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Big Sexy Epics: Kushiel’s Dart, by Jacqueline Carey (2001) E

March 28, 2013 in Book, Novels by Emera | 2 comments

 Reviewer: Emera
Date read: 12.28.2012
Book from: Borrowed from cousin

This past autumn proved to be the kind that required a lot of popcorn reading, and I mean a lot. As winter came on, I ended up barreling through several examples of one of my favorite popcorny subgenres: the epic courtesan-spy adventure. Training montages, poisons and daggers, sexytime intrigues – aw yeah.

Kushiel’s Dart was one of those reads. Its protagonist, Phèdre, is a sacred courtesan whose superpower happens to be sexual masochism. Her homeland: a sexually enlightened, medieval France-analogue, unfortunately threatened by an unstable monarchy and oh-so-barbaric Germanic barbarians. (Persistently and distastefully, Carey cannot stop letting her characters indulge in a very juvenile, even if fictional, sort of nationalism/racial superiority: Phèdre harps endlessly on the unparalleled beauty and sophistication of her people, who are the descendants of stray angels.)

As I’ve seen advertised by its many fans, Kushiel’s Dart is, indeed, very kink-friendly, very queer-friendly, and generally embracing in its portrayals of myriad variations on desire and preferences for sexual and romantic fulfillment. It’s perhaps also groundbreaking in its depiction of a respected, even exalted, form of prostitution, built around consent and reverence for free sexual expression. (“Love as thou wilt” is the country’s founding credo.) Compare that to, say, Companionship in Firefly, where, as far as I can recall, Inara’s status as Companion is mostly used as an excuse for Mal to repeatedly call her a whore.

High-school me would have been over the moon to find this series – except that at the time, Kakaner and I were tearing through Storm Constantine’s delightfully loony and even more baroquely erotic and melodramatic Wraeththu series. The Kushiel series would hardly have measured up in terms of sheer fun.

In fact, setting aside the sexcapades and superficially elaborate political intrigues, I found Kushiel’s Dart pretty dull.  Read the rest of this entry »

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Flight of the Dragon Kyn, by Susan Fletcher (1993) E

March 23, 2013 in Book, Novels by Emera | No comments

Reviewer: Emera
Date read: 3.25.2011 (reread)
Book from: Personal collection

book dragonkyn

Flight of the Dragon Kyn is the second in Susan Fletcher’s Dragon Chronicles, and a prequel to the rest of the series. (At the time that I found the books, they were a trilogy; a fourth that I’ve yet to read came out in 2010.) The series was one of my childhood favorites, combining as it did a number of my best-beloved themes and elements: an Arctic setting; a young female protagonist negotiating loyalties divided between the human and the inhuman world; and what amounts to an ecological crisis, rendered here in fantastical terms. All heady ingredients for a wannabe biologist/budding fantasy nerd. (Also falling under that rubric: Julie of the Wolves and The Woman Who Loved Reindeer.)

Kara, a young woman treated with fear and suspicion for her ability to communicate with birds, experiences a sudden reversal in fortunes when summoned by the king, who gives her rich gifts and takes a clear interest in her talent. Eventually he reveals – to Kara’s horror – that he wishes for her to use her power to call down dragons, so that he might earn recognition as a dragon-slayer. As readers of the preceding novel, Dragon’s Milk, will know, Kara gained her power when she was nursed by a dragon as an infant; the king’s demand forces her to choose between facing his punishment, and betraying her foster kin.

Re-reading the novel, what struck me the most strongly this time were not the movements of the plot, which are fairly standard, though well-told, as is Kara’s gradual evolution from a sullen, fearful loner to a young woman of resolve. (Though when it came to the plot, I could still barely face the scene in which [highlight for spoiler] the dragon who nursed Kara is slaughtered.) What stood out was the grace and lucidity of Fletcher’s prose, and the captivating immediacy with which she paints the the Nordic setting, both natural…

“It was one of those clear, frosty days when the wind snaps your cloak and fleets of clouds scud like warships across the sky. The sun lay low about the mountains, piercing the air with shafts of liquid light that glittered on the fjord and haloed the rime-shaggy firs. […] A whitchild called from a hawthorn tree; I called back. It swooped down and landed on my wrist, eyeing me unabashed, its fierce little claws pricking my skin. I called down a gull, too, which landed on my elbow, and a crake, and a sleepy stony owl that tucked one foot up and tried to take a nap on my arm. ‘Wake up,’ I said, twisting my arm so they all lost their balance and clutched me and wildly flapped their wings.

I laughed and stroked them one by one.”

…and human:

“I hesitated. My eyes, accustomed to the brightness out of doors, gradually made out the shape of the hall. Narrow, horn-covered windows striped the walls, shedding a dim, honeyed glow across a shifting tide of warriors and an undertow of dogs. A darkish smoke-haze lingered high in the network of beams and rafters, where perched a flock of doves.

One by one the warriors broke off talking and turned to look at me. Silence grew until it seemed to fill the hall, until the doves’ placid burbling sounded loud.”

Falconry was/is also one of my pet subjects; the novel weaves in absorbing scenes of Kara working with birds under the tutelage of a taciturn and irascible (of course) falconer, including her own gyrfalcon, Skava. And on the fantastical side of things, Fletcher invents some wonderful details of dragon biology – like the fact that infant dragons, being so full of combustible gases, float in their sleep, until grounded again upon breathing out little gouts of flame. And all of the scenes – often fraught with awe-ful tension – of Kara moving among the wild dragons are vivid and convincing.

All told, it made me happy to my roots, to step back into the world of an old, old favorite and find so many of its details as fresh and fascinating as I remembered them to be.  I’m thinking now of also revisiting Fletcher’s Shadow Spinner (1999), a retelling of the Thousand and One Nights’ frame story from the perspective of a young girl who helps Shahrazad to find new stories.

Go to:
Susan Fletcher: bio and works reviewed

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Blood Oranges, by Kathleen Tierney (2013) E

February 18, 2013 in Book, Novels by Emera | 1 comment

Reviewer: Emera
Date read: 2.8.2013
Book from: Personal collection

“My name’s Quinn. If you buy into my reputation, I’m the most notorious demon hunter in New England. But rumors of my badassery have been slightly exaggerated. Instead of having kung-fu skills and a closet full of medieval weapons, I’m an ex-junkie with a talent for being in the wrong place at the right time. Or the right place at the wrong time. Or…whatever.

Wanted for crimes against inhumanity I (mostly) didn’t commit, I was nearly a midnight snack for a werewolf until I was ‘saved’ by a vampire calling itself the Bride of Quiet. Already cursed by a werewolf bite, the vamp took a pint out of me too. So now… now, well, you wouldn’t think it could get worse, but you’d be dead wrong.”

The recently released Blood Oranges looks to be kicking up some dust in the vicinity of urban/paranormal fantasy, which is as it should be: Caitlín Kiernan, writing under the pseudonym of Kathleen Tierney, aimed it as a rejoinder to many of the more questionable indulgences of the genre, whether they be tramp-stamped, pleather-clad heroines or beglittered vampires. It’s also a fast-paced, profane, and combustive little thriller with an unapologetically queer, thoroughly ornery protagonist who’s suffered the tragicomical fate of being transformed into the world’s only werepire. (At least her heroin addiction is gone.)

Since I lack a generalized sense of vindictiveness towards urban-whatever fantasy, I don’t find particular satisfaction in trope-busting per se, and some of Quinn’s acid meta-commentaries – about how if she had been a character in that kind of book, this would have happened that way, but she’s not, so it didn’t – do go on a bit. What does interest me about the device is how it helps inform Quinn as a character. As fun as pyrotechnics and various deaths-by-werewolf can be, I found it far more rousing to watch the way that, tedious particulars aside, Quinn constructs and references narratives, then unceremoniously shreds them in her wake. Junkies lie, she tells us very early on. And so, after she’s rattled off a grimly spectacular rendition of her origins as a monster-slayer, it soon comes out that in fact she’s “been stretching the truth like it was a big handful of raspberry-flavored saltwater taffy.” The real origin story involves significantly more clumsiness and bad timing on the part of the defunct monsters.

While Quinn never repeats that gambit to quite that degree in the rest of the novel, digressions and evasions continue to criss-cross and loop around her narration – pop-cultural riffs and potshots, reminiscences that slide back and forth across time and various shadings of the truth. Combined with the raw prose (Quinn warns us that she’s no writer), what comes across is the voice of a young woman who’s talking too fast, sometimes too loudly or too softly, compulsively running her hands through her hair, and not much meeting your eyes – someone rough, vibrant, and, despite the efforts of numerous supernatural beings, very much alive.

Quinn doesn’t have enough agency to be a really free-wheeling trickster character (like many of Kiernan’s characters, she’s trapped in a relationship with a dubiously benevolent protector/mentor/creator), but in her exuberant roughness, her scrappiness, her avowed suspicion of anything resembling a moral code, there’s a definite, electric touch of the trickster spirit. Temper that with the sense of submerged loss that’s another constant in Kiernan’s work, and you have a protagonist whose wry, sometimes melancholy self-awareness convincingly undergirds the satire.

Go to:
Caitlin R. Kiernan: bio and works reviewed
“So Runs the World Away,” by Caitlin R. Kiernan (2001): review by Emera
Alabaster, by Caitlin R. Kiernan (2006): review by Emera
The Red Tree, by Caitlin R. Kiernan (2009): review by Emera

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The Boneshaker, by Kate Milford (2010) E

January 26, 2013 in Book, Novels by Emera | No comments

Reviewer: Emera
Date read: 4.24.2012
Book from: Personal collection

 ”Strange things can happen at a crossroads, and the crossroads outside of Arcane, Missouri, is no exception. Thirteen-year-old Natalie Minks knows all the odd, mysterious tales about her little town – she grew up hearing her mother tell them. But even Natalie is not prepared for the strangeness that’s unleashed when Dr. Jake Limberleg’s Nostrum Fair and Technological Medicine Show rolls into Arcane with its bizarre tonics and elaborate, inexplicable machines. When Natalie finally gets a close look at the intricate maze of the medicine show, she knows in her gut that something about this caravan healers is not right… and that Arcane is in grave danger.”

Like Bradbury’s classic Something Wicked This Way Comes, Kate Milford’s The Boneshaker is a spooky circus mystery-adventure set in a Midwestern town, and featuring young protagonists who must reckon with the insinuation of evil into their lives. Realizations about both mortality and morality loom large. The Boneshaker has more of a Western feel, though, shaded with near-apocalyptic gloom; the seductions of the circus have an even more explicitly diabolical flavor. Nick Cave’s “Red Right Hand” would be right at home on a soundtrack for the novel, I think.

As protagonist, Natalie is an intriguing foil to the unearthly disruptions of Limberleg’s Nostrum Fair: inquisitive, skeptical, mechanically minded, a little bristly and imperious. Admirably, her inquisitiveness extends to the emotional realm, as increasingly throughout the book, she tries to get inside the heads of the people she’s known for all her life, but frequently taken for granted. From the townspeople who have encountered evil in its various forms before, including her own mother, she gleans haunting snatches of narrative that deepen the novel’s Biblical mythos and lend it an absorbing sense of grandeur and pathos.

Unfortunately, Milford’s prose, though carefully detailed, is on the flat and list-y side, even when she write scenes that should be demonically animated:

“She didn’t have to be told to run. The harlequin lunged after her.

She sprinted and dodged, not caring which twists and turns she took in the maze of tents. Bells jingled overhead; the harlequin had taken to the wires again.

Her feet kicked up dust and slid on old straw. The things in her arms stirred restlessly. The Amazing Quinn raced alongside and above on a wire parallel to her path.”

And so on; the rhythm and syntax remain monotonous, and the descriptive choices expected. It’s troublesome, too, that one of Natalie’s mentors seems to have been tipped out directly from the Magical Negro mold. “Nothing to do but play my guitar and dispense advice to white folks in need, doot de doo…”

What Milford does do beautifully is frame rational-minded Natalie’s collision with the realization that the world is insistently, terrifyingly irrational. Her town and the crossroads are much older and stranger than she thinks they are; many of the adults around her have known far more suffering and struggle than she could have imagined; and moreover – worst of all, even – they, too, are fallible and vulnerable. Milford has things to say, too, about the power of story and memory, and weaves in the usual YA subplot of learning to stand your ground in the face of fear, but Natalie’s coming to grips with the pervasiveness of evil and mortality is by far the most affecting narrative strand.

I won’t be seeking out the sequels, but all in all, The Boneshaker was an entertaining read, both thoughtful and goosebumpily suspenseful, with satisfying lashings of American folklore and Christian mythology. I’d recommend it as a companion for a thunderstormy summer afternoon.

For a previously reviewed dark fantasy also featuring Western and Biblical touches (and, coincidentally, a red-haired doctor of dubious humanity), see: The Music of Razors, by Cameron Rogers.

Go to:
Kate Milford: bio and works reviewed
The Music of Razors, by Cameron Rogers (2007): review by Emera

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The Grand Tour, by Patricia C. Wrede & Caroline Stevermer (2004) E

November 16, 2012 in Book, Novels by Emera | No comments

Reviewer: Emera
Date read: 10.15.2012
Book from: Borrowed from cousin

“…or, The Purloined Coronation Regalia: being a revelation of matters of High Confidentiality and Greatest Importance, including extracts from the intimate diary of a Noblewoman and the sworn testimony of a Lady of Quality

Dear Reader,
We are having the most wonderful time on our tour of Europe with our new husbands, Thomas and James. We’ve been shopping in Paris, sightseeing in the Alps, and riding gondolas in Venice – there’s nothing like exploring the Continent!

However, there have been some troublesome moments. There was the midnight intruder who left behind a fashionable Turkish slipper. We also always seem to be running into the same peculiar people on our visits to ancient sites. And, oh yes, there was our discovery of the mysterious parcel that hints at a murderously magical plot of international importance!

Clearly, this isn’t quite the calm and relaxing journey we were expecting. But this Grand Tour is turning out to be the best adventure of our lives!

Love,
Cecy and Kate“

The Grand Tour is an equally witty and fun sequel to the classic Regency fantasy Sorcery and Cecelia (my review). Plotwise, it’s over-reliant on convenient coincidences to move things along – the first half of the book verges on tiresome in this respect, as the girls and their husbands meander from attraction to attraction and just keep on bumping into those “peculiar people.” Eventually, though, the protagonists do go on the offensive and start trying to think one step ahead of the evil conspirators, as the extent of their plot becomes increasingly clear. But even before then, the affectionately combative dialogue, occasional brushes with danger (thieves! highwaymen! societal embarrassment!), and opportunities for secondhand touristry (there’s plenty of amusing and curious detail on 19th-century European travel, with the bonus of magical conveniences like anti-flea charms) kept me trundling on through the pages.

One of my only disappointments with Sorcery and Cecelia was the authors’ exceedingly light touch when it comes to fantastical worldbuilding, so I was gratified that The Grand Tour, with its international stakes and post-Napoleonic anxieties about war and rulership, goes a bit further in weaving magic into the world’s political and historical fabric. Its climax, especially, hints intriguingly at the depth of ancient magical practice.

Mostly, though, The Grand Tour is happy to remain a character-driven romp. The epistolary form rarely generates any real plot tension, since dramatic events are necessarily recounted after the fact, so I found that more tension arises from any distress the characters might be feeling during the events, than from the events themselves. This is especially so since the universe is a quite moral one, and threats to life and limb of the main characters are rarely serious and never permanent. Very comforting.

I did previously also complain about it being difficult to distinguish the personalities of the main characters; it turns out the nearly 500 pages’ worth of sequel is an effective cure for that, especially when one of the major subplots is Kate’s continued efforts to overcome her nervousness at all social obligations. This is resolved in a heavy-handed but still charming way.

The last page of the book suggests, of course, the possibility of another sequel, which I’ve only just realized was released in 2006: The Mislaid Magician, or, Ten Years After, which I’ll have to keep in mind for the next time I’m looking for the bookish equivalent of a frothy cup of hot chocolate. All three books have recently been released as ebooks with beautifully designed covers (link includes an interview with Stevermer on the trilogy).

Go to:

Patricia C. Wrede: bio and works reviewed
Caroline Stevermer: bio and works reviewed
Sorcery and Cecelia, by Patricia C. Wrede & Caroline Stevermer (1988): review by Emera

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Odd and the Frost Giants, by Neil Gaiman, illus. Bret Helquist (2009) E

June 4, 2012 in Book, Novels by Emera | 1 comment

Reviewer: Emera
Date read: 5.31.2012
Book from: Personal collection

Photo previously featured in the post “Some additions to the horde.”

In a village in ancient Norway lives a boy named Odd, and he’s had some very bad luck: His father perished in a Viking expedition; a tree fell on and shattered his leg; the endless freezing winter is making villagers dangerously grumpy.

Out in the forest Odd encounters a bear, a fox, and an eagle—three creatures with a strange story to tell. Now Odd is forced on a stranger journey than he had imagined—a journey to save Asgard, city of the gods, from the Frost Giants who have invaded it. It’s going to take a very special kind of twelve-year-old boy to outwit the Frost Giants, restore peace to the city of gods, and end the long winter. Someone cheerful and infuriating and clever . . . Someone just like Odd.

I did NOT expect to like this as much as I did. I wasn’t wild about the cover illustration (Helquist’s style ended up doing a lot more for me in the black and white interior art, where his lumpy-craggy shapes and light, scratchy hatching really shine), and was feeling a little surly and hacklesome when I decided to give the novel a try. (“Book, I dare you to charm me…”) But I came away from the read smiling, and kept smiling for a good long while afterward.

Odd and the Frost Giants is the tale of a wise fool, with Norse mythology woven in with surprising density. Careful descriptions of historical and natural detail (food, architecture, Odd’s means of survival in the Norwegian wilderness) deepen the thoughtful, inward-looking feel of the narrative, and as typical for Gaiman, the writing is elegantly compressed. I was moved by the sensitivity of his portrayals of Odd – an ingenious, plucky, but quietly sad child – and the singular Frost Giant whom he eventually meets, who in his anxious pathos bears a good deal of resemblance to Wilde’s Selfish Giant. Odd’s story is ultimately about looking deeply at other people, and understanding their needs and suffering.

Gaiman mentions in the author’s bio that he’s considering further Odd tales – I definitely wouldn’t say no to more.

Go to:

Neil Gaiman: bio and works reviewed

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The Women of Nell Gwynne’s, by Kage Baker (2009) E

April 22, 2012 in Book, Novels, Short stories by Emera | 1 comment

Reviewer: Emera
Date read: 4.1.12
Book from: Personal collection, via Subterranean Press.

(N.B. The Women of Nell Gwynne’s is out of print, and has since been republished as Scarlet Spy.)

“In any other neighborhood, perhaps, there would have been some uncouth speculation about the inordinate number of females under one roof. The lady of the house by Birdcage Walk, however, retained her reputation for spotless respectability, largely because no gentlemen visitors were ever seen arriving or departing the premise, at any hour of the day or night whatsoever.

Gentlemen were unseen because they never went to the house near Birdcage Walk. They went instead to a certain private establishment known as Nell Gwynne’s …

Now and again, in the hushed and circumspect atmosphere of the Athenaeum (or the Carlton Club, or the Traveller’s Club) someone might imbibe enough port to wonder aloud just what it took to get an invitation from Mrs. Corvey.

The answer, though quite simple, was never guessed.

One had to know secrets.”

The Women of Nell Gwynne’s is a breezily entertaining steampunk spy-thriller novella, serving up fast-paced intrigue, witticisms, and gadgetry, with the occasional amusing period detour into e.g. the niceties of Victorian cake decoration. There’s a modicum of social commentary, too, on the precarity of being a woman in a man’s world: the Women of Nell Gwynne’s are societal cast-offs, disgraced former gentlewomen (and one former workhouse girl) offered recourse as courtesan-intelligencers. Their sponsors are the Gentlemen’s Speculative Society, a mysterious organization of spies and inventors that eventually gives rise to the Company, the subject of numerous of Baker’s other works (which I’ve never read). Here, members of Nell Gwynne’s are dispatched to investigate the disappearance of a Society member on assignment at the country manor of a secretive aristocrat, who appears to have developed a taste of his own for invention.

Most of the Women are charming sketches, like the three cheeky Misses Devere and the cross-dressing Herbert/ina, who has “the appearance of a cupid-faced lad fresh from a public school whereat a number of outré vices were practiced.” (Predictably, I was enamored with the latter.) The only psychological interior to which we have access is that of Lady Beatrice, the Scarlet Spy. Lady Beatrice is a survivor of abduction and rape during the disastrous first Anglo-Afghan War, who returns to England only to be promptly disowned by her family. Her relationship with herself – her horrific past, her mechanically unstoppable will to survive, the wary distance she keeps from herself as a physical being – is the story’s most compelling element. While The Women of Nell Gwynne’s didn’t have me hankering to dive into the entirety of the Company series, I am curious to read the further Nell Gwynne’s novelette The Bohemian Astrobleme, to see whether Lady Beatrice is further developed as a character.

Edit to add: Reading about the life of the actual Nell Gwynne, a 17th-century brothel girl turned celebrated comedienne turned royal mistress, is a must. Amazing woman.

Go to:

Kage Baker: bio and works reviewed
Subterranean Press: Kage Baker’s Scarlet Spy

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White Cat, by Holly Black (2010) E

February 24, 2012 in Book, Novels by Emera | No comments

Reviewer: Emera
Date read: 2011.10.16
Book from: Personal collection

Cassel Sharpe is the only non-magical member of a family of curse workers, in a world where magic is illegal and hence “worker” families constitute the magical equivalent of the mafia. Despite his disappointing failure to inherit curse-working powers, Cassel somehow managed to murder his childhood friend and love, Lila – though why he can’t remember. Add in life-threatening bouts of nightmares and sleepwalking, a dysfunctional crime family, and the beginnings of an elaborate conspiracy, and Cassel’s attempts at passing himself off as a normal kid seem like they might be over for good.

I read White Cat in one sitting after accidentally meeting Holly Black at a book festival and picking up a copy from her. This is addictive stuff: magical con artists and Russian mobsters; family melodrama; a hard-driving, twisty-turny plot; a mouthy, self-deprecating protagonist with likably grounded sidekicks. I must give a particular hurrah for there being a male Asian-American character: Sam Yu, Cassel’s roommate, a theater geek whose vehicle of choice is a converted hearse.

Black’s prose is a lot sharper and cleaner than I remember it being in her Modern Faerie trilogy, which I sorta-loved for its heroines, but mostly remember as a swill of angst. Cassel angsts plenty, too (I admit to skimming some of the whinier passages), but there are moments – particularly the ending – where his emotional experience deepens into real, wrenching anguish. That, and plenty of sharp detail – the world-building, Cassel’s slickly laid out cons, characters who convince you of their reality – kept me invested. I can’t wait to see where the series goes from here. Let this stand as a reminder to myself to pick up Red Glove whenever I find the chance.

Go to:
Holly Black: bio and works reviewed

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Sorcery and Cecelia, by Patricia C. Wrede & Caroline Stevermer (1988) E

October 26, 2011 in Book, Novels by Emera | 3 comments

Date read: 10.25.11
Book from: Borrowed from a friend
Reviewer: Emera

“… or, The Enchanted Chocolate Pot: being the correspondence of two Young Ladies of Quality regarding various Magical Scandals in London and the Country.

Dear Reader,
A great deal is happening in London this Season. To begin with, there’s the wizard who tried to poison Kate at the Royal College – she must have mistaken Kate for the Mysterious Marquis (which is curious, as they look nothing alike). There’s also the man who seems to be spying on Cecelia, though he’s not doing a very good job of it – so just what are his intentions?
Then there’s the strange spell that has made our friend Dorothea the toast of the town. Could it possibly have something to do with the charm-bag under Oliver’s bed? (Speaking of Oliver, how long can we make excuses for him? Ever since he was turned into a tree, he hasn’t bothered to tell anyone where he is.)
Clearly, magic is a deadly and dangerous business. And we might be in fear for our lives . . .  if only we weren’t having so much fun!
Love, Cecy and Kate”

A mightily charming epistolary romp through magical Regency England, and a long overdue read for me. Sorcery and Cecelia is fast-paced and stuffed full of clever gambits, sardonic conversation, and plenty of historical slang and detail to please period buffs – the girls spend as much time outwitting fussy aunts and negotiating delicate social constraints as they do uncovering wizardly misdeeds. Also, there are jokes about Byron.

My one disappointment is that the book doesn’t make much room for character development beyond what’s necessary to move the plot along. Between that and the lack of detailed physical description I had trouble telling the girls, and their respective love interests, apart – everyone is witty, quirky, and dark-haired. I must also confess to fantasy-nerdly hankering for more detail about the magical system and the greater role of wizards (they seem to have curiously little influence on society) – but seeing as Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell also exists, I can hardly complain that that itch has gone unscratched.

In any case, S & C is a great divertissement: playful and vivid, with a lovable (if homogeneous) cast. Common sense says I shouldn’t (too much work to do these days!), but I’m already scheming about finding the sequel…

Go to:
Patricia C. Wrede: bio and works reviewed
Caroline Stevermer: bio and works reviewed
The Grand Tour, by Patricia C. Wrede & Caroline Stevermer (2004): review by Emera
The Thirteenth Child, by Patricia C. Wrede: review by Kakaner
Dealing With Dragons, by Patricia C. Wrede: review by Emera
Talking to Dragons, by Patricia C. Wrede: review by Emera

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The Year of the Dog, by Grace Lin (2005) E

September 13, 2011 in Book, Novels by Emera | No comments

Date read: 8.10.11
Book from: Personal collection
Reviewer: Emera

“It’s the Chinese Year of the Dog! When Pacy’s mom tells her that this is a good year for friends, family, and ‘finding herself,’ Pacy begins searching right away. As the year goes on, she struggles to find her talent, deals with disappointment, makes a new best friend, and discovers just why the year of the dog is a lucky one for her after all.”

Another hug in book form from Grace Lin. This is her first novel, aimed for a slightly younger reader than Where the Mountain Meets the Moon (review) is. Lin’s writing, though sometimes clunky, has a straightforward warmth and cheerfulness that I continue to find irresistible. The dialogue had me laughing surprisingly often, especially the exchanges between Pacy (Lin’s fictionalized younger self) and her parents and older sister. And as in WtMMM, Lin interlaces the main narrative with tender, funny stories shared by Pacy’s friends and family, and copious, loving descriptions of food and food-centric imagery. (“The days disappeared like dumplings on a plate,” Pacy narrates at one point.)

Pacy’s life isn’t a dramatic one, but there are all sorts of little confusions and upsets to be navigated, both as a young girl tasked with “finding herself,” and more specifically as a first-gen Taiwanese-American who speaks neither Mandarin nor Taiwanese: sorting out holiday traditions, being called a twinkie (yellow on the outside, white on the inside) by other Asian-Americans, feeling alternately too Asian or too American to fit in a given context. Lin calls The Year of the Dog “the book I would have liked to have when I was little.” As a Chinese-American who regularly feels guilt over barely being able to speak Mandarin, I appreciated it just as much now, especially since I’ve been thinking pretty often this summer about cultural identity and immigrant assimilation.

There were also plenty of silly (but mortifying at the time) moments that I identified with and loved seeing in Pacy’s story. Possibly my favorite “OH MY GOD MY CHILDHOOD” moment:

Everyone in our neighborhood hung up Christmas lights all over their houses and trees. We tried to get Dad to do the same. Dad hung the lights, but he didn’t spend too much time doing it. Without putting on his coat or boots, he ran outside and threw them on a bush.

“Brr,” he said, stomping the snow from his bedroom slippers, “it’s cold out there.”

So, of course, while everyone else’s lights were in nice arches and evenly spaced all over their trees and bushes, our lights looked like a blob with lightbulbs flashing frantically for help.

“It looks more natural this way,” Dad said when we complained.

There is one weird point of unaddressed conflict: Pacy’s best friend at the start of the book is a white girl named Becky. When a new Taiwanese-American girl arrives at Pacy’s school, they quickly become best friends instead, but we never learn how Becky feels about it (resentful, confused, unfairly excluded?), or whether Pacy feels any confusion or guilt over it herself. I was nonplussed to see that fly under the narrative radar; Lin seems to have decided to elide any potential tension there.

Go to:
Grace Lin: bio and works reviewed
Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, by Grace Lin (2009): review by Emera

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