Ray Bradbury - The October Country

My newfound love for Bradbury close at hand, I skimmed the library shelf and decided on this collection of short stories, largely because, well, it was a small paperback. (I have no car, and it's a twenty minute walk to and from the library; my book choices are highly influenced by my ability to lug them back home again.) I'd also heard that out of all the mediums in which he's written, Bradbury is best at the short story.

I've read some of Bradbury's essays and musings on his own writing history and writing methods, so I know that he had a habit of making lists of words that sounded good, sounded like they could have stories in them, and then plucking one out and working at it until he'd found the story. The list of titles in this collection reflect that: 'The Crowd', 'The Scythe', 'The Lake', 'The Jar', and so on.

Horror isn't a genre that I've read much of at all, and I'm not sure to what extent Bradbury's stories count as horror; I read somewhere that one can lump him in with Stephen King in a genre of 'American weird', which I think is a pretty apt description. Not all of the stories are frightening, or more than mildly horrific. But they're definitely unsettling; definitely weird.

He does seem fond of the age-old device of one person being convinced of the danger inherent in a seemingly innocuous thing, and the disaster that results when nobody around them will take their conviction seriously. It's a trope that can be tiresome when handled badly, but I was impressed with how effectively Bradbury recycled it in new, creepy, engaging ways. The trope is most blatant in what I think are two of the most seriously disturbing stories in the collection, 'The Small Assassin' (which could almost be read as an allegory for postnatal depression) and 'The Wind', a really quite beautiful story with a creative concept at the heart of it, making it enjoyable and gripping even though it develops in a very predictable manner.

As well as the outright weirdness, the collection also contains some stories with an almost whimsical feel to them (Jack-in-the-Box, Uncle Einar) and those that are quite specifically about familiar emotion translated into a fantastical setting; the quiet despair of the protagonist in 'Homecoming', being surrounded by his supernatural family and hating his normality and inbility to be what is expected of him, shows that Bradbury's creativity is not limited to the simple act of dark invention.

Something that struck me in particular, reading as I did all nineteen stories in a fairly short space of time, is Bradbury's focus on the horror of the body. This is most obvious in 'The Next in Line', what I thought was the standout story in terms of how utterly creeped out it made me feel; after a woman pays a reluctant tourist visit to some mummies arranged in a catacomb in Mexico, she is overwhelmed with fear that she will die and join them. The careful, meticulous, horrible descriptions of the way she deteriorates -- almost entirely done in terms of bodily sensation and paranoid thought rather than emotion -- is masterful, and very upsetting. 'Skeleton', 'The Man Upstairs' and 'The Dwarf' are also body stories, in which one's own body can be traitor or alien or hated. It's a visceral and ancient kind of horror. It works.

'There Was An Old Woman' is another body-focused one, but instead of the body being the primary source trouble, it's something to be treasured and clung to. I loved this tale of a cranky old woman whose stubbornness in the face of death is both hilarious and, in an odd way, inspiring; it was a wonderful little celebration of humanity's ability to rage, rage against the dying of the light -- and a breath of fresh air in such a dark collection.

I think I need a break before my next Bradbury book; much as I enjoy his writing style and his imagination, the occasional brief and delicious immersion is enough.

Karen Healey - Guardian of the Dead

This is only the second book I've read dealing with the mythology of New Zealand, the first being Keri Hulme's The Bone People, a Booker-Prize-winning fucking marvel of a novel that's somewhat like being kicked slowly in the chest. Guardian of the Dead is much more of an outright dark-fantasy novel, and the mythology -- and the idea of mythology -- plays a much larger part in the story.

(Tangentally, I'll say right off the bat that this is one of my favourite book covers ever. You don't realise how clever it is until you've actually read the book, but even at first glance it's gorgeous and creepy and sucks you in.)

Guardian of the Dead follows Ellie, who like most protagonists of urban fantasy is coping reasonably well with her life (at her boarding school on New Zealand's south island) until, well, weird shit starts happening. The story deals with magical beings, magical powers, and -- of course -- a quest to save the world, or at least a particular corner of it. Not knowing much at all about Maori mythology I can't say how much licence has been taken, but it comes across as self-contained and fascinating and has certainly made me curious to learn more. I was surprised and impressed at how far into horror the imagery strayed, too, wrapping the reader up in creepiness until you don't feel at all safe, and that makes the story itself more unpredictable, because hell, anything could happen now. This is contributed to by the fact that it has exactly the right tone to it, the feel of myth, where every action holds meaning and things like sacrifice and lies and family and courage become all-important.

The characters are sketched well, though I must admit that the love interest held no particular appeal for me. I was completely sold on the fact that Ellie liked him, and that he liked her, no problems there, but something in his personality was too flat for me to get on board entirely with his presence in the story. But I loved most of the very teenaged teenagers and the way they interacted, and the various magic-makers and figures of power, and how Healey shows that even when strange new fantastical things are happening, the motivations and niggling details of everyday life are still worth thinking about.

This book is a prime example of what I think of as the Social Justice YA Movement: it spins a great tale with a likable protagonist, but it also addresses asexuality, fatphobia, sexism and rape culture. Which is fantastic! The more books that show fat girls kicking ass, and asexual boys refusing to compromise their identity, and people judging and making mistakes and rethinking -- the better. Ellie's self-consciousness and automatic comparison of herself to others is almost painfully recognisable, and I think it would be so for anyone who's ever been a teenager. I like that everyone has secrets, and nobody's perfect, and people cross the boundaries between good-guy and bad-guy with perfect aplomb; a healthy dose of moral ambiguity is always welcome, especially in myth.

Also there is Shakespeare in it. Did I mention? SHAKESPEARE. Ding ding ding, automatic bonus points.

I'm going to push this on my sister as soon as I can, and I'd recommend it if you're at all into dark urban fantasy; and I'm now sitting around impatiently waiting for Healey's next book to fall into my hands, because I love the way she tells a story.

Ray Bradbury - The Halloween Tree

Alas! I am now 99% sure I will never have access to a time travel machine, because if I ever do, I fully intend to scoop up a large handful of Ray Bradbury's books and drop them in the path of my ten-year-old self with a note attached: READ THESE. And as my first encounter with Bradbury took place less than six month ago, at the ripe old age of 24, I can only assume that no such time-traveling opportunity will be presented to me in the future.

This didn't look like much when I pulled it off the library shelf (which I did largely because it looked short) -- a novel about a group of boys in a small American town on Halloween. Being Australian, the whole idea of Halloween has mainly entered my consciousness via the consumption of American media. A couple of optimistic kids might show up at the door every year, and we will have to cast around perplexedly for something to give them. During high school it was a good excuse for costume parties.

The first thing that struck me is that these are very boyish kinds of boys, so distinct that I think I could probably pick a Bradbury child from, for example, a Wynne Jones child, should they ever appear in the same story. The way the story is told, hyperbolistic and rapid and rough and overwhelmingly wondrous, is the perfect style for a children's story that refuses to talk down to you.

Over the course of Halloween Night, the group of boys is swept through the midnight histories of the human race: the realities and the myths behind each of their costumes -- skeleton and witch and caveman and mummy, all those classical figures that run through Bradbury's works -- and through it all they are chasing the missing member of their band, who appears to need saving from some unknown fate. It's just enough of a driving plot on which to hang ragged handfuls of fantasy and mythology and horror, and it works. Each of the scenes is evocative, and scary, and manages to sneakily educate you as well. Plus, it's overwhelmingly about how people conceptualise and cope with death, which is right up my alley.

My absolute favourite aspect of it, though, is the sound of the words. I was only a few pages in when I started doing something with this book that I've never done with any other: I read most of it aloud, or at least imagined myself speaking each word inside my head. I couldn't help it. I want to read it to children, with pauses in the spooky bits, and proper sound effects. I want to show them how words can roll together and echo, how rhythm sings when it's done right.

Here's a bit that's death-mythos and language all at once:

"...When you and your friends die every day, there's no time to think of Death, is there? Only time to run. But when you stop running at long last -"

He touched the walls. The apemen froze in mid-flight.

"- now you have time to think of where you came from, where you're going. And fire lights the way, boys. Fire and lightning. Morning stars to gaze at. Fire in your own cave to protect you. Only by night fires was the caveman, beast-man, able at last to turn his thoughts on a spit and baste them with wonder. The sun died in the sky. Winter came on like a great white beast shaking its fur, burying him. Would spring ever come back to the world? Would the sun be reborn next year or stay murdered? Egyptians asked it. Cavemen asked it a million years before. Will the sun rise tomorrow morning?"

I'm on to a book of Bradbury's short stories, now, but I haven't yet met anything that impressed me as much as this small book.

Patrick Rothfuss - The Wise Man's Fear

I heard of a man
who says words so beautifully
that if he only speaks their name
women give themselves to him
- Leonard Cohen

I'm going to do something irritating and review the second book in a trilogy without having reviewed the first, but don't worry: I'm not going to talk too much about the plot. What I'm going to do instead is tell you why you should be reading Patrick Rothfuss's Kingkiller Trilogy (despite the uberdramatic name) even if long fantasy trilogies aren't really your thing. My sister made me read this one; our relationship has progressed to the point where I am no longer the sole bestower of wisdom and Good Reads advice, which is sort of depressing but also means I read things I otherwise might pass over. I read myself to death on high fantasy in high school and have left the genre largely alone ever since.

I was therefore pleased to discover that this is not your everyday derivative dragons-and-swords high fantasy, even though it features both dragons and swords. This is a (young) man narrating his memoirs, over the course of three nights, to a scribe. The protagonist, Kvothe, does dance perilously close to the realms of Perfect Awesomesauce Fantasy Hero, but is saved from it because his narrative voice is so very human: he's funny, dry, emotional, perceptive and angry by turns, and although the trilogy is indeed all about this one person, it's tribute to Rothfuss's powers of invention and lively writing that you never get sick of Kvothe's company. And the retrospective narrative technique means that there's an inbuilt curiosity about trajectory that keeps the pages turning: how did he get from there to here? We want to know. We really want to know. We wish the book would stop it with the enticing fucking hints. (Not really.)

Although this isn't an ensemble piece by any means, there's a large cast of characters that dance in and out of the story, and I think they might be my favourite thing about the entire trilogy, because they have lives. They're all recognisably complicated people who sometimes interact with Kvothe and sometimes are off doing their own thing. Even if they serve a very particular purpose for Kvothe and for the plot, the reader never feels like they're looking at some stock characters who have been dragged onstage in order to serve this sole purpose. I am particularly fond of the way Rothfuss portrays women (he's a blatantly feminist writer in a way that comes across on occasion as a mite too self-aware, but is still vastly better than the alternative, and very refreshing to see in the genre of male-authored fantasy fiction), and also Kvothe's university friends and their quirks and relationships.

In fact, the majority of the first two books revolve around Kvothe's life at the University, with the result that it kind of feels like Pamela Dean's Tam Lin fell into the hands of Raymond E. Feist and was subjected to a makeover: sure, there's adventure and myth and magic, but there are also long swathes of delightful academic time wherein people study for exams and geek out over weird subjects and get annoyed with their teachers and then go and get drunk. I love it. The greatest and best worldbuilding that Rothfuss has done is in this academic arena: all of the areas of study have been thought out and described beautifully, and their applications are fascinating, and they never come across as easy. Sometimes you have to study until your head aches. Sometimes things come easily, but sometimes you just don't have the knack for it.

The Wise Man's Fear also sees Kvothe leave the University on a sort of enforced gap year, during which this Penny Arcade comic happens (see also: the quote at the top of this review). Oh, and he also learns some crazy ninja skills and comes a bit closer to solving the mystery of his parents' death, which is related to a lot of dark mythology and a possible secret society (there's that plot I wasn't going to tell you about). Another very intense piece of worldbuilding is done here, and that's the people of the Adem, who communicate emotion and nuance via their hands rather than their faces, and have a warrior code and a matriarchal society structure that are impeccably thought out and effectively delivered. I could have read about that society forever; there's so much imagination put into their crreation that you can almost feel it coming off on your fingers as you turn the pages.

There's one more thing that I was so, so impressed to see in these books, and that's the treatment of money. There are a lot of stories where people rise from poor beginnings, and a lot of stories where it's just assumed or handwaved that the characters have enough money to live and to go and do whatever the plot needs them to do. What Rothfuss illustrates wonderfully is just how fucking difficult it is for poor students living hand-to-mouth. Kvothe never has enough money; not through fault (usually), but because he has neither family nor savings, and his tuition is expensive, and it's hard to hold down decently paid work and study like a maniac at the same time. It's a story that rings true with me and I think would with a lot of people -- not wanting to insult friends by not going out with them, but wondering how the hell you can get away with not buying a meal. Praying that no sudden misfortunate requiring money to fix it will come along, because you have no safety net. Borrowing. Pawning. Making compromises. Making do. For all that Kvothe is a talented, brilliant person, he has to work bloody hard just to stay afloat in his own life, and I always appreciate it when an author is brave enough to do that to their darlings.

This wasn't so much a review as a very long recommendation, but there it is: read The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man's Fear, and then prepare to sit around waiting for the third book along with the rest of us.

Diana Wynne Jones - Eight Days of Luke

SCHOOL FETES ARE THE BEST PLACE TO GET BOOKS. Some poor deluded person will always have donated something that you deeply desire, and you will pick it up for the ludicrous price of $1! It feels almost illegal, like at any point, as you are hugging your bag of books to your chest and scurrying past the milkshake stall, you will be stopped by large men in security uniforms.

"Sorry," they'll say. "There's been some mistake here. The universe doesn't believe you should be acquiring so much literary enjoyment for so cheap a price. Hand over the books."

Uh, this has never happened to me. Obviously. But I can never shake the feeling that it might.

The excellent thing about these particular editions of Diana Wynne Jones's books (stay with me, this is relevant) is that their garish spines stand out beautifully in the Children's Books section, even though Children's Books are pretty damn colourful as a rule. When I saw this one, I leapt in, realised that it was one I hadn't read yet, and made a loud noise of gleeful acquisition, startling everyone else in the vicinity. Most of whom were...children. Funnily enough.

Eight Days of Luke is a very short book, so I expect my review will be short also. In fact I'm pretty sure the above blathering about fetes will comprise the majority of it.

Basic plot summary: David enjoys spending the holidays with his family about as much as Harry Potter does, so when a mysterious boy called Luke shows up out of the blue, claiming that David has released him from some kind of imprisonment, he's pretty pleased to have some company. Until some strange people start showing up and threatening him. (And even then, he's mostly pleased that his holidays are looking a lot more interesting.)

If you're at all familiar with Norse mythology -- which I am in a vague sense only; I had to look up a few things to fit the pieces together -- then you'll love this one to pieces. The mystery is satisfying, the plot bounds along at a satisfying rate, David is a very teenage teenage boy, and DWJ pulls off one of her best family portraits in showing us both the grubby psychology of his relatives and the ways in which David observes and thinks about their games and behaviours.

It's quintessentially Wynne Jonesian, which means it reads kind of like an Enid Blyton book and American Gods got drunk at a party and reproduced. (Neil Gaiman has gone on record re: how much he was and wasn't influenced by this book, which came out long before American Gods was written.) Plus there's a lot of talk about cricket, which I always like to see in my British fantasy.

And that's about it! Short & sweet.

Margo Lanagan - Black Juice

After reading Tender Morsels, I was determined to hunt down more of Margo Lanagan's work, and the library was good enough to supply me with some of her short story collections. I picked up this one first for the simple reason that it had a medal on the cover (2004 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards), thus proving that I am easily swayed by awards and other cheap tricks.

'Singing My Sister Down' has become quite well known; it's a quiet, ruthless story that has real overtones of horror for me. A young boy and his family head to the tar pits for a ceremonial picnic and singing session during the hours of his older sister's ceremonial execution. Lanagan's skill in building up a society that has alien customs but familiar interpersonal dynamics is displayed beautifully here, as the family's bickering and love and shared grief are played out against the strange, slow, slow ritual of death.

I found 'My Lord's Man' to be the weakest story of the bunch, not because it isn't well written but because it doesn't have as much of a narrative as the others. It paints a clear picture of three people and the complicated ways in which they relate to one another, judge one another, and forgive one another. But it feels -- not quite incomplete, but lost. As though it needs to be part of a larger whole.

'Red Nose Day', on the other hand, was my favourite. The story of a pair of assassins that slowly expands and expands into something weirder and deeper, it's got the perfect balance of tension and instant strong characterisation. It's a truly bizarre, chillingly imagined tale that reads like Terry Pratchett by way of Stephen King; you're not sure if it's a joke, but you certainly don't feel like laughing. In fact, you feel like backing away gently and hoping it doesn't notice.

When I was quite young my grandfather, who's spent a lot of his life in places like Sri Lanka and India and Bangladesh, wrote and illustrated a wonderful book for me, from the point of view of a labour elephant who had a lot of strange adventures with his handler. It was the first thing I thought of when reading 'Sweet Pippit', which tells the story of a group of elephants in search of their favourite human, who has been arrested and taken away from them. Once again Lanagan mixes recognisable human culture with the fantastical creation that is the elephants' customs, personalities, and powers. And I think that if elephants had names for themselves, they would absolutely be things like Booroondoonhooroboom.

I'm still not sure what to think of 'House of the Many'. Without a doubt it's incredibly well put together, once again abandoning normal fantasy tropes for the scarier and closer-to-home details of a cultish group of people controlled by a single man, seen through the eyes of a small boy. (Margo Lanagan, like Diana Wynne Jones, seems to have a fondness for child narrators.) But I think I was hoping it would lead up to something bigger.

I really liked 'Wooden Bride' but again felt that it could be more effective if it was part of something longer. Maybe because the idea of it -- 'bridehood' as an event that has nothing to do with men and everything to do with girls coming into their own, all the trappings of a wedding blurred into myth and meaningless ritual -- was something that made me yearn to see a wider context, instead of a short vignette that gives the bare bones of the concept and not much more.

'Earthly Uses' is a really fucking creepy story about a boy who lives with his abusive grandfather, and is sent to fetch an angel to heal his dying grandmother. Except 'angels', in this story, are definitely not the shining intermediaries we associate with the word. Gah. I still get shivers thinking about this one, which I suppose means it's a very effective piece of storytelling.

I let out a cheer when I worked out that 'Perpetual Light' was recognisably set in Australia; most of Lanagan's stories are set in unnamed and/or unrecognisable cultures, and there's a sad dearth of Australian urban fantasy or sci-fi in general. To be honest I'm still not entirely sure what parts of it are about -- I'd need to reread it, I think -- but there are definite themes of environmentalism and family, a much more science fiction feel than any of the other stories in the collection, and a kind of mild, dusty dystopia that I loved because it was based firmly in the NSW bush. I also thought the narrator, Daphne, was a great character. I would happily read novels worth of this particular world.

'Yowlinin' was another favourite of mine, largely for the narrator -- a half-wild girl abandoned by her village because her parents were killed, a girl fiercely proud of her independence and scornful of everyone else, but also with a bit of a crush on one of the village boys -- and partly because I think it had the most effective pacing and plot. Like 'Earthly Uses', it features the kind of magical creatures that you're likely to have nightmares about.

'Rite of Spring', about a boy who participates unwillingly in a harsh and dangerous ritual that is needed to bring about the start of spring, is another one that has a strong sense of myth to it, with the struggle of human beings against the grudging elements, and the idea that our rituals and beliefs have real consequences.

All in all, this collection left me with both a wild jealousy for Lanagan's powers of imagination and language, and a desire to snap up all her other books as soon as possible.

Diana Wynne Jones - Unexpected Magic

You know how it is. You're in Galaxy Bookshop (or any other fantasy-sci-fi treasurebox of your choice) and you can maybe, possibly, probably stretch your budget to one book. One book. Suddenly everything looks desirable, but nothing looks quite desirable enough to be The One. You slouch impecuniously towards the Diana Wynne Jones shelf in the YA section, knowing that her books are at least the kind that you will consistently reread and are thus usually worth purchasing.

Lo! And behold! Sitting neatly next to a handful of Chrestomanci books is something you've never come across before (excellent) and that you know your local library doesn't have (even better!): a book of short stories. Nice and thick, too. Decision made.

I read this collection slowly, especially because I was only a fraction of the way into the book when Diana Wynne Jones's death was announced. I felt as though every word of hers that I hadn't yet read had just become infinitely more precious.

If you've read any DWJ at all you probably have a fair idea of the kind of stories that are in this collection: fifteen shorts and one novella, all stuffed full of children and cats and families and England and annoyances and, as the title suggests, one sort of unexpected magic or another.

I enjoyed the novella, 'Everard's Ride', the most, because I think DWJ's characters are best when you have a bit of time to get to know them. It's a fairly standard normal-kids-get-mixed-up-in-affairs-of-magical-kingdom story, but with a frightening bite to the politics of it all, wonderfully drawn dynamics between siblings, friends, and acquaintances, and a hefty dose of class awkwardness thrown in.

There's probably not much point in faithfully listing every single story in the book, but I'll mention some favourites. 'Auntie Bea's Day Out' is another classic DWJonesian story of a family of a children under the eye of an unpleasant relative, and the strange things that start happening to them on a trip to the seaside. 'The Girl Who Loved The Sun' stands out as being much less deadpan and Kids Own Adventure; it's written as a fairytale, a lyrical myth, and brings some welcome variety of tone to the collection. 'Nad and Dan adn Quaffy' (no, that wasn't a typo) is a tongue-in-cheek, hilarious story about an author whose writing technique is to pretend that her word processor is the controls of a spaceship -- and who is one day surprised to find that the computer is talking back.

There are three stand-out shorts, in my opinion, and I think I liked them the most because they were most successful in conveying a real sense of niggling danger. 'The Master' is the disturbing tale of a newly qualified vet called out to a murder scene and faced with crypticism and wolves. 'Enna Hittims' is about a girl stuck at home with the mumps whose drawings come to life and try to take over her house. And 'Dragon Reserve, Home Eight' is a real masterpiece of worldbuilding, giving a strong sibling relationship and some dragons and a whole lot of fear and moral ambiguity, all in a very short space.

Telling any existing fan of Diana Wynne Jones to read this book would be the most pointless form of preaching to the choir, but if you've never read her, I think it would be an excellent introduction to her distinctive narrative style.

Annette Curtis Klause - Blood and Chocolate

There are many reasons why I follow the blogs of authors, not least of which is the vain hope that they might inspire me to WRITE SOMETHING YOU LAZY FOOL, but one of them is so that I can catch posts like this one from the fabulous Sarah Rees Brennan, in which she throws book recs around the place. Blood and Chocolate is, in her opinion, the best werewolf book ever. As someone whose favourite werewolf books has for years been, by default, Terry Pratchett's The Fifth Elephant (which is maybe not a Werewolf Book per se, but certainly the only book I can remember that contains a significant number of them), this sounded like an excellent genre-exposure opportunity.

Paranormal romance is not something I get excited about as a general rule. I will happily read sporkings of the more dreadfully written and blatantly rape-culture-endorsing examples of the genre, but by and large I will steer clear. (If you haven't read that post of bookshop's before, GO AND DO SO NOW. I'll wait.)

For the first chapter or so I was feeling dubious about Vivian, the protagonist, given that we are quickly treated to a description of her that teeters precariously on Mary Sue Precipice:

She was tall and leggy, like her mother, with full breasts, small waist, and slim hips that curved enough to show she was female. Her skin was gently golden; it was always golden, sun or not, and her tawny hair was thick and long and wild.

But although Vivian is gorgeous and a boy-magnet and speaks French with a perfect accent and has hair that changes colour super strength, there was a lot I ended up liking about her. I liked that she's a teenage girl with teenage girl problems ranging from how to fit in at school to how to cope with her mother's taste in new boyfriends. I liked that she has good self-esteem. She also has a healthy and enthusiastic attitude towards sex that I found really refreshing to read about, as even a lot of books aimed at adults tend to dial down the sexuality of women -- especially young women -- and so Vivian's HURRAH KISSING and GODDAMNIT WHEN WILL I BE ABLE TO SEDUCE THIS DUDE thoughts and feelings came across as part of a balanced portrayal of a teenager, not sexytimes for the sake of sexytimes; especially because romance and sex are definitely not the only thing Vivian thinks about. Not even the main thing she thinks about, I'd say.

The other enormous redeeming factor is that Vivian is not a normal human girl who happens to be the object of a paranormal being's affections. Vivian is a proud werewolf whose pack is having problems: some of their members started killing humans (which is absolutely forbidden) and they had to leave their last town in a hurry, but not before a fire was set on their property in revenge; a fire that killed a lot of them, including Vivian's father. And the pack is now having a lot of trouble settling into their new place, especially because they are lacking a leader, so there's a lot of infighting and bitchiness and power plays going on, which in Vivian's opinion is a whole lot of stress she really doesn't need. Especially now that she's gone and fallen in love with a human boy.

Basically: Vivian is what would happen if Edward Cullen were actually a vain and ballsy teenage girl who just wanted a) her family to stop being so crazy, and b) to have some sex already.

So yes, there were a lot of things to like: I liked Vivian and her pro-active attitude, I liked the werewolf mythology and the werewolf politics, I liked the characterisation of a lot of the supporting characters, I liked the plot. I liked that there was a scene where Vivian bit out another werewolf's eye and then spent a few hours afterwards going ugh, I did what? But...as a whole, the book fell flat for me, and there were too many things that pulled me up short and made me frown.

The lack of positive female characters other than Vivian herself was depressing. Vivian's relationship with her mother is at least complicated, but Esme is presented as being sort of flighty and status-hungry, and not really there as any kind of emotional support. Vivian is also the only female werewolf of her generation in the (admittedly quite small) pack, and it's quite clear that her milkshake brings all the boy-wolves to the yard, not just because she's all sexy but because...well, there's nobody else? All of Vivian's inner struggles and identity issues and boy troubles etc. are dealt with inside her head because she has absolutely zero female friends, or even friendly acquaintances, to confide in.

As for the love story, I was waiting for the other shoe to drop for the first half of the book, but when it did, it just didn't make sense. Suddenly there's another love interest? That guy who sexually harrassed you quite a few times without ever apologising? Remember when you accidentally won some kind of ritual battle and he expected you to be his queen and you were like hell to the no? Can't we stick with that interesting storyline, ie. loyalty to pack law vs. dislike for powerful jerkface?

Spoiler alert: no.

It's not that I was heavily invested in the original love interest, either, it's more that I would have been just as happy -- happier -- for Vivian to end up single and a bit wiser. (Although an unfortunate side effect of the lack-of-female-confidantes problem was that for the ending to be a happy one, Vivian needed to end up with some kind of close relationship. It's just sad that romance was presented as the only option.)

For a story that has at its heart a great portrayal of identity problems, the frustration of two conflicting aspects to one's life, and the determination to follow one's heart even if it leads one outside the norms of one's community, I found the ending disappointing. Inasmuch as it answers the question of 'Can one defy one's appointed role in life and society?' with a resounding APPARENTLY NOT.

Blood and Chocolate is an easy read and a fun inversion of the usual paranormal romace tropes -- I'd certainly hold Vivian up a a role model to any young girl who might be tempted to stray down the Bella Swan path -- but as far as my favourite werewolf book goes, I think The Fifth Elephant is still at the top of the list.

Margo Lanagan - Tender Morsels

I didn't know what I was getting into when I pulled this book off the library shelf. I'd heard the name of it bandied about on other blogs, and I'd heard it recommended by people whose tastes I generally trust, but my knowledge of the book itself was something like: another YA fairytale retelling? Maybe? Kind of...dark?

Hoo boy.

For one thing, I don't know how many teenagers I'd give this one to. For another, it's not trying to retell any one existing fairytale that I'm aware of, though it has elements woven through it that seem very familiar in an old, forest-dark, Brothers Grimm kind of a way. It's set in two worlds: the 'true' world, and an 'ideal' world, or personal heaven, to which a young woman called Liga escapes with her daughters. The book is about the reasons for that escape, and what happens when the barriers between the worlds start to break down. I won't say a lot more about the plot itself because I found that going into it with no expectations was actually a good way to do it.

It took me an embarrassingly long time to twig to the fact that this is, starkly and insistently, a book about rape culture. It's about female sexuality. It's about the policing of female sexuality, and the ownership of it, and how difficult it is to understand your own emerging sexuality as a growing girl enmeshed in a society that keeps trying to tell you how and when and to what extent you should be exercising it. (It's also, well, about rape and sexual abuse of children, and while the scenes are never graphically described, I imagine it would be very triggering for some.)

The other main theme is related, but wider in scope. It asks the questions: to what extent can we, and to what extent should we, protect our children? Where do we draw the line between sheltering their innocence and keeping them wilfully ignorant? Given power and choice, should life be enjoyed, or should it be lived? Should it be narrow and comfortable, or painful and rich? Lanagan never flinches from portraying these questions, and the characters caught up in them, as complex and morally conflicted. She doesn't lead us easily towards the answers, and she doesn't pretend that good will always win out, even though the pursuit and possibility of justice is another theme that shines through.

There were a couple of niggling complaints that I had with the book as a whole; most significantly, I found the pacing to fall entirely flat. It wasn't until I was well over halfway through the book that I found myself wanting to keep turning the pages to find out What Would Happen Next; up until that point some things had happened, sure, but I hadn't been given any sense of overarching plot or tension. That said, I was interested enough in the characters and the subtle world-building to keep going, and everything did more or less draw together by the end.

Tender Morsels is a dark fairytale. But the creeping insidious horror of the book isn't any particular monster, or any one evil villain; it's the hovering phantom of male control over female sexuality, the phantom of rape culture. By the end of it I felt bruised and shaken and furious on behalf of the characters, and on behalf of everyone who's ever had to put up with misogynist language and entitlement and sexual harrassment and communities structured in such a way so as to endorse sexual double standards. This book will make you angry. Read it anyway. Read it because.