New post up today for my writing group blog, Stonehenge Writers! You may remember at the beginning of the year, I wrote a post about setting writing goals. Well, we’re almost five months along, and it’s a good time to take a look at goals and make some reassessments… Come read the post: “Revising My Revising Goals.”
Tag: Fiction
Heir to Sevenwaters by Juliet Marillier
One of my goals for Once Upon a Time was to continue my way through the Sevenwaters series by Juliet Marillier. It’s a wonderful series that has been taking me far too long to read! I just finished Heir to Sevenwaters, and can happily report that it’s my favorite of the series so far.
This could possibly be read independently of the first three, but there would be spoilers for the earlier books, and sorting out the family members and their various backgrounds and context could be confusing without knowing the first three books.
The heroine of this story is Clodagh, one of the daughters of the Chieftain of Sevenwaters (and if you lose track of the family tree by this point in the series–I did–there are helpful guides at the beginning of the book). Clodagh considers herself a rather dull, domestic type, unlikely to do anything of any great excitement or depth. When her newborn baby brother is kidnapped, however, she must set off on a quest to rescue him from magical forces. And meanwhile there’s the question of Cathal, a young man who plainly has some connection to the recent turmoil, but whether for good or ill is much harder to say.
This is Book Four, placing us beyond the original Sevenwaters Trilogy which all tied more closely together. It felt slightly removed from the first three, in tone and focus. Certainly it’s still part of the series, still in the same world, but it feels a little bit lighter and a little bit more focused. Of course, when I say “lighter,” that doesn’t mean there isn’t still dark magic and grim adventures! But it deals less with sweeping forces that will decide the fate of entire countries, and the magic has taken a less mysterious turn.
The magic in the previous books was certainly present, but there was a strong Otherworldly mystique to it. We saw the magic folk mostly as very cerebral, very distant figures who drift on the edges of human affairs. This book had more of a straight fairy tale or folklore feel to it, with some elements reminscent of the ballad of Tam Lynn, and the magical creatures more resembling fairies or leprechauns of folklore. I love fairy tales, so I enjoyed this brand of magic.
I liked Clodagh quite a bit, as I always have a soft spot for heroines who don’t realize their own strength. I really liked Cathal as the book developed and we learned more about him. Slight spoiler (though not much) to say that I inevitably loved him because I have an equally strong soft spot for grim, forbidding heroes who are hiding hearts of gold. The romance fell together a little easily, but for the most part it was an absolute delight.
There are some clever plot twists in here that I don’t want to give away, and some very clever use of stories-within-a-story. I love books that feature the power of stories, and of folk lore as the key to a riddle or the answer to a quest. The novel is immensely engaging throughout, and I found it very difficult to put down during the last 150 pages or so (a common feature of Marillier’s writing, by the way).
So: unknowingly strong heroine, gruff but good hero, fairy tale elements and the power of stories. Yeah, this is definitely my favorite so far…
Author’s Site: http://www.julietmarillier.com/
Other reviews:
Gilded Page Reviews
Zeitgeist Reviews
Caressing the Muse
Me and My Books
Anyone else?
Buy it here: Heir to Sevenwaters
The Writer’s Voice
Exciting news today! Recently my friend Ruth told me about a contest for writers with polished manuscripts hoping to find an agent. Step One was to enter a lottery just to be in the contest–and I got in!
Step Two is to post a query and the first 250 words of the novel to the writer’s blog. Regular readers may remember hearing before about Jasper the wandering adventurer and Tom the talking cat, yes? Well, you’re going to hear a bit more about them now… I hope you enjoy, and cross your fingers for me that the contest-organizers enjoy it too!
Query
Jasper planned to fight a magician, but he didn’t expect to pick up a talking cat as a traveling companion in the process—especially since he has a long list of rules, and one of them is Always travel alone (#18). The Wanderers follows the exploits of Jasper and talking cat Tom, through a landscape full of monsters, questing princes, and new spins on familiar fairy tales
The Wanderers is a young adult fantasy novel. It is a completed work, with a length of 107,000 words. We follow Jasper and Tom as they successfully help an inept prince complete a quest (and follow Rule #7, On quests, always help anyone who asks), and rescue a girl kidnapped by a witch. Plans take another twist (and Rule #18 is tested again) when the girl runs away and joins Jasper and Tom’s travels. Julie is just hoping to escape from the witch—who is, in fact, her mother. She quickly discovers a taste for adventure as well. The three band together to tangle with outlaws, a sea serpent, a very hungry (yet refined) ogre, and to solve a mystery involving twelve princesses and a lot of worn-out dancing slippers. Situations are rarely as they appear, and Jasper would probably do much better if he just listened more often to the cat!
I graduated summa cum laude from the University of San Francisco, where I was an English major with a writing emphasis, and had multiple submissions accepted to the school’s literary magazine. I currently work in marketing and social media with UniversalGiving, a San Francisco-based nonprofit. I also run my own writing and book review blog, Tales of the Marvelous. I am hoping to make The Wanderers my first published novel. It is a stand-alone piece, but I believe there is high potential for a series. The first 250 words are included below.
The Wanderers
No one mentioned mucking out stables when they told stories of wandering adventurers. Jasper didn’t bring up that part himself, when he spun out tales of his exploits. But it’s hard to ignore the reality when you’re in the middle of it, especially when that reality stinks. Even now, when he was well-out of the stable, he could still detect a whiff of that particular slice of reality. It was making an otherwise terrible meal even worse.
The food was excellent. They had started with a fish course, gone on to baked ham, and were fast approaching cherries jubilee for dessert. The bench was comfortable, the table didn’t slant, and the banquet hall was clean, if a little too full of stone pillars for Jasper’s taste, and far too large for a scant company of twenty.
The trouble was that company of twenty. Almost everyone present was a servant, and every one of them served with terrified zeal, as though their lives depended on performing their duties to perfection—which they did. By far the biggest trouble among many troubling people was the only one who wasn’t a servant, the magician sitting at the head of the table. The meal had begun when Magician Hawkins swept into the banquet hall, violet velvet cloak billowing around him in what was clearly calculated grandeur, and he had dominated the room ever since.
Hawkins passed the meal making caustic comments. Everyone laughed when he did, the sound echoing off the stone walls.
And…that’s 249 words!
The House on Durrow Street
In another read for Once Upon a Time and my continuing efforts to finish series, I read The House on Durrow Street by Galen Beckett. (Read my review of the first book, The Magicians and Mrs. Quent) I loved revisiting the world of Invarel, and I feel like I’m fonder than ever of the characters.
This book kept up some of the style of Austen and Bronte, without adhering to their plotlines (as in the first book). In fact, I didn’t feel like plot was a strong point of the book–but that was okay! Rather than strong plot elements, it felt like we were just reading about the continuing lives of the characters, and though I feel like I should object, in actual fact I found it entirely satisfying.
Picking up not long after we saw them in the last book, we continue with the same three major characters, Ivy Quent, Mr. Rafferdy (who must have a first name, but I don’t remember it), and Eldyn Garrett. Ivy is overseeing the refurbishment of her father’s house (on Durrow Street…) and enjoying whatever time she can snatch with her husband, when he isn’t busy with his work as an Inquirer. Mr. Rafferdy is being dragged into responsibility by his father’s poor health, which has forced his son to take his place in Assembly (rather like the House of Lords), despite his best efforts to have no impact at all. Eldyn is working as a clerk for the church, but finds himself continually drawn by the illusion plays–and by one of the actors.
Swirling around these more ordinary affairs are continuing magical mysteries, and hints of much bigger troubles afoot. There’s political upheaval, growing revolts, and even the heavens are falling out of line, as the ever-reliable almanacs can no longer predict the length of day and night with accuracy. The funny thing is, most of this seems to be going on in the background somewhere–the characters observe it or touch on it peripherally (and a little more directly, near the end) but usually it’s not the focus.
I felt like that should annoy me–but actually, I kind of enjoyed watching ordinary people carry on their relatively ordinary lives. It felt wonderfully realistic somehow. All that said, I probably will be bothered if some of these elements don’t become more central in the third book!
This book followed the same pattern as the first one, switching between viewpoints of the three major characters, with a slight variation. This time Ivy alternated chapters with either of the two men, instead of cycling evenly through all three (most of the time). I approved–I always liked Ivy’s chapters best. I think it’s that Ivy is interesting whatever she’s doing, while Eldyn and Mr. Rafferdy are only interesting when they’re doing something interesting–which they did for most of the book. That distinction was true in the first book, but may be less so now, as I think I grew increasingly attached to both of the men throughout this second book.
But I continue loving Ivy as a character, and enjoyed her relationship with Mr. Quent. I wish he’d been more central! They have moments together, but he spends a lot of the book off doing something else (which could make a great companion book…) Considering the third book is titled The Master of Heathcrest Hall, I hope he’ll be more directly involved. When they are together, it’s wonderful how much they obviously love and trust each other. In fact, he’s so trusting that there are moments when I just have to wonder…is he really sure that he’s really that glad that she’s getting on so well with Mr. Rafferdy? Really?
Mr. Rafferdy undergoes some very nice character growth here–he was already starting to find himself a bit in the last book, and he continues that process here. Since he also continues to be in love with Ivy, I’m really wondering how that’s going to turn out for him…
Eldyn went through quite a bit of self-revelation as well, and I thought he was posed with some very interesting conflicting pulls. It was a little disappointing in that I thought it ultimately worked out too neatly, by having circumstances make his choice much more clear than it had been (or might have continued to be).
I know I’ve come to this trilogy a bit late, but here’s where it pays off–because now I can go swiftly on to the next book instead of waiting for it! I have several others I very much want to read too, so I won’t get to Book Three immediately…but it’s definitely on the short-list to be read soon. I’ll let you know how it goes!
Author’s Site: http://wyrdwood.net/
Other reviews:
Fyrefly’s Book Blog
Stella Matutina
Fantasy Book Critic
Anyone else?
Buy it here: The House on Durrow Street
Princess of the Silver Woods
I recently reread Princess of the Midnight Ball by Jessica Day George (review), which turned out to be great preparation for reading the third book in the series, Princess of the Silver Woods. Thank you, Lark, for letting me know it existed!
The first book retells the story of the Twelve Dancing Princesses. There’s a second book, loosely retelling Cinderella, Princess of Glass (review). As the cover makes clear, the third one draws from Little Red Riding Hood—if very loosely! Fairy tale or not, this is definitely another good one for Once Upon a Time.
The third book focuses on Petunia, the youngest of the princesses, who starts the book traveling through the woods to visit an old friend from a neighboring royal court, the Grand Duchess Volenskaya. Along the way, she runs afoul of bandits wearing wolf masks–particularly their leader, Oliver, who abducts Petunia more or less by accident. She makes it eventually to the Grand Duchess’ and all should be well—except that she and her sisters have recently been plagued by particularly vivid nightmares, shadowy forms are lurking in the garden, and the Grand Duchess may have ties to their old enemy, the King Under Stone.
There are elements of Red Riding Hood here and there, but mostly this novel is a second confrontation with the King Under Stone and his macabre court. This felt like a much more closely connected sequel than the second book, which was primarily a separate adventure.
I really enjoyed seeing the twelve sisters again. George managed her deft juggling of many characters once again, and I didn’t feel troubled trying to sort out which princess was which. As in the first book, it’s always self-evidently obvious—Jonquil must be the hysterical one, because she’s always collapsing whenever we see her. Poppy (the lead of the second book) is obviously the bold one, because she’s always being bold. It was nice seeing Galen again (who really is lovely), and I liked that we got a little more of Heinrich, who just barely shows up in the first one. And I love that all the princesses’ have taken up knitting!
Petunia didn’t blow me away as a heroine, but she’s scrappy and likable, and I do enjoy when she starts ordering her demon-suitor around. Oliver is a bit of a Robin Hood figure, a displaced earl who turned to banditry to feed his people. Again, likable, if a little typical-hero-type.
The romance didn’t do much for me. There was nothing wrong with it—it just didn’t feel like it added much to the adventure. Petunia and Oliver have very few opportunities to interact, and while that was true for Rose and Galen too (Galen even makes a comparison at one point), somehow I felt the romance in the first one much more than I did here. And I was a bit annoyed with Oliver when both Petunia (a girl he had barely met) and his men (who he had lived with and fought with all his life) were in mortal peril, and he seemed to find these concerns equally troubling, with a possible slight edge to Petunia. Really?
But while the romance may have been a bit of a non-thing, the adventure was excellent. The King Under Stone and his brothers are thoroughly creepy, and the fact that they were defeated once already doesn’t at all seem to lessen the threat. George did a nice job of re-exploring familiar territory, while convincingly raising the stakes and the tension.
Overall, I’d say that Princess of the Midnight Ball was the stronger book, but this third one was good fun to read as well—and I enjoyed spending more time with the twelve princesses, and getting a little more of their story. The first one can stand alone, but I’d recommend the next two as well.
Author’s Site: http://jessicadaygeorge.com/
Other reviews:
The Bookwyrm’s Hoard
Escaping Reality (One Book at a Time)
Tressa’s Wishful Endings
The Book Smugglers
Anyone else?
Buy it here: Princess of the Silver Woods
Tales of the Marvelous 