Review: Finding Sky by Joss Stirling

Finding Sky is the latest in a stream of American high school romances that pitch good girl against bad boy with extraordinary powers.  Sky, like Bella before her, is the new girl in the school who finds herself drawn, against her better judgement to the mysterious cool guy that her friends warn her against. And Zed, the cool guy in question, like Edward before him, is a member of a tight-knit protective family all of whom have their own special powers. But there the analogy dies.  There are no vampires here, just ‘savants’, human beings just like any other with the exception of super-tuned senses that enable them to talk telepathically, read the past or future or move objects without touching them.

Sky is no Bella either. For starters, she’s English and that fact alone provides the equally English author with no end of opportunities to have fun at the expense of our so-called shared language. She’s a feisty number too, more than capable of holding her own, and of making, often difficult, decisions. And that points to another difference: because in many ways this is as much a book about the choices people make when they are given power as it is a romance or a fast-moving thriller.

This also happens to be one of the best written books about at the moment. The prose is pacey, witty and a delight to read. It sucks the reader in effortlessly, placing them firmly in the mindset of a shy and emotionally damaged English girl struggling to come to terms with her natural attraction to a fine specimen of adolescent manhood, her appalling past and her exciting potential future.

The lovely folk at Oxford sent me this review copy. If you want one for yourself please order it via the link below and Amazon will then send a small contribution towards the maintenance of this blog

Review: Curse of the Wendigo by Rick Yancey

This, the second of Yancey’s Monstrumologist series, does not disappoint. Gore, horror and general yuck-factor opportunities abound along with an evocative depiction of early twentieth century New York and further development of the two key characters of Will Henry and Dr Warthrop.

The Curse of the Wendigo is almost two separate novels rolled into the one. The first half follows Will Henry and Dr Warthrop as they track down Warthrop’s old sparring partner John Chanler who has disappeared in the Western Canadian wilderness. This is the landscape that adults will know from Twin Peaks and X-Files and Yancey draws all that televisual eeriness into his book with an expert’s touch. The second half takes place in a richly drawn New York where appalling slums nestle alongside exquisite high society and both Will Henry and Warthrop get to interact with the opposite sex. This is new territory for the series and bodes well for the next book. The poignant description of Warthrop’s liaison adds a level of complexity to his character and provides something of an explanation for his enigmatic personality. Will Henry’s new friendship, by contrast, provides light relief and a tempting glimpse of what might be to come.

This is a book for horror fans who are bored sick of vampires, werewolves the usual array of evil characters. And, speaking from experience, this is definitely not one to read at twilight in an empty room!

Originally written for writeaway.org.uk

OUP Dark Fantasy Event

On the evening of Wednesday 27^th October Oxford University Press hosted a Dark Fantasy event in The Drawing Room of the House of St Barnabas in Soho. The purple uplighting, chandeliers, and mirrors of the room were complemented by a liberal scattering of carved pumpkins, not to mention a furry spider and a rather wonderful Venetian mask. Where better to gather for an evening of literary chat and spooky readings?

William Hussey, complete with large and distinctly hirsute spider adorning his left shoulder, opened the readings with an excerpt from Gallows at Twilight, the second book of his Witchfinder trilogy, out on 6^th January 2011. His relish in describing the Crowden sisters feasting on children reassured us that the stomach churning gore and shudder fest of the first book will be continuing in the second, right down to something he tantalisingly described as the ‘infamous shopping-bag line’!

Rhiannon Lassiter came next with a reading from Ghost of a Chance, also out on 6^th January. Rhiannon came to the event with a large supporting cast, including her august mother, Mary Hoffman, sporting the be-feathered mask previously mentioned.  Rhiannon came to dark teen fantasy via science fiction, magic realism and thrillers and it was clear that all had played a role in shaping this book. There were shudders aplenty in this reading: definitely not one for the faint-hearted.

Joss Stirling completed the evening’s readings, with an excerpt from Finding Sky, her first novel in this persona  and published earlier in October. Dressed in a sparkly black dress she more than looked the part and opened her talk with a brief discussion of her theory that the English are prone to periodic bursts of the gothic (or should that be gothick given the historical nature of the discussion?)  The book was written with a very specific teenage girl audience in mind, and several had come along to the event to vouchsafe their approval.  The reading gave more than a glimpse of the nature of the book: psycho-horror underpinned by the humour inherent in an Anglo-American culture clash. Sadly we didn’t get a glimpse of what Joss described as her deep hatred of Las Vegas in the reading but I am assured that we will find it in the novel!

This was an exhilarating event that gave a suitably murky teaser to some very dark books.

Review: Behemoth by Scott Westerfeld

Behemoth is the second in a series that started with Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld of Uglies fame and as you might expect, given that parentage, this is an historical novel with a considerable and thought-provoking twist. So, assume that Darwin not only came up with natural selection but that he also pre-empted Crick and Watson, discovered DNA, or ‘life-threads’ as they are called here, and then set about fabricating all kinds of species to help mankind. Then assume that the new ‘technology’ is only accepted by Britain and her allies, whilst Germany pursues a more historically accurate technological development, albeit, unwittingly influenced by the ‘Darwinist’ fabrications. Now place all that in the historical setting of 1914, and add Alek, the young heir to the Hapsburg throne, and Deryn, a girl pretending to be a (male) midshipman aboard the airship Leviathan.

Leviathan ended with Alek and Deryn, now good friends, baby-sitting a trio of mysterious eggs for the redoubtable Dr Barlow (Darwin’s own descendent) and headed towards ‘Constantinople’.  In Behemoth they reach Constantinople but Dr Barlow’s plans to win over the Sultan, stop the Clanker (the Darwinist term for German) advance eastwards and open up the shipping lanes to supply Russia’s fighters, go catastrophically wrong and it is down to Alek and Deryn to turn things round and keep the Ottomans from becoming another Clanker power.

Historians will be intrigued. Much of the environment of this series is historically accurate, right down the 1914 British Embassy in Istanbul not containing anyone who could speak Turkish! Even the names of some of the characters (Admiral Wilhelm Souchon for example) are accurate. But the means of fighting, the way of living is entirely different because of that mind-bending beastie-fabricating twist.

And this is where the fact that this is an illustrated book becomes so important. In Leviathan Keith Thompson’s monochrome drawings superbly pointed up the difference between the ‘fabs’ and the Clanker monstrosities: one all smooth, sinuous lines, and misty depths; the other sharp profiles and harsh lines. In Behemoth Thompson also gets a chance to depict the Ottoman synthesis of the two technologies, producing haunting images of enormous machines, some with almost human features. There is a delightfully early-twentieth century feel to these drawings, whilst at the same time they are undeniably modern. The attenuated figures and impish faces are reminiscent of Chris Riddell’s Edge Chronicles characters, and some of the battle scenes are pure steampunk, but many of the internal scenes would not be out of place in a Sherlock Holmes story.

Behemoth, likes its predecessor, Leviathan, is chock full of action, mystery, deception, and even the early stirrings of love. It raises fascinating questions about man’s relationship to beasts and the extent to which they should be manipulated for our benefit.  It also probes issues around gender expectations which are still not fully resolved today. 12 year olds would no doubt enjoy the series but the more philosophical and ethical content might be more appropriate to a slightly older audience.

Originally written for writeaway.org.uk

Review: Angel by LA Weatherly

The ‘what if’ behind Angel is the idea that angels walk amongst us, feeding off our psychic energy and leaving us, at best, mentally debilitated and addicted to their charms, and at worst, dead.   For Alex, the third-person narrator of part of this novel, this means that ‘the only good angel is a dead angel’. He has been raised as an angel hunter and lost his family to their deprecations. Now he is old beyond his years and has no other aim in life but to avenge his family.

Willow, the other (first-person) narrator, is a misfit, whose only claim to fame is an unnerving ability to see into other people’s futures. Her mother is little more than a child, mentally incapacitated by some mysterious past event and her father unknown. She is raised by her aunt, but just like Alex, her family circumstances have made her older than she really is.

The two meet early in the novel, when Alex is targeted to illuminate Willow. He soon realises that she is no angel, but she doesn’t seem entirely human either and together they embark upon a road trip across America seeking out the truth behind Willow’s birth and why the increasingly powerful ‘Church of Angels’ is desperate to kill her.

Weatherly expertly handles the switches between the first and third person narratives. They provide the reader with unique insight into each narrator’s thoughts and emotions as well as their growing relationship, whilst at the same time, pushing the action along at a breathtaking pace. There is none of the steaminess of Twilight, but the emotions run, if anything deeper, and are perfectly matched by action and excitement.

And then there’s that ‘what-if’. There’s a whole cast of biblically named angels here and they really aren’t very nice. This is delightful twist and certainly provides some opportunity for thought and discussion about the supernatural and its potential interaction with humanity. My guess is that British readers will not have a difficulty with this, but given the reaction of some, mostly US, audiences to Twilight and Harry Potter, a degree of circumspection might be in order.

There’s been a fair amount of hype surrounding the launch of Angel, with even the Guardian newspaper running a piece earlier this year on how Angels are set to be the new vampires. Don’t be put off by this. Angel is one of those ‘can’t be put down books’ that leaves the reader breathless at the end and longing for the publication of the next instalment in Spring 2011.

Originally written for WriteAway.org.uk

Review: Shade by Jeri Smith-Ready

Aura is a sixteen year old with all the usual fears and confusions about relationships, love and sex but that’s not all: like the other ‘post-Shifters’, she has to deal with whinging ghosts and physically distressing shades but uniquely, she is also struggling with a thumping great mystery about her own birth and the disappearance of her mother.  The first person narrative guides us through this melée of emotions and concerns. We feel Aura’s irritations with petitioning ghosts, her distaste for the police that deal with them, which mutates from some sort of teen rebellion against authority figures into adult concern about both their methods and aims, her frustrations when she tries to unravel the mysteries of her birth, and, more than anything else, her total confusion when faced with the apparent choice between Logan’s ghost and the growing love she feels for human Zachary.

This is all handled so expertly by Smith-Ready, that by the end, the reader is as desperate to find answers to the Logan/Zachary and birth/Shift mysteries, as Aura is herself.  On the way, the first person immediacy, does also take us into territory which may raise some eyebrows: the night-time scenes with Aura and ghost-Logan are portrayed subtly but, nevertheless, the very fact of the ghost’s lack of corporeal substance takes us into areas of auto-arousal which make the book unsuitable for the youngest teens.

The finale brings a sort of closure to some of Aura’s issues, but enough questions remain unresolved to leave the reader gagging for the next book.  Jeri Smith-Ready has already won awards for her adult fiction. Shade, her first teen novel, may well win her more.

Originally written for writeaway.org.uk

Interview with Sara Rees Brennan

Sara Rees Brennan is an Irish author, living in Dublin. For a short while, she lived in New York and became involved with a wide circle of writers who encouraged and supported her, including Holly Black, Cassandra Clare and Scott Westerfeld, with whom she has recently completed an American book tour. Sarah has developed a wide audience through her popular blog, where she writes movie parodies, book reviews and stories. Her debut novel, The Demon’s Lexicon, was published in 2009 and was followed in May 2010 by book two of the trilogy: The Demon’s Covenant.

In this interview she talks to Jeannette Towey about her books, writing for teens and country music.

You’re twenty six, and your first novel, The Demon’s Lexicon, came out last year. How did that come about?

The book took about nine months to write, and about four months to revise, with the help of my agent.  I was in London at the time and my agent warned me to fill the freezer with ice cream as it might take several months to sell.  In the event it sold after a week and there I was left with a freezer full of ice-cream. I mean, what could a girl do?

How was writing the Demon’s Covenant been different?

The main difference, of course, is the view point. I’d decided that I wanted to have a different point of view for each of the three books. Nick came first in Lexicon. I liked the idea of getting into the head of a demon. Mae was a fairly obvious choice for Covenant. She was a lot easier, mostly because, unlike Nick, she’s a reader. I don’t find girls’ viewpoints easier than boys’, or demons’, but I do find it easier to get inside a reader’s head than a non-reader’s. This has given me a bit of a problem with the third book too, which is told from Sin’s point of view. She’s also not keen on reading.

So why didn’t you choose any of the other characters?

Well, Alan is too scheming. His view point would be all about plots and I think that would get too complicated. And Jamie is just too quippy. A book written from his point of view would just be tiring!

Demon’s Covenant is certainly steamier than Lexicon. Is that just because it’s told from Mae’s point of view?  

After The Demon’s Lexicon came out I got lots of emails from fans asking for more romance. So I wrote a follow up which contained 36 make-out scenes in response! That got edited, heavily, you’ll be glad to hear. But certainly it helps writing from Mae’s point of view. Nick is never going to find romance anything more than a joke. So Mae offers up much more opportunity.

Is a romantic angle a requirement after Twilight anyway?

I think it’s more a case that all we writers all grew up with Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles: the allure of the dark side, the hope of redemption for both you and the jerk you’re in love with. If you think about it this is a classic teen myth – after all it’s not for nothing that Wuthering Heights is now being rebranded. So I think Stephanie Meyer was just responding to the same thing as the rest of us and it’s what the kids want.

You’re back in Ireland now, after your tour of the States with Scott Westerfeld. Is that where you write?

To some extent, although I prefer to write in a group, and I tend to take trips to the US to meet up with my New York writer pals and then we all go off together and write. We had a really productive trip to Mexico recently. But if I’m on my own then I write to country music.

Country music?

Yeah. I’m a big fan. I go to concerts too, and embarrass my friends by dressing up and everything. I saw Garth Brooks recently; wore the boots, skirt, cowboy hat, all of it. My house-mate was horrified!

OK, if I can get that image out of my head, let’s get back to your writing. What’s the process?

I start off with a chapter plan: about 5 bullet points for each chapter. I wander around for days with it glued to me. I won’t let go of it. It’s too important. Then I start writing and about half way through the chapter plan get’s lost, forgotten about, completely dumped. I tend to overwrite first time around: typically I write about 1000 pages for a 400 page novel. So I apply a strict rule: every scene has to do at least two things; if it doesn’t it gets cut.

And then there’s all the research.

Tell me about it.

I think it’s important to get the details right. So I do the research. There’s a scene in The Deomn’s Covenant where a duel takes place on the Millennium Bridge. I wanted Nick to jump up on the support struts but I wasn’t sure if they’d take his weight. So I visited the bridge and climbed up on the struts, only to be pulled off by one of the Tate Modern security guards who was convinced I was trying to commit suicide. He kept telling me it would all be OK, while I was trying to explain that I was just a writer. Then he told me not to worry, I would get a publisher!

And, finally, what about the third book?

I’ve just finished it and it’s with the editor. As I mentioned before, this one’s told from Sin’s point of view.

And its title?

Well, it will be Demon’s something but we haven’t settled on the something yet. There are a couple of possibilities at the moment – they both begin with T – but who know what it will be.

Thank you Sarah Rees Brennan for talking to WriteAway.

Interview with Scott Westerfeld

Scott Westerfeld is possibly best known as the author of the hugely successful Uglies series, but he has also written another YA series, the Midnighters, three stand alone YA novels and five science fiction books for adults. And, of course, Leviathan, the first of yet another series. He’s a Texan by birth, but spent his childhood living on both sides of the US. Maybe that goes some way to explaining why he and his Australian writer wife, Justine Larbalestier, are ‘bisummeral’: splitting the year between New York and Sydney summers.

In this interview in London (it’s sort of en route between his two bases), he talks to Jeannette Towey about Leviathan, working with an illustrator in particular, and teenagers.

Leviathan is a very different sort of book. Where did the idea come from?

The success of Uglies gave me a huge opportunity. It meant I could do what I wanted. So I made a list of stuff that I liked. I spent a lot of time in my parent’s attic going through boxes of old boys’ adventure stories. And of course, there was the technology. I write about that a lot. I think people spend a lot of time with tools; often tools define how people turn out, what they are. So if you play with technology, you play with people.

And what about the illustrations?

I wanted the book to feel like it came from a different time and place. When I’d written about sixteen thousand words, I realised it needed illustrations. I did some research, looking for the sort of illustrator that I thought could produce the look and feel I wanted, and I found Keith Thompson. His background isn’t illustration: he worked previously in video game and movie design, focussing on creatures. He has a perfectionist sort of attitude and does loads of research. For example, when he started, he studied Punch magazines from the 1910s so that he could recapture the period look.

How do you work together?

Working with an illustrator is very different to working alone. Writers can hedge a bit about what something looks like but an illustrator needs precision. Keith needs to know exactly how big something is, its shape, how it works, everything.  He’s actually produced these amazing colour drawings of the Leviathan, for example, with cut-aways showing all the major rooms, and everything. It’s great for me when I’m writing a scene because I can see exactly how it will play out. We’re hoping to publish these drawings in a large ‘field guide’ sort of book to go with the series.

What about the mechanics of working together? What comes first text or illustration?

Generally I write a couple of chapters, Keith produces sketches, and I rewrite. All sorts of considerations come into play when you have illustrations. Keith might ask me to remove a character from a scene because the drawing composition just won’t work with that extra character. You also have to be careful about things like not having too many night time scenes, one after the other, or too many indoor ones. We try to get variety into the illustrations, alternating big scenes with detailed ones, things like that.

The next book in the series, Behemoth, is out in the autumn. What can you tell us about it? Does the egg hatch?

Oh yes. The egg hatches and just in time!

The Ottoman Empire appears in Behemoth and that’s really interesting because although the Ottoman Empire is a Clanker power it’s also embedded in another aesthetic which is more organic. So what you end up with are mechanised animals, like the huge mechanical elephant walkers that the Emperor uses. History starts to diverge in Behemoth too. In Leviathan I kept pretty true to history, but events in Behemoth take the First World War in a different direction

There’s a lot of dystopian fiction around for teens at the moment. Do you think that’s anything to do with the aftermath of 9/11 and war on terror.

Possibly. It’s a bit like the ash cloud. We suddenly discovered that technology that we’d taken for granted didn’t work anymore. 9/11 had that effect too. Then you could fly but no-one wanted to. So you had to find another way to travel. Cell phones didn’t work for a while either.

And the psychological impact?

I’m not so sure. It seems to me that modern teens have any number of apocalypses on offer: 9/11, H1N1, Aids, global warming, etc. That’s the difference between modern teens and those growing up in the 70s, say, where the only thing to worry about was the Cold War. There’s pleasure to be had out of apocalypses though:  figuring out if you’d survive and how. Plus there’s no more homework to do, no grown-ups nagging you, freedom! So I think dystopia means escapism. And I think teens need that. They get a bad press but I think they’re pretty impressive. I don’t think we’ve figured out what it means to be a teen, even when teenage starts and ends. If they go round in groups we think they’re threatening. We don’t really treat them as human at all at times. And yet they come through it all. When you think about it, that’s really amazing.

Leviathan is supposed to be aimed at a younger audience than your previous work. Did it feel different writing it?

I don’t really think about age ranges when I’m writing and I’m not at all sure that Leviathan is for a younger age range any way. What I do know is that it gets read by reluctant readers and also teens with a younger reading age. I think that’s because of the illustrations. History teachers like it too. I think alternate history is quite popular with teachers. And a lot of military liked Leviathan. I got a lot of fan email from guys with military email addresses. That’s how I know.

You travel a lot. How does that affect your writing?

I try to write about 3-4 hours a day wherever I am. I create rituals to help me. So I try to write at the same time each day and I have a particular chair, one in New York and one in Sydney. Plus, of course, travel is good for writing. It raises questions, makes you think.

Did you travel for research for the Leviathan series?

Absolutely. I took a big tour of Austria, Germany and Italy. I even got to go up in a Zepellin in Germany. That was an amazing experience. They fly low and slowly. So you get to see all the detail in the landscape and because the engines are so far away from the gondola, they’re very quiet. I took loads of photos. In fact I started to feel like I’d become glued to the camera while I was up in that thing.  It was a fantastic experience.

And finally, what comes after Behemoth?

The next in the series: Goliath.

Thank you, Scott Westerfeld, for talking to WriteAway and for sharing your wonderful photos and illustrations on your ipad.