The Riddle of Stars, a trilogy by Patricia A. McKillip

It is best to review these three titles as a trilogy á la Lord of the Rings, rather than three separate novels. Series fiction has become so popular in the children’s and young adult literary world that we have forgotten the joy of a good trilogy, which combines the longevity of narrative that series fiction attempts to supply with a story that is well structured and coherent: with a beginning, a middle (climax, change of scene, rising action, another climax, another change of scene and rising action), and an end (a final climax, dénouement, and ultimately great satisfaction for the reader). Series fiction, on the other hand, often lacks the solid structure that leads to reader satisfaction: because it is written without a solid plan in the initial stages, it seldom forms as cohesive and satisfying a narrative. Don’t remind me that Dickens (among others) wrote his novels piecemeal this way, weekly, changing his plot to satisfy his readers’ opinions as he went along… I firmly believe he would have been even greater had he not suffered under such constraints!

To continue. I have not read The Riddle of Stars trilogy since I was a teen, but I cannot think why not: it was one of my absolute favourites, second perhaps only to Lord of the Rings. When I picked it up again last week, I remembered why I loved it so much. Even though I remember the essential plot, I can no longer remember the details, and the story and the world McKillip has created pulled me deep within: I ran with the vesta; I became a tree; I wept with Raederle… No trilogy or series since this—except perhaps K.V. Johansen’s Warlocks of Talverdin—has constructed for me such a complete, satisfying world, mythology, and backstory to the current narrative.

   In The Riddlemaster of Hed (1976), we meet Morgan, Prince of Hed. Morgan’s title means that he is bound irrevocably and immutably by a deep magic to his land. Not until his death—and then equally irrevocably—does his rule pass to his land-heir. But Morgan is also a Riddle Master, sent away from his agrarian homeland to study in the city of Caithnard with students from all the lands in the realm. He is torn between his identity as ruler of Hed—a land and culture that he truly understands and loves—and the three stars on his forehead that appear to mark him as something other than a ruler of cattle, pigs, and their keepers. Ultimately, he has to choose whether to pursue or abandon the riddle that is his identity. In McKillip’s world, philosophy, history, and belief are both bound and explained by the riddles the learnèd ask of each other, and their answers. Morgan has been trained in this world as much as his princedom, but there are riddles that even he cannot answer. He journeys north to Erlenstar Mountain, to seek the High One of the Realm, the only one who can answer the Riddle of his Stars, and his identity. En route he meets and befriends a number of rulers of other kingdoms; these friendships  will serve him well in his future struggles. But when he reaches the apparent end of his quest, the final words we are given are “Oh, no!” There his tale—at least in this volume—ends.

In Heir of Sea and Fire (1977), we return south to Raederle, Morgan’s intended, and the political struggles in which the world is embroiled now that the Prince of Hed has disappeared. While Raederle’s father seeks Morgan in his own way, Raederle and the two other women who love Morgan—the warrior Lyra and Morgan’s sister Tristan—abandon the pattern of their lives to seek him, and the answers to the fate that awaits their world. Parallelling Morgan’s search for identity, Raederle seeks to understand her own heritage, to learn why her wise and loving father made an oath to marry her to the man who could win a contest of Riddles with the shade of Aum of Peven, a great King and Riddle Master. She begins to comprehend her true nature, and to fear it, as much as—or more than—she fears losing Morgan.

In Harpist in the Wind (1979), while Raederle has learned her true name and nature, Morgan still struggles to determine who he is, and why the harpist Deth, whom he loved, had betrayed him so cruelly. The shape changers who pursue him to the corners of the realm, the evil Riddle Master who seeks to destroy him, even his own nature seems to battle against the peace he seeks for himself and his world. Slowly he integrates his abilities with self-knowledge, battling against self-doubt, until in the final moment—almost too late—he learns his true name, and his real place in the natural order of his world.

The Discovery of Socket Greeny (2010), by Tony Bertauski

Lately I’ve been downloading a large number of free ebooks from BookBub, or Kobo, or anywhere I can: my book budget has been exhausted. I have discovered, though not surprisingly, that my quality of reading has thus dropped significantly, and a large proportion of the free books I delete after reading the first couple of pages. Every once in a while, thankfully, one like Tony Bertauski’s The Discovery of Socket Greeny comes along to rejuvenate my joy of reading on the Kobo. The book was first released in 2010, so it was not a “straight-to-almost-free” book like so many, but at first my response was “What on earth are they doing offering this for free?” followed by “I wonder how much the sequels are going to cost me?” For there are always sequels in children’s and YA fiction these days, it seems: but I have lamented this situation before.  There are, in fact, sequels to The Discovery of Socket Greeny, although all three books were released in 2010: The Discovery of Socket Greeny in July, The Training of Socket Greeny in September, and The Legend of Socket Greeny in December. Despite the sequels, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the first book was, in fact, sufficiently self-contained to satisfy my narrative needs completely. There were directions that Bertauski could take his story, more that could be told, but it is not necessary to read more to find closure.

The conception and plot of Socket Greeny are original and engaging. Picture a YA version of Neuromancer with shades of Little Brother, Ender’s Game, and Feed. How could I not read on? Perhaps, too, I liked the immediate immersion into the virtual world of MMOGs (massively multi-player online games).  The story opens with three teens hooked into virtualmode to study, but instead hacking into someone else’s virtual world to battle. Bertauski’s description of the transitional process is both a little familiar (see Neuromancer) and yet unique.

The banter between Socket, Streeter, and Socket’s girlfriend, Chute, about the wisdom of their enterprise reveals the closeness that exists in this triad of friends:

“What are we doing here?” I asked
“We’re going to get our kill on.”
“I just got pardoned for fighting. We get caught, just stamp my suspension.” …
I looked at Chute. “Did you know we were doing this?”
“He didn’t tell me. If you were in class on time, he wouldn’t have told you, either.” …

I have listened to the teens upstairs: Bertauski’s characters are real.

Hacked into the Rime world, something goes terribly, unexpectedly wrong. Their sims are almost destroyed: a shadow forms that only Socker can see (“You’re brain damaged. Shadow sims can’t stabilize in this environment”); he begins to feel his sim; and time stands still. Cut to the three of them in detention for misuse of virtualmode time, when Socker is pulled away by his mother for a “family emergency.” His friends don’t see him again for 8 months.

The discovery of Socker Greeny—who and what Socker is—underlies the remainder of the novel. But it is not the mystery that grabs the reader so much as our affection for the character: his combination of youthful bravado and insecurity, his compassion, his need for love, his anger, and even his outright fear. His internal monologue sits comfortably beside his descriptions of all that he sees and experiences in the new reality he finds himself in.

Ultimately Socker does discover who he is, essentially, as well as learning the truth about his broken family, and his mother’s disinterest and even coldness towards him. Starved of affection for so long, it is no wonder that he clings to his friends just that little bit, emotionally. His need is mirrored in his unswerving commitment to the friendship, though, and in the end it is the combination of their talents that helps them to fight for their lives almost successfully… Not that everyone dies, of course, but it honestly is not obvious that they will all survive. Bertauski does give us the satisfactory happy ending (of course, we knew that Socket lives on, or there wouldn’t be sequels), but the danger feels real, and the escape from it uncontrived, if expectedly fortuitous. The world has changed irrevocably for Socker and his friends: they will never again be the team that they have always been, but they—and we—are okay with that.

The Sower of Tales (2001), by Rachna Gilmore

I have recently given a guest lecture on Children’s Literature of the South Asian diaspora, and I closed with a discussion of Rachna Gilmore’s The Sower of Tales. The class I spoke to was about to begin an investigation of Salmon Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories (1990), focusing on its metafictive elements, and Sower of Tales seemed to me to be a perfect text to launch them into the more complex metaphors that Rushdie employs.

The Sower of Tales presents a similar concept—the need for stories in our lives, the death of the imagination equated with the death of happiness—but to a younger, less intellectually mature readership. By this I do not intend to denigrate Sower of Tales; there is absolutely a place for both expressions of this theme within the corpus.

The metaphor that Sower of Tales presents is that of stories as a gift from the Sower, grown bi-weekly on plants scattered about the land. The Gatherer is responsible for choosing an appropriate “story pod” for the evening Talemeet for his or her village. The ripe pods give off a hum, and a talented Gatherer can tell from the hum what tone of story is therein contained. Our protagonist, Calantha, shows great promise as a Gatherer, but is too young yet to apprentice. Nonetheless, when tragedy strikes and new story pods no longer sprout, Calantha is chosen to make the dangerous journey to seek the Sower of Tales, to help right the imbalance in the world that has caused the blight.

When she reaches her destination, she is harrowed to find that the answers are not readily available. The Sower of Tales is losing her power, and can no longer heal herself: she needs Calantha to make another, more dangerous, journey. Calantha learns that an evil sorcerer has twisted the Essences, knotted the winds so that the new seeds that rise out of opened pods, up to the Sower of Tales, are diverted to the neighbouring kingdom. The significance of this is that in Gilmore’s fantasy world, the stories are power, as much as they are a life-force, and the source of culture and tradition.

The Healer Theora tells Calantha that “the Essence of the story pods is tied to the very fabric of our beings” (136), and the Sower of Tales, telling her how story pods first came into being, tells her:

Tales grow, with a life of their own. Words and ideas are like seeds. … the Essence of the story pods comes from the oldest and most powerful of all Essences—the life-spark, the Essence of creation itself. … And so, over time, the Essence of the tales enmeshed and interwove with all the other Essences linked to that life-spark, strengthening them, too—strengthening unity and love, joy and creativity and hope. (231-33).

The corollary is that without the story pods, the world will be blanketed in despair, like the poisoning of the Rushdie’s Sea of Stories… In the final scenes, in a flash of insight, Calantha understands:

The Plainsfolk must, they must learn to tell the tales. Tales from the story pods, yes, but more—they must also learn to tell their own tales. Mend their own hope, stoke their own strength. Oh, they must learn to tell their own tales to fuel their own joy and delight … And when the story pods returned—if the story pods returned—they must still keep telling their tales. That was how the tales would be saved. It was the only way the tales would be saved. (416)

The Sower of Tales can be seen as representing the birth of an oral tradition: stories are no longer given to the people by magical beings, but now must be created by the people, for the people: humanity in Gilmore’s fantasy world has now taken responsibility for its own happiness or despair, its own future narrative.

The Last Dragonslayer (2010), by Jasper Fforde

I read the first five of Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next series as they came out in the early years of this millennium (I had to say that!), and was thrilled by the irreverent humour, the originality of concept, and the artfully handled literary allusions. “But,” I thought to myself, “these cannot be literature for the average young adult, for the simple reason that they require an extensive background in the classics of English literature.” What a shame, as I know my teenagers would love the humour and the disruption of readers’ expectations that Fforde revels in.  So finally, in 2010, Fforde gratified my hopes, and produced his first YA novel. The Last Dragonslayer reveals the refusal to conform to readers’ expectations and narrative conventions, but is playing with a sub-genre more popular among child and young adult readers: fantasy, magic, and witchcraft. The tropes Fforde plays with will be recognizable to any readers familiar with Harry Potter, or Diana Wynne-Jones’s work, or Susan Cooper’s, Lloyd Alexander’s, Michael Ende’s, Cornelia Funke’s, Christopher Paolini’s, Chris D’Lacey’s… the list goes on.

The story centres around the Kazam Mystical Arts Management company, currently run by the “apprentice” Jennifer Strange, an orphan indentured to the owner, Mr. Zambini, who has mysteriously disappeared. Kazam’s business is to rent out sorcerers and other individuals adept at what magic there is left in the world: for magic is quickly being depleted as the dragons slowly die out. The last dragon is aging, and the magical world is in upheaval. Fforde constructs a world in which magic is an inherent part of consensus reality, woven through the day-to-day complications and frustrations of contemporary middle-class life: the combination is sardonic, and hilarious.

Part of the history of magic in the Kingdom of Hereford, in the Ununited Kingdoms, where Kazam is located, are the magical creatures created before such sorcery was outlawed. The fiercest of these is the quarkbeast: “a small, hyena-shaped creature that is covered in leathery scales and often described as: One-tenth Labrador, six-tenths velociraptor and three-tenths kitchen food blender” (Song of the Quarkbeast 87). You cannot train a quarkbeast: it chooses its owner. Or not. Wild quarkbeasts are rare, and hunted much as lions or grizzlies are in our world: as trophies. Quarkbeasts are also “fiercely loyal” (120), affectionate, and “for all their fearsome looks … obedient to a fault” (94), with a “placid nature” (5) that is belied by their appearance. It is not their fault that the mere sight of one sends fear into the hearts of even the bravest; in fact, Jennifer’s “might have been so unaware [of his fearsome appearance] that he wondered why people always ran away screaming” (6). That Jennifer Strange has The Quarkbeast as her companion is a clue to the reader, as well as those around her, that she is something more than an unmagicked apprentice—which of course she also is. We like Jennifer, her fortitude and refusal to be cowed by disreputable but powerful political forces, but we love the Quarkbeast.

Jennifer Strange, prophesy says, is destined to be a key player in the political and magical situation developing in the Ununited Kingdoms. Ultimately, she has to make choices that pit her moral integrity against the financial security of those who depend upon her. The situation is sufficiently complex that readers can not necessarily anticipate her responses, and what seems to be the wrong choice turns out (in true Jasper Fforde style) to be not only right but essential.

In the Hand of the Goddess (1984), by Tamora Pierce

The sequel continues Alanna’s adventures, and at the end reveals her gender identity to those around her. Pierce continues with her ability to cast Alanna as a successfully ungendered individual until the middle of the book, when both George and Jon, who know her as a girl, begin to show interest.  Alanna’s response at this point becomes less credible than her earlier lack of interest was.  Kristin Cashore deals much more effectively with the balance between female sexuality and independence within a patriarchal society in Graceling (2008).  Still, Pierce’s writing is good, and the story compelling, albeit less successfully in this book than the first.

Jump Cut (2012), by Ted Staunton

Jump Cut is one of the Seven series, which advertises itself as “The Seven Series: 7 grandsons; 7 journeys; 7 amazing authors; 1 amazing series. Read one: Read them all.” The website listed as “www.sevenseries.com” is wrong; when I began this review, it took me to a site that seemed to be the setup for a movie version of the books; now it takes one to “www.sevenseriestv.com,” which seems to be a Nigerian film site… very odd. Regardless, the official website is here.

I was sent an Advanced Reading Copy (ARC) of one of the other novels, Devil’s Pass, by Sigmund Brouwer, by Resource Links online magazine in the summer, and loved it. I was thus really excited when my daughter brought three others home as soon as they came out in October (her school librarian is really on top of things).  I had been advised by another children’s literature scholar whom I respect that the series is “very uneven,” but I of course wanted to read them all myself, regardless. My friend didn’t mention Staunton’s, so I did dive into it unprejudiced by other’s opinions. I was not, however, as thrilled with it as with Devil’s Pass.

The premise of the series is that David McLean dies, leaving seven grandsons of five daughters all bereft, for, from all accounts, McLean was am amazing man and a fabulous grandpa. In his will, he leaves each of his grandson’s with a task that will send them on some sort of adventure. Early in each story (I surmise… certainly in the two I have read), we glean that each of the adventures was specifically chosen not only to satisfy some emotional, historical need of the grandfather, but to help each grandson grow into manhood through life lessons that he would not otherwise have access to. The set up is not only clever, but carefully and artfully constructed so that it works both narratively and emotionally: we really like what David McLean has done for his grandsons, and our appreciation reflects also their love for their grandfather and thus their willingness to do seemingly odd things to achieve the goals he sets out for them. In Devil’s Pass, Webb ends up trekking in the northern wastes, a adventure replete with red-neck bullying and the requisite grizzly bear—still, it does not sink as far into stereotype as this sounds; in Jump Cut, budding cameraman Spencer’s task is to film himself kissing the cheek of an old Hollywood flame, “Gloria Lorraine,” his grandfather’s youthful heartthrob. The story is, of course, far more complex than this, and Spencer learns the truth along with the reader. He also learns some lessons about what constitutes worthy content in both film and reality, a lesson I would have thought he had a better handle on at the outset. This is perhaps the greatest failing of the novel: Spencer misses so many filmic opportunities. I would have though that a keen teenaged boy with a new video camera would be more interested in actually shooting footage, in fact the trope is of course how annoying a newbie with a camera can be… Spencer consistently misses shots that are not only interesting, but essential to the task he has set himself—of Gloria has set him—on: filming her journey back to her roots. It becomes annoying. The behaviour, too, of the “kidnapped” gang member seems less authentic than the social threats expressed so effectively in Devil’s Pass: Jump Cut reads like a fiction—fun, interesting, but no actually something that might ever happen this way. Still, it was interesting enough for me to want to read Richard Scrimger’s Ink Me, the story of Spencer’s younger brother, “Bunny,” whose seemingly simple assignment is to get a tattoo…

The Ropemaker (2001), by Peter Dickinson

This is an epic narrative about the transition from one era to the next in a fantasy world.  The new era is ushered in by the passing of a token from one powerful magician to the next, and in this case facilitated by our protagonists, who must journey out of the comfort of their pastoral valley existence to locate the magician who can help them heal their valley… so they think.  But they are caught up on the affairs of the Empire, and set in motion the changes that herald the coming of the new era.

It is well written, but a bit long for the tale.  Unlike Lord of the Rings, there are not enough politics to sustain the length of the book, and it drags at points.  Regardless, it is a fascinating and original story, and does lead one to want to read the sequel, Angel Isle (2007). That is not to say the ending is unsatisfying—the text stands alone completely; the sequel must be another story in the same setting, but not requiring a connection to the intricate and complete plot of The Ropemaker. It is on my self, so maybe I should read it next…

Alanna: The First Adventure (1983), by Tamora Pierce

“Sure,” I thought facetiously, “that’s an original plot element: girl dresses up as a boy to become a knight…” But Alanna gripped me fro the first moment.  To begin with, she is a twin, so disguising herself as her brother has a certain amount of feasibility. Pierce’s description of the character, too, lends credibility to her lot; ultimately, we are willing to forgive any implausibilities for the engaging and enjoyable story.
Alanna (“Alan”) is gifted with magic, as are many people in her world; she is a healer but wants to become a night, not a lady. Her wise-woman mentor tells her that she must cultivate her gift, in order to offset the violence and death that a knight brings to the world.  The book is of course a bildungsroman of Alanna’s growing into young womanhood while masquerading as a boy—complete with her distress at breasts and her period—but it is also largely about how Alanna comes to balance the two sides of her being: knight and healer. The metaphor is not overt; young readers will imbibe the message women of the 1980s were learning: it is difficult to balance home and autonomy, nurturing of self and others, as women forged their path into what had for so long been exclusively a man’s world.  Alanna is a delightful, while powerful, adventure that will give strength to young female readers, but be equally engaging for boys, as Alanna’s comrades are interesting, well-developed characters in themselves.
            Alanna: The First Adventureis the first of a series of four novels in the Song of the Lioness series; it is followed by In the Hand of the Goddess (1984), The Woman Who Rides Like a Man (1986), and Lioness Rampant (1988).  Alanna also appears in Pierce’s other series, The Immortals, Protector of the Small, and Daughter of the Lioness.

Amos Daragon: The Key of Braha (2012), by Bryan Perro

This review was first published in Resource Links Magazine, “Canada’s national journal devoted to the review and evaluation of Canadian English and French resources for children and young adults.” It appears in volume 17.5.

Amos Daragon: The Key of Braha

Amos Daragon: The Key of Braha, second in Bryan Perro’s “bestselling twelve-book children’s series” (dustjacket), is a complicated narrative reminiscent of Garth Nix’s Grim Tuesday or Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series.  The language and characterization, however, and especially the humour, seem aimed at a younger reading audience, one too young to fully grasp the political machinations driving the plot. The problem lies perhaps the translation—there must be better phrases than “positive gods” and “negative gods” for whatever the French is, for example (3-4)—but other characteristics of the text suggest that the writing itself was lacking in the original.

The plot is interesting, and I must say that the dénouement almost redeems the novel, but unfortunately not quite. The Key of Braha is a legendary key that will purportedly open the gates to “paradise” and “hell” (2) from the City of the Dead, Braha, where souls are judged. The doors have been sealed, and it will take a mortal who descends to the underworld and yet lives—or lives again—to unlock the mystery and the doors. Through the complex intrigues that provide the novel’s greatest interest, Amos Daragon is manipulated into this role. His search for the truth of what is happening to him is a well-constructed plot, but his characterization does not support the intelligence his author claims for him.

Amos Daragon’s cleverness in this novel does not rise to the level of the more experienced young reader: although King Junos claims that Amos is “wiser than most of my white-bearded advisors” (25), the ways in which he “tricks” his opponents are—in youthful parlance—lame. When a dead soul has no coin to offer Charon, Amos argues: “this man has nothing to pay their fare, well, I’ll pay if for him. In fact, if you allow them on the boat, I’ll offer you twice nothing” (49), a ruse which works, and is thus the first of many instances where the reader is amazed not at Amos’s brilliance so much as the stupidity of his adversaries. The three riddles he has to solve are equally unimpressive, as is his trick in stealing a golden spoon to prove himself the best thief in the city, or the argument that gains him the key in the end: “You were to keep the key until the light of the candle went off on its own,” the keeper of the key complained; “Yes, but I just blew it out. Therefore it did not go off by itself” is Amos’s “clever” rejoinder (155-6). This level of trickery is amusing to primary school children, perhaps, but the Ragnarök plot that Perro has created is more appropriate for the more mature intermediate or middle school student.

The Shadow Road (2010), by K. V. Johansen: Revisited

The first three times I finished The Shadow Road, I immediately wanted another text, a sequel, so that I could continue to dwell in K.V. Johansen’s mesmerizing world.  This time, however, I read the series more critically, thinking more deeply about the narrative structure of the series, rather than merely revelling in the enjoyment of the story as expressed in each individual text. In the end, The Shadow Road leaves us in a place that does not actually require further narrative, however much we might want it.  The denouement presents us with effective closure and yet leaves the possibility—should the author so desire—of further stories: notably not further illumination of the questions that have run through the series to date, the secrets of the Yehillon, as these mysteries are solved.

Nethin’s experiences in The Shadow Road are presented as a retrospective report of dubious authenticity. Rather like the frame narrative of Margaret Atwood’s A Handmaid’s Tale (1985), the two short descriptive paragraphs that frame Nethin’s story inform us that years—if not decades or centuries—have passed between the action of the novel and the moment of our reading. The scope for further tales within this period is vast and encouraging, and we can only hope that Johansen sees fit to populate those years with recorded narrative. Apparently she has plans for a fifth book, temporally placed between Nightwalker and Treason in Eswy, but Orca Publishers is not yet convinced. I suggest that anyone reading this review, who appreciates The Warlocks of Talverdin even a quarter as much as I do, write to Orca Publishers (orca@orcabook.com, attention Sarah Harvey, Orca Young Readers, Juvenile & Teen Fiction Editor) and let them know how much we want to see that fifth—and sixth, and seventh—installment.