Book Review: To Spin a Darker Stair

To Spin a Darker Stair is a collection of two short stories, the first is a reprint of Catherynne M Valente’s, A Delicate Architecture and an original short, Oracle’s Tower, by Australian author Faith Mudge.  The cover and and internal illustrations are by Kathleen Jennings (who was interviewed by Galactic Chat here).

I was lucky enough to get the book for $5 during Fablecroft’s World Fantasy Awards special offer – Kathleen Jennings has been nominated for her work across a number of projects, including many local and international small presses and Fablecroft have been an active supporter of her work.  You should still be able to get it at the all inclusive price here.

The two stories are fairytale inversions or alternates, a growing fave genre of mine.  I like works that examine the often simplistic, often conservative morals of fairytales and either examine and reinterpret them or show the other side of the story.

A Delicate Architecture is the first Valente I have read and the writing is as good as I would expect it to be from her reputation.  The writing is rich and poetic which suits the subject matter of the story perfectly – a girl purportedly made from confectionary seeks the glamour of the Imperial capital.  This story is heartbreaking.

Oracle’s Tower, while less consciously rich in its prose manages to create a beautiful fairytale ambience. It feels more consciously fairytale like to me.  Valente charms you with her command of language.  Mudge rearranges the fairytale building blocks and tropes so that the work has a familiarity but the reader is not sure where they are being led. I don’t want to say much more about the stories themselves.  I had no knowledge of the fairytales they were to riff off beforehand and I think a clean reading approach to the stories is the best way to experience them.

Thematically the stories fit well together and I appreciate the effort Fablecroft went to create this book. They can’t be making too much on this offer and yet we get a very rich deal in the bargain -Valente, Mudge and Jennings in a bound book for less than the coffee and croissant you could enjoy while finishing it.

If you like fairytale retellings and you want to see two skilful proponents with different approaches and styles I think you’ll like it.

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Book Review – Red Winter by Dan Smith

Red Winter is a historical thriller set in Russia in the aftermath of The Great War, the  time of the Russian Civil War and the time of The Red Terror when the Bolshevik secret police, the Cheka, carried out mass killings, torture and suppressions of the various groups that sought to resist the revolution.

Kolya is returning home with his brother who has died on their trip.  Tired from too long spent fighting, first against the Germans, now against the enemies of the revolution. He hopes to find his wife and sons, to bury his brother next to their parents, to live a quiet life.  Only when he arrives the village is empty, as if everyone simply walked out.  Desperate and unsure if he is dreaming or losing his mind, he comes across the sole surviving member of the village, so malnourished and raving that he does not recognise her at first. 

When he tries to ask about what has happened to the villagers and his family, all she will talk about is Koschei, and how it was his doing.  Koschei the Deathless, a fairytale bogeyman of Russian myth. Kolya begins to think her insane until she shows him the forest.

What follows is a journey across a country and a culture being torn apart by violence and mistrust.  A journey to discover if Koschei is real, if Kolya’s family are alive.

I had heard of Koschei the Deathless, but I didn’t know his tale.  Smith, through Kolya, retells the tale(or one of them) and is ingeniously vague about the outcome.  I think Smith does a good job of balancing the tension between the outcome of the fairytale and the outcome of Kolya’s story.  

I found Red Winter to be deceptively well paced. It’s related in the first person.  It initially feels slow and ponderous; a tale in which you very much feel the weight of the landscape, the cold and the despair of a man who has lost almost everything.  Like the fairytale form that it shadows though, there is a magic here, born out of a compelling mystery. This is Russia in 1920, it’s not a land of fairytales, no matter how much the reader might like it to be for our protagonist. Much of Smith’s success comes I think from balancing the readers expectations between a fairytale ending and a realistic one.

The tension was so well played for me that I ended up reading it in two sittings, staying up until the early hours because I had to know if our hero triumphs. With a more literary sensibility and by that I mean a focus on the internal landscape of Kolya’s character as much as the external story I was never quite sure, even til the last page just which way it would go.

In tone it felt very much similar to that of Scandinavian crime writing that’s been hitting the shelves.  Whether that stems from the characterisation of the setting; bleak northern European winters or from the fact that the period covered is pretty much untouched in the public consciousness, I am not sure.

If you like fairytale as a metaphor, modern European history, or a compelling mystery with an edge of horror, I heartily recommend it.

 

This book was provided by the publisher.

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Book Review – Black Sun Light My Way by Jo Spurrier

Black Sun Light My Way is Jo Spurrier’s second novel and the follow up to Winter Be My Shield (reviewed here).  It’s book two of what I suspect will be a trilogy, though it’s ending surprised me – it didn’t feel like the traditional middle of a trilogy.  I like to be surprised and I am eager to see what Spurrier does in the final book.  I thought I had a handle on where she was going, now I am not so sure.

At the end of Winter Be My Shield, Sierra having managed to learn some control of her powers lets herself be caught by Akharian slavers in an attempt to get closer to Isidro and the potential treasure hidden at Demon Spire.  An uneasy alliance is formed between Rasten, Isidro and Sierra as they manage to manipulate the Akharian’s and gain access to Vasant’s treasure trove of Ricalani magic.

Much of what I thought to be the goals of the major characters seemed to be resolved by midway through the story.  It turned out to be a decoy by Spurrier an easy victory before she really tightened the screws on the characters.  Much of the tension achieved in this novel comes from the testing and twisting of bonds between those characters.  Much of the physical danger and tension comes again from isolating the characters from their allies and from each other.

Rape as a threat to characters and bystanders features heavily in Black Sun Light My Way.  Spurrier, as she did in Winter be My Shield, didn’t restrict the threat or act to female characters.  I like( appreciate maybe is a better word) that she takes this realistic approach ( modern fantasy seems to skirt around the use of rape in conflict as a weapon used against all genders) but the prevalence of it as a way to manipulate the readers emotions came close to being overused for my reading.

There was some anachronistic dialogue that jarred with me much as it did with book one, phrases or figures of speech that sound out of place because they are modern.  But then we are reading fantasy; who says fantasy needs to be written in with an equally unrealistic 19th century English vocabulary?

What continued to impress me was Spurrier’s research and her use of it in bringing the Wild alive as a very visceral setting. Pregnancy as a plot device was an interesting and realistic addition to the story and adds another layer of emotional connection between characters that I am sure Spurrier will use against the reader in book three. 

Despite the points mentioned above Spurrier has an engaging style.  This was an easy book to slip into but very hard to get out of -  I read from midway to the end in one setting.  If you are a fan of Trudi Canavan’s work and are prepared for the adult content then I heartily recommend Black Sun Light My Way and Winter Be My Shield.

This book was provided by the publisher.

An interview that I conducted with Jo for Galactic Chat can be found here.

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This review is part of the Australian Women Writers Challenge 2013.  Please check out this page for more great writing from Australian women..

 

 

 

 

 

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