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Leaflet Review: Alice in Tumblr-land: And Other Fairy Tales for a New Generation by Tim Manley

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Cover of Alice in Tumblr-land by Tim ManleyPeter Pan finally has to grow up and get a job, or at least start paying rent. Cinderella swaps her glass slippers for Crocs. The Tortoise and the Hare Facebook stalk each other. Goldilocks goes gluten free. And Rapunzel gets a buzz cut.

Here are more than one hundred fairy tales, illustrated and reimagined for today. Instead of fairy godmothers, there’s Siri. And rather than big bad wolves, there are creepy dudes on OkCupid. In our brave new world of social networking, YouTube, and texting, fairy tales can once again lead us to “happily every after”—and have us laughing all the way.

In case my earlier discussion of using fairy tale motifs in creative writing didn’t tip you off (or the mention of my folklore-emphasizing master’s degree, etc.), I’m a bit of a fairy- and folktale nut. My most recent read in the realm of fairy-tale retelling is Tim Manley’s Alice in Tumblr-land: And Other Fairy Tales for a New Generation.

First, I should point out that the book is an outgrowth of Manley’s Tumblr blog Fairy Tales for 20-somethings. (As such you can probably guess that this isn’t for your kids—insert language and content warnings here. My warnings for the book are stronger than for the blog: the book is more explicit, includes more sex-involved storylines, etc. Take a glance around the blog, and if that pushes your boundaries, don’t pick up the book.) But the book does some things that are ill-suited to a blog-style project, and I’m going to focus on those things.

The book, like the blog, has a mix of stories with different characters from different fairy tales (with little to no carryover between fairy tales). Each “fairy tale” story ranges from a couple sentences to a few paragraphs long. (Side note: His definition of fairy tale is very broad and inclusive. If it’s a Disney movie, it probably qualifies for Manley as a fairy tale. Aesop is fair game too.) Although there are overarching narratives for several characters (Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Rapunzel, etc.), no character has two consecutive fairy tales if you’re reading the book cover to cover. Technically most of the tales could be read independently, but the most “bookish” parts of the book, the ones toward the end of the volume, normally require the background knowledge of Manley’s interpretation of the characters.

It’s these sorts of tales that I’m going to focus on for this review. While the blog constantly puts out standalone tales—whether they be humorous or poignant—that sort of telling is ill-suited to a coherent book that is supposed to be read and remembered as something other than a gag book. (Gag books have their place, make no mistake. But that’s not what Manley is doing here.) In the book Manley has selected posts from the blog, rewritten some of them, and added many, many more tales to give characters overarching narratives with problems, failings, successes, and ultimately, an inner calmness and peace. While the book describes many stereotypes and tropes of the lost, confused, bewildered, or befuddling generation of today’s American twenty-somethings, it is not a book that ends on the note of being lost, confused, bewildered, or befuddled. Every recurring character finds a way to reconcile his or her questions and instability into some form of calm willingness to press on, innovate, and engage with life.

All in all, I think the book does a good job. As with the blog, there are some tales (and some arcs) I consider more successful, humorous, or emotionally impactful than others, and there are some I don’t particularly care for. In that way it is like many anthology-style books that include multiple discrete storylines: some are bound to please more than others. I would even argue that until the book fully engages with being a book—until we start getting the closure that doesn’t sit well in an ongoing blog-style context—it feels a bit weaker than the blog. But in the end, Manley pulls it off. Since each tale is so sort, it really doesn’t take that long to get to the end either, so overall it’s worth a read.

Leaflet Review: The Half-Made World by Felix Gilman

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The Half-Made World coverThe world is still only half-made. Between the wild shores of uncreation, and the ancient lands of the East lies the vast expanse of the West—young, chaotic, magnificent, war-torn.

Thirty years ago, the Red Republic fought to remake the West—fought gloriously, and failed. The world that now exists has been carved out amid a war between two rival factions: the Line, enslaving the world with industry, and the Gun, a cult of terror and violence. The Republic is now history, and the last of its generals sits forgotten and nameless in a madhouse on the edge of creation. But locked in his memories is a secret that could change the West forever, and the world’s warring powers would do anything to take it from him.

Now Liv Alverhuysen, a doctor of the new science of psychology, travels west, hoping to heal the general’s shattered mind. John Creedmoor, reluctant Agent of the Gun and would-be gentleman of leisure, travels west, too, looking to steal the secret or die trying. And the servants of the Line are on the march.

I can’t remember exactly how I became interested in The Half-Made World, but it’s been a while. I wasn’t quite ready to drop enough money to buy a new hardcover from an author I’d never read though, and that’s why when it came time to find books to populate my Nook, I was ridiculously pleased to see that for some reason, it was on sale for $3.99 (I later discovered that this was a promotional price because the sequel came out last week). It would have been worth paying more than that.

Characters in Conflict

The most interesting aspect of the book, for me, was how every viewpoint character had a strong internal conflict between who they were, what they were doing, and what they wanted to do.

The world of this book feels very magical-wild-West: there are cowboy-like outlaws (the Agents of the Gun), industry-driven railroad men (the men of the Line), the innocents caught in the middle, and the magical Hillfolk that no one fully comprehends. There’s a viewpoint character from every group except the Hillfolk.

John Creedmoor, Agent of the Gun, is ridden by a demon who lives in his revolver. The demon, Marmion, is used to more or less dictating the actions of his host. But Creedmoor delights in defying his master as much as he can, even when it results in demonic torture. Don’t get me wrong: Creedmoor is not a good man, and that point is frequently reiterated through his thoughts and actions. But there is a part of him that knows what good is and that wants someone to do the right thing, even if it isn’t him. John’s internal conflict was, for me, the most compelling conflict of the story.

Lowry is a man of the Line. Men of the Line are supposed to be more or less the same across the board: more or less equally capable, efficient, and unquestioningly loyal to the Engines they worship. His little rebellions are nowhere as brazen as Creedmoor’s, but they wouldn’t fit his character if they were. He is ever so slightly proud of his accomplishments (pride is anathema for Linesmen). He struggles with his desire for glory and his place in a system that doesn’t allow for glory. Especially when he’s put in contrast with Creedmoor, who is a complete glory hog, Lowry is actually an interesting character considering he comes from a group of people who are supposed to be the bland product of assembly lines and cookie-cutter lives. Where he ends up at the end of the book is perfectly fitting (though it felt unfulfilling for a moment and it took me a bit to realize how brilliant it was).

Liv was, for me, the least interesting of the characters. She too is in conflict with herself for most of the book—she struggles with her revulsion and pragmatic acceptance of Creedmoor—but I think she surprised me the least and had the simplest character arc. That said, she is very different, in a good an interesting way, from your typical fantasy heroine. She’s just not, in my opinion, the most interesting person in the book.

Drive to the Sequel

This book’s ending feeds heavily into the sequel. The biggest secret of the book still hasn’t been revealed, new difficulties are introduced, and in general it does a good job of letting you know that if you enjoyed this book, you must pick up the next one as soon as possible. But while I thoroughly enjoyed the setting and I’m emotionally invested in Creedmoor’s character, especially after the events at the end of the book, I’m going to hold off for a bit. Why? Because Liv suddenly became more central (and I already mentioned that she’s not the most interesting for me), and given the back-cover copy of the sequel, I’m not sure that the sequel will end up being what I’d expect. So I’m going to hold off until the price drops to something closer to the price of a mass market paperback. Gilman’s voice and setting are intriguing, and I want to try more; I’m just not quite prepared to pay a premium for it yet.

content warnings: Language (several F-bombs) and allusions to Creedmoor’s liaisons with various women.

Leaflet Review: The Emperor’s Soul by Brandon Sanderson

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The Emperor's Soul by Brandon Sanderson coverThe Emperor’s Soul showcases a fascinating magic system as the clock ticks down for a condemned criminal. When Shai is caught replacing the Moon Scepter with her nearly flawless forgery, she must bargain for her life. An assassin has left the Emperor Ashravan without consciousness, a circumstance concealed only by the death of his wife. If the emperor does not emerge after his hundred-day mourning period, the rule of the Heritage Faction will be forfeit and the empire will fall into chaos. Shai is given an impossible task: to create—to Forge—a new soul for the emperor in less than one hundred days. But her soul-Forgery is considered an abomination by her captors. She is confined to a tiny, dirty chamber, guarded by a man who hates her, spied upon by politicians, and trapped behind a door sealed in her own blood. Shai’s only possible ally is the emperor’s most loyal councillor, Gaotona, who struggles to understand her true talent. Time is running out for Shai. Forging, while deducing the motivations of her captors, she needs a perfect plan to escape …

This novella from Brandon Sanderson was the first full piece I read on the Nook SimpleTouch my husband got me for my birthday. (Side note: I know I’ve never been an outspoken fan of ebooks, but I have to say, with a newborn, I love my Nook. I can hold it and turn pages with one hand, and if the little one is up in the middle of the night, it has a little light to illuminate the screen so I can read while I rock him. Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.) It was well worth the money I paid for it, even though there are full ebook novels you can get for the same price. As is typical of Brandon, the magic system is innovative and interesting. The two most important characters, Shai and Gaotona, have very different perspectives on theology, the place of magic in the world, and politics, but Brandon does an amazing job of showing how similar they can be when they’re genuine with one another. There is a great deal of discussion about the nature of beauty and art, and it’s actually quite poetic. As far as intellectual elements go (rather than the fun of character and worldbuilding, which were delightful), my favorite part was when Shai begins to understand how the emperor went from an idealistic crusader to an idle ruler. It rings very true, not just for the characters in the story, but for everyday people in the real world. I have to admit that I skimmed the fight scene. Fight scenes are another thing Brandon is known for, but I didn’t fully appreciate this one. However, you can hear Brandon explain why he kept it in a recent episode of Writing Excuses. (The episode is spoilerific, so don’t listen unless you’re okay with that.) Note: If you’re a big print fan and you decide you’d like a hard-copy version of this novella, go for it. If you buy the print version from Tachyon Publications, just email your receipt or a photo of yourself holding the book to ebooks@brandonsanderson.com and you’ll get a free electronic copy as well.

Leaflet Review: Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

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Cover of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom RiggsA mysterious island. An abandoned orphanage. A strange collection of very peculiar photographs.

It all waits to be discovered in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, an unforgettable novel that mixes fiction and photography in a thrilling reading experience. As our story opens, a horrific family tragedy sets sixteen-year-old Jacob journeying to a remote island off the coast of Wales, where he discovers the crumbling ruins of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. As Jacob explores its abandoned bedrooms and hallways, it becomes clear that Miss Peregrine’s children were more than just peculiar. They may have been dangerous. They may have been quarantined on a deserted island for good reason. And somehow—impossible though it seems—they may still be alive.

Normally I’m not very good at enjoying a book that I think is a standalone, but is actually an introduction to something more. Normally I get a bit perturbed by books that spend a long time setting things up and keep me from fully understanding the worldbuilding for a long time. Normally I wouldn’t have been able to finish a book like Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children.

But this book does things differently. The slow discovery of the world of the peculiar children is natural, and the steady pace at which the reader’s understanding unfolds somehow sits just right. It helps that the main character, Jacob, is as ignorant as the reader—anything he knows, you know, but anything he doesn’t, you don’t.

I’ll admit, the fact that it isn’t a standalone when that was my expectation was jarring.  I’m not particularly fond of being jarred. However, I found the children in the book—their personalities, their powers, their different reactions to their predicament—so interesting that even when I realized there was no way the story could wrap up by the end of the book, I didn’t get too upset. I appreciate that a good number of the children are treated as individuals instead of as a lump-sum group. An experience that makes one child an academician of everyday events turns another into a borderline sociopath who, frankly, makes me nervous (it doesn’t help that he keeps various body parts preserved in jars in the basement).

In short, the character development of the book makes my usual deal-breakers fade into the background. I enjoyed Jacob’s development from a loser teen to a bereaved grandson to the person he becomes by the end of the book. I enjoyed meeting the peculiar children right along with him and seeing his relationships with them develop. And it certainly didn’t hurt that there were pictures in the book (there are far too few pictures in “grown-up” books). If you’re looking for something with some strong characters and just a bit of creepiness, this book is a good place to look.

Content warnings: None that I can remember.

Leaflet Review: Railsea by China Miéville

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I apologize for the hiatus—I know it’s been a while. The good news is that I’ve haven’t been posting because a series of exciting adventures have struck: the whole pregnancy thing (only five weeks until the little guy comes!), moving back to Utah from Texas, and starting graduate school are just a few of them. Because of all the adventures, after the next three book reviews (this one included), I’m only going to post once a week, on Wednesdays, instead of the Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule I used to have. Now, speaking of adventures, here’s a look at China Miéville’s latest work: Railsea.
Cover for Railsea by China Miéville

On board the moiletrain Medes, Sham Yes ap Soorap watches in awe as he witnesses his first moldywarpe hunt: the giant mole bursting from the earth, the harpoonists targeting their prey, the battle resulting in one’s death & the other’s glory. But no matter how spectacular it is, Sham can’t shake the sense that there is more to life than traveling the endless rails of the railsea—even if his captain can think only of the hunt for the ivory-colored mole she’s been chasing since it took her arm all those years ago. When they come across a wrecked train, at first it’s a welcome distraction. But what Sham finds in the derelict—a kind of treasure map indicating a mythical place untouched by iron rails—leads to considerably more than he’d bargained for. Soon he’s hunted on all sides, by pirates, trainsfolk, monsters & salvage-scrabblers. & it might not be just Sham’s life that’s about to change. It could be the whole of the railsea.

A Unique Spin on Classic Stories

As you may have guessed from the book description, Railsea bears traces of Moby Dick in it, only instead of hunting a great white whale, the crew of the Medes is hunting an ivory mole (the captain is certain to inform anyone who thinks otherwise that Mocker Jack is not yellow). But as I read, I found that the actual plot line bears a stronger resemblance to Treasure Island. Young Sham longs for adventure and finds a bit too much of it along his way.

However, as one would expect of Miéville, although the book draws on these classic stories, it has a texture and a feeling that is all its own. The dingy, polluted atmosphere of the world of the railsea permeates the book and makes it settle into your mind even when the scenes are on the lighter side. The worldbuilding is in depth and shows itself in everything from the way the world’s inhabitants think about dirt and water to the way the words appear on the page (the word “and” is never used, only the ampersand). Railsea’s world is, well, not necessarily a delight, but certainly a unique draw for the book. (I can’t use delight because that implies sunshine and butterflies, but between the polluted cloud of the upsky and the bizarre mutations it causes for airborne creatures, you find little of either on the railsea.)

A Lackluster Main Character

Although the setting was compelling, I found it difficult to read Railsea quickly (quite the change from how I felt about Embassytown). This was largely because the main character, Sham, didn’t particularly interest me. He is a young boy without much direction in life: he longs for some kind of purpose, but since he doesn’t know what he wants, he simply drifts from task to task and from event to event. That attitude doesn’t really change until at least halfway through the book, and by that time I’d failed to connect with him. This stands in stark contrast with Avice from Embassytown, who was a self-proclaimed societal drifter, but who was compelling anyway. However, like Avice, Sham changes a lot over the course of the book, and his growth is realistic. He just isn’t as compelling.

Final Thoughts

Outside of the main character issue, I think the book was particularly strong. I enjoyed the stylistic prose quirks—the self-aware narrator, the asides about storytelling, etc.—even when they interrupted the flow of the narrative. Speculative fiction is prone to info dumps, and many people hate them (myself included) as a general rule. But in Railsea, Miéville selectively info dumps in a few chapters, never taking more than a page or two at a time. The voice is so compelling that the info dumps don’t feel like info dumps, and the timeouts from the main plot were some of my favorite parts of the book.

Content warnings: Some violence, though it isn’t trivialized; some language, though nothing you wouldn’t hear on TV; drinking; sideways conversations about sex, but no sexual scenes.

Leaflet Review: The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne M. Valente

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The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own MakingSeptember is a girl who longs for adventure. When she is invited to Fairyland by a Green Wind and a Leopard, well, of course she accepts. (Mightn’t you?) But Fairyland is in turmoil, and it will take one twelve-year-old girl, a book-loving dragon, and a strange and almost human boy named Saturday to vanquish an evil Marquess and restore order.

Not since Oz has there been a land—or a cast of characters—so rich and entrancing.

My last review was about a collection of Catherynne M. Valente’s shorter novels, and in this children’s novel, Valente retains her unique voice and mastery of language, but infuses it with veins of humor and whimsy. Where the other novels I reviewed are not books I would recommend for light reading, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland is something you can curl up with and enjoy along with a cup of hot chocolate.

Fairyland imitates a Victorian-style children’s novel, complete with a separate narrator character. However, the narrator and the novel’s circumstances have a modern flavor on the sly. The book consists of a series of small quests—retrieving a witch’s spoon, finding a magic sword, and freeing good friends from imprisonment—but they all flow together into a nice plot arch overall.

My favorite part of the book was probably A-through-L, the Wyvern whose father was a library (making him a Wyverary, to be more exact). He’s kindhearted and quirky, and he takes huge pride in his vast knowledge of all things that start with the letters A through L (he hasn’t had a chance to study the rest of the letters yet, though his siblings have the rest of the alphabet covered).

Ell, as September calls her Wyverary friend, is fairly typical of the rest of the settings and characters in Fairyland. Everything and everyone has a few targeted things they’re really good at, but they’re also specifically limited in interesting ways. Marids grant wishes, Leopards fly on the winds, and furniture over 100 years old comes to life. But Marids must be wrestled within an inch of their lives before wish-granting, some Leopards aren’t allowed in Fairyland, and most furniture has a pretty poor attitude after 100 years of abuse at various human hands.

And through it all, September goes from being a Somewhat Heartless human child to a Hardly Heartless hero with a host of Fairyland friends. All before her airplane mechanic mother notices she’s missing or her soldier father comes home from the war in Europe. For a twelve-year-old from Omaha, Nebraska, not a bad first visit to Fairyland.

Cover illustration by Ana Juan.

Leaflet Review: Myths of Origin by Catherynne M. Valente

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Myths of Origin by Catherynne M. Valente

New York Times bestseller Catherynne M. Valente is the single most compelling voice to emerge in fantasy fiction in decades. Collected here for the first time, her early short novels explore, deconstruct, and ultimately explode the seminal myths of both East and West, casting them in ways you’ve never read before and may never read again.

I found this collection of short novels the last time I visited a city with a decent brick-and-mortar bookstore. I’m glad to have been introduced to Valente’s unique voice and style, and I have her children’s novel, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, waiting for me after I put this volume back on the shelf. Because this book contains four novels, I’ll tackle each one in a mini-review and follow up with general comments.

The Labyrinth

A woman wanderer, a Maze like no other, a Monkey and a Minotaur and a world full of secrets leading down to the Center of it All.

The Labyrinth is Valente’s first-ever novel. Before trying her hand at long-form fiction, she was mostly a poet, and that prior experience flashes its colors in the prose of this short novel. The language is beautiful, the structure dizzying and mazelike. However, this focus on poetics is also something of a flaw: the book doesn’t feel much like a novel. I felt validated when I read that Valente, looking back on her work now, considers it a “two hundred page poem with no columns and [her] whole heart.” I recommend The Labyrinth if you crave gorgeous and innovative uses of language and myth structures, but although I read it in a day, it isn’t exactly a quick read.

Yume No Hon: The Book of Dreams

An aged woman named Ayako lives in medieval Japan, but dreams in mythical worlds that beggar the imagination … including our own modern world.

This is the novel in this collection that I found most interesting of the four. It’s also the least linear. Ayako dreams herself into myths from various cultures, from the Sphinx-and-Oedipus story to Babylonian creation myth, and the way all the myths weave together into Ayako’s life experience, and how Ayako weaves into them, is elegant. Because it is the least linear of the novels, it takes a little time to get a firm grasp on the story, and once you do the Sphinx dream will find a way to throw you off periodically.

The Grass-Cutting Sword

When a hero challenges a great and evil serpent, who speaks for the snake? In this version of a myth from the ancient chronicle Kojiki, the serpent speaks for itself.

Where Yume No Hon is nonlinear, The Grass-Cutting Sword is the most linear in the collection (that isn’t to say it’s strictly linear, but it’s much easier to grasp the basic flow of events). In this myth the Japanese god of storms falls from heaven and sets out to kill a monster that has devoured seven young sisters and is about to eat number eight. What I found most interesting in this book was that each sister got her own moment in the spotlight: her character, her desires, her motivations for putting herself in the monster’s way, etc. Frequently stories that involve such repetitive disasters go light on differentiating the characters in each one. That is not the case in The Grass-Cutting Sword.

Under in the Mere

Arthur and Lancelot, Mordred and le Fay. The saga has been told a thousand times, but never in the poetic polyphony of this novella, a story far deeper than it is long.

I’ve read a lot of Arthurian spinoffs; I’ve read a lot of Arthurian originals. Valente’s Arthurian novella is not necessarily a retelling of the Arthurian cycle, nor is it a retelling of a particular tale. Instead it is a collection of character portraits that reinvent the basic frames of the Lady of the Lake, Kay, the Green Knight, Dagonet, Lancelot, Balin & Balan, Pellinore, Galahad, Mordred, Bedivere, and Morgan le Fay. As a different way of approaching and interpreting the well-used cycle, I loved it. However, because it is, like the other novels in this volume, linguistically complex, and because it lacked an overarching plot beyond the general Arthurian cycle, it took me some time to get through. I typically read a character portrait or two in isolation and came back for more later. I don’t think my enjoyment suffered because of this.

Overall Comments

The novels contained in this collection are beautiful. For that reason alone I recommend it. But I don’t recommend it for light reading—these aren’t exactly breezy beach reads, but they aren’t meant to be. If you want something linguistically innovative or structurally experimental, pick up this collection or any one of the individual novels. You won’t be disappointed.

Content warnings: Adult topics dealt with in an adult fashion, so don’t go handing them to small children. Not that I think you would after the review I just gave.

Leaflet Review: The Rook by Daniel O’Malley

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The Rook by Daniel O'Malley

“Dear You,

The body you are wearing used to be mine.”

So begins the letter Myfanwy Thomas is holding when she awakes in a London park surrounded by dead bodies—all wearing latex gloves. With no memory of who she is or how she got there, Myfanwy must follow the instructions her former self left behind to discover her identity and escape those who want to destroy her.

She soon learns that she is a Rook, a high-level operative in the Checquy, a secret government agency that protects the world against supernatural threats—from sentient fungus to stampeding ectoplasm—while keeping the populace in the dark. But now there is a mole on the inside, and this person wants Myfanwy dead. […]

Suspenseful and hilarious […] The Rook is an outrageously inventive debut novel for readers who like their espionage with a dollop of purple slime, or their supernatural thrillers with an agenda and a pencil skirt.

In my first post of the year, I said The Rook was first on my list of books I look forward to in 2012 (both chronologically and otherwise). It didn’t disappoint, and I’m glad I own it so I can reread it in the future. There were a few main reasons I had for loving the book Daniel O’Malley wrote.

Premise

The pitch for The Rook intrigued me right from the start: the premise is unique because even though it follows a relatively common setup—Myfanwy Thomas lost her memory—the book tackles the concept from a new perspective. The old Myfanwy (who the “new” Myfanwy calls Thomas) has left letters, instructions, and binders full of briefing materials to guide the new Myfanwy, and the new Myfanwy is actually substantially different than Thomas. Thomas’s personality has been erased, so although both characters occupy/ied the same body and have the same skill set, they’re different people. Not to mention the fact that Myfanwy is a high-ranking official in “Her Majesty’s Supernatural Secret Service,” so it’s not like walking into her life is a walk in the park to begin with.

Voice

Any memory-loss plot will involve a lot of information being hurled at the reader (and the amnesiac protagonist), which makes such plots prone to infodumps. However, in The Rook the infodumps are laced with another thing I love about the book: a voice so playful and engaging that even personnel dossiers are a joy to read. The voice that infuses the storyline from beginning to end is a blast.

Emotion

The voice helps The Rook walk the line between humor and heart. There’s no doubt that it is a funny book (if the bunny and the octopus in the coat of arms on the cover didn’t give it away, I’m not sure what would). However, it tugs at your heartstrings too. A lot of the tugging is done by Thomas, the old Myfanwy, in her letters. The way I felt about Thomas progressed through several stages, ending in an affection that almost led to tears for me when I read the last chapter (but I was strong and resisted impulses to let my tear ducts leak).

Character

The stages of my feelings about Thomas mirrored a masterful character arc. I expected Myfanwy to progress through the book, to grow from a personality newborn into a likeable hero who could save the day and beat the bad guys. That isn’t to say her growth wasn’t a pleasure to see—on the contrary, the way she grew to meet the demands of Thomas’s old job and new foes had me laughing and rooting for her cover to cover. But I think the growth of Thomas surprised me more, and shows the unique quality level of The Rook better. Thomas could have been a stagnant character, dispensing advice and knowledge from a static position of competency. With the playful voice, she could have been that way and I wouldn’t have minded a lick. But she went from a rather weak person who earned very little respect to a lovable, sacrificing tragic figure. I was terribly sad that the world at the end of the book couldn’t have both Thomas and Myfanwy.

There were other reasons I liked the book—it doesn’t rely on a romantic subplot, the supernatural powers were innovative and bizarre, the characters are people first and heroes/villains second, the beginning and end have a completely satisfying chiasmic structure—and I’m sure you can find plenty more. So get thyself a copy and enjoy the ride. Then join me in anticipating the sequel O’Malley has already promised.

You can also follow Myfanwy Thomas’s Twitter feed, @RookFiles. Prior to the book’s release Thomas tweeted, but now it’s Myfanwy. She doesn’t post often, but it’s always fun when she does.

Book jacket design by Lindsey Andrews