits to Conor
grow more and more severe.

Ultimately, it leads him to confront his deepest fears.

9781406311525A Monster Calls has a sad history. In an Author’s Note at the beginning of the book, Ness explains that the premise of the book was conceived by author Siobhan Dowd, along with the characters and the beginning. It would have been her fifth book. “What she didn’t have,” he says, “unfortunately, was time.” What he doesn’t mention in his note is that she had cancer.

However, he was asked to turn her beginning into a book. He felt like he’d “been handed a baton, like a particularly fine writer has handed me her story and said,

‘Go. Run with it. Make trouble.’

“So that’s what I tried to do.”

He had only a single guideline: “to write a book I think Siobhan would have liked. No other criteria could really matter.”

He certainly wrote a book a many people like. Ness and the illustrator Jim Kay won the Carnegie and Greenaway Medals for writing and illustration, as well the British Children’s Book of the Year and a swag of other awards. I’d include it on any list of the best books for pre-teens/teenagers, and would recommend it to most adults. It’s a deceptively simple story, with a huge depth of psychological and emotional sophistication.

Film is a very different media to print, but I hope the underlying complexity, the confusion, grief, fear, love and alienation that Conor deals with manages to be portrayed in the film.

The monster paused again.
You really aren’t afraid, are you?
“No,” Conor said. “Not of you, anyway.”

The monster narrowed its eyes.
You will be, it said. Before the end.

Details
A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness
Candlewick Press/Walker Books
ISBN 1406311529
Pub: May 2011

Links
Patrick Ness’s website
Second trailer for the A Monster Calls movie

Posted in: Awards, Cancer, Children's books, Contemporary, Family, Fantasy, Folklore, Illness, Young Adult Tagged: Book review, Books, Cancer, Child Protagonist, Children, Contemporary, Family, Fantasy, Folklore, Illness, Patrick Ness, Review, Young Adult

Two Wolves – which will you feed?

April 24, 2016 by Sheree 3 Comments
Released as “On the Run” in the US

Ben Silver is home with his little sister one afternoon when the cops show up looking for his parents. After they leave, his mum and 19392551dad arrive and bundle them in the car, supposedly taking them on a spontaneous ‘holiday’.  Ben finds it hard to believe the two things aren’t linked.

So begins a tale of tension, suspicion and fear. Why did they leave so fast, without clothes or food? Why do his parents take Ben and his sister, Olive, to a filthy cabin in the middle of nowhere?

What’s in the bag his father
tries to hide?

Two Wolves is a novel at the lower end of the YA bracket that tackles some difficult questions. Parents are supposed to look after you, but what if other things are more important to them? What if they neglect you, or worse? What if they betray you? What if you come from a family who do things that are wrong? Does that mean you’ll be just like them?

Tristan Bancks handles these and other questions with skill. While his other books have lighter subjects and tones, Two Wolves captures the confusion, loneliness and longing of Ben as he tries to make sense of what’s happening to him and his family.

The title is taken from a story in the pages of Ben’s grandfather’s almost-empty journal, which is printed as a brief preface before the first chapter. In this version of the old story, a man tells his grandson that inside all of us a battle rages between two wolves.

“One wolf is bad – pride, envy, jealousy, greed, guilt, self-pity.
The other wolf is good – kindness, hope, love, service, truth, humility.”

23310747When the child asks who will win, the grandfather answers, “The one you feed”.

The conclusion to the novel isn’t a tidy, neat, Disney happily-ever-after, but it’s a satisfying resolution that stays true to the characters and story, while still allowing the reader to ask themselves, “What would I do?”

Highly recommended, for readers from late primary school up.

 

 

Details
Two Wolves by Tristan Bancks (On the Run in US)
Random House Australia
ISBN: 9780857982032
Published: March 2014

Links
Tristan Bancks website: http://www.tristanbancks.com

AUSSIE-AUTHOR-2016 Aussie Author Challenge 2016

Posted in: Aussie books, Aussie setting, Children's books, Contemporary, Family, Young Adult Tagged: #aussieauthor, #LoveOzYA, Aussie setting, Book review, Books, Child Protagonist, Children, Contemporary, Review, Tristan Bancks, Young Adult

Zeroes – What’s your superpower?

October 27, 2015 by Sheree 1 Comment
If you had a supernatural ability, what would it be?
Not what you’d like it to be, but what it would be?

The fifteen-year-olds in Zeroes didn’t get to choose their abilities. While their powers let them do things others can’t, not all the effects are easy to live with. Ethan (nicknamed Scam), for instance, has a ‘voice’ that talks its way into getting anything he wants when he lets it take over, but it doesn’t take consequences into account. This time, it ends up getting him involved with gangsters and bank robbers, and the police don’t buy his lame explanations.

Though he hasn’t spoken to them since his temper got the better of him last summer, his fellow Zeroes come to his rescue. The fallout of Scam’s interference is the discovery of a new Zero, and she wants them to help find her father.

They’ll be risking more than their group. They’ll be risking their lives.

24756394Zeroes is a young adult novel by three well-established authors, Scott Westerfeld, Margo Lanagan and Deborah Biancotti. It’s fast-paced action, each chapter from the perspective of one the six Zeroes characters, though all written in third person. Though each author wrote from the perspective of two characters, they blend seamlessly.

What holds the narrative together is not just the action but the relationships. All is not well among the Zeroes. They’re a diverse bunch with little in common other than their possession of a strange ability. There’s dissent, there’s friction, there’s sexual tension, all of which provide conflict and interesting places for the characters to go.

On the other hand, around half-way through the book I found myself looking for other things to read. I lost interest for a while; I didn’t feel like finishing it. This was in spite of an excellent plot with plenty of menace to keep the pages turning. It had all the right ingredients, and I really wanted to love this book.

Why wasn’t I engrossed?

After a little thought, the answer was obvious. I didn’t like the Zeroes very much. They’re interesting, complex, well thought out, and definitely flawed as all good characters should be. They’re well written. I just didn’t enjoy being with them. The suspense and ‘need to know’ were outweighed for a while by the need for space away from the characters, the way you sometimes need space away from friends who are irritating you.

If I was a newly discovered Zero they’d asked to join their group, I wouldn’t be keen. They mean well – mostly – but they’re pains in the bum. They’re a smorgasbord of self focus, arrogance, resentment and anger, and even Flicker, the mild-mannered blind girl who can see through other’s eyes, doesn’t have much compassion for her twin sister when their relationship is encroached upon by another Zero.

24885636It was also difficult to get a clear picture of the Zero, Nathan. The others call him Glorious Leader, but it was hard for me to get a handle on the nature of his power. We know it has to do with the attention of crowds, but I found it nebulous until close to the end of the book where we get a small demonstration. His nickname, Bellwether, didn’t help. I’d heard the term but had no idea what it was. I probably should have bitten the bullet and just looked it up, but I was reading a hard copy and e-reading has made me quite lazy. (I eventually looked it up, and it made more sense of Nathan’s power.)

Overall, Zeroes has a great premise, is well-written, fast-paced with a compelling plot, and full of complex, interesting characters. Eventually I picked it backed up again and finished it. The plot brought me back and I wanted to know what happened, specifically to the new girl, Mob. I liked her the most – though she wasn’t the sharpest tool in the Zeroes superpowered shed.

Though I didn’t love Zeroes as much as I wanted to, it’s still a good book. The writing is great, and it certainly wasn’t a book I could leave unfinished indefinitely. I’ll be reading later books in the series, but the events in this one have changed its characters. Hopefully that means they’ll be less irritating.

Details

Zeroes by Scott Westerfeld, Margo Lanagan, & Deborah Biancotti
Allen & Unwin
ISBN: 9781925266955
Published: September 2015

Links

Scott Westerfeld’s webpage
Margo Lanagan’s webpage (called Among Amid While)
Deborah Biancotti’s webpage

Aussie-Author-Challenge-2015-300x264 50Aussie Author Challenge

 

awwsml-2015Australian Women Writers Challenge

 

 

 

 

Posted in: Aussie books, Australian Women Writers, Contemporary, Science fiction, Young Adult Tagged: #aussieauthor, #aww2015, #LoveOzYA, Book review, Books, Contemporary, Deborah Biancotti, Margo Lanagan, Review, Science fiction, Scott Westerfeld, Young Adult

And the Winner Is …

October 14, 2015 by Sheree 2 Comments

… Young Adult books!

Though the literary world seems abuzz with Man Booker fever over a novel that sounds like Stephen Hawking meets Psycho, the #LoveOzYA community is celebrating the winners of the Inky Awards. (I’m sure the MB prize winner is a great book; I’m just excited by the Inkies.) If you haven’t heard of the Inkies, don’t despair. Once upon a time no one had heard of the Man Booker Prize either – or the Oscars.

The Inky Awards are bestowed through The Centre for Youth Literature, State Library of Victoria, who promote reading as “not just something that is done as school work” and “an active, pleasurable and essential activity for all young people”. One of their projects is Inside a Dog, a website which promotes young adult literature, showcasing both Australian writers and their work and the cream of international YA literature.

Why “Inside a Dog”? It comes from a Groucho Marx quote:

insideadog-small“Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside a dog, it’s too dark to read.”

The name of the award comes from the Inside a Dog mascot, Inky, the all-round wonder-dog. The Gold Inky is awarded to a book by an Australian author while the Silver Inky is awarded to a book by an international author.

So, who are the winners for 2015?

The Gold Inky winner is:

Gold_winner_nobkgnd_1 9780732297053

The Intern,

by Gabrielle Tozer

 

 

The Intern is great book, a contemporary story of a girl in her first year of university who is pushed out of her comfort zone by an internship at a fashion magazine as part of her course requirement. You can read my review of The Intern here. Congratulations Gabrielle!

The Silver Inky winner is:

Fangirl_Pan Macmillan_0_1.previewSilver_winner_nobkgnd_0

Fangirl

by Rainbow Rowell

 

 

I haven’t read Fangirl yet but it’s on my list, and this has bumped it up quite a few places.

A quick look at the long list for this years awards shows the calibre of books that were in the running for the Inky Awards this year.

2015-Inky-longlist

Though I’ve only reviewed Clariel by Garth Nix, the quality of books is amazing. It’s impossible to keep up with all the excellent YA being produced as well as Australian speculative fiction – and that’s great news for everybody.

Links

Inside a Dog Homepage

The process of nomination and judging the Inky Awards plus previous Long Lists, Short Lists and Winners, here

Gabrielle Tozer’s website

Rainbow Rowell’s website

Man Booker Prize 2015 Announcement

 

Posted in: Aussie books, Aussie setting, Australian Women Writers, Awards, Contemporary, Opinion, Young Adult Tagged: #aussieauthor, #aww2015, #LoveOzYA, Aussie setting, Awards, Books, Contemporary, Gabrielle Tozer, Inky, Rainbow Rowell

Tower of Thorns, by Juliet Marillier

September 29, 2015 by Sheree 6 Comments
A wailing monster, a cursed land and a lady with secrets.

Add a bristling healer and her hulky companion with pasts that haunt them, and you have an enthralling story that sweeps you into its world of fey and mystery.

22567177Blackthorn is a healer and wise woman who was rescued from a death sentence by one of the fey. The conditions of her reprieve included not seeking vengeance against the chieftain who unjustly imprisoned her. With another of the prisoners, Grim, as friend and companion, she has built a new life in Dalraida.

When the Lady Geiléis arrives seeking help from the Dalraidan prince, it is to Blackthorn they turn. A monster has taken up residence in an old tower surrounded by impenetrable thorns on the lady’s lands. It howls from dawn to dusk and has cast a blight upon the whole land.

At the same time an old friend emerges with a tempting offer for Blackthorn, to bring her old tormentor, Mathuin the chieftain, to justice. She plans to go the lady’s lands and deal with the monster, then slip away from Grim and travel south to help in Mathuin’s trial. Once at Lady Geiléis’ lands, though, it becomes clear the lady and her servants are hiding something.

Tower of Thorns works as a stand-alone novel, but readers of the first book in the Blackthorn & Grim series, Dreamer’s Pool, will be eager for this second offering.

One of the strengths of these novels is the complexity
of the title characters.

They are defined by the things they have in common; their traumatic pasts that are being slowly revealed to each other and the reader, their time in Mathuin’s prison where they occupied opposite cells while enduring deprivation and abuse, and their understanding of the brokenness of one another.  Yet they also provide a contrast for one another.

Blackthorn is well-named. She’s prickly, bitter and prone to fits of temper, finding it difficult to be around other people for long periods. She’s also assertive,  as Lady Geiléis discovers once they are back on her land.

“Once Blackthorn decided to take the reins, it seemed she was blind to anything that might stand in her way.”

However, even though she finds the caring side of her healing work exhausting, she does it well. She sees herself with little to give emotionally but is so attuned to others that she can’t help empathizing and supporting them when they’re in need. Though she’s been scarred by her life, at the core she’s decent and good and does what she believes is right.

Grim sees himself with little to give in general, in spite of being able to turn his hand to anything from thatching and growing vegetables to training others in use of weapons. Though they conduct their relationship as companions, his devotion to Blackthorn never wavers. Where her focus stays on making Mathuin pay for his crimes, Grim’s is on Blackthorn and doing all his power to protect and provide for her. Discovering more of his story and who he his in Tower of Thorns was especially welcome.

17305016It isn’t easy to get stories about people with post-traumatic stress right, let alone in the context of medieval Ireland where old magic and the fey are forces to be reckoned with. Blackthorn and Grim have different ways of dealing with the traumas of their pasts, but each is authentic and rings true in the context of the time. The descriptions of Grim’s flashbacks and physical symptoms are particularly well done.

Tower of Thorns is told from three points of view; Blackthorn’s and Grim’s, both using first person, and the third from the perspective of Lady Geiléis in third person. Though the narrative style changes, it works well. Marillier’s prose flows, often lyrical, always grounded.

Not only does it feel as though this medieval Ireland of fey magic is real, but it should be real.

Though evil is there just as it is in our world, there is also a beauty and wonder in creation that has been lost for most of us. Perhaps books like this can challenge us to appreciate what we have and strive to preserve the beauty and natural wonders around us.

As I said when reviewing Raven Flight, I’ve been a keen reader of Juliet Marillier’s books since her first book, Daughter of the Forest, was published, so I tend to be well-disposed towards her books when I pick them up. So far I haven’t been disappointed. I’m already looking forward to the next in the Blackthorn & Grim series.

* I received an ARC from the author for review.

 Details
Tower of Thorns  by Juliet Marillier
Pan Macmillan Australia
ISBN: 9780451466990
Published: 3 October, 2015

Links
Juliet Marillier’s Website
Aussie-Author-Challenge-2015-300x264 50Aussie Author Challenge

awwsml-2015Australian Women Writers Challenge

 

 

 

Posted in: Adult Fiction, Aussie books, Australian Women Writers, Fantasy, Folklore, Romance Tagged: #aussieauthor, #aww2015, Adult fiction, Book review, Books, Faery, Fantasy, Folklore, Juliet Marillier, Review, Romance
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