Category: Fantasy

Elidor by Alan Garner

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I’ve been meaning to re-read this classic children’s fantasy novel for a long time and was motivated to move it further up the TBR pile after reading a wonderful review by Chris of Calmgrove Books earlier this year. I first read it at the age of about nine or ten – or rather, it was read by a lovely teacher who used to read aloud to us at the end of the day. I enjoyed it so much I got my own copy to read for myself a few years later.

Elidor was published in 1965 and has a strong 1960s feel which contrasts with the eerie, otherworldly nature of the fantasy land of Elidor. It begins with Roland Watson and his older siblings Nicholas, Helen and David wandering the streets of Manchester one cold afternoon, looking for something to do to pass the time. The post-war urban slum clearances are under way and the children stumble upon a church being prepared for demolition. When one of them accidentally kicks a ball through the church window, they go in one by one to look for it and don’t return, until only Roland is left.

Following his brothers and sister into the church, he discovers a portal to another land: Elidor, a world that was once beautiful but is now dying and decaying, under attack from the forces of darkness. Here, Roland meets the mysterious Malebron – a blind fiddle player, or is he a king? – who tells him that three of Elidor’s four golden castles have now become dark, but all hope isn’t yet lost. The Watson siblings must find the four Treasures – a stone, a spear, a cup and a sword – and keep them safe in their own world until light can be restored to Elidor.

For a fantasy novel, we spend a surprisingly small amount of time in Elidor itself. Most of the story takes place in Manchester, once the children have returned with the Treasures (which, away from Elidor, are transformed into everyday objects to make them easier to hide). However, the boundary between the two worlds is thin and the dark forces of Elidor begin to find their way through. There was a scene I found quite terrifying as a child, where the hidden objects begin to create static electricity, causing interference with all the electrical items in the Watson household. I still found it very unsettling as an adult! It’s this encroachment on the characters’ ordinary lives that makes Elidor darker than, say, the Narnia books. It reminded me a lot of Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising, which also features a battle between light and dark and the intrusion of evil forces on the real world.

Another thing this book and the Susan Cooper series have in common is a strong mythological background, with various allusions to myths and legends woven into the plot. Roland’s name, for example, is significant because the first part of the story has parallels with the folktale Childe Rowland, in which Rowland also has two brothers and a sister, Burd Ellen, who also disappear after kicking a ball over a church. Then there’s the title Elidor, inspired by a medieval Welsh folktale (Elidyr and the Golden Ball); the four castles and four treasures, which correspond to the Irish legends of the Tuatha Dé Danann; and the untamed unicorn, Findhorn, whose song is the key to saving Elidor. Don’t worry, though, if you’re not familiar with any of these myths – they’re not necessary to understanding the story.

Although I enjoyed reading Elidor again after so many years, I didn’t find it an entirely satisfying book. There’s not much worldbuilding regarding Elidor itself; we only get a brief glimpse of it early in the novel and we never really learn exactly why it is being destroyed, who the evil forces are or what their aims are. Everything is kept intentionally vague and although this does add to the general eeriness of the book, I would have liked to have known more. We aren’t told the ages of the children either – we just know that Nicholas is the oldest and Roland the youngest. I found it surprisingly frustrating not knowing how old they were! Of course, none of this bothered me the first time I read it and it is a children’s book, after all.

I’m not sure if I ever read any of Alan Garner’s other books and can’t remember them if I did. Maybe I should try some of them now that I’ve reminded myself of this one.

The Unicorn Hunters by Katherine Arden

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This was one of my most anticipated new releases of the year, having loved first Katherine Arden’s Winternight trilogy and then her standalone novel, The Warm Hands of Ghosts. The Unicorn Hunters promised the same blend of history, fantasy and folklore and sounded just as fascinating.

The novel is set in 15th century Brittany, at that time an independent duchy. Following the death of Duke Francis II, his daughter, Anne, has succeeded him as Duchess of Brittany. She believes she will be able to govern Brittany well and had promised her father she would never allow it to be conquered, but naturally a land ruled by a young, unmarried woman quickly comes under threat from other, more powerful nations. Determined to avoid a union with France at all costs, Anne secretly marries Maximilian of Austria by proxy but as she waits for her new husband to join her in Brittany, Charles VIII of France and his forces draw closer to the duchy.

As a delaying tactic, Anne suggests a unicorn hunt in the enchanted forest of Brocéliande. She’s sure the king and his men will be unable to resist the temptation of capturing a magical beast – and according to legend, a unicorn can only be tamed by a virgin, which means Anne should be able to avoid being forced into marriage with Charles until Maximilian arrives and her secret can be revealed. No one is really expecting to see a unicorn – until one emerges from the trees and allows Anne to take a lock of its mane. With Anne under increasing pressure to agree to the French marriage, it seems there could be a way to save Brittany after all, but it will mean delving further into the world of magic.

I really enjoyed The Unicorn Hunters, although I found it a bit uneven. The first half is mainly concerned with the politics of Brittany and France, with only a few fantasy elements: the brief appearance of the unicorn, whom we don’t see again until later; the role of diviners who use dice, wine or beetles to spy on rival courts and coloured cloths to communicate what they’ve learned; and a man who stumbles out of the Lost Lands, a sinister realm that borders the forest of Brocéliande and is inhabited by korrigans (Breton fairies or spirits). I was reminded very much of Guy Gavriel Kay’s books, which are mostly set in thinly disguised worlds based on real countries and real historical periods and have subtle supernatural touches. In the second half of this novel, though, the fantasy elements become much stronger as Anne and her friends and enemies move in and out of the Lost Lands.

I liked Anne as a character, but I should point out that the Anne of Brittany in this book is not quite the same as the historical one and her story follows a different path, so be aware that you aren’t learning the ‘real history’ here. For example, the real Anne was eleven when she succeeded to the duchy, but Katherine Arden’s Anne is an adult. Other characters, such as Louis of Orléans and Anne’s sister Isabeau, have also had large parts of their stories altered – and Charles VIII’s sister, Anne of France, is renamed Marguerite to avoid confusion. Arden explains some of her choices in an author’s note at the end of the book, although I wonder whether it would have been more sensible to have just changed the names of all of the people and places, like Kay does, and set the book in an entirely alternate version of history.

Something I really loved about this book is the way so many aspects of Breton myth and legend are incorporated into the story: the mythical lost city of Kêr-Is, swallowed up by the sea in the Bay of Douarnenez; the presence of the korrigans and the anaon (spirits of the dead); the ancient forest of Brocéliande, associated with Merlin and the Arthurian legends; and of course, the unicorn – but unicorns obviously appear in the myths of other cultures as well. The real Anne of Brittany does actually have a connection with unicorns as it has been speculated that she commissioned the famous set of tapestries known as The Unicorn Tapestries, although this has never been proven.

I preferred the earlier sections of the book as I felt there was a definite shift in tone and pace in the second half, but I’m sure other readers will have the opposite preference depending on whether you like your fiction to be more grounded in history and politics or more fantasy-heavy. The Winternight books are still my favourites by Katherine Arden (start with The Bear and the Nightingale and read all three in order) but this was enjoyable as well and I’ll be looking out for her next book.

Thanks to Random House UK/Century for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

Book 3/20 of 20 Books of Summer

Vile Lady Villains by Danai Christopoulou

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Literature is full of villains, many of them women. Sometimes they are based on real people and sometimes they are purely fictional. Sometimes their reputations for villainy are deserved and sometimes they’re not. But what would happen if two female villains from two very different works of literature crossed paths, got to know each other and worked together to write new endings to their stories? This is what Danai Christopoulou sets out to explore in Vile Lady Villains.

Our first lady villain is Lady Macbeth. We meet her after she and her husband have carried out their plot to murder King Duncan and she is trying to wash the blood from her hands. She asks the three witches for help and is given a potion to drink, but it doesn’t have the effect she hopes for – instead of removing her burden of guilt, it transports her to an endless corridor lined with doors. Drawn to one with a bloodstained handle to match her bloodstained hand, she opens it and finds herself in a room where another murder has just taken place…

Klytemnestra has just killed her husband, Agamemnon, and is standing over his dead body. The murder was revenge for the death of their daughter, Iphigenia, whom Agamemnon sacrificed in return for winds to sail to the Trojan War, and for bringing his concubine Cassandra home with him. Suddenly a door in the wall appears and a woman dressed in black stumbles onto the scene of the crime…

This is how Christopoulou brings together Lady Macbeth and Klytemnestra (spelled with a K in the book rather than the more common C), two women from different times and different worlds. Together they become lost in a realm of stories, pursued by a mysterious goddess known as the Shepherd, or the Mistress of the House of Books. The Shepherd holds the keys to reopen their doors, but the more time our two villains spend together the more they begin to question whether they really want to return to their own stories and if so, is there anything they can do to redeem themselves first?

This is a difficult book to classify – it’s fantasy and also metafiction; there’s an element of historical fiction where Lady Macbeth’s story intersects with the real woman who inspired her character, Gruoch; there’s Greek mythology with Klytemnestra’s storyline; and there’s a thread of romance running through the novel as well. To be honest, although I could tell from the blurb that this would be an unusual story, I wasn’t really prepared for quite how bizarre it actually was. I enjoyed the beginning and the end but felt lost for a while in the middle. Also, the two women are referred to throughout the book by nicknames they give each other: Lady Macbeth becomes Anassa (the ancient Greek word for queen) and Klytemnestra becomes Claret, a reference to the colour of blood. I found this unnecessarily confusing, although I understand the thinking behind the two women wanting to choose their own names rather than the ones given to them by their creators.

The book is beautifully written, if a bit too flowery at times, which is particularly impressive as Christopoulou explains in her acknowledgements the extra challenges she faced due to English not being her first language. She also gets around the problem of an Ancient Greek woman and an 11th century Scottish woman being able to understand each other by making it one of the rules of the realm of stories, under the control of the three witches (who appear to Claret as the Three Fates, or Moirai). I don’t think it’s essential to have any knowledge of either Shakespeare or mythology, but it certainly helps! This is a very imaginative book with a lot of layers and a lot going on; ultimately it was just a bit too strange for me, but I’m sure the right reader will love it.

Thanks to Michael Joseph, Penguin Random House for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

A Remedy for Fate by MA Kuzniar

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I wasn’t sure whether to read this as I didn’t care for MA Kuzniar’s previous book, Midnight in Everwood, but I loved the idea of a story set in 18th century Prague so I decided to give her a second chance. I’m glad I did as I thought this book was much better.

A Remedy for Fate is very loosely based on the fairy tale Rumpelstiltskin and is written from the perspective of Thea, a ‘fate weaver’ who runs Stiltskin’s Apothecary, brewing special potions that can change her customers’ futures – for a terrible price. Thea herself paid that price seven years earlier when she agreed to lose her memories and her heart for reasons she can no longer remember and in return has been given the ability to weave fates. Although she’s still human, Thea’s body is held together by a spell controlled by her employer, Jasper Stiltskin. The only way to free herself from the spell is to correctly guess her birth name, which she has forgotten as it’s yet another memory taken from her by Jasper.

The Apothecary is located in Prague’s Magic Quarter, a secret world hidden beneath the city which can only be accessed by people in need of help. However, the protections that keep the Magic Quarter safe from those who wish it harm are starting to break down, allowing entry to the sinister Magic Hunters who are determined to find the evidence they need to close the whole area down.

Although the historical Prague setting was the thing that attracted me to this book, I found that we didn’t actually see as much of Prague as I’d expected. Although Thea does occasionally venture up into the city, most of the action takes place in the Magic Quarter, which is described very vividly – a maze of narrow streets, wreathed in mist and lined with enchanted pastel-painted shops. It’s also populated with colourful characters including Pani Dagmar, an elderly witch who claims to be five hundred years old; Wojslav the vampire, who leads a solitary life running an antique shop; and Thea’s friend Zofka, the kitchen-witch, who bakes magical cakes and pies. The world-building is wonderful and I loved the way Kuzniar creates a feeling of community where the residents of the Magic Quarter, despite not always seeing eye to eye, all come together to fight the forces threatening their lives and livelihoods.

Because the story is set mainly in the Magic Quarter, a fantasy land which is very separate from Prague itself, there’s very little sense of the time period. Apart from some references to Empress Maria Theresa’s recent banning of witch burning and torture in 1768, I felt that the book could really have been set in any period, past, present or future. I also thought Thea, although she’s supposed to be a woman in her thirties, felt much less mature and the book in general, like Midnight in Everwood, seemed to be aimed more at younger readers, despite them both being marketed as adult novels. Not necessarily a problem, but something to be aware of if you’re planning to read them.

Thea’s actions frustrated me at times, but I thought Jasper was a great character and I enjoyed watching his relationship with Thea unfold and change throughout the book. The answer to the question of Thea’s real name seemed quite obvious to me, though, and I’m surprised she was having so much trouble guessing it! Overall, then, I found this an entertaining read, with just a few negative points, and the writing style didn’t irritate me the way it did in Midnight in Everwood. I would be happy to try Kuzniar’s other adult novel, Upon a Frosted Star, which is based on Swan Lake.

Thanks to Hodderscape for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley

Circle of Shadows by Marisa Linton

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Mystery, fantasy, historical fiction, dark academia…this is a difficult book to classify as it’s all of those things and more. Most importantly, it’s also a fascinating, entertaining read and after finishing it I was pleased to learn that it’s the first in a series, with the second book, Domain of Darkness, coming later this year.

The novel is set in 1904 and follows Evie Winstanley, the daughter of a scholar who collects occult books. When her father is found dead in his study, with his clothes dripping with water and a circular symbol chalked on the floor beside him, Evie is determined to find out what has happened to him. Convinced that he was working on some kind of occult ritual before his death, she manages to identify the symbol as the Kuroskato, or circle of shadows.

Evie’s investigations take her first to a country house on the Yorkshire moors and then to Oxford, where she learns more about the Kuroskato and how it could be dangerous in the hands of the wrong people. She also meets two very different men: Marcus Ellingham, a reporter for The Ghost Hunter, who has written a series of articles on fraudulent mediums, and Aubrey Penhallow, a country gentleman who is an expert on horse racing. One of them is a friend from the beginning, whereas the other is much more difficult to interpret. As Evie’s path crosses with both men again and again throughout the book, she must decide which, if either, can be trusted.

I enjoyed this book and liked the way the supernatural elements were always there in the background but never really dominated the story too much. Yes, this is a world where the dark arts really exist, where people can be possessed and spirits can be summoned, but Linton manages to weave these things into the plot in a way that feels convincing and believable. The mixture of a scholarly historical setting with a real, practical system of magic kept reminding me of Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, although the plots of the two books are very different.

I also found Evie a very engaging character. She shares her father’s love of history, books and archaeology, but as a woman in Edwardian England her opportunities to pursue an academic career of her own are very limited. When she finds her way to Oxford University in search of answers to the mystery, she has to navigate the halls of all-male colleges, gain access to the Bodleian Library and infiltrate a secret society, the Sons of Dionysus, made up of rich and privileged young men. The sections of the book set in Oxford are wonderfully atmospheric, whether Linton is describing the world of academia, the bustling streets of the tourist areas or the banks of the River Cherwell at night. The earlier parts of the book, where Evie and her sister visit Yorkshire are just as vividly described and the country estate with its dark and sinister lake provides a contrast to the urban setting we see later on.

Although I guessed who the villain was in advance, I was still satisfied with the ending, particularly as it sets things up perfectly for the second book. I can’t wait to see what Evie does next and wish we didn’t have to wait until December to find out!

Thanks to Hodderscape for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

Travel Light by Naomi Mitchison

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What an unusual book this is! I’ve been interested in reading something by Naomi Mitchison for a long time (I did have The Corn King and the Spring Queen on my Classics Club list at one point, before replacing it), so when I spotted this novella on NetGalley, it seemed like a good opportunity to try one of her books.

Travel Light was published in 1952, two years before The Lord of the Rings, which Mitchison proofread for her friend Tolkien, and as you can probably guess from the cover, it’s one of Mitchison’s own contributions to the fantasy genre. It tells the story of Halla, a king’s daughter, who is cast out as a baby because the new queen resents her. She is rescued by her nurse, Matulli, who transforms herself into a black bear, picks up the baby in her mouth and carries her into the woods, where she is raised with a group of bear cubs. When Matulli and the other bears prepare for their winter hibernation, Halla is entrusted to the care of Uggi the dragon, who becomes her friend and mentor.

The book is divided into three sections and the first is devoted to Halla’s childhood with the bears and the dragons, as I’ve described above. I really liked this first section; it has the feel of a children’s fairy tale and I particularly enjoyed reading about Halla’s time with the dragons on Dragon Mountain, where she learns about their love of collecting gold and is told stories of heroes rescuing princesses from dragons. These stories lead Halla to question whether the damsels in distress really wanted to be rescued and whether the heroes are really so heroic after all!

Despite growing up feeling that she’s half bear/half dragon, Halla eventually has to accept that she is, in fact, a human, and in the second part of the book she ends up joining a group of men from the fictional land of Marob who are on their way to Micklegard (or Byzantium, later known as Constantinople) to ask the emperor for protection against their cruel governor. The book loses some of its charm after this; it becomes more grounded in reality, the politics and religion of men play a bigger part, and things happen that showed me that it’s not really the children’s fantasy I thought it was at first – or at least not one I would recommend for young children. There are still plenty of enjoyable moments, though – I loved the idea of racehorses deciding amongst themselves who should win the race – and I found the ending of the book quite satisfying.

Norse myth features heavily in the story, with references to the Norns and the weaving of fate, a Valkyrie who keeps popping up at various times throughout the book, and an encounter between Halla and the All-Father (Odin). It’s the All-Father who, just before Halla joins the world of humans, gives her a part of his night-blue cloak for protection and tells her to set aside the treasure-hoarding habits of the dragons and ‘travel light’, without material possessions or mental burdens, as she moves forward into her new life.

At 192 pages in the new Virago edition, this is a quick read. Although I found it uneven, as an example of an older fantasy novel written by a woman and featuring a female protagonist I think it’s well worth reading.

Thanks to Virago for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

The Astral Library by Kate Quinn

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Life has never been easy for Alix Watson. Passed around from one foster home to another, her childhood lacked love and security, and now that she’s an adult she’s living in poverty, juggling three part-time jobs in an attempt to make ends meet. But today has been the worst day of all: she’s lost one of her jobs – the highest paying one; her roommate has thrown her out of their shared apartment because his girlfriend is jealous; and she only has a few dollars left in the world, which she can’t even access because her card has been declined. Homeless and alone, Alix takes refuge in the reading room of Boston Public Library, the only place that has ever felt like home. Stumbling through an open door, she finds herself emerging into the Astral Library – a place where time stands still and where the desperate, the lonely and the abused can find sanctuary, literally, inside a book.

Many of us have probably wondered what it would be like to live in one of the fictional worlds described in our favourite books, but in the Astral Library people get the chance to really do exactly that. Alix just needs to decide which literary world to choose – Austen’s Regency? Dickens’ London? The possibilities are endless (as long as the book is in the public domain). Eventually Alix makes her decision, but before she can step inside her book and begin her new life, an urgent message arrives. Someone already within another book is in danger and it seems the future of the Astral Library itself could be under threat.

The Astral Library is a change of direction for Kate Quinn as she has previously only written historical novels, some of which I’ve read and enjoyed. I don’t read a lot of modern fantasy, but was curious to see how Quinn would handle such a completely different genre. First of all, I loved the concept of people being able to enter a book and make it their new home, interacting with the characters and watching the well known storylines play out. I was looking forward to seeing which book Alix would choose and what would happen to her once she’d entered it. However, the novel goes in a direction I wasn’t expecting and instead of Alix becoming immersed in one fictional setting, she jumps constantly from one to another as she and the Librarian are called on to rescue other library users. We only get brief glimpses of most of these books, which is a shame as a lot of them are books I’ve read and enjoyed – such as Jane Eyre, Dracula and The Three Musketeers – and it would have been nice to have spent longer exploring them!

There’s some interesting worldbuilding in terms of the Astral Library itself and the many rules that govern it – rules on who can and can’t enter, which books you can live inside and what you’re allowed to do once there, what to do about suitable clothing, the different privileges granted to the Librarian and her assistants, and much more. The Librarian is a great character; Alix finds her a bit unwelcoming at first, but gradually gains respect for her when she discovers what lengths the Librarian will go to in protecting those who have sought sanctuary in the library and how valiantly she’s been battling the bureaucracy of the Library Board who disagree with the way the library is being run. I was intrigued by the addition of two more characters, the Gallerist and the Programmer, but I won’t say any more about those!

I found The Astral Library mostly entertaining, although not quite what I’d wanted and expected it to be. Later in the book, though, it becomes clear that it’s a novel with a message – a message about the many threats facing libraries today. Libraries all over the world are at risk of closure, in need of more funding and increasingly focusing on offering other things rather than just books. Quinn also explores the topics of book banning and censorship. Towards the end of the book, it did seem that these messages were starting to dominate and become more important than the plot and the characters, but still, I enjoyed the book overall. I would prefer Kate Quinn to go back to writing historical fiction, which I think she does better, but it’s always interesting to see authors trying something different.

Thanks to HarperCollins for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.