'Total Oblivion, More or Less' - Alan Deniro (Second Half Thoughts)

Finally, here's my second post about 'Total Oblivion, More or Less' by Alan Deniro, which Jeanne and I read in May. I really don't know what's up with me at the moment - hopefully normal blogging pace will resume soon.

Both the first and second parts of ‘Total Oblivion, More or Less’ are journey quest stories. In the first part of the novel Macy and her family’s journey feels somehow less perilous because her whole family is together on the journey. Even though pretty awful things happen to them all and they quickly lose any sense of control over their actual destination, or fate, there’s a security in seeing this family unit struggling to hold on to a goal, together that undercuts some of the danger inherent in the random flailing mess their lives have become.

At the same time their journey together does feel very random, very unplanned because it’s clear that Macy’s dad, who they are following, because he received a letter from a colleague offering him and job and a destination to aim for, is losing faith. Macy’s mum is vague for much of the trip, even before she gets the plague. Macy’s sister Sophia is trying to escape. Her brother Ciaran appears a menacing force that will destroy the family for fun, especially when he’s accompanied by his sinister dog Xerxes. So, through the first part of the novel there’s this tug and release balance between the safety the family unit provides and the worry that when the time comes for action all the family’s different members will get in the way of each others survival.

In part two Macy has to set out on her own quest alone and the precariousness of her situation is quickly apparent. She’s travelling to Nueva Roma to see Ciaran before he’s tried as a terrorist (at fourteen years old) when her boat is attacked. Macy attracts the attention of a man:

‘I could tell he was thinking about hurting me. Maybe he wanted kicks before dying, or to hurt someone before he got killed.’

Yet Macy on her own, proves more capable of making a decision than the Macy who journeyed down the river with her family. She kills the man and jumps off the boat into the corpse filled river, ready to try and make some kind of stab at living. Maybe it’s because she has no one else to rely on, or maybe it’s because she’s finally freed to make her own decisions without having judgement piled on her head, but she gives the reader the illusion that she is taking control in a situation that is so out of control and full of randomness. Really she’s just adapting, in order to survive, as so many science-fiction characters do. However, I’m impressed that Macy is a heroine who can fool me into believing that she’s taking names and carving a path through this jumbled jungle, even when all evidence in Deniro’s world suggests that there’s no way to take control of anything (unless you’re very manipulative and very rich, but I’ll come to that later). She’s shaping a linear narrative of progress and success out of the weird, even as she reminds us that narratives and stories rarely reflect the true collision and tearing of life:

‘That was the last time I ever saw Oxna. I had half-expected that we would have future adventures together, that our lives would intertwine more. But life doesn’t work out like that all of the time.’

She does piece together a surrogate support system throughout the second half, made up of Em the submarine captain and her lover Wye (who in the first half of the book is a shady, menacing character who arrests Ciaran – odd turn around). This group of people indirectly leads her to find parts of her family and contributes a slight feeling of increased safety to Macy’s story (at least for me). Strangely Macy’s younger brother William, reincarnated in the body of the dead Xerxes was the character which made me feel most secure about Macy’s fate. Once there was a talking dog on the scene I knew everything was going to be reasonably ok in the context of this novel. As William is family I guess that shows that I don’t always feel like Macy’s family gets in the way of her safety and the book kind of bears that thought out. After William turns up in his dog form Macy’s family’s narrative arc becomes one of a family coming back together, rather than a family willingly separating into parts. Macy finds and rescues Sophia, returns to her dad and hears that Ciaran is free. Em and Wye begin a new submarine board family when Em’s baby is born.

To wind up I just want to quote a couple of my favourite moments of political commentary in the second half of the novel. When I was talking to Jeanne about the first half of the book I said I couldn’t really determine a particular metaphorical connection between the political commentary and current events (I probably used like a lot more when I e-mailed her).

There’s a lot of general commentary that links the controlling forces of Deniro’s Nueva Roma with the destructive corporate side of America:

‘Crystal touched the edge of Oxna’s teal scarf. We designed these she said. Oxna gave her a goofy smile.

You really are in the Teal’s corner, he said. It’s been huge –

The stepmother laughed and it was cutting. No, no she said. Our brand identity team designed the logos and apparel for all the colours. The street campaigns are designed so that each team thinks they’re the unique target – that no one else “gets” them, their unique needs.

Crystal made the quote mark sign with her hands, which I’m positive Oxna didn’t get. She squeezed Oxna’s shoulder and said: Our little secret, okay?

Oxna’s shoulder sank.’

I think in the second half of the novel the connection between Roman conquering forces and American capitalism becomes a lot more definite:

‘It’s all manipulated by my stepmom and dad, she said. They keep pretending to give people something authentic, but it all turns out to be force fed lies. Look at this.

She was drinking some kind of papaya rum concoction from a Dixie cup. She pointed at some graffiti of a unicorn sparring with a gladiator. The unicorn had a cup in one of its front hooves. The cup was over flowing with a green liquid. PAPAYA-OVERLORD! It said in English, and there was demotic script below it. The same slogan, I assumed.

They use “street teams,” Lydia said. These freelance art-school dropouts from up north pretend to be actual graffiti artists and tag the city with these stupid ads.

The Romans used to do the same thing, I said. I mean, the graffiti, not the street teams.’
How that all fits into the grand scope of the books political rhetoric I’m still not sure. I’m not sure there’s a lesson to be extracted from ‘Total Oblivion, More or Less’, a way that Macy’s society could have saved their world. Maybe Deniro just wants to point out that we should all at least be aware of what’s going on and the connections that can be made between history and now. Maybe we all need to be aware, instead of remaining totally oblivious, in order to avoid total oblivion. Maybe we all just need to be aware, even if that won’t keep us from ending up in a similar situation to Macy. Maybe the only way to cope is to be aware enough to survive?

IMPORTANT - MY EMAIL HAS BEEN COMPROMISED

Hi everyone. Just a note to say that my Gmail account got spoofed (which, is totally different from hacked, so my email account is ok now I've switched passwords and deleted contacts lists I think - the things you learn in times of technological disaster).

Please don't open any email you receive from bakerjodie at googlemail dot com today and don't click on any links within those emails. If you have Gmail accounts please report these emails as Spam using the 'Report as Spam' button at the top of your Inbox. If you receive anything dodgy after this moment in time (12:11 GMT) please let me know.

'Total Oblivion, More or Less' - Alan Deniro

This week Jeanne from the shiny new, Wordpress version of ‘Necromancy Never Pays’ and I will both be sharing some thought on Alan Deniro’s ‘Total Oblivion, More or Less’, a trippy young adult novel about the crumbling end of American society. Today Jeanne’s talking about Part One of the novel and answering some of my questions about the voice of the narrator Macy, while I’ll be chatting around some of her questions on the total weirdness of the novel.

Short version of the plot that runs through the first part of this novel: Minnesota, where Macy’s home is, has been invaded by horsemen, Scythians who want land and the Scythians have been combated by people called The Imperials. Macy guesses the Imperials are on the side of ordinary people, but nobody seems very clear. They start turning people out of their houses and instructed them to go to CAMP. Macy and her family are travelling downriver in a dystopian version of America, after escaping what has turned out to be a cross between a refugee and a prison camp. Along the way many a strange and sad thing happens; not everyone makes it to any sort of final destination.

If there’s one thing both Jeanne and I agree on, it’s that ‘Total Oblivion’ approaches a new level of literary weirdness for both of us. Deniro seems to have taken every strange image that floated into his mind while he was writing and committed them to paper. His novel includes a plethora of random details that never go anywhere significant, like Carl the giraffe who Macy’s brother buys on a whim, then just as quickly sells. I’d expect to see this kind of fun, but ultimately meaningless diversion, cut ruthlessly from a first novel to make it tighter, but these unimportant details actually form the basis of 'Total Oblivion'. It’s almost like Deniro pulled junk out of the back of his mind’s attic and balanced everything precariously to make one giant, unstable art installation and the placement of a giraffe in the pile comes to seem almost normal in contrast to the stuff that surrounds it (‘Is that dog eating a baby, just as it’s being born? Is that ship full of gladiators fighting for tourists entertainment? Sea cucumbers? Guns that sing? I think I would like to look just at the giraffe now dear, I understand giraffes.’ The novel’s whole world is crafted out of idea debris.

Which sounds very bad, doesn’t it? It sounds like I’m being critical, but somehow Alan Deniro turns debris into a certain kind of craft without ever allowing his novel to show that it’s making the least bit of effort at working to win the reader. Macy’s world is rebuilt is a short space of time and a new country wide craziness suddenly dictates how peoples lives go. Suddenly her entire life is pushed and pulled by a series of random occurrences. So it seems appropriate for this novel, where anything can happen at any moment and life can end so suddenly, to be filled with so many random, unexplained details. And ‘Total Oblivion’ somehow pulled me right into its story, so that I barely ever thought to quirk an eyebrow at its strangeness until I put it down.

There is a lot of weirdness for weirdness sake, for example in between Macy’s first person narrative there are excerpts from various source materials that narrate the history of this developing dystopia. Alternatively, some are vignettes that provide back story for members of Macy’s family. While some of these chapters are very effective at filling in gaps, or just providing interesting stories some, like one entitled ‘The Function of Dis-Ease, and How to Solve It’ are just plain out there. They don’t seem to serve a narrative purpose, but then looking for purpose and meaning in this novel is probably a mistake. Trying to analyse this book on symbolical terms has proved confusing and looking for coherent metaphors seems impossible. So maybe instead I should just be blunt and say that a few of these diversionary sections are dull. They don’t add to the fun or the sense of chaos of the novel, they don’t add to the narrative…They feel extraneous in a book that is built on the superfluous.

Even though I said the meaning behind the images in this book is hard to define there are threads of connection deep in the weirdness that suggest unifying themes. Macy’s father tells her a story about a man who saw the devil’s head in a diamond. Then when a man on board Macy’s ship catches the plague Macy sees images in his pustules, ‘a cathedral with a sun over it, the sun’s jagged rays falling on the cathedral’s roof; and a bird that mimicked his tattoo.’ Macy mentions her knowledge of weapons, gained from World of Warcraft several times and gaming seems to crop up occassionally. And the novel often makes satirical links between the forces of Scythians, Thracians and Imperials that seem instrumental in America’s break down and the European and American history of colonisation. If Deniro has a defining message that he wants to get across I can’t quite puzzle it out, but all the details and plot shrug along together narrated by Macy’s sardonic voice, creating an effect I’d call charming if there were a way to reconcile that word with the enthusiastically grizzly tone of some of the details (I quite enjoyed the originality behind some of the more intentionally disturbing moments).

Deniro’s unstructured weirdness feels familiar to me, but I can't place why. I've read a few weird fantasy books, but most of them are structured in their weirdness. The weirdness in most books feels like it has some kind of purpose and often feels like it's been placed strategically with the aim of achieving a particular effect (although some writers can go too far with that and the weirdness ends up feeling clunky and so obvious that it feels as if the book is jabbing you with a fork going 'look how kooky I am'). In 'Total Oblivion' the weird elements feel less tied together, more offcuts, sudden dawn inspirations that had to be written down before they disappeared. It's hard not to be enthusiastic about a writer who manages to blurt out such a sustained trail of originality, without detracting from the plot, or alienating readers.

'The Latte Rebellion' - Sarah Jamila Stevenson

‘The Latte Rebellion’ by Sarah Jamila Stevenson is the latest contribution to an area of YA that I hope is going to grow and grow. In my short time of reading YA I’ve come across a few novels which focus on teenagers organising movements for social justice. Last year I read ‘The God Box’ and ‘The Mariposa Club’, where teenagers tried to form Gay Straight Alliances. I also read the outstanding novel ‘8th Grade Superzero’ by Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich, where young characters work out that they want to give back to the community and then mobilise to improve their world. I love novels about vampires with all my fantasy addicted heart, but I wouldn't mind seeing this branch of contemporary young adult fiction take off with the same kind of force that consistently pushes paranormal young adult novels into the bestseller lists.

At a pool party a racist remark, made by Roger Cho, the obnoxious head of the Asian Cultural Society, makes biracial students Asha and Carey decide to set up a club for biracial students at their school. Setting up the club seems like an easy way to fight against Roger’s ignorance and add some extra skills to the girls college applications, but it’s quickly blocked by Roger and the school administration.

Asha and Carey are outstanding students, focused on getting into college, but as school begins to come to an end they’re feeling the pressure to improve their chances of getting into college and at the same time, crave a little release. With a little inspiration from their favourite coffee drink they turn the club into a small business venture, by setting up a website called ‘The Latte Rebellion’ to sell t-shirts that show people’s support for the biracial community. The girls just have to do a little grass roots marketing and hide the money from their parents, so they can take an end of school bff trip to London.

Like ‘8th Grade Superzero’, ‘The Latte Rebellion’ acknowledges that movements like the rebellion don;t always begin because the organisers have saintly motives. Asha and Carey initially think of creating a club for biracial students because of a racist remark, but they really launch the rebellion as a vehicle to improve college applications and earn money for a holiday. Stevenson makes an important point with her choice of character: Asha isn’t some saintly, politically involved figure, but she goes on to become concerned about issues of social justice. As Asha gets more involved in co-ordinating the movement, she attends some political meetings at her cousin’s university, which encourage her to keep going. The movement grows and she comes to realise that the rebellion means a lot to biracial people, which crystallises what that the movement really does mean something to her. She illustrates that just because a teenager doesn’t keep a halo in a hatbox doesn’t mean they can’t come to feel that issues are genuinely important to them. By setting up a heroine who has to come to the realisation that campaigning for social justice is important Stevenson avoids making a book about teenagers ‘getting involved’ as worthy as that phrase suggests such books are.

Stevenson also slowly makes it clear that the effective results the rebellion achieves aren’t undermined, just because the rebellion has less than altruistic beginnings and again I think that’s a great point. Corporate social responsibility projects often have than charitable motives behind them, but if co-ordinated properly, they can do some good. However, I kept returning to the fact that Asha and Carey’s initial marketing is misleading, or at the very least exceptionally vague, using phrases like ‘In order for the Latte Rebellion to achieve its goal of spreading the word around the English-speaking world, consuming coffee at every turn, we must raise the necessary funds.’ to suggest that all the money raised would be used to further the cause of the rebellion. The rebellion isn’t a formalised cause, or charity, subject to laws about what the founders do with the money, so Asha doesn’t do anything illegal and in the middle of the book Asha does pledge all the money she doesn’t need for her holiday to the rebellion. Still, I was surprised that none of the new members, even asked Asha why she was using a chunk of supporters money for her own use. It’s an unexamined line that might have added complexity to the examination of co-ordinating a movement for change.

I enjoyed seeing The Latte Rebellion grow and change. I also found Asha’s emerging political conscience really convincing, especially as it emerges out of issues that directly impact her, for example when she learns that top colleges are not equipped to deal with applications from someone who identifies with more than one race. Unfortunately I wasn’t as convinced by other aspects of the story, such as the friendship between Asha, Carey and Miranda. At the very beginning of the book Asha and Carey’s relationship feels a strong, fun friendship and their conversations are full of familiarity and common feeling:

‘We both stuck our tongues out at each other. Then we put out our hands and wiggled our fingers together like we were playing “Chopsticks” on an imaginary piano, followed by putting our hand sover our heads and doing an Indian-style back-and-forth head motion. Then I went for a high five and accidentally hit her in the head because she thought it was the part where we shake hands. We broke out in shameless hysterics, which earned us some weird looks that I valiantly tried to ignore.’

As the novel develops the girls begin to have different priorities, which is fine, it’s interesting to see a novel which builds a main strand around the involved ups and down of a female friendship. What bothered me about the developments in Asha and Carey’s relationship was how fast the conflict came on and how quickly Carey dropped out of their friendship with very little explanation. The book doesn’t explore why Carey really feels threatened by the way the rebellion threatens to consume time, or why she steps away from Asha when their interests begin to diverge. The reader can make assumptions based on what we know of Carey’s life (she needs a scholarship to escape to college, she seems a little bit boy crazy and maybe gets involved with Leonard kind of fast) but there’s no chance to verify these assumptions, because the book doesn’t suggest any connections between Carey’s background and the way that her character acts over the course of this book. Her seriously negative reaction towards the growth of the rebellion doesn’t seem to have much reasoning behind it. She says she has to focus on her school work and that Asha should concentrate on hers, but without any reference to the background reasons that push Carey to be so concerned with grades, her words sound priggish and accusatory. Carey sounds like a bad friend and her drift from Asha comes across as a failing, rather than the result of logical, contextually appropriate reasoning.

Carey is in opposition to Asha throughout this book and Asha is the likeable protagonist, which makes Carey easy for the reader to dislike anyway, but the missing access to her reasoned decisions make it hard for the reader to do anything but judge their friendship as broken, long before she finally betrays Asha. I felt like this approach diminished the reality of Carey’s character and made her a simplistic character. Carey’s quick, unexplained split from Asha also made the girl’s friendship feel like it was based on shallow founding, that could be easily disrupted, when that’s exactly the opposite of the way Asha describes her past relationship with Carey. I don’t want to say that this one relationship acts as a comment on all female friendship ever, but I feel uneasy about this depiction of female friendship. I’m not that bothered that Stevenson presents a female friendship that fails, women’s friendships do break down and realistic literature needs negative relationships between women, just as it needs positive ones. It’s just, Stevenson’s creation of a female friendship that fails doesn’t contain all the complication I’d expect to see in the breakdown of a long standing teenage female friendship. Asha has explained how far back their friendship goes and how close they are in passages like:

‘We’d developed our secret handshake in sixth grade after being the only two new kids in our class, and now it was a tradition. I’d asked Carey over to my house that first week of school, and it turned out we both had protective parents, a secret and embarrassing love of old teen movies like The Breakfast Club and Dazed and Confused, and weekly cravings for pineapple pizza. We both had a silly streak, and we spent at least a monh refining our handshake. It was our first “master plan” in a way…but obviously not our last.’

that their separation is too simple and too unexplained for me to understand.

Maybe I’m overly focused on this one relationship. Asha’s friendships with other characters (male and female) aren’t exactly deeply explored, instead they act as a way of keeping Asha on track with the rebellion. This feels like a destination novel, rather than a journey novel, where the goal of the novel is to get the reader to the end for the emotional payoff of the conclusion where they’ll find out how the rebellion got out of hand and whether Asha will be expelled from school, because that’s the best bit. I don’t know if that makes sense, because obviously the goal of every novel is to keep the reader hooked so they want to find out what happens at the end, but ‘The Latte Rebellion’ feels like a book that is more focused on the end goal than on the developing lines that come up along the way. The plot drives the reader on with its plot structure, which switches back and forward from the past where the rebellion is just being created, to Asha’s current disciplinary hearing for charges of disruption and terrorist activity. The use of the unknown, threatening future event in the past narrative has the effect of pushing the reader through the pages to find out what necessitated Asha’s disciplinary hearing and increases the tension of the book.

This constant focus on the end didn’t agree with me at the time I picked up ‘The Latte Rebellion’, because I felt like I was being hussled from behind every step of the way, but that’s a totally mood-related thing. I’ve read novels that operate in the exact same way and loved them. I just wasn’t in the mood for that kind of style when I picked up this novel. It’s more important to look at whether this style worked for this particular story.

In my opinion it did and it didn’t. This focus on tense, forward pushing narrative style increases the excitement of the story. A feeling of extra jeopardy is introduced by the way the novel focuses so intently on the way the rebellion shapes Asha’s life. Readers are reminded by the way that the novel constantly refers back to the disciplinary hearing, that the conclusion of the novel is make or break for Asha. The feelings of tension and the reader’s worries about whether Asha will be expelled, transfer themselves nicely on to Asha’s worries about college, as two very stressful strands are explored close to each other (will Asha be expelled and Asha’s college rejections). ‘The Latte Rebellion’ provides an effective reminder of how pressurised teenage academic life can be and how it feels like there’s one chance to get everything right, or you’ll end up working a dead end job forever. However, the constant push of the main plot doesn’t compliment other strands of the novel, like the issues surrounding Carey and Asha’s friendship. This area of the novel in particular ends up feeling rushed and needs more space and time to be explored fully.

While I doubt ‘The Latte Rebellion’ is going to make the list when I choose my favourite books read in 2011 it was an entertaining, if rather shovey, reading experience that made me think more about teenage activism. Not every book is the love of your life, y’know, but not every failed romance is a waste of time either.

Other Reviews

Reading in Color
The Booksmugglers
Bookish Blather
An Armchair, A Fireplace and a Tea Cozy
The Happy Nappy Bookseller

'Fury of the Phoenix' - Cindy Pon

At the end of my review for ‘Silver Phoenix’ I bemoaned the fact that there was probably going to be a ‘totally unnecessary sequel’ (I wrote my review before the white washing debate, which is when I learnt that ‘Fury of the Phoenix’ was going to exist). I remember thinking that the lack of detail that Cindy Pon provided about Zhong Ye and Silver Phoenix’s relationship, left this aspect of ‘Silver Phoenix’s’ plot feeling like an insubstantial after thought. When I read ‘Silver Phoenix’ I wondered where Ai Ling’s power came from. Then it turned out she’d been given the power by a goddess, so that she could end the life of a necromancer, who this goddess once loved, which is a fantastic, original idea. The problem was that this part of the book’s plot was dealt with so quickly it never felt fully realised. I assumed that if the author had put a bit more detail about this romantic relationship into ‘Silver Phoenix’ any sequel need not have existed. I assumed the sequel would feel a little thin and unnecessary.

You know that trite little saying about what happens when you assume...yeah, spot on. Lemme say it loud “I was wrong.” Ok, I still think that ‘Silver Phoenix’ needed to include more detail about Zhong Ye and Silver Phoenix’s to make their relationship feel emotionally real in the context of that book. However, the sequel, ‘Fury of the Phoenix’ is so much more than a weak spin off, add on. It is so fun and satisfying that I can’t imagine it not existing.

‘Fury of the Phoenix’ has two parallel storylines. Ai Ling hurries to board the ship Chen Yong is taking to Jiang Dao because she had a dream he’s in danger. And when I say hurries to board, I mean she engages a fisherman with the seafaring equivalent of ‘follow that taxi’, jumps from one vessel to another and grapples her way up the side of the deck. And just like in ‘Silver Phoenix’ Pon gives us a heroine who is determined, but at the same time is rather daunted by her task, as many of us would be if we had to jump from a boat and climb up the curved side of an effing, great ship, while it is moving:

‘With trembling arms, Ai Ling took agonizingly slow steps upward. The ship rocked across the sea, riding over a large wave so its bow slanted to the heavens. Ai Ling was flung backward and dangled helplessly, the sky filling her vision, then was bashed back into the ship’s side. Unable to breathe, she squatted like a bruised toad against the ship as it slammed down, and the water surged up to meet her. Focus. One hand over the other, then shuffling with her feet. The rough rope bit into her slick palms. The crew would disperse soon. She began to shake with the effort and bit her lip hard. She would get on board this ship or die trying.’

Realistic heroics are my favourite kind.

Ai Ling is swiftly found aboard. Actually she’s found rather too fast, which feels abrupt. The author needs to get Ai Ling into a particular situation quickly, so she has her discovered by chance as soon as Ai Ling boards the ship. This sudden discovery undermines the tension of the whole boarding episode, as that scene set the reader up to become invested in the drama of Ai Ling’s attempt to aid Chen Yong secretly and then ends the tension so hastily.

When Ai Ling is found so quickly by a crew member and taken to the Captain without much drama, the boarding scene feels like wasted effort, like Ai Ling has already failed so soon after spending so much time stealthily getting on the ship. I was left feeling a little flat and a tad resentful that Pon hadn’t found a more natural feeling way to get her heroine where she needed to be for the plot to continue.

However, after Ai Ling is found, her storyline becomes so quietly fascinating. Her travels this time are much less monster filled and dangerous than they were in ‘Silver Phoenix’, although Pon still includes one very cool shipboard battle with some Sea Shifters. Instead Ai Ling spends time training in a martial art called shuen, dealing with her feelings for Chen Yong and making new friends on the ship. And all this is taking part on a ship, which is fabulous. Ship board is a setting that means characters can’t escape from one another so resentments, or loving feelings inescapably bubble to the surface leading to a big emotional payoff for a reader like me. And all the time that Ai Ling is engaged in this almost commonplace, but fascinating ship life she has the feeling that there are memories in her head that aren’t her own, but she doesn’t quite know what to do about them. Pon weaves contemporary and fantasy together without one element taking over the book. By balancing the dynamic, fantasy conflicts and more active plot points with more scenes of quieter downtime, she creates a novel that feels much more comfortable in its pacing, world building and structure than ‘Silver Phoenix’, which was at times so enthusiastic to show off fantastical ideas that it neglected the basic underpinnings of its story.

As Ai Ling struggles with strange memories aboard ship the novel also follow a second historical storyline. The second storyline shows Zhong Ye, the villainous necromancer from ‘Silver Phoenix’ as a nineteen year old eunuch, who wants to increase his standing with the Emperor. To do so he must find a courtesan who can give the Emperor another son. He selects the young Mai Ling, whose lady in waiting is the beautiful former song girl (prostitute) Silver Phoenix. Slowly, as Zhong Ye advances Mai Ling’s interests, he and Silver Phoenix fall in love. Their growing affection for each other is tender and believable. Oh, how I wanted them to be happy, but sadly I already knew how their lives turn out because I’d read ‘Silver Phoneix’.

The real proof of Pon’s skill is that she almost makes the reader forget about the fate of these two lovers. She situates the reader so firmly in the present, by concentrating on humanising both her characters and focusing the reader on their feelings. It’s hard to feel the connection between Zhong Ye, the evil, obsessed character in ‘Silver Phoenix’ and the Zhong Ye of the sequel, because they’re so different and this Zhong Ye is such a simple, yet engaging character. The third person narrative supplies a high level of detail character detail, by describing his past, his ambitions, his feelings and by showing him interacting with characters in a personal way:

‘He grabbed her hand and kissed her fingertips. “I never made a good farm boy.” She smiled, but he suddenly couldn’t return it. He had meant it in jest, but it was a poor joke. His throat closed and he glanced away.

“What’s wrong?”

“I ran away when I was eleven years. Worked, studied, apprenticed, became a palace eunuch.” He waved a hand. “All of this. So I could become better than a farmer and give my mother what she deserved in life.”

“You’re a filial son,” she said.

“Am I? Perhaps what they needed more was for me to be there to plow the fields.” He tried to picture his mother’s face. “I send coin back each month, but not letters. No one can read them.” He could remember only his mother’s eyes, light brown as a walnut shell. “I just wanted to escape. I haven’t seen them in seven years.”

Silver Phoenix bent over him, cupping his face with a cool hand. “We have each other now.” '

The humanisation of Zhong Ye’s character makes it easy for the reader to like him and later when that feeling has been comprimised by his misdeeds, to empathise with him.

That’s not to say that Zhong Ye is a tragic innocent, brought down by circumstances. He’s interested in status; in fact that’s why he became a eunuch (although his greedy interest in status is tempered by the fact that he sends money to his poor family). His desire to rise higher brings him into contact with a foreign alchemist who claims he can grant the Emperor immortal life and this contact sets Zhong Ye on to the evil path that leads to his fate in ‘Silver Phoneix’.

What is so interesting about Zhong Ye’s fall is that even as he loses his soul and becomes a bad person who will kill to extend his own life, his character never degenerates into a monster. Pon could have to make it easy for her readers to hate Zhong Ye, as she does in ‘Silver Phoenix’, but Pon keeps the reader focused on the positive aspects of his personality. His love for Silver Phoenix continues to exist in a pure form and it’s hard not to sympathise with him through his troubles, although it’s obvious that he is being corrupted by alchemy, power and self-interest.

Personally I prefer ‘Fury of the Phoenix’, to ‘Silver Phoenix’ because it feels much more assured, like a second novel by a writer who has really worked on improving their craft. I’m especially glad that I think the repeated word use that I found so annoying in ‘Silver Phoenix’ has disappeared. Pon makes the more complex dual storyline format work for her novel, when it’s a hard structure to get right. Neither of the storylines is ‘the dull one’ that readers will flip through to get to the one that is more interesting and the switches between stories felt like they came at the right point without leaving huge cliff hangers, or unnatural shifts. There are still some odd plotting blips in this book that seem to rely on the reader to unnecessarily suspend their disbelief, when reasoned plot development could have been included to make these moments seem more organically created, for example Ai Ling knows just where to find something of Zhong Ye’s at the end of the book without being told where it was.

‘Fury of the Phoenix’ could be described as a more conventional book than ‘Silver Phoenix’, with its romance and its dual plot line. Sure it has a heroine who battles demons, gets possessed and makes a trip into the underworld (which is vividly described and I can still see images like ‘the wide river of molton lava’ and ‘the warren of endless catacombs, a wasp’s nest hewn from rock.’ in my minds eye) which seem to argue against it being conventional. However, compared to ‘Silver Phoenix’ which is so focused on Ai Ling’s physical and emotional journey the concentration on romance in ‘Fury of the Phoenix’ seems traditional and less subversive than a story of a girl stabbing monsters. I feel obliged to explain that it still doesn’t feel traditional at all when you’re reading it, it’s just more quietly subversive than ‘Silver Phoenix’. We still see Ai Ling eating and solidly doing what needs to be done while being aware of the dangers she faces, it’s just that she’s in love while she gets on with the rest of her life. And there’s this respect between both members of each couples, as well as a joy in their partners when they eventually get together that is charming to see, for example when Zhong Ye walks on his hands around Silver Phoenix. Sensible, secure love doesn’t sound very exciting, but somehow these two couples make it just as interesting to watch as an tortured relationship. Likewise being compassionate to your enemy doesn’t sound as exciting as vanquishing them with balls of fire, but the part where Ai Ling meets Zhong Ye again is full of intriguing emotions:

‘ “The demons are keeping score,” he said with a wry smile, not bothering to glance up. “I’m losing.”

He was glad to see her, she could sense his pleasure. It only terrified her more.’

I’ll leave you with that and a recommendation to read both ‘Silver Phoenix’ and ‘Fury of the Phoenix’ close together, so that you can see the comparison between the special powers of both books.

Other Reviews

Reading in Color

Nerds Heart YA 2011 - Short-list

This week is a young adult week at 'Bookgazing' as I've got two reviews of YA novels scheduled this week and a big YA announcement to make. Today I'm presenting the full short-lit, for the Nerds Heart YA 2011 tournament!

The specialist consultants have completed the tough job of narrowing down the nominations for the 2011 Nerds Heart YA tournament (thanks so much consultants, I really appreciate you taking the time to help out).

In alphabetical order here’s our Nerds Heart YA short-list for 2011:

'A Love Story Starring My Dead Best Frind' – Emily Horner
'Abe in Arms' - Pegi Dietz Shea
'Bamboo People' - Mitali Perkins
'Bleeding Violet' – Dia Reeves
'Dark Water' - Laura McNeal
'Dirty Little Secrets' – CJ Omololu
'Efrain’s Secret' – Sofia Quintero
'Eighth Grade Superzero' – Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich
'Finding Family' – Tonya Bolden
'Five Flavors of Dumb' – Antony John
'How I Made it to Eighteen: A Mostly True Story' – Tracy White
'Invisible Girl' – Mary Hanlon Stone
'Jumpstart the World' – Catherine Ryan Hyde
'Last Summer of the Death Warriors' – Francisco Stork
'Mindblind' – Jennifer Roy
'Paper Daughter' – Jeannette Ingold
'Premiere' – Melody Carlson
'Pull' – B. A. Binns
'Stargazer' – Von Allan
'Stringz' – Michael Wenberg
'Summer Song' – Louise Blaydon
'Tall Story' – Candy Gourlay
'Teenie' – Christopher Grant
'Tell Us We’re Home' – Marina Budhos
'The Dark Days of Hamburger Halpin' – Josh Berk
'The End: five Queer Kids Save the World' – Nora Olsen
'The Kid Table' – Andrea Seigel
'The Red Umbrella' – Christina Gonzalez
'Toads and Diamonds' – Heather Tomlinson
'What Momma Left Me' – Renee Watson
'When The Stars Go Blue' – Caridad Ferrer
'Where the Truth Lies' – Jessica Warman

The tournament schedule is as follows:

First round: 13th June – 29th June
Second round: 11th July – 27th July
Third round: 1st August – 7th August
Fourth round: 22nd August – 24th August
Final: 12 September

And we'll have a graphical representation of the brackets up as soon as possible (edited to say 'and here it is'. Don't forget to follow our Twitter feed to keep up to date with what's going on.

We're also looking for some bloggers to interview a few of the authors who have been nominated. If you're interested please email nerdsheartya at gmail dot com and title your email 'Interview Interest'.

So what do you think of the short-list? Are you excited about Nerds Heart YA 2011?

Red Riding Hood

In 'Red Rding Hood', a recent adaptation of the 'Little Red Riding Hood' story Valerie is the girl who will come to possess the famous red cape. She has always tried to be good, or so her voiceover tells us), but from the very first scene she is tempted from her duty by a hunting trip with her friend Peter. Peter grows up to be a humble woodcutter (important!) who Valerie loves very much. Sadly Valerie’s parents want more for her than a life as a wood cutters wife and betroth her to Henry, the son of a wealthier metal worker. Alas, alack Valerie loves Peter (who I was cheering for, because a romantic hero called Peter in a werewolf film, that is some meta-coolness right there).

This troubled love triangle takes place in a village that must constantly placate a wolf with animal sacrifices. The wolf hasn’t killed a human in a long time, but just as the film opens Valerie’s sister Lucy is found dead. The wolf seems to be linked to Valerie in some way and she spends most of the film trying to keep from being taken, without letting the wolf destroy her village, while the audience attempts to work out who could be the wolf.

I heard rumours that 'Red Riding Hood' was a feminist retelling, which tweaked my curiosity. One feminist reading of the original 'Little Red Riding Hood' is that the story warns young women of the dangers of straying from the path and exploring the world for themselves. The film gestures towards this reading of 'Little Red Riding Hood', by making the wolf a hindrance to women’s unsanctioned sexual exploration. At the beginning of the film Peter and Valerie are making out in the woods, only to be interrupted by the warning horn that signals that the wolf has killed again. They return from the woods and find out that Valerie’s sister has been killed by the wolf. Characters initially assume that Lucie may have been killed because she snuck out to meet Henry on a wolf night. Both of these characters are exploring romantic partners outside their parents sanctioned choices and have stepped outside the bounds of their parents village.

'Red Riding Hood' made me think hard about how I identify a piece of media as feminist. How do I interpret work as feminist? How important is my knowledge of the creator’s intent? I feel like there’s feminist intent behind this film, attempting to make it a film that deliberately pushes a feminist message. However, I also think my feelings are mostly based on flimsy moments in the source that could easily be interpreted as simple reiterations of anti-female messages. In the scenes I described above the film is restating the original symbol of the wolf as a warning against the dangers of women straying from their sanctioned lives. Valerie kisses Peter and the wolf horn sounds. Lucie possibly goes to meet a boy and the wolf kills her. This restatement of the original fairytales message that responding to unsanctioned sexual interest can lead to danger, does not make the film an explicit feminist interpretation of the story. The original tales of 'Little Red Riding Hood' contain the same themes and I don’t think many would argue that these themes make it a text with a deliberate feminist intent.

The meaning behind these moments was never explicitly clarified. No one ever comes out and says ‘Using a wolf to represent a warning to women against exploring sexuality is creepy wrong’ so, why do I interpret them as moments created out of feminist intent? Why did I see them almost as wink to camera moments and think of the director Catherine Hardwicke raising her eyebrow, pointing and mouthing ‘See the messed up anti-female bias in the original story’? Maybe I identified them as feminist because reviews had told me to expect to find a feminist slant in this film. Maybe I reinterpreted these moments in light of later, clearer feminist commentary about the uncomfortable link between imprisoning women and protecting them from wolf shaped danger. Or maybe I saw them as feminist moments, because Valerie and Peter clearly express the happy, cheerful side of their attraction to each other. I guess my assumption is that if a film includes characters who are free to express happy feelings of sexual interest, any moments that speak of sexual interest being punished by a wolf, must be included as knowing commentary? Like I said I’m concerned that this is flimsy reasoning, which relies too much on my interpretation of the films intent. And as we all know interpreting sources based on assumptions about intent is a dodgy business. I will think on and see if I can identify anything more concrete that makes me interpret these moments as feminist.

Whatever led me to see these moments of cloudy meaning as pointed feminist commentary, some kind of explicit feminist commentary needed to appear to convince me that this film was a feminist piece of media. The most effective moment of commentary comes when Gary Oldman’s character, Father Solomon, arrives to hunt the wolf. His small daughters venture out of from his heavily armoured carriage, crying and shaking. They ask if the wolf he seeks here is the one that killed their mother. Father Solomon says it might be, then bundles the girls into the carriage. They are driven away to a mysterious location while they sob and peer out from a barred grill. The shot of them being driven away is a strangely chilling moment. It also allows the film to allude to ideas that men sometimes imprison their daughters under the guise of protecting them, which subtly comments on Little Red Riding Hood’s function as a warning tale.

Father Solomon quickly reveals himself as a villain, who the audience should despise, by contradicting widely held modern sensibilities, for example by accusing a boy of being a werewolf because he is disabled. If anyone wasn’t freaked out enough by the idea of a father locking his daughters in a constantly moving jail for their own safety (I mean that pretty much had me screaming SCARY VILLIAN in my mind) the other grounds that establish him as a villain suggest that all his actions, including his attempts to protect his daughters, should be viewed as suspect. This scene acts as explicit commentary on wider ideas about male protection of the female, specifically fathers’ attempts to control their daughters lives, which the ending of the film ties into nicely.

The theme of fathers controlling daughters and the metaphor of wolves representing overly protective fathers is the best developed strand of feminist commentary in this film. Sadly, that isn’t exactly saying much. The theme is not sustained, or really referenced, very often in the film after Father Solomon’s scene with his daughters. The viewer has to wait until the end for a really strong return to the theme of fatherly control. And yet it is still the most well developed feminist thread in this film. Red Riding Hood is scattered in its presentation of feminist critique and doesn’t quite know what it wants to comment on. At first it seems to want to pick away at the anti-female aspects of the original tale. Then it switches and tries to provide a wider criticism of historical attitudes towards women, as Valerie is unwillingly betrothed to Henry. Father Solomon says he found out his wife was a werewolf and killed her, so surely the film then switches to criticism of husbands who…I dunno, kill their wolfed out wives and metaphorically clamp down on their wives abhorrent wolfish sexuality? The line of feminist investigation is all over the place.

It’s like the film knows it wants to be feminist and it knows about a range of feminist issues that could be addressed in an adaptation of 'Little Red Riding Hood', but it panics - there’s too much feminist correction to be done, it feels overwhelmed and it tries to take too much patriarchy on at once. There are flares of successful commentary, like the scene with Father Solomon’s daughters, but the feminist critique isn’t shaped into a satisfying, sustained narrative line. I was left with muddled ideas about what the film achieved in terms of feminist commentary and I feel unable to point to many specific parts of the film which are effective pieces of feminist examination. The ending brought the feminist angle to the front of the story again as a villain walked through the ways that the wolf’s killing was been full of punishments for deviant female sexuality. Valerie defeats the wolf, dressed in her red cloak which is an obvious ‘I am woman, see me stab’ moment. However, I felt that although the ending makes 'Red Riding Hood’s' feminist intent clearer, it isn’t enough to shape the film into an effective piece of feminist media.

That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy some aspects of this film. I might be the only one, judging from other net chatter, but I genuinely didn’t know who was going to turn out to be the werewolf. The misdirection of the film worked really well for me and I followed it willingly as it suggested that Peter, Valerie’s grandmother and the young priest could each be the werewolf. I even suspected Father Solomon for a while. It’s a shame though that the film doesn’t take advantage of the opportunity to offer different kinds of feminist critique as each new person is framed as a potential wolf. The symbol of the wolf could potentially change its meaning depending on which character is thought to be the wolf. The film focuses on the entertaining mystery aspect of the town’s uncertainty rather making explicit reference to the symbolic chances provided by the changing accusations.

But perhaps it’s a mistake to focus mostly on the story’s symbolism and themes. As kind of a hot, action thriller 'Red Riding Hood' is quite a fun romp. As I said, the mystery element is intriguing. It’s also sexily shot. I watched the trailers and there is something alluring about the snow, flowing red capes and dark woods . It’s a classic combination, designed to tap sensual indicators set up by a lot of old stories and cultural ideas I guess. It certainly worked on me. And there’s a lusty 12A hot edge to certain scenes, especially one where the village dances because it thinks it has defeated the wolf. I’m very fond of Amanda Seyfriend since her appearances in ‘Mean Girls’ and ‘Veronica Mars’, so it was nice to see her reappear...

'Red Riding Hood' is definitely not the worst film I’ve ever seen ('Varsity Blues') or even the worst film I’ve seen all year ('The Adjustment Bureau') and I feel a little unfair summing up all it’s good qualities in such a short paragraph. Unfortunately, it’s undeniable that there’s more bad than good in this film and to say the good points go any deeper that surface appearances would be to skew the truth. It’s a sexy, adventure romp with a strong gothic violence vibe that trips daintily along the line between darkly sexy and genuinely uncomfortable (personally I think the scene near the end where Valerie is forced to wear a stylised iron wolf mask is disturbingly fascinating). It includes a feminist focus, even if that focus is all over the place. It’s a paranormal romance film where the female lead is be allowed to kiss a guy without HEAPINGS OF SHAME being piled upon her head. I would watch it again if I were to find it while idly flicking through channels.

A few comments on some of the weirder stuff found in 'Red Riding Hood':

The romantic love triangle in this film is made of fail from the very beginning. There’s a total lack of romantic chemistry between either of the two male leads and Valerie. Henry is just so incredibly meh, even his hair cut is apathetic. There’s never any real tension about who Valerie will end up with, so why include a love triangle? Answer: because someone spent a whole meeting boring on about how love triangles are hot right now, until everyone in the room caved or head desked themselves to death.

There’s a pretty lusty vibe between Peter and Valerie, but I couldn’t see any deeper romantic feeling between the two of them. I have no problem with characters whose relationship is entirely about sexual attraction, but this film asks me to believe that Peter and Valarie are the kind of loved up couple who could weather paranormal tests and forced betrothals. I believed they were hot for each other and having a great time, but I didn’t really see any especially convincing emotional connection between them.

Suzette, Valerie’s mother’s costume and makeup is zupped up to the max, in comparison with all the other actresses. I’m not sure if her corseted, brightly coloured outfit and flawless foundation was an attempt at some kind of weird feminist commentary (we find out she’s had an affair, maybe the emphasis on her overtly sexy appearance was meant to reflect her status as a woman of unsanctioned sexuality). If her appearance was intended as commentary it was stupid (as stupid as having British actors speak with American accents while playing Roman soldiers in ‘The Eagle’). If it wasn’t, her costuming and makeup were bizarre in the context of this film.

Father Solomon arrives in his ominous armoured coach and his guards step out, all wearing helmets. They remove their helmets and…they’re all black, or Asian. Right from the get go, the audience understand that he is a villain, because he’s accompanied by a guard force whose members are positioned as strange, ‘exotic’ and threatening partly because of the fact of their race. They make the villagers gasp. Black and Asian men would have been scarily unfamiliar and threatening to them right? I mean, maybe, I don’t really know enough about Russian ethnic history to comment, but whatever, that’s not really the point. The point is that Red Riding Hood is another film that associates particular racial groups with evil, menace and unfamiliarity. It misuses (probably) historically plausible attitudes to justify including a serious modern racial bias that we see reoccurring throughout the film industry. Please make this kind of thing go away.

Personally I find it annoying that a disabled character was included in this film, just so that he could be killed. Plod (yes, I know, maybe the villagers would give him a derogatory nickname, but perhaps the viewer could also have been told his real name just the one time) He isn’t given any back story or characterisation. Then he’s suspected of being the wolf, because he’s disabled and likes card tricks, so Father Solomon has him killed. It’s contextually realistic for Father Solomon to think a disabled person could be in league with the devil, but Plod needs to have some kind of substantial characterisation. His disability should not be just a plot point, which allows Father Solomon to kill him and show a modern audience how unhinged he is. I’m not sure I’m explaining this very well, but I definitely feel like everyone involved in this film needed to think harder about the inclusion of Plod.

Reading the ending with a feminist head on and looking for consistency in the symbolism creates a problem. Peter is bitten by the wolf and turns into a werewolf. He goes away for a while until he can learn to control himself. Then he returns, to continue his romance with Valerie. Well looking at that symbolically it gets all kinds of messy (and I’d probably spoil the ending if I explained why). I suspect we’re supposed to view Peter returning to Valerie’s arms as a wolf, as Valerie embracing her sexuality…Meh, I want to give it the benefit of the doubt, but it feels dodgy to me. This was the only moment in the film where I was suddenly struck by the incongruity of the director of a Twilight film ( part of one of the most anti-feminist teen franchises in the last five years) directing a feminist remake.

So, it’s another case where I quite enjoyed a film that was a bit silly and found plenty of fodder to roll round my brain. At the same time there were some parts that would make me uncomfortable talking about this film as just a silly romp, with a few theatrical problems, so you got this long post. I hope you found something of use here (and now off to try and get some book reviews written up, before my weekend disappears under a friend’s birthday celebration).

May Reading: Striking a Deal

This month I made a deal with my mum that I would mostly read books from her bookshelves.

The situation: She buys really interesting books. I keep saying ‘Oh I want to read that too’.

The problems:

1.) She’s a much faster reader than me.
2.) Before the book buying ban I would keep buying myself new books and reading those before reading her books.
There are now about 30 (alright maybe more like 50) books on her shelves that she could send off to the charity shop, or sell online if only I would read them.

The solution: Pick some books and read them before she puts me out of the house for being a worthless daughter. Simples.

The picks: I generally read about six or seven books a month, so I’ve selected six that I’m going to try to read, with the caveat that I can change my mind at any time.

‘Iceland’ – Besty Tobin: This is actually one of her library books, so it won’t clear any space on the shelves, but it was a random library find and I’ll probably forget all about it if I don’t read it now. It’s a retelling of a Norse legend set in 1000AD, which is good because I quite fancy reading about early history right now.

‘Snowdrops’ – A D Miller: This novel is supposed to be a literary twist on the crime novel which could be good, or very bad. Some of the greatest surprises come when literary writers show an interest in genre, but some of the very worst example of high handed ‘genre fixing’ turn up as well. Cross your fingers I get all the good stuff.

‘The Street Philosopher’ – Matthew Plampin: Even though I’m not a great fan of the Victorians (I know, I should leave Britain immediately) I the Crimean war fascinating.

‘Nemesis’ – Lyndsey Davis: The blurb for the latest Falco mystery sent me into such a panic over who might be dead that I flipped through the first couple of pages to reassure myself. I am reassured and I can read on in one of my favourite series.

‘Ruby’s Spoon’ – Anna Lawrence Pietroni: A well reviewed fantasy by a Birmingham based author that I’ve been meaning to read since it came out.

‘A Fine Balance’Balance’ – Rohinton Mistry: At least two celebs brought this to Anne Robinson’s recent show ‘A Life in Books’ and one said it was the best book he’d ever read.

I'll also be reading a fantasy book with Jeanne, (we'll be talking about that book together this month and I am so excited about that exchange). So that’s what I’ll be reading this month, though don't expect to see reviews of these for a while as I've got about a month's worth of other reviews that need writing and sharing first. Does anyone want to praise up any of the books on the list, or suggest what I should start with?

The Guys Lit Wire Book Fair - 2011

Important news: The Guys Lit Wire team have opened up the wish list for their third annual Book Fair.

Every year Guys Lit Wire asks book lovers everywhere to help them donate books to teenagers that just do not have the literary resources a lot of us grew up with. In its first year they bought books to make a library for young offenders and last year they sent books to two under privileged schools and hopefully those books. This year they’re supporting a school in Washington which has just one book for every student in the school. Yeah...

You can see the size of their library in a video that one member of staff made, when she decided to actively ask for help stocking the library. I probably have more books in my house than they do in their school. One of the organisers, Coleen at Chasing Ray, explains why this school was chosen if you need any more information.

GLW have put together an online wish list at Powells, with input from members of the school that will benefit. If you have a little bit of money available this month and you think you might want to purchase a book, or two off the wish list I know this school would appreciate it.

The wish list will be open until May 13th 2011 and it has tons of cool title on it. All the instructions on how to donate can be found in the introduction post.

I made my donation last night. Just a note: Trying to use the check out with Paypal option proved so difficult that I just used the regular Checkout button. Turns out Powells will let you pay with Paypal through that option any way when you get to the payment tab.

'Demonglass' - Rachel Hawkins

When Sophie Mercer first arrived at Hex Hall, the magical borstal for delinquent members of magical Prodigium society, she felt like her mixed parentage and her father’s status set her uncomfortably apart from the other pupils. Her mother is human, her father is a witch, whereas her classmates all come from two magical parents. Her father is Head of the Prodigium Council, so people initially mistrusted, her even though she’d never had much contact with her dad. By the end of ‘Hex Hall’, the first book in Rachel Hawkins debut trilogy, Sophie found out that there was another secret difference between the Mercer family and all the other Prodigium. Her father is one of the last demons in existence. He is descended by birth from the spirit of an angel who fought on Lucifer’s side before the Fall and his heritage is a closely guarded secret among the other members of the council. Sophie’s magical powers are demonic, just like the powers of her crazy ass great grandmother Alice who rose from the dead in ‘Hex Hall’ and killed some of Sophie’s classmates.

Sophie wants to have her demonic powers removed so she can never hurt anyone like Alice did and as ‘Demonglass’ opens (with a scene nicely balanced between comedy and peril) she’s waiting for her absent father to summon her to see the council in England. As going through the Removal can potentially kill Prodigium everyone who loves Sophie is against her decision. Her father asks Sophie to spend some time learning about demons in England while they get to know each other better. So, she flies to England taking her vampire roommate Jenna and her strong, silent, ‘ever so dreamy’ caretaker friend Cal, for support.

When she arrives at Thorne Hall, the new headquarters of the council, Sophie discovers she and her dad are not the only demons in the village. Someone is raising new demons to use as potential weapons against Prodigium’s enemies, L’Occhio di Dio (The Eye). That’s not all Sophie has to deal with. Archer, Sophie’s crush who turned out to be a covert member of the The Eye, may be in England. And, oh yeah, she and Cal are betrothed - sixteenth century style. Those damn Americans bringing hilarity, deadly mayhem and romantic angst into our sedate isle.
It’s obvious that there’s a lot that readers need to know about the events from ‘Hex Hall’ to understand ‘Demonglass’. It’s not the kind of second book that can be read as a standalone novel. I have a really bad memory for plots and names, so I want the next book in any series (if it can’t be read as a standalone book) to refresh my memory of events without making me feel that the author would like to throw copies of the previous book at me in a dodge ball style book barrage. Although there is a lot of detail the reader needs to be reminded of, character and event reminders are brought up too fast, as Sophie recaps characters and events from ‘Hex Hall’. In just the first three pages she reminds us that Cal ‘was the schools groundskeeper even though he was only nineteen’, that ‘by the end of last term I’d watched my great-grandmother kill my best frenemy, and the boy I loved had pulled a knife on me.’ and ‘I hadn’t had a dream last night that re-created in vivid detail the one kiss Archer and I shared last November. Only, in the dream, here was no tattoo on his chest, marking him as a member of L’Occhio di Dio…’. However Hawkins manages to merge frequent reminders and clarification of what happened in ‘Hex Hall’ into the rest of the novel without slapping her readers over the head with her previous book, so overall I recommend this as a series that people with memory issues can read as it’s being published. You don’t have to wait until all the books come out and read them back to back to keep from forgetting what happened in each novel.

In ‘Demonglass’ Sophie continues to narrate in the same delightfully snarky tone she uses in ‘Hex Hall’. One of the best things about this trilogy is how integral Sophie’s narrative voice feels to Hawkins telling of the story. ‘Demonglass’ is written in a way that almost precludes my imagining it written in any other way and because it’s so much fun to read Sophie’s account in her snarky, first person voice that she almost is the ‘Hex Hall’ books. To think about them being written in any other way (third person, from another pov) automatically makes me think of those other options as ‘the wrong way’ for these books, even though the story of a magical correctional school written in say, third person would have probably been just as interesting. What Hawkins has achieved is to create a narrative voice that feels like the optimal way for this particular story to be presented to the reader. It’s the only way, I want to see this story written and it’s rare for me to not be thinking about how fun it might be to hear a book written from another point of view.

I also like how the comedic way Hawkins writes creates such a distinct, natural narrative voice for Sophie. The sarcastic lines seem to come from her as naturally as breath and Hawkins has created a heroine whose cynical confidence is entirely believable. Hawkins comedy writing is crafted to avoid snags that might disrupt the flow of the humour and cause the reader to question if Sophie’s constant whipping comments are part of her real persona. The comedic scenes never feel contrived, because Hawkins writes them so well. By writing such a clean, genuinely funny, sarcastic voice Hawkins has believably established Sophie as a character who describes her whole world as if it is always ripe for sarcastic commentary, so it never feels unnatural to see a comedic set piece appear in Sophie’s description of an event. Hawkins has created a positive, circular situation where because she writes comedy so well Sophie’s sarcastic voice sounds natural and because Sophie’s sarcastic voice sounds so believable readers find Hawkins comedic writing as being well created.

‘Demonglass’ is fun just like ‘Hex Hall’ was, but there’s a weightier feel to this second book. It feels like more is at stake, probably because the reader knows that the things happening around Sophie in this book will directly affect her. In ‘Hex Hall’ the attacks on girls she sort of knows happen around Sophie and she is aware that The Eye’s members attack Prodigium, but she never fully feels that these things may be linked to her life. By the end of ‘Hex Hall’ Sophie knows the attacks are all to do with her and The Eye is actively trying to harm her. So, in ‘Demonglass’ the reader is more keenly aware that Sophie is at the centre of the story, surrounded by potentially harmful forces.

There are also more emotional conflicts in ‘Demonglass’, which add to the complexity of the relationships between characters. ‘Hex Hall’ is a pretty straightforward novel in terms of the relationships it presents: Sophie makes friends, has enemies, meets a cute boy and is in contact with her mother who she’s pretty close with. In ‘Demonglass’ her relationships with Jenna and Cal become more conflicted, her main parental contact is with her dad who barely ever contacts her and it’s harder for Sophie to identify her enemies. She’s operating in general a state of mistrust, as at the end of the last book she found out her parents and Archer had seriously lied to her. While she is still quick witted and bouncy in general, many of her decisions are now based on the lessons she has learnt about trust from other people. As Jenna says ‘Sophie’s spent the last sixteen years of her life having people lie to her’ which makes it hard for her to trust people, or to ask them to tell her the truth. Sophie’s desire to make sensible decisions and avoid being conned again often wars with her romantic inclinations, as Archer, the demon hunting love of her life is not a sensible romantic choice. Again this sense of internal conflict adds complexity and interest to ‘Demonglass’.

Just a note about the romantic developments in ‘Demonglass’. Personally I have written Cal off as a viable love interest, even though he and Sophie seem to be developing hot, nice to watch chemistry. As soon as I learnt about the arranged marriage, I decided the lovely Cal would be better off with someone else. The arranged marriages between Prodigium families sound as if they are set up solely by male members of the families and are used to strengthen these men’s allegiances. Cal agrees to the match (notice that he is consulted about the match while Sophie only learns about it in this novel and the reader can probably think of lots of logical reasons why her parents never mention the bargain, but it’s still kind of weird behaviour on their part) because he thinks he and Sophie would make a good pair from what he hears about her, not because he is actively invested in patriarchal dominance. There’s genuine feeling between them in ‘Demonglass’. At the same time it is unsettling that Cal would consent to this match and to the way no one tells Sophie about the arrangement. Hawkins comes up with plausible reasons to explain why Cal never told Sophie about the match and readers can take into account Cal’s self-contained personality that keeps him from saying much to Sophie at the best of times if they need further reasons for his silence. Still, his involvement in what is essentially a marriage deal that his fiancé is unaware of, disturbs my idea of Cal as the noble, selfless hero character that Hawkins presents him as. If Cal and Sophie get together I feel like their relationship would validate Prodigium’s patriarchal social convention: ‘Oh well it worked out fine, no need to think about how male controlled the system of arranging marriages is when it appears in this world’. Just to clarify: I don’t mean to make a statement about all arranged marriages in the real world, just the way arranged marriages work in ‘Demonglass’.

Then again Hawkins might find a way to seriously critique the system while showing a positive individual romance springing between Sophie and Cal. She clearly shows Sophie being opposed to an arranged marriage in ‘Demonglass’, so I’ve no reason to think that she couldn’t pull off critique of arranged marriage and romance. I’ve said before that sometimes in series you have to put a bit of trust in authors that they’ll work out some of the kinks you don’t like in future books and I’m essentially making guesses about something I can’t know, so I will put faith in Hawkins skills and await the results of the love triangle in the final book. I continue to be in the part of Sophie’s cheering section that wants it all to work out with Archer.

So, I look forward to the final book of the trilogy and to finding out who is still alive. The end of ‘Demonglass’ is the cruellest cliff hanger known to humanity, as it places all the main characters in England in proximity of immediate death (apart from Sophie, what would be the point of a cliff hanger like that – she is a first person narrator). It seems likely that at least one person will die forever (really do not want it to be Jenna, not fussed if it’s Sophie’s dad). The last book is not even available for pre-ordering yet. I’m just saying, proceed with caution those of you with cliff hanger issues.

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