The Time Will Come (1)

The Time Will Come was begun by Books For Company.

Each Thursday, we highlight a book from our shelves we are anxious to read but haven't gotten around to yet.

(I took the liberty of using a different graphic to represent the meme.)

I thought my first post in this meme would be about the book I'm most anxious to read, but instead it's going to be about the book I feel most guilty about not having read. It's Into the Wildewood by Gillian Summers, book two in The Faire Folk Trilogy. I read book one, The Tree Shepherd's Daughter, in June 2008. It had a magical quality that few books are able to achieve. The protagonist, Keelie, was immensely likable, as were many of the minor characters. One of the most interesting things about it was that it was set in a Renaissance Faire. The writing wasn't brilliant, but Summers avoided most of the pitfalls that many other YA authors tumble into. It was just one of those books that you don't want to end, and when it does, you want to read the next book right away. But by the time the second book was out, I was deep into other series. I kept promising it that I would read it any day now...soon...one of these days.... And now, not only has the trilogy been completed, but a spin-off trilogy is already two books deep! Oh, the time has definitely come to enter Into the Wildewood!

Book One

Book Three

Stable the Bull, Free the Muse!

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The Girl in the Steel Corset
by Kady Cross

Pub. Date: May 2011
Publisher: Harlequin Teen
Format: Hardback, 473pp
Age Range: Young Adult
Series: The Steampunk Chronicles #1
ISBN-13: 9780373210336

 Synopsis from Amazon.com

In 1897 England, sixteen-year-old Finley Jayne has no one…except the "thing" inside her.

When a young lord tries to take advantage of Finley, she fights back. And wins. But no normal Victorian girl has a darker side that makes her capable of knocking out a full-grown man with one punch....

Only Griffin King sees the magical darkness inside her that says she's special, says she's one of them. The orphaned duke takes her in from the gaslit streets against the wishes of his band of misfits: Emily, who has her own special abilities and an unrequited love for Sam, who is part robot; and Jasper, an American cowboy with a shadowy secret.

Griffin's investigating a criminal called The Machinist, the mastermind behind several recent crimes by automatons. Finley thinks she can help—and finally be a part of something, finally fit in.

But The Machinist wants to tear Griff's little company of strays apart, and it isn't long before trust is tested on all sides. At least Finley knows whose side she's on—even if it seems no one believes her.

Jennifer's Review of The Girl in the Steel Corset

(There are no spoilers in this review.)

There comes a moment when you’re reading a book that you slip your bookmark between the pages and notice that you’ve just passed the halfway point. If it’s a tedious book, you might react with a resigned sigh. (Oh, man. Three hundred more pages of this lunatic chasing a whale.) On the other hand, if it’s a page-turner with interesting and extremely likable characters, and with a storyline that bounces along in a steady and comfortable rhythm, then you might regret that there are less pages awaiting you than there are lying behind you.

The Girl in the Steel Corset, from its beautiful cover to its final pages, is of the latter ilk. Yes, it has its flaws, some fairly irritating ones at that, but they're mostly steamrolled by the absorbing plot and immensely pleasing characters. Still, there’s a wee bit too much blushing going on, and a tad too many eyebrows “arch”. The lone American character at times sounds more British than he ought (or, conversely, like a stereotype of a cowboy). And I have to wonder if Cross is working on the old pulp mag penny-a-word scale: He raised a hand to his nose, and when he saw the blood on his fingers, he made a growling sound in his throat. Indeed. You know, he could have just "growled", and replacing the weak (and trite) phrase with a single, forceful word would have increased rather than sapped the potency of that sentence.

But my biggest complaint is that the author frequently exhibits a sameness in her prose. For example, midway down page 298: ...[Sam] demanded, coming at her like a bull at a red flag. Jump to the top of 299: Sam came at her. And finally, drop to the next paragraph: Sam raged, coming to stand in front of her, a bull ready to charge. Nice analogy the first time, not so much the second. Actually, it's the second and third times, at a minimum. On page 16, there's a different character, but the same verb and the same male bovine: He came at her again, like a bull. Cross tends to recycle her analogies -- an uninspired way to write that, by not challenging the writer, does her craft and her manuscript no favors. A writer's best friend is her Muse; allowing complacency to shut the door on inspiration and creativity is asking for stagnant prose, as is evident here when Sam's movements are described by the words “coming”, “came”, and “coming”. (Now that I think of it, monotonous prose is very pulp mag-ish, too! Just be aware of what you've already written, and if you're tempted to recycle an analogy, for example, force yourself to be a better writer by taking a few extra minutes to create something new.) Then there’s the character on page 309 who’s said to be profoundly glad that his friend was going to recover. A few pages later we are told once more that this character is profoundly relieved that his friend was alive. Clearly, there was some lax editing on the part of the writer and lazy proofreading on the part of both writer and editor. And that brings up what is without doubt the most nettlesome thing about this book: the dozens upon dozens of typos and other printing errors in the text. There are missing commas, commas where there shouldn’t be any punctuation, missing words, extra words inserted, and so on. A truly abysmal publication job, Harlequin Teen.

And yet, how good this book must be to overcome those difficulties and garner such a high rating! Well, actually, I’m not sure that good is the best word. Fun would be a better choice. It’s been a while since I’ve had such a blast reading a book. The romances (this is a Harlequin novel after all) are handled lightly, but are one of the highlights of the tale; there are good characters who struggle with the bad side of their natures, and bad ones you want to believe are better than they seem; and there’s just the right amount of humor to offset the drama. The steampunk elements are believable and enjoyable, and though they are an essential part of the story, the descriptions of machinery, etc., are easygoing and do not intrude on the narrative.

Oh, I could quibble over the muddled and ever so slightly contrived denouement. And I could complain about the author’s habit of adding descriptive sentences or phrases after "he said" that at times undercut the emotion being expressed by a character and/or interrupt the flow of a conversation. To see what I mean, let’s revisit page 299:

“It could have killed her,” Sam raged, coming to stand in front of her, a bull ready to charge. “She wouldn't let me die, but she risked her life for you. You are not worth her life. You're not worth her blood.”

Notice how Sam's anger dips after “raged”. The phrases that follow check the growth of his wrath (which is contrary to the violence about to pour forth from this outburst), as his subsequent statements are disconnected from “raged”. But read that paragraph aloud without the phrases following “Sam raged”. Now his anger, rather than slackening, gains momentum, and his act of violence erupts more naturally from his words. (In fact, removing the first phrase alone accomplishes the task almost as well.) Though such expository phrases are a common and useful tool for writers, Cross inserts an overabundance of them into her dialogue, and as a result some conversations feel choppy and bumpy. (More words, more pennies, I suppose.)

But darn it, reading The Girl in the Steel Corset is like having an uncomfortable seat at a terrific play. You squirm every now and then, and grunt out an “Ouch!” or two, but as the play progresses, your senses become enthralled by what’s happening up on the stage. And when you leave the theater, you do so energized and sporting a giddy smile. That was wonderful! you think, the uncomfortable seats of no consequence (until you get home and write your review of the play).

And if a sadness that the magic is over and the cast is gone tries to creep over you, it may be readily banished by the happy thought that this is only book one in The Steampunk Chronicles!

(A shorter version of this review was published in June 2011, on GoodReads.com.)

There But For the Grace of God

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Nightwalkers: Prostitute Narratives from the Eighteenth Century
by Laura J. Rosenthal

Pub. Date: August 2008
Publisher: Broadview Press
Format: Paperback, xxxii, 229pp
Age Range: Adult
Series: None
ISBN-13: 9781551114699
 

Synopsis from Broadview Press

This anthology makes available for the first time a selection of narratives by and about prostitutes in the eighteenth century. These memoirs...offer important insights into female experience and class and gender roles in the period. Portraying the lives of women in both success and hardship, written in voices ranging from repentant to bawdy, the memoirs show the complexity of the lives of the "nightwalkers." For eighteenth-century readers, as Laura Rosenthal writes in her introduction, these memoirs "offered sensual and sentimental journeys, glimpses into high life and low life, and relentless confrontations with the explosive power of money and the vulnerability of those without it." 

Jennifer's Review of Nightwalkers: Prostitute Narratives from the Eighteenth Century

Nightwalkers is a collection of prostitute narratives from the 1700s written not by the women themselves, but by those who claimed to possess the facts of their lives. So though we don’t hear their experiences first-hand, we do get a good look at the reasons why these specific women, and others like them, wound up in the oldest profession. The editor, Laura Rosenthal, whose excellent introduction sets the historical  and literary stage for what follows, did a fine job of gathering together a cross-section of reform, sentimental, and libertine narratives, each differing in style, tone, and purpose (though none are the least titillating). As a result, we learn that some prostitutes, like today’s expensive call girls, moved freely and openly in high society, setting themselves up time and again as a wealthy man’s mistress in order to extract as much money and property from him as they could, occasionally leaving him bankrupt, or nearly so, in the process. Others longed to reform, but then as now, character references were needed for most respectable jobs and these women had none. We find, too, that with society’s help, some fortunate prostitutes were able to mend their ways and live a happier life.

Despite the sadness inherent in them, the narratives often contain unexpected and amusing treats that shed light on the culture of the times. For instance, in The Juvenile Adventures of Miss Kitty Fisher, Kitty, whose love-lorn soliloquies are eavesdropped upon by her landlady (who misinterprets them as a sign of insanity), is examined by a doctor: 

He had...enquired of the people of the house concerning her behaviour; when they unanimously informed him, that she had been raving all day 'till just then....[E]ndeavoring to discover from what source her disorder sprung, he touched upon the usual topics that occasioned madness: adversity, disappointments, application to study, poetry, and at last on love.

If you’ve read Richardson, Fielding, or Defoe, then you have an idea of what a prostitute’s life was like in eighteenth century England. But through the narratives in Nightwalkers, the reader comes to understand that not all of society condemned these women, and indeed, only the strictest moralist would find them all worthy of condemnation. Circumstances – There but for the grace of God go I – put many of these women on the streets and kept them there. Of course, there were those like Sally Salisbury, whose biography opens the book, who seemed born to the profession. No one reveled in her work like the beautiful, devious, acid-tongued Sally. “It was always my Ambition,” she was reported as saying, “to be a First-Rate Whore, and I think, I may say, without Vanity, That I am the greatest, and make the most considerable Figure of any in the Three Kingdoms.” 

(Original, though shorter, review first published May 18, 2011, on GoodReads.com.)

A Poetic Excursion into Fairyland

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Nymphidia or The Court of Faery
by Michael Drayton

Pub. Date: 1906
Original Pub. Date: 1627
Publisher: George Routledge & Sons, Limited
Format: eBook (PDF), 96pp
Age Range: All
Series: None
ISBN-13: N/A

Jennifer's Review of Nymphidia or The Court of Faery

(There are no spoilers in this review.)

Written in 1627, Nymphidia is a quirky, yet masterful, poetic excursion into fairyland. King Oberon learns that Queen Titania is having a tryst with the Faery knight, Pigwiggin. His fury knows no bounds, but his attempts to take revenge on the lovers are bumbling at best. Nymphidia, one of the queen's maids -- and the "gentle Fay" who, Drayton says, "bewrayed" this tale to him -- learns of the king's approach and plots to spare both Titania and Pigwiggin the humiliation of discovery. Delightful illustrations head each octave, plus there are eight excellent full page photogravures of drawings by Thomas Maybank that perfectly evoke the fey atmosphere. Drayton occasionally stretches for a rhyme (as in "Squirrel"/"perill"), but as is ofttimes the result in the hands of a skilled poet, it is usually more merit than sin. The poem is charming in its recitation of the details of the fairies' lives, and there are many stanzas where Drayton is wonderful:

She mounts her chariot in a trice,
Nor would she stay, for no advice,
Until her Maydes that were so nice
To wait on her were fitted;
But ranne her self away alone,
Which when they heard, there was not one
But hasted after to be gone,
As she had beene diswitted.

The book is readily available as a free download. I suggest the PDF version from Google Books. The illustrations and text look sharp for the most part, and you have the sense that you're reading an old book.

Nymphidia is a light, fun, and as far as the literary development of the fay is concerned, an essential read.

(Review originally published June 27, 2011, on GoodReads.com.)

The Book Stops Here!

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The House of Dead Maids
by Clare B. Dunkle

Pub. Date: September 2010
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
Format: Hardback, 160pp
Age Range: Young Adult
Series: None
ISBN-13: 9780805091168

Synopsis from Barnes & Noble

Young Tabby Aykroyd has been brought to the dusty mansion of Seldom House to be nursemaid to a foundling boy. He is a savage little creature, but the Yorkshire moors harbor far worse, as Tabby soon discovers. Why do scores of dead maids and masters haunt Seldom House with a jealous devotion that extends beyond the grave?

As Tabby struggles to escape the evil forces rising out of the land, she watches her young charge choose a different path. Long before he reaches the old farmhouse of Wuthering Heights, the boy who will become Heathcliff has doomed himself and any who try to befriend him.

Jennifer's Review of The House of Dead Maids

(This review contains spoilers.)

It would have been wonderful to have read, reviewed, and rated Clare Dunkle’s little book minus its blurb and final chapter. I would have bestowed five stars upon it without hesitation. From the front cover to the inner illustrations to the penultimate chapter, The House of Dead Maids is an excellent ghost story. Why only three stars then? I’ll get to that. But first, the art.

Few horror novels, or novellas, as this is, are blessed with such an evocative cover – with her black, empty eye sockets, the dead maid’s face, set amongst stark, bare tree branches with an otherworldly light glowing in the background, creates a forbidding atmosphere that augurs suspense, mystery, and menacing ghosts. Add to that the creepy illustrations that head each chapter and the artwork earns five big stars. (Give credit for the illustrations to Patrick Arrasmith. Among other things, he is responsible for the equally outstanding, and spooky, art of The Last Apprentice series.)

The promise of the cover is, for the first eleven chapters, fulfilled and then some. The story contains numerous beautifully written, chilling passages that are a pleasure to read:

The dead hold no terrors for me. I have watched by the beds of those who have passed on, comforted by their sorrowless repose. But this little maid was a ghastly thing, all the more horrible because she stood before me. It wasn’t the pallid hue of her grimy face that shocked me, or her little gray hands and feet. It was the holes where her eyes should have been, great round sockets of shadow.

As a result of her consistently able writing, Dunkle’s characters and setting come to life in all their unsettling glory. Aside from Tabby, the young nursemaid and our heroine, no one creates sympathy in the reader. But this is as it should be, for Tabby is an innocent thrown in among wolves. The nameless six year old boy who becomes Tabby’s charge (“Himself”, she dubs him, though he prefers, and revels in, “heathen git”) is a tyrant and a cruel little monster. When we find out that he and Tabby are doomed to die, the only reason we hope that Tabby will be able to rescue Himself is because we know she won’t leave without him. Otherwise, we would be as happy to see him die as he would be. (Himself longs to come back as a ghost and terrorize the household where he and Tabby are held prisoner.) The bulk of the cast consists of cold, amoral individuals – not unlike the horde of ghosts that haunt the house. Together, the living and the dead create a sinister environment where, if evil rests, it’s only to lie down in bed with you. (Literally, as Tabby finds out.)

Other reviewers have summarized the plot. I will only say that the resolution arrives naturally and is suspenseful and exciting. And that it is with much satisfaction that we read this, the perfect closing line:

Thus we came safe out of that accursed country, with not a footprint left behind to tell of our passing, nor a scent for the bloodhound to catch.

As if they were ghosts, the admiring reader thinks.

But alas! Despite how neatly that sentence concludes the story, the book refuses to end. Instead, it staggers on through an entirely unnecessary chapter twelve – a contrived piece of work with little of the atmosphere of the preceding chapters, which spoils the novella by cheapening all that comes before it. And now I must refer to that other part of the book I had wished gone – the blurb on the back cover. There we are told that The House of Dead Maids is a prequel to Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, and that “the child who will become Heathcliff is already a savage little creature”, etc. But this story – and by that I mean the eleven chapter tale of Tabby and Himself – is most assuredly not a prequel to Wuthering Heights. (Watching Heathcliff being tugged through an adventure at six years old hardly constitutes a prequel. The intent, apparently, is that this story lays the groundwork for the brooding adult Heathcliff – but one might consider boyhood and adolescence to be of equal or greater importance to his development, especially as later on we are led to believe that those years will be normal and pleasant ones.)

What makes the book a prequel is that infernal chapter twelve, in which the reader is bombarded with well over a decade’s worth of information about Tabby’s later life: She makes a friend and together they open a knitting school; she has two more encounters with ghosts; she survives a serious illness; her friend marries and she moves in with the couple; finally, she becomes a maid for the Brontë family and tells the children all manner of eerie stories. Also on this excursion into biography, we find out that Himself was picked up on the street by a kindly, respectable stranger who, when he asks the “little scoundrel” his name, mistakes his reply, “heathen git”, for “Heathcliff”. (Thanks to the blabbing blurb, the reader sees that coming from the first time “heathen git” is used in the story.) As Heathcliff is coincidentally the name of the stranger’s dead son, he immediately announces that he will take the rude, unkempt, thieving lad home to live with him (as his son, it is implied) at Wuthering Heights.

A writer needs to know where to end his/her book. It seems basic and obvious, but it is as much a skill as knowing where a story should begin. In her epilogue, Dunkle says she was inspired to write Dead Maids by Wuthering Heights and the real life Tabby. But in that final chapter, she forces her book to be something it doesn’t want or have to be, thereby dragging it down. Now, instead of a smile appearing on the reader’s face as she closes the book, there’s a grimace.

A ghost story is simply a type of fairy tale. And like a fairy tale, it occupies a small, confined world from which the reader should be released as soon as the plot has been resolved. We don’t need to see what happens after “happily ever after” – that broadens the world and spreads thin the spell the story has cast upon us, ruining the moment, as it were. Give the boy a name, reduce the number of times he’s called a “heathen git”, and end the book at chapter eleven. The House of Dead Maids would then stand on its own as a minor classic in the field of young adult horror. As it is, it will be forever huddling, ghost-like, in the shadows of Wuthering Heights. Although, as a huge fan of that novel, perhaps that is exactly what Dunkle intended. It would explain why that unfortunate final chapter was tacked on to an otherwise enjoyable and memorable ghost story.

(Two minor comments:

1. On several occasions, Tabby uses the word “wisht” – an adjective which is British dialectal for “dismal” or “eerie” – to tell Himself to be quiet. Doubtless, the author meant to write the interjection “whist” (or “whisht”), meaning “hush”. But mine being an ARC, hopefully such mistakes were caught and corrected.

2. I can’t let this review go by without quoting the second sentence from the book’s Dedication: “I love you, Jennifer.” Sure, the comment’s not meant for me, but reading that line after having just turned over the unnerving cover with those empty sockets staring at me curled my toes!)

(Review originally published October 22, 2010, on GoodReads.com.)

Research, Research, Research!

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Passion Play
by Beth Bernobich

Pub. Date: October 2010
Publisher: Tor Books
Format: Paperback, 367pp
Age Range: Adult
Series: Erythandra #1
ISBN-13: 9780765322173

Synopsis from Barnes & Noble

Ilse Zhalina is the daughter of one of Melnek's more prominent merchants. She has lived most of her life surrounded by the trappings of wealth and privilege.  Many would consider hers a happy lot. But there are dark secrets, especially in the best of families. Ilse has learned that for a young woman of her beauty and social station, to be passive and silent is the best way to survive.

When Ilse finally meets the older man she is to marry, she realizes he is far crueler and more deadly than her father could ever be. Ilse chooses to run. This choice will change her life forever. And it will lead her to Raul Kosenmark, master of one of the land's most notorious pleasure houses...and who is, as Ilse discovers, a puppetmaster of a different sort altogether. Ilse discovers a world where every pleasure has a price and there are levels of magic and intrigue she once thought unimaginable. She also finds the other half of her heart.

Jennifer's Review of Passion Play

(This review contains spoilers.)

The most important thing about telling a lie is to make certain its every detail is believable. If, under scrutiny, even a fragment of it breaks down, then the entire lie is exposed. Now, there is no 'lie' bigger than a work of fiction, especially a fantasy novel. Not only have the characters never existed, but their world does not, and has never, existed. But through the magic of suspended disbelief, we readily accept the validity of a novel's fictional world, and view as real and meaningful its characters and their actions, as long as every detail is believable.

Passion Play is two stories in one: the first is very good, the second is average. Story number one features a swiftly moving, well-written, enthralling plot, with a 15 year old girl as the winning protagonist for whom we root and with whom we suffer. So good were these first 100 pages that I had to force myself to put the book down. Unfortunately, after story number two began, I had to force myself to pick the book up.

What destroys Passion Play, where the 'lie' begins to break down, is the male lead, Lord Raul Kosenmark. When we first meet him, he is described as having a very high, feminine voice. Shortly after, we find out that, in order to prove his loyalty so that he might serve on the king's Inner Council, he underwent castration. As an adult. Five minutes of research would have informed the author that castration after puberty does not change the male voice. And since his condition, this error, is brought to the attention of the reader every chapter or two, there is no way to forget that what we are reading is not real.

What's unfortunate is that it is totally unnecessary to the plot. Remove every instance of Raul's eunuchism from the story, and nothing is lost. Return it, and nothing is gained. (In a world of magic, an oath of fidelity could have been enforced magically: One willingly accepts into one's body an infusion of magic that, like a bomb, may be detonated by the king at the first sign of treason.) Furthermore, we learn that Raul’s condition may be reversed through magic, which nullifies the value of that type of oath.

This is not, however, the book's only breakdown. In the last 200+ pages, Ilse, our heroine -- who is 16 now -- becomes the chief confidant and prime counselor to Lord Kosenmark (who is in a life or death struggle to prevent a war and save the kingdom). None of the other, older members of Raul’s inner circle seem to think her youth and inexperience in affairs of state is a problem. Yet this is the same girl who, but days before, was sorely distressed over the teasing and pranks of the mean girls who worked with her in Raul’s kitchen. But perhaps those other characters may be forgiven because, once out of the kitchen, Ilse thinks and behaves like a 25 or 30 year old woman. Since the author seldom mentions her age, the reader must constantly remind herself that Ilse is still a teenager.

After the excitement of the early chapters, the plot in the latter chapters drags to a halt. The most exciting thing that happens is opening the mail and attending the staff meeting afterward. Literally. And daily. Ilse is Raul's secretary (and later, his lover), so she examines all of his correspondence, much of which concerns the intrigues revolving around the “shadow court” he has established. Then she and Raul, and whoever else may be in-house that day, sit around and discuss the content of the letters. Except for one, hard-to-believe battle (Ilse, barely trained in self-defense, defeats two well-armed professional soldiers), the bulk of the action -- battles, murders, the machinations of Khandarr, the evil magician -- takes place off-stage, the reader learning about these things through letters. It is very hard to be concerned about threats to characters you've never met, or to fear a faceless foe. (Khandarr appears once, briefly and ineffectually, when he magically crashes a meeting, looks around ominously – in actuality, checking attendance – and then is shooed away.)

Bernobich's conversations flow easily and naturally, and, in the first part of the book anyway, the characters, even the minor ones, come to life. Her depictions of Ilse's rape and later love-making are tasteful, without undue details or sensationalism. For the most part, her prose is lively and free of cliches, though she frequently exhibits a first novelist's tendency towards verbosity: Raul “vented a sigh” (for 'sighed'); during sword exercises he “made a noncommittal noise” ('grunted'); at dinner, he “made a noise in his throat” (‘cleared his throat’); and early on, we come across the bane of poorly written juvenile fiction (or the pride of melodramatic parody) when Ilse sheds “hot tears”. These are common mistakes of a first-time novelist, and too often, sins of the genre, but the editors should not have allowed them to reach press.

The author mentions in her acknowledgments that it took her “many years to write” the book, that she “fumbled toward the story” she wanted to tell, and that one person advised her where to start, and another where to end, the novel. Passion Play is dedicated to the redoubtable Sherwood Smith who, Bernobich writes, read “draft after draft, giving me feedback on prose and plot and characters.” Toss in the editors she credits with supposedly saving her book from “all kinds of inconsistencies and infelicities”, and it’s clear that many share the blame for its problems.

At the end, when Ilse and Raul agree to separate for safety's sake (a questionable decision that feels contrived), I felt no sorrow, only joy that, for a few pages at least, I could again spend time alone with Ilse. If the sequel concerned only her, I would read it, although given that she and Raul will be miles apart, I fear the plot will once more involve opening endless amounts of mail.

(Review originally published October 22, 2010, on GoodReads.com.)

It's Fay, Not Fey! (And Please Stop Muttering!)

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The Iron King
by Julie Kagawa

Pub. Date: February 2010
Publisher: Harlequin Teen
Format: Paperback, 368pp
Age Range: Young Adult
Series: The Iron Fey #1
ISBN-13: 9780373210084

 

Synopsis from Harlequin Teen

Meghan Chase has a secret destiny—one she could never have imagined…

Something has always felt slightly off in Meghan's life, ever since her father disappeared before her eyes when she was six. She has never quite fit in at school…or at home.

When a dark stranger begins watching her from afar, and her prankster best friend becomes strangely protective of her, Meghan senses that everything she's known is about to change.

But she could never have guessed the truth—that she is the daughter of a mythical faery king and is a pawn in a deadly war. Now Meghan will learn just how far she'll go to save someone she cares about, to stop a mysterious evil no faery creature dare face…and to find love with a young prince who might rather see her dead than let her touch his icy heart.

Jennifer's Review of The Iron King

(There are no spoilers in this review.)

As enjoyable as The Iron King was, it was nonetheless a disappointment, because with a touch more attention by the author, it could have been much better. The plot is interesting and moves along nicely, the characters are engaging, and Kagawa’s storytelling keeps the pages turning. Clearly, she did her research into fairy mythology – motif after motif appears, especially in the first part of the book – and that adds an additional layer of realism and pleasure to the tale. But there are two annoying, recurring problems with her writing: one that could have been avoided with a single peek in the dictionary, and one that could have been eliminated had her rewriting process been more diligent.

The first problem is that Kagawa does not understand that the word fey is an adjective, not a noun. It means “fairylike or magical”, or even, “fated to die”. It is not synonymous, as she believes, with the word fairy. The word she was looking for was fay, or its Old French progenitor, fae, both of which are nouns meaning “fairy or elf”. The mistake is especially surprising since Kagawa regularly employs the term faerie, the archaic form of fairy, and since her research is otherwise solid. It may not seem like a big deal until you realize that the word is used incorrectly over and over and over again, starting with the cover of the book (where the series is called “The Iron Fey”, which at best translates as “The Iron Fairylike”). Occasionally, such as when she writes “the fey boy”, the word nearly works, although it is entirely by accident and contrary to her intentions. (I say nearly because the boy in question is a fairy, not just fairylike.) She is not alone in making this error. Other writers have gotten confused, and I have even seen paintings of the Arthurian enchantress Morgan le Fay mistitled “Morgan le Fey” by artists who should know better. But none of that excuses Kagawa nor eases the pain the reader feels at each instance of the word. It is the first law of writing: Know the words you use!

The other problem that drags The Iron King down is that Kagawa succumbs to the “pet word” blight that hampers so many authors’ prose. Even good writers, if they’re not careful, can develop bad habits through oversight or laziness, but there’s no excuse for any writer using the same descriptive word page after page. In this case, there are two words that Kagawa seems unable to stop using: murmur and mutter. Every character in the book does one or the other, or both, at some time or another. It gives one the impression that people are afraid to raise their voices in Kagawa’s Faeryland. What’s worse, the repeated use of a word to describe a character’s actions or manner eventually evolves into a trait of that character in the reader’s mind. For example, the male lead in The Iron King, supposedly a dark and mighty knight, “mutters” or “murmurs” in nearly every conversation he has, making him seem, by turns, unconfident, indecisive, or mawkish. Our heroine’s strength is likewise sapped by her constant murmuring and muttering. But the disease afflicts everyone in the story, and whenever a new character appears on the scene, the reader holds her breath because sooner or later, that character will murmur and/or mutter. The problem reaches its crescendo on page 277 when, in a short conversation, three different characters murmur. This comes in the midst of a staggering display of murmuring in which seven different characters murmur a total of 19 times in 47 pages. (Mind you, many of those pages contain no dialogue.) During this same span of text, when the characters aren’t murmuring, they’re muttering – 15 times in fact. But the muttering really takes off with chapter twenty-one. In 21 pages, three characters “mutter” 11 times (and “murmur” 8). Nearly every conversation has at least one mutterer, and sometimes characters actually trade off muttering.

I had hoped that Kagawa would have reined in her use of those words in Winter’s Passage, the novella that falls between The Iron King and The Iron Daughter. But no, if anything it’s worse. In 59 pages, many of them devoid of conversation, Kagawa uses murmur 21 times and mutter 12. On page 9, in a half-page span of a very short conversation, she outdoes herself. Our dark fae starts it off: “Hold on,” he murmured. Our heroine has a one sentence reply, and then the fae responds: “I don’t know,” he muttered. A couple lines of conversation and a brief descriptive paragraph follow, and then: “Meghan, wake up,” he murmured. Later, in five pages near the end that contain just a few lines of dialogue, our majestic knight, in four brief opportunities, repeats the sequence, first murmuring, then muttering, then murmuring.

This is lazy writing and even lazier editing. Writing is work; rewriting is hard labor. Hard, hard, hard labor. But to make a book its best, the latter must be done with a conscientious effort made to improve what has been written. There is absolutely no excuse for using the same word in every dialogue. In fact, in the majority of cases in The Iron King, there is no reason for either a murmur or a mutter. The transparent “he said” works fine; no word at all works in several places; and as for the rest, they could be varied by “he said tenderly”, “he said softly”, or “she said under her breath”. Take the thesaurus off the shelf and have the characters grumble, grouse, mumble, or speak in an undertone. English is rich in synonyms, and a writer must take advantage of that fact. As much as anything, good prose is about vocabulary and variety. When I’m writing, I dread the third draft because that’s my “word use/overuse” draft. It is weeks of tedium and drudgery as I use my word processor to search the text for instances of a hundred or so different words – those I’ve found that I tend to repeat when the first draft is flowing out. This gives me a chance to polish and strengthen my prose on a word by word basis, and to be certain that my presence as the author is undetectable to the reader (or to the characters).

They are solitary undertakings, the writing and rewriting of a book. Certainly there are times when getting someone’s feedback might be helpful, but if a writer thinks that’s the equivalent of an authorial review of their work, then they are deluded. The burden of proofreading, in particular, should fall solely on the shoulders of the author. No family member, no writing group, no editor, is going to read every single word in a manuscript aloud, as a writer should and must do multiple times. (It is the only way to catch some problems, and had Kagawa done it, or performed the task more thoroughly, The Iron King would have been a much better novel.) A writer owes it to her characters to tell their story in the best way possible, and certainly she shouldn’t be responsible for sabotaging them through something as easily correctable as misused and overused words. It robs their tale of some of its wonder, and while it’s a shame to lose even a little magic from any work of fiction, it is especially unfortunate in one written about the lives of the fae.

(Review originally published March 24, 2011, on GoodReads.com.)