Review: Spear, by Nicola Griffith

 

The girl knows she has a destiny before she even knows her name. She grows up in the wild, in a cave with her mother, but visions of a faraway lake come to her on the spring breeze, and when she hears a traveler speak of Artos, king of Caer Leon, she knows that her future lies at his court.
And so, brimming with magic and eager to test her strength, she breaks her covenant with her mother and, with a broken hunting spear and mended armour, rides on a bony gelding to Caer Leon. On her adventures she will meet great knights and steal the hearts of beautiful women. She will fight warriors and sorcerers. And she will find her love, and the lake, and her fate.

Nicola Griffith's Spear is a queer Arthurian retelling following a young woman on her journey of self-discovery. The lyrical prose and the attention to historical detail make this tale a must read for any enjoyer of stories about King Arthur. The protagonist, Peretur, leaves her home in search of a bigger destiny, plagued by dreams that lead her straight to the Arthurian court. There she'll fulfill her destiny, and find love.

The clever intermingling of history and myth leaves the reader breathless and aching to take a course on the Matter of Britain, a resolution only magnified by Griffith's thoughtful foreword where she lays out all the different versions she was inspired by. This book is obviously a labor of love for the subject, and it's contagious.

Peretur's origins were what really sold the book for me: getting to slowly unravel the mystery alongside her was a treat. Her romance was a touch underdeveloped and sudden, but it had a dream-like quality that worked in the context of the story.

I need to say a few words about the lovely interior illustrations by Rovina Cay, the cover artist: they are incredibly evocative and they enrich the reading experience.

Spear is a fascinating tale that deserves to be on everyone's bookshelves.

✨ 4 stars

Review: Misrule, by Heather Walter

 

Feared and despised for the sinister power in her veins, Alyce wreaks her revenge on the kingdom that made her an outcast. Once a realm of decadence and beauty, Briar is now wholly Alyce’s wicked domain. And no one will escape the consequences of her wrath. Not even the one person who holds her heart.
Princess Aurora saw through Alyce’s thorny facade, earning a love that promised the dawn of a new age. But it is a love that came with a heavy price: Aurora now sleeps under a curse that even Alyce’s vast power cannot seem to break. And the dream of the world they would have built together is nothing but ash.

Vengeance can't be everything. While the first book in the duology, Malice, is simply a compelling retelling of the story of Sleeping Beauty, the second book deals with the aftermath. Heather Walter's Misrule asks heavy questions: what happens after you exact revenge for everything they did to you? How much can you push until it only becomes an endless cycle of violence? Is there any way to stop? Alyce, now called Nimara, spends a century lost in the need of taking revenge against those who wronged her and her people, saving Goblins and Vilas and making the fae pay the ultimate price. There's nothing to keep her in check until Aurora awakens, and the princess ends up acting as a moral compass of sorts. Aurora isn't happy with the changes within Alyce, especially those she feels are only caused by the darker presence buried deep inside Alyce. Aurora knows that the status quo couldn't remain the same, but she doesn't think that endless violence is the answer.

This conflict is at the heart of Misrule, showing a constant pull between what is easy and what is right. The question whether Alyce and Aurora will finally overcome their differences and get back together is almost in the background, and it's a good thing. Obviously the matter is at the forefront of Alyce's mind, but it's also shadowed by the core conflict. The resolution, too, to this clash of values is beautiful. Forgiveness takes time, and rightly so.

The world, which was fairly circumscribed in the first book, here takes on new depths. We meet all manners of new fae species, and the past is more explored. I found especially well done the inner conflict Alyce experiences when faced with the Shifters, reminding her of the betrayal she suffered in the first book. This wariness mirrors her fear of accessing that very same part of herself, and it's fitting that part of the resolution is exactly making her peace with it.

The new characters shine, but it's an old one that I find especially fascinating. The Grace who used to torment Alyce - and whom I would have loved to see redeemed - here takes a sharp turn towards villainy, but it's still a turn that makes sense with the character, and with what she suffered over a whole century. While I didn't like her ending, I appreciated how it reinforced the deeper point about revenge being an endless cycle.

All in all, Misrule is a solid conclusion to the duology, with an ending more complex than I expected.

✨ 3.5 stars

Review: Siren Queen, by Nghi Vo

 

“No maids, no funny talking, no fainting flowers.” Luli Wei is beautiful, talented, and desperate to be a star. Coming of age in pre-Code Hollywood, she knows how dangerous the movie business is and how limited the roles are for a Chinese American girl from Hungarian Hill—but she doesn’t care. She’d rather play a monster than a maid.
But in Luli’s world, the worst monsters in Hollywood are not the ones on screen. The studios want to own everything from her face to her name to the women she loves, and they run on a system of bargains made in blood and ancient magic, powered by the endless sacrifice of unlucky starlets like her. For those who do survive to earn their fame, success comes with a steep price. Luli is willing to do whatever it takes—even if that means becoming the monster herself.

There's power in what we choose to call ourselves. Nghi Vo's titular Siren Queen is unnamed, forced to use her own sister's name when a pseudonym is demanded of her. Battling against racism and sexism and later, homophobia, she shrouds herself in a coldness that protects her and allows her to succeed in an old Hollywood where studio executives are literal monsters, inhabited by ancient beings - maybe fairies, maybe demons - powered by blood sacrifices. Such coldness, and her determination to not have what she perceives as demeaning roles, finally lands her the role of a monstress, a murderous mermaid in a successful movie franchise. The character we know as Luli Wei is the Siren Queen, at least in the studio.

Inside, we see her insecurities and her loves, from her first love to the person whose comments pepper and interrupt the recollection, small playful moments that show us how things will get better, which constantly remind us that while things are bleak in the narration, there exists a future where Luli is free. We also see her friendships, the lengths she can go to in order to help the people she loves; but we see her shortcomings too, and her regrets. She's very human in this regard, a character who is allowed to make mistakes. Every character is fallible and complex, and the strongest part of this book are the bonds between them, messy and real and tragic and beautiful. Her lovers especially are all treated with the same dignity, and even when her first love ends due to her partner's choice to protect herself, said partner isn't villanised. After all, the villains of the book are something else.

The magic is fey, never explained, in the same way as it was(n't) in Nghi Vo's The Chosen and the Beautiful. This is a world were the Wild Hunt takes place every Friday night, where the Hunters mount cars instead of horses. Every year on Halloween, an actor is sacrificed. Actors and directors sometimes disappear; sometimes their place is taken by dolls. It's unclear whether the studio changeling are actual folklore changelings, or if it's a metaphor. Pacts are made with creatures who will take years off someone's life in exchange for the chance to be extraordinary. Sometimes your fellow actor can be a kidnapped magical being, or a plain boy transformed into a beautiful man. Immortality can be achieved by successful Hollywood stars. These things are all taken for granted, and never explained; but it works perfectly.

In the Afterword Nghi Vo says that the novel began as a set of novellas. This is especially visible in the structure, with each part taking place some years after the climax of the previous one. I wouldn't mind other novellas further exploring this world and the protagonist. While the ending is satisfying, it leaves tantalizing morsels of information that beg to be turned into a full story.

Nghi Vo caught my attention with The Empress of Salt and Fortune, but with this book she fully captured my heart.

✨ 5 stars

Review: Peter Darling, by Austin Chant

 

Ten years ago, Peter Pan left Neverland to grow up, leaving behind his adolescent dreams of boyhood and resigning himself to life as Wendy Darling. Growing up, however, has only made him realize how inescapable his identity as a man is.
But when he returns to Neverland, everything has changed: the Lost Boys have become men, and the war games they once played are now real and deadly. Even more shocking is the attraction Peter never knew he could feel for his old rival, Captain Hook—and the realization that he no longer knows which of them is the real villain.

Sometimes you see a book's premise and you just know that you have to read it. Peter Darling by Austin Chant is a dazzling novel that takes your hands and asks you to believe in fairies once more. I've never been particularly taken with Peter Pan, but this retelling and sequel manages to strike a chord deep within oneself. If you ever felt you couldn't belong, this is the book for you. It's a heartfelt tale about finding oneself and growing up and finding companionship despite all adversity.

The book starts in medias res, the past slowly unraveling as we witness Peter's return to Neverland, his first meeting with Hook after many years, as we sense the attraction between the two grow from swordfighting to more and more. Theirs is a pairing I can honestly say has never crossed my mind, especially given their respective ages in the original novels, but Austin Chant makes it work perfectly. Peter, grown up and terribly unhappy with the shackles he was forced to don once more when he returned to his family, finally decides he can't take it anymore and returns to Neverland with the help of an aged-up Tinkerbell, always nonchalant in her cruelty and terribly fond and protective of Peter. Neverland isn't as it once was, and Peter falls easily into old schemes, unable to change. But it's not his fault, at least not consciously: the island is a haven, and as such clouds memories. It's only with the help of the Fairy Queen that Peter is able to unveil his past.

It's a past he doesn't want to relive, nor return to. And yet it's him that awakens in Hook the man's own lost memories, lost to decades spent on the island. James Hook, once he remembers who he was and too his own trials, is a softie. He just wants to protect Peter, and take him back home, save them both from the danger of losing oneself in a fantasy. Peter doesn't want to, not when only in Neverland he can truly be himself, but with the help of Hook he realizes he can be himself even in the real world, or rather, he can be himself with Hook and the world is none the wiser.

Peter is transgender; his life before Neverland, and when he bent back home before the beginning of the novel, is described with infinite kindess. His parents are blinded by society's expectations, and can't see how they are harming him. His brothers, too, are blind to it, but we don't really see how they act in the years leading to his decision to leave again.

One thing I would have liked to see more is a deeper exploration of Neverland and the way it works. The fairies are eerie creatures, not the ones we know from folklore; a kraken inhabits the waters. The island is elsewhere and exerts a certain kind of control over its denizens, but Hook often mentions known pirates, and there's a treasure buried on land. The island creates illusions to keep happy those who find themselves there. I wouldn't have minded a longer work, if it meant to flesh out more these aspects.

As it stands, the book is a lovely tale, heartwarming and profound, that will leave you giddy.

✨ 4 stars

Review: Wild and Wicked Things, by Francesca May

 

On Crow Island, people whisper, real magic lurks just below the surface. Neither real magic nor faux magic interests Annie Mason. Not after it stole her future. She’s only on the island to settle her late father’s estate and, hopefully, reconnect with her long-absent best friend, Beatrice, who fled their dreary lives for a more glamorous one. Yet Crow Island is brimming with temptation, and the biggest one may be her enigmatic new neighbor. Mysterious and alluring, Emmeline Delacroix is a figure shadowed by rumors of witchcraft. And when Annie witnesses a confrontation between Bea and Emmeline at one of the island's extravagant parties, she is drawn into a glittering, haunted world. A world where the boundaries of wickedness are tested, and the cost of illicit magic might be death.

'Tis the season of Great Gatsby retellings. Much like last year's The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Vo, Wild and Wicked Things by Francesca May is marketed as a queer, witchy take on the American classic - but I fail to see the parallels. Yes, the story is set in the appropriate time period, there's a house whose owner is mysterious enough, they're on an island, and wild parties abound. But the similarities, I think, end there. That said, the book is delightful. It works best if one doesn’t think too hard about the supposed inspiration and simply lets the story speak for itself. It’s a packed adventure that isn’t afraid to take its time; every beat serves its purpose, even in its moments of stillness.

First and foremost, it’s a book about sisterhood and the bonds we form in a traumatic setting. The relationship between Emmeline and her longtime companions is deep and heartbreaking. The friendship between Annie and Beatrice, shadowed by a tragic loss, is no less compelling. This is a book with deeply flawed characters, which can be a risk, but Francesca May manages to strike a balance. Emmeline in particular was fascinating, a study in contrasts, although I would have liked her gender nonconformity to be more explored.

This is a dark novel with dark themes, abuse and sexual assault among them; Emmeline uses sacrificial blood magic, and such magic has a price.

I found the romance not as developed as I would have liked; then again, with such a packed plot, it might be expected. The mutual fascination between Emmeline and Annie is explored, but I got the feeling that it wouldn’t have taken that form if not for their link.

What I really loved was Annie’s journey; seeing her coming into her own and realizing her queerness, in every sense of the word, and accepting herself.

✨ 3.5 stars