Book Review: Juliet Marillier's Daughter of the Forest

Rating: 4/5 stars (maybe even 4.5)

Clean rating: PG-13. There is discussion of violence but not particularly gore, and in my opinion the violence was not really a problem. There is also some torture, and you see the after-effects, not the torture itself. But that’s kind of rough anyway. The worst is that there is rape, and while it is not described in gory detail, it is emotional and ugly and horrific (not much of a shocker, considering that it’s rape). So the content is emotionally fraught, but I didn’t find it to be morally ugly, if that makes sense. There was no glory in the terrible things that happen in this book; there was a very strong awareness of the ugliness—which, in my opinion, makes it a much stronger book.

Short summary: Sorcha is the youngest of seven children. When their father marries a sorceress, Sorcha and her brothers try to protect themselves from her. They fail and end up with a terrible spell placed on them that only Sorcha can undo, but only at great personal cost. The book is an extended version of “The Six Swans,” set in medieval Erin (this is Ireland, right? my history knowledge is sooo very bad).

What I liked: It would probably be a shorter post if I just skipped straight to what I didn’t like. Because pretty much I liked everything.

For starters, the tone and voice and language. It is beautifully written. The words are fluid like water rushing past and so easy to read. This is not flowery, overblown language. It is simply the loveliness of gorgeous, perfect prose. It is a beauty that I often try to achieve in my stories and that Marillier does in a way that makes it look effortless. Okay, enough gushing. It’s wonderful, that’s all I can say.

Next: I have read versions of “The Twelve Dancing Princesses” where, at the end, I could not keep any of the princesses straight. I recently read a book that had only four siblings, and I’m still not sure I could name a single one of them. But in this novel, it’s been a week or so since I read it, and I’m pretty sure I can not only name each of the six brothers, but I can also tell you a little bit about each one.* They all stood out as separate people, which I think is a difficult task in cases like this. But Marillier did a good job with it.

Sorcha was a likeable character. She had a lot of ugliness to deal with, but she loved her family and she was hardworking and she was overall pretty darn awesome.

What didn’t work for me: Well, we’ve got to come up with something here, right? So I will say that it was long. Not only is it over 500 pages, but the print is really small. This is undoubtedly a turn-off for some, and I confess I wasn’t thrilled about it. But it didn’t really feel long to me. As in, “Really? It’s not over yet?” I’m sure I could come up with something else to complain about, but they would be minor quibbles.

Last words: It’s a good thing I read this because I had once considered doing a novel-length retelling of “The Six Swans” (there’s something about this tale that I just love), but now I can honestly say that the best possible version of this story is already written. I might someday revisit it just for fun, but I would have to place it in a contemporary setting and with a very different emotional tone and just a wildly different story overall because this version is pretty much perfect. If you like fairy tale retellings with a sort of lush magical tone, you must read this!

* Okay, now I have to test myself. Mild spoilers contained herein. Liam: leader, oldest, warlike. Diarmid: idiot, hothead. Cormack: Conor’s twin, a little warlike, loved his dog. Conor: druid. Finbar: moody, into justice. Padriac: loved animals, a healer. Wow, look at that! Easy peasy.

** P.S. I liked this one a lot better than Wildwood Dancing, even though I also liked that one.

Nix

I recently decided I would enjoy writing some projects with some very short time constraints, just to vary my routine a bit and practice looking at stories in different ways. The following is the first of my “Sixty-Minute Shorts.”* Hope you enjoy!

Listen well, and I will tell you a story. It is a story you may have heard before, with a hero and a villain and love and death. It is only sort of my story, for I was the villain. At least that’s how they tell it now.

They call me a siren or a water nymph. They say I like to drown my victims, that none ever escape my clutches. They call me fearfully beautiful, with a voice of such perfection that none can resist. I must admit this: they are right.

Once upon a time, as these things go, there was a rich miller who lived near a pond, where he built his watermill to mill the grain to sell to the townsfolk. And in this millpond, I lived.

The miller, he was rich, yes. But he was a stranger to industry and fair business. In time he became poorer and poorer, and his family with him. His wife, daily increasing with a babe in her belly, became hungrier and hungrier.

Oh, yes. I see the face you make. What tragedy! you say. What sorrow for the poor miller and his wife. There must have been something to save them.

And this is true. The thing that could have saved them? A bit of reason. Hard work. Humility. But the miller and his wife had none of these things. I could see all this, as they argued beside the riverbed.

“And what will become of me?” shrilled the wife. “How are you going to feed me?”

“We have grain. Make yourself some bread!” he said carelessly.

“Me? Make bread? I did not marry you to be a poor little slave. You are the one whose business is failing. You learn to make the bread.”

“Preposterous. I guess you’ll just have to starve.”

And on it went, never a word for the child in her womb. Never did they think beyond themselves. So one day, as the miller sulked and paced beside my pond, I offered him a deal. “Kind sir,” said I, though I knew he was no such thing. “I know of your troubles. I know a way you can prosper again.” I smiled at him. Few can resist my smile.

“You do? Tell me at once.” He rubbed his hands together, and his eyes went wide like a frog’s.

“Well,” I simpered. My simpering is also remarkably effective. “I cannot give you this for nothing. I would like . . . ” I pretended I had to think about my bargain. “I would like the next thing that is born here on your land.”

The miller looked at me, a sneer crossing his face. “The next thing that is born?”

“Yes,” I said. “I long for something of my own.”

He scarce gave it a thought, perhaps didn’t even realize how close his wife was to childbirth. Most likely didn’t care. “I accept. The next thing.” And he held out his hand to shake mine. As if a handshake was binding to the fair folk.

I smiled and touched his hand softly. He shivered. “Now I think you should bring to me your son,” I told him with a smirk.

I’m sure you can imagine what happened next. You humans are always feeling so very clever, trying to fool the fae, wanting to make sure you get the best end of every bargain—everything you want with no sacrifice of your own.

And so the miller tricked me. Another fault of humans: you forget that we are not mortal. We have a patience you have never dreamed of. We follow the moves of the game long after you have forgotten that it was ever started.  When the miller placed his wards and his charms around my pond, I raged. It is customary, after all. I pounded against those barriers, cried and swore vengeance. I didn’t laugh when he said I would never get his son.

And I waited.

Oh, you think me bad, do you? You wonder why I bothered? Shall I tell you? Shall I tell you how the miller’s son was born of water, pure and innocent, supposedly, just like all of you? But each day he was poisoned by the miller and his wife. Each day I saw him fall to the same cursed carelessness. Yes, I wanted to save him sooner. But I knew that, no matter the span of time, I would save him in the end.

The water purifies, you see.

So days went, and years went, and the son grew greedy and ugly but fair of face. He married, and on the day of his marriage, his wife came and knelt beside my pond. She wept and called out—she did not know that she called out for me. She said that she had been sold to a monster, one who was cruel and cold.

Could not the universe do something? she asked. Could it save her and change her husband?

And so I spoke to her. “I am not the universe, but I can do something for you. You need only remove my bindings and I will change your husband.”

She looked, as you might expect, uncertain. Your women are never quite so eager to trust me as are your men. Still, she was desperate. So she did as I asked, and she lured him to the pond with the promise of hunting. And he forgot his father’s warning never to stray near the water, so intent was he on catching his game.

I took him down with me into that water, and it washed away his darkness, softened his cold heart. When he rose from the water again, he was not the same. The woman cried and thanked me.

But you forget that part of the story.

And so you tell your children the stories of the evil nix who lives in the pond and lures men to their deaths. But I know it isn’t so. And now so do you.

Book Review: The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater

Rating: 3/5 stars (for purely personal reasons; if I had been someone else, I would have rated it 4/5; see “What didn’t work for me” below)

 

Clean rating: PG-13 largely because, hello, it’s dealing with violent, flesh-eating horses. There is death and blood and maybe a limb or two lost, though not described in overly gory detail.

Short summary: Told from two POV characters, Puck (a female) and Sean, The Scorpio Races is the story of a tiny island where, every year, bloodthirsty water horses wash up on the beach and the men of the town ride them in a highly lucrative race (lucrative if you survive and win, of course). Both Puck and Sean have something they are desperate to fight for, they both enter the race, and they find themselves wanting to help each other. People die. Sheep are eaten (by said bloodthirsty water horses). Teapots are painted. Good times are not had by all.

What I liked: Stiefvater (I do wonder how to pronounce that name) built an interesting mythology of these water horses (whose names I also cannot pronounce and can’t even remember how to spell)* who come to the island every year. They feel just like part of the world of Thisby (the island), and I kept imagining what the world (ours) would be like if there really were such a place. It felt very real.

I also enjoyed the plot overall, except that I could not really engage with the characters as much as I would have liked to for the reasons described below. When I pretended that I didn’t find a couple of their specific behaviors completely incomprehensible, I enjoyed the characters and felt for their struggles and wished them success in their goals and needs.

The conclusion was quite satisfying for me, not one of those “everyone gets exactly what they want too easily” conclusions, but one where some sacrifices were made, some middle ground was found, and the people we cared about got what mattered most to them—though not the way they originally planned. A friend complained that the deal made at the end was unbelievable, and I see her point, but it didn’t bother me over much.

What didn’t work for me: I am not an animal person. If you know me, you know this already. I don’t do pets, largely because they require so much time and work and cleanup and such. But also . . .

(And here’s where I take a minor detour to bring us back to the point.) About two days after I read The Scorpio Races, I read Dan Wells’ I Am Not a Serial Killer. The main character, John Cleaver, is a sociopath (has antisocial personality disorder). This means he has no empathy, no understanding of human emotions; he can read about them and see them and even try to imitate them, but he doesn’t really get them. At one point, John describes it as an entirely different language that he simply doesn’t know. Reading this directly after my inexplicable experience with Scorpio made me say, “Yes! That’s exactly how I feel about pets!” I can read about how much people love their pets and how they don’t mind the dog tearing up the sofa, the cat peeing on the bed, etc., but I just don’t get it. I do not have that kind of attachment to any animal, nor am I willing to have it. I think wild animals are beautiful, and I have a healthy respect for them, but I’m quite happy for them to stay out of my house. (Let us just be clear here, though: Don’t worry, I am not a sociopath.)

So, back to Scorpio. If I don’t get liking your dog who eats your slippers, I’m certainly not going to get why Sean cares so much about his water horse that he doesn’t mind the fact that it is a powerful, killing monster. To me, this is not a horse you want to hang around. Period. Sean’s love for his horse is utterly incomprehensible. It is a foreign language. So I could not relate to him on a very fundamental level.

The same goes for Puck, except in her case it’s the island. Again, I can’t get attached to a land the same way she does. If the place I’m living is wholly inhospitable (and spits out monster horses every October), if I cannot find a way to support myself or my family there, and if I have better prospects elsewhere—well, I feel like ninety-nine times of a hundred, I would move to that elsewhere.

In summary: This inability to relate is why I couldn’t give it another star. I just couldn’t get these people, and so the story didn’t work for me on the visceral level where found myself saying, “I do not understand these choices.” On the other hand, I realize that this is a personal reaction that probably wouldn’t be a problem for a large majority of people, so a 4/5 stars would be my rating if I were someone else.

* Her choice of the name is actually based on some water horse legends, so I can’t completely fault her for it, but I confess to preferring fictional names I can pronounce.

Expecting the Unexpected

Day 31 (or maybe 28?): Sore and crampy. Blech.

I stretch and climb out of bed. I’m giving it three more days. Three more days and I’m taking a test, just to get it over with so I can accept that my body has just come up with a new way to torment me. I mean seriously, I don’t think I’ve ever in my life prayed that my period would actually come sooner, but it’s getting a little old sitting around and waiting. And I can’t even count it right, what with that weird, stuttering period last month. Did it start on Tuesday or Friday? What is going on when I can’t even figure out when my period started?

Maybe this month I’ll get a 33-day cycle or something fun like that, just to mix things up a bit. I’ve been trying to be not cranky, to just be grateful that my body works, at least fairly well. To be glad that the endometriosis (maybe) and tiny fibroid (or is it a polyp? or just a mysterious shadow on the ultrasound?) are not cancerous, are not even remotely serious. All they do is cause me some annoyance, some pain (how bad on the scale of one to ten? they ask; well, I’ve done natural childbirth, so . . . not that bad).

Oh, and apparently they make it kind of hard to get pregnant.

My daughter strolls into the room as I’m getting dressed for the day. I hug her tight and give her a good tickle. Life is good. I’m just tired of the doubt.

Day 32 (29?): Sore and crampy. Blech.

I’m beginning to doubt that keeping a log of my menstrual cycle every morning is going to do anything for me other than make me crazy. Do I really need to analyze every sneeze-induced muscle cramp? (Note to my round ligaments: You’re only supposed to feel this way if I’m like six months pregnant.) It’s not like taking notes is going to magically change anything (except, apparently, my sanity).

I looked in the mirror last night, and my cheeks were rosy. Another pregnancy symptom. Just like everything ever—every weird twinge, craving, gastrointestinal event, sore spot, and whatever else is someone’s pregnancy symptom. And they’re pretty much all PMS symptoms too. Still, the rosy cheeks—never had that before. But I’m freezing cold. I mean, really really cold. That’s definitely PMS talking. Really, I’m just tired of the months of wondering, overanalyzing, thinking maybe everything could be a sign. Thinking maybe this time. And always being wrong and feeling dumb. And let’s not forget cranky.

Stupid period, please just come and put me out of my uncertain misery. I know I’m not pregnant. Just come confirm it.

Day 33 (30?): Sore and crampy. Blech.

Okay, that’s it. The moment I wake this morning, I decide that it’s ridiculous to stay on this little merry-go-round of wondering for the three bucks it costs to buy a test. I’m just gonna buck up, do it, and then when it’s negative, I can wait patiently a little longer. I can schedule that “elective surgery” to maybe clear out whatever gunk is causing problems, and most of all I can go back to knowing I’m not pregnant, this time with no doubts.

So I head for the bathroom.

I dip the little stick, try not to think about what’s in the cup I’m holding. Oh for not having to think about pee. Some days it feels like it’s all pee. Reminding my older daughter that she needs to go pee. NOW. Dealing with my younger daughter’s pee, with her still deciding whether she wants panties or diapers. And now mine.

Count to five. Done.

The instructions are always so lovely and specific. Dip. Set down on level surface. I wonder briefly how slanted the surface would have to be to skew results. Now I watch. “DO NOT READ RESULTS AFTER THREE MINUTES,” the box always yells at you. So my husband’s trusty watch sits beside the stick, also watched. Har har har. Watched.

Oh good, there’s the little line creeping across the results window. There it is, crossing the test line (that shows that you haven’t completely screwed up the test). Crawl crawl crawl, up the stick.

I blink.

I squint and blink again. Something like a gurgle of amusement, hysteria, and disbelief exits my lips.

Oh.

Day 34 (weird that it counts as the same day, even though it’s completely different): Sore and crampy. Hooray?

Editing, Reading, Writing, All That Jazz

I’ve been reading/skimming a lot of novels lately. Frankly I’ve always been an obsessive reader (as in, who needs sleep, food, showers, or fresh air when you have books?).* But lately I’ve been doing a lot more analyzing—something I rarely did in the past. (Which lack is not an impressive quality in an author-to-be. Which is not even remotely the point of this blog post.)

The point is that I’ve started noticing some things about a large number of these books—many of which have been self-published. Let me first say that I think self-publishing is wonderful in so many ways. This is by no means a disparagement of self-publishing. However, I have noticed that many of these particular books that I’ve been reading bear a few unfortunate commonalities.

The biggest of these is problems with story elements that simply don’t make sense, that never get explained clearly—things that are obviously a big deal to the characters but that I just don’t understand. For example, I recently read a novel in which the main character is cursed (in rhyming couplet and all). But the curse is so confusing that I never actually understood the peril, even after the character theoretically figured it out. In another novel, I couldn’t understand what the main character thought he was saving the world from.

Here’s what I think happened: It all made sense in the author’s head. It was perfectly clear. But somewhere between the brain and the keyboard, some of it just got lost, or muddled, or twisted around until it no longer made sense for a reader.

Now, I am a copyeditor. If you haven’t heard me mention that yet, here you go: I copyedit. I pick up the tiny details that no sane people care about (like smart quotes vs. straight quotes—oh how it burns me). This is useful stuff for an author. It means my manuscripts (once I have actually worked on them sufficiently) are quite clean overall. Of course I miss things; I’m human. But grammatically and punctuationally,** my work tends to be in good shape.***

So, onto my point.

Being a copyeditor isn’t good enough to make a good manuscript. It requires someone else to look at your book—someone else who hasn’t been swimming through it for the past many moons, someone who knows only what is there on the page. This is something every writer needs. This is why agents and editors exist (well, among other stuff). This is what self-published authors must get as well.

 

Last week I heard about this giveaway at Portable Magic Editing. What a great way to get started. Sign up, ye authors! Sign up! (Or maybe don’t, because that decreases my chances of winning.)

We authors need someone to tell us when we’re writing nonsense. Someone other than our angry readers.

* I both love and fear that I gave this obsession to my older daughter. Oh the pride that shines in my eyes when I see her walking in from the car, to the dinner table, and off to her bedroom carrying a book and reading as she walks. I remember those days so well (probably because they were just yesterday). Sadly, she has not yet developed the talent of looking where she’s going at the same time.

** Do you love how I’ve just told you I’m great with words and now I proceed to make them up?

*** Now I’m going to be severely embarrassed when it turns out I made some particularly dumb mistake in this post. Oh well.

Book Review: Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus

I was only maybe two or three chapters into this book when I realized that there was something magical about the book itself, not just the story within it. It took me a while to figure out what made the book so dreamlike and lovely. So far it certainly wasn’t the storyline—in the first several chapters we are treated primarily to an abusive/bordering-on-murderous father, a suicide, an incredibly out-of-place vulgarity,* and another father figure who adopts an orphan only to prepare him to fight to the death. So, not a lot of loveliness there.

But there are two hints that pull you through the ugliness of the opening story. The first is the opener, a truly brilliant page that uses the second person POV (“you do this, you do that”). It is an invitation to enter the Cirque des Rêves (the Circus of Dreams) and come see for yourself, and it works like a magnet, pulling you in.

The other hint was something I had a hard time quantifying at first. There was something in the quality of the writing that made it beautiful, but it’s not as if there were many particularly beautiful sentences or paragraphs that I could point to. Eventually I decided that it felt like the cadence of the writing, the rhythm of the words, a little like a gentle lullaby or the soft rocking of a boat on calm water. It was like that quiet space of time before you fall asleep and dream, where your mind is suggestible and everything seems possible.

To me, that dreamy cadence is what made this whole novel work so well—beyond the fantastical world of the circus and the romance of the story, either of which would have made the book a success on its own. But it was that strange and lovely rhythm that made the book magic.

I would totally go to this circus.**

A side note: My book club met to discuss it, and we dressed in black and white with a splash of red, just like the fans of the circus. We ate black and white and red themed foods (which was really hard, by the way—there aren’t a lot of nondessert items that are really black or white). I lit cinnamon- and vanilla-scented candles and darkened lights, and I wished I could have hired a contortionist (okay, not really). It’s a good book club book, and it lends itself very much toward sensory experiences.

A content note: I’ve already revealed pretty much all the negative content. There is a little more violence, as well, but it is not graphic and does not glorify the violence. The only other content concern is a short, nongraphic sex scene. You can see it coming a mile away and easily skip the page.

* I recognize that in the writing world, I’m a bit of a prude. But even setting that aside, this particular swear word was so out of place in the story. It felt like a definite misstep for pure (and pointless) shock value. It was so jarring, so wrong for the diction, the setting, and even the character that I had to look it up to see when the word first came into use. It did, indeed, originate before the setting of this story, so at least it wasn’t anachronistic, but it still didn’t fit. There are so few critiques that I have to offer for this story, but I really think this one was a mistake.

** Plus, it doesn’t have clowns.