The World, but not as we know it...

 

I've read a few books recently which have left me feeling, at the very least, short-changed, and in one case, downright fed up and angry. In most cases I've managed to bite my tongue and carry on reading and reviewing the book. But in that one case I couldn't even finish, let alone review, it.

So what was the problem? In a word: the World. All these books were fantasies, ranging from stories set in the real world with the odd thing tweaked, to a full-on alternative world dystopia (which was the one that gave me the problem) and stages in between.

Now, maybe I've spent too much of my life reading and watching sci-fi and fantasy,  maybe I'm too much of a fan of masters of these genre, people like Stephen King, Philip K Dick, JRR Tolkien, to name a few. And maybe it's because I write fantasy and scifi myself. Whatever, as far as I'm concerned, if you create an alternate world, no matter how minimally alternate, then it has to hang together. Totally. And these books didn't do that.

Here's an example from the book I couldn't finish. It's set in a dystopian world, riddled with disease and failing technology. So far so good. Then the protagonist visits a club with coloured floor lighting and you wonder where the electricity comes from, especially as the vehicle she uses to get there has to be powered by burning coal. But you keep going. After all, maybe the electricity is just for the wealthy few. Then one of the few pulls out a quill pen to write a letter.

 

A quill pen?Seriously? Aside from the fact that there is no mention of birds anywhere and as plant life seems to have largely disappeared, it seems reasonable to asume that there are no birds to provide quills anyway, why go for a quill pen in the first place? So, there are no factories to produce biros or gel pens or whatever. But what about nib pens? Surely they would fit more neatly into the whole steampunk environment suggested by the coal-powered cars.

Maybe this seems petty to you but it bugs the hell out of me. It speaks of sloppiness, a lack of faithfulness to the genre. Fantasy only works if the reader can suspend disbelief. But if she is constantly fussing about details like this, disbelief goes out of the window, and the story you are trying to tell goes with it.

And that all got me onto wondering how this could have happened. How could a book where the alternative world was so badly constructed have been published? My first thought was that dystopia is the thing at the moment and maybe this is what happens when the parties involved don't really understand the fantasy genre. And then another, rather saddening, thought hit me. Maybe it's because these are books for children and young adults; maybe the parties involved think it's not so important to get everything tight, that kids won't worry about quill pens and coloured floor lights.

Either way, it's a shame. Fantasy and sci-fi have their own rules and you break them at your peril. Readers won't put up with this sort of shoddy world-building and in a crowded marketplace it's not a good idea to alienate your potential audience.

North of Nowhere by Liz Kessler

This is another of those precious little harbacks from Orion. I do love the look and feel of these books. They bring back all the charm of childhood. They're the right size for a kid's hands with beautifully illustrated dustcovers and interesting end papers and North of Nowhere with its stormy sea cover and vermilion endpapers is no exception.

 

This is the first of Liz Kessler's books that I've read and I wasn't disappointed. She has a delightful writing style which immediately sucks the reader into thirteen year old Mia's mind and then takes youoff on a fast-paced mystery adventure that has you guessing right up to the end.

 Mia's grandad has vanished and her grandma is at her wits end trying to make sense of what's happened while coping with running the pub/hotel they both own. So Mia's mum decides she has to go and help her and as it's half term Mia has to come along too. Mia is firstly furious, then horrifed and finally guilty. The prospect of a week away from her friends in the sleepy little seaside village of Porthaven where her grandparents live fills her with dread but she loves her grandparents dearly and is just as worried as everyone else about what might have happened to grandad.

Things don't quite turn out as expected though. Firstly Mia discovers a journal, written apparently by a girl of a similar age to herself, on a boat moored at the old dock. Mia christens the writer Dee because she always finishes her journal entries with the letter D, and she is so struck by the apparent similarities in their interests that she starts to write replies to Dee's journal entries. After the predicatble spat - 'Who are you, and why are you reading my PRIVATE diary?' - the two girls settle into a friendly correspondence and even make plans to meet up at the end of the week, assuming the local weather is good enough for Dee to travel to the mainland from the tiny island where she lives.

There's also a bit of potential love interest in the form of another half-term visitor to Porthaven, Peter, although Mia is struck by how comfortable she feels with him and how different that is to how she usually feels around boys.

As the week progresses Mia's relationship with both Peter and Dee strengthen and she wakes up on the Friday morning bursting with excitement about the forthcoming meeting with Dee. But disappointment comes swiftly when she discovers the boat and Dee's journal message that the seas are too dangerous and her father won't let her go with him.

At this point the plot becomes increasingly exciting as Peter and Mia try to make their own way over to the island and are nearly drowned in the process, and then it becomes even more mysterious too, although I can't explain why without revealing too much of the plot. The explanation for everything that has happened is clever and complete, although for me, the magic involved didn't sit comfortably with the totally believeable realism of the rest of the book.

That quibble aside, this is an exciting, easy to read book with great characters and some nail-biting moments. There's great poignancy in the denouement too and I'm sure it will please and delight many a young girl.

The lovely folks at Orion Books provided this review copy. If you want one for yourself, (it's out on January 17th 2013) then please click through from here and Amazon will make a small contribution to the maintenance of this blog.