Lud-in-the-Mist, Hope Mirrlees

I’ve been meaning to read Lud-in-the-Mist for ages and ages, and I don’t know why I didn’t get round to it sooner. It is classic fantasy; more like Lord Dunsany’s work than anything modern, though maybe Patricia McKillip might be a spiritual successor in some ways. The prose is glorious; it just feels warm and vivid, though honey-tinged in colour. I felt, reading it, like I could see the city of Lud; like I knew something of the dreams of its people, even if their daily lives were perhaps a little too devoid of the whimsical. It’s a fairly traditional set-up in a way: a town which embraces modernism and turns away from what Fairyland offers, while Fairyland creeps in through the gaps.

There’s whimsy, but there’s also quite serious comments on human nature and human relationships, on people and the kinds of things they do and think. And ultimately, the point about letting in a little Fairyland is a good one: it’s basically a metaphor for imagination and fun, and that is something people need.

The characters are interesting because they’re not what you would expect from modern fantasy; they’re not great people, they’re not heroes. The main character is a middle-aged man who just wants to protect his son — a son he doesn’t understand, but whom he loves all the same, and maybe is only just realising how much he loves. Nathaniel Chanticleer isn’t a particularly good man, nor a particularly clever one — in fact, he can be rather silly; he’s not some exemplary chosen one. He’s just the one who happens to be there, and just happens to do the right things, because of perfectly ordinary emotions.

I really enjoyed Lud-in-the-Mist, probably for the same reason I enjoyed Dunsany: it’s a kind of magic that I don’t find in modern fantasy enough, an old enchantment.

Rating: 5/5

Broken, Susan Bigelow

Perhaps it’s not surprising after Ryan @ SpecFic Junkie‘s review, but I really didn’t enjoy this book either. The set-up sounded kind of cool: I enjoy superhero stories in prose, because it’s a style of story I’m very familiar with from a childhood watching cartoons and Lois & Clark, but I’m not the world’s most visual person and sometimes comics really don’t work for me because they require more of an eye for detail. And a superheroine who has lost her powers teaming up with a guy who can see the future, in order to save a kid — okay, I’m in.

In execution, though, the prose is rather… dead, and the characters are exactly as one-dimensional as Ryan warned me. And the whole thing with the polyamorous household where polyamory has apparently been brought to human culture by aliens and everything’s weird and… um, no, I know a couple of people who are in polyamorous relationships, some of them like the one described, and it’s just… not that shocking.

Despite the cool-sounding premise, I was pretty much immediately turned off by main characters’ self-pity. Like Broken: she names herself Broken because she’s lost her ability to fly. And she fritters away her life because she’s broken. And yes, yes, we get it, you’re broken, your whole identity apparently depended on being able to fly. Right. Tired of that now!

Rating: 1/5

The Falling Woman, Pat Murphy

The Falling Woman is a slowish, atmospheric read which got hooks into me and wouldn’t let go. I love the setting — the archaeological dig, the tensions of the excavation team, even the awkwardness between the long estranged mother and daughter… It feels like the kind of site it is: laden with history, meaning, and maybe even ghosts. It’s hard to describe, and to do so would be a disservice if you want to read the book, I think; the whole point is the slow unwinding, the building of tension and uncanniness, even threat.

What’s also awesome is that this is a book populated with women — not all female characters, but still, a good proportion. And they talk to each other (about things other than men!), and work and get dirty and bitten by bugs and tired till they ache. They like or dislike each other, find it difficult to relate, enjoy one another’s company or avoid it, and it feels real. No tokenism here (though perhaps a bit of racial stereotyping around the boyfriends the younger women pick up during their time off), and no false utopia either. Things are complicated, sometimes things aren’t even solved, and Murphy handles it well.

Definitely don’t read introductions or summaries, for this one. Give it time to reveal itself to you — I think you’ll be glad if you do.

Rating: 5/5

Little, Big, John Crowley

I’ve had Little, Big on my reading list for sooo long, and it definitely sounded like something I could love — a house bordering on the otherworld, rich writing, a whole tangle of family and connections to the otherworld that isn’t understood by all characters, and indeed is revealed slowly to the reader as well… For a while, I was captivated, definitely. Crowley’s writing is lovely, made me almost smell the rooms of the house, the dew-damp ground outside, etc, etc.

In the end, it reminded me a little of my experience with Tam Lin, in that I was waiting for things to happen, waiting for the story to move. Unlike Tam Lin, by the time it did, though, I’d stopped hanging on. I wasn’t interested in the characters anymore — who was sleeping with whom and who was the father of whose child, or even what each character was interested in and what they believed about their part in the story. Smokey Barnable reminded me of Neil Gaiman’s Shadow in American Gods; a nebulous figure to whom the story happens (except Smoky isn’t nearly as central as Shadow).

In the end, I got too lost in the words to enjoy the plot; honestly, I’d find it hard to tell you what the plot of most of the book was (though more plot appeared later on). A lot of it seemed to be just about coexisting with the otherworld, without much reaching across the boundaries, without much conflict or drive. It felt like short episodes of life from a family saga which just happened to include an otherworldly link. It just didn’t keep my interest, despite the high recommendations from friends (and the fact that it’s one of the Fantasy Masterworks series).

Rating: 2/5

The Copper Promise, Jen Williams

The Copper Promise is a fun, relatively traditional fantasy — you step into the world and it’s like a well-worn shirt: you know more or less the shape of the continents, the kind of creatures that live on and beneath the earth, the kind of relationships people have to their rulers. It’s somewhat medieval, feudal; there are knights (who will kick out gay members of their number, of course), ancient gods, magic just coming back into the world… And it’s fun because of that feeling. You can just relax into it and enjoy the characters: the somewhat grim knight, the scarred and vengeful mage, the quick and lithe thief. (And also enjoy the fact that the latter is a woman, Wydrin, and she’s very good at what she does.)

There are a couple of hiccups in the structure; it was originally written in a serialised format, in four sections, and sometimes the joins show a little too much. Mostly, though, I just found it well paced and fun. I mean, it starts with raiding an ancient temple structure. Awesome.

At the same time, it’s not hidebound. One of the main characters is gay, and not in some obvious flouncy way, but just because that happens to be part of who he is. Wydrin is a woman, and yet never trivialised in battle or in planning or indeed anything else I can think of; she’s as much of a character as the others, and often brings refreshing snark.

It could be a little predictable at times, but again, that felt like part of the point — it felt like pretty pure escapism in a traditional fantasy world, and I’m all for that.

Rating: 4/5