Book Review: The Fragile Threads of Power

  By V.E. Schwab

• Pub Date: 2023

• Genre: Fantasy

• Where I bought this book: The Book Loft, Columbus, Ohio 

• Why I bought this book: Well, I've read the first three novels, so may as well keep going  

 ******

    Some great characters return in this book, the fourth in the Shades of Magic series, and the first in a new series, tentatively titled the Threads of Magic*. There's Lila Bard, the angry Antari**, a messy, unsubtle whirlwind; Alucard Emery, a wealthy lord, wannabe pirate, and consort to the king, and Kell Maresh, once cocky and now uneasy, an Antari who has lost his magic.

    They are joined by a series of new magicians: Tes, a young girl who can see the threads of magic and fix broken ones; Kosika, another young girl, who finds herself the queen of White London; and Queen Nadiya Loreni, wife of the new King Rhy Maresh, a magician and scientist.***

    The locations continue to excel: There's Red London, ruled by the Maresh family -- it's the powerful London with raucous neighborhoods full of taverns and marketplaces, but it's people worry it is losing its magic; dystopian Black London, closed up after destroying its magic centuries ago; and White London, trying to make a comeback after a devastating battle with the utmost evil. We also see the return of the Ferase Stras, which you must somehow find before boarding the ship of magical stuff and paying the proper price before getting what you may need.

    So we have a bevy of cunning characters, imaginative places for them to roam, and adventurous stories about royalty and magic and betrayal, urchins and bullies, love and life and death. All of the needed background is explained in the new series, but reading the previous three is well worth your time.

    This is good stuff. The overall story is compelling; the tales and anecdotes are gripping, and we are glad to be along for the ride. Even when the books top 600 pages, they are satisfying and surprisingly quick reads.

    The only flaws I find are the scenes of the battles of magic, which sometimes get a bit overdone and confusing. But rest assured, you can rip through them and stay in touch with the stories.

    -------------------------

* When I picked up the first book, I did not know it was part of a series.

** A most powerful magician in this world.

*** After all, what is science but magic with an explanation?

Book Review

Once There Were Wolves, by Charlotte McConaghy

• Where I bought this book: The Book Loft, Columbus, Ohio
• Why I bought this book: I loved her first novel, Migrations

*******

    Inti Flynn is trying to start a new community. It is one that she feels -- in her very bones and in her soul -- to be a part of, but also one she can only watch from afar. 

    Her goal is to reintroduce wolves into rural Scotland. They once lived there, but the shepherds ran them off. As a result, the deer population exploded, and the grasslands and forests are slowing dying, She knows in her heart that returning the  wolves to the area will put its envionment back into balance.

    But the community fears the wolves will kill all their sheep.

    Flynn should be the perfect candidate for the job. She can be hard, but she has a natural empathy toward others. 

    She has a condition called mirror-touch synthesis. Whenever she sees a person feeling pain or pleasure, she experiences the same feeling.  Literally: If she sees two people kissing, her lips experience the act of kissing and being kissed. On the other hand, if she watches two animals fighting, she endures what both animals suffer -- if one is bitten, she can feel the sensation of biting and the painof being bitten. She will see and feel her phantom blood flow. 

    (Yes, it's a real conidtion. I checked. It affects about 2 percent of the population.)

    Flynn -- who is mostly an introvert -- has a symbiotic relationship with her twin sister, Aggie, who has even more introverted tendencies. Aggie has a troubled psyche, having been the viction of domestic abuse and sexual assault. The sisters have a complicated relationship with their divorced parents, who live on two separate continents -- Australia and North America. Flynn also finds a lover and becomes pregnant in the novel, which is paired with the wolves mating and reproducing.

     (Yes, lots of metaphors here, which tie down the book.)

    Anyway. The book focuses on Inti bringing the wolves back, and fighting with the local shepherds -- she both upbraids them and tries to calmly bring them along. Most don't want to listen, although a few here and there are willing to hear her out. Her approach is complicated by her belief that getting too close to some of the residents will simultaneously help her understand them, as well as destroy her ability to view them from afar.

    (Another metaphor. She also takes this approach to the wolves, because if they become too comfortable with humans, they will lose part of their natural instincts for survival.)

    And, at times, the book gets almost into a detective/thriller mode (yes, there is an unsolved murder) that also tends to bog it down.

    Yet, McConaghy is such a good writer she is able to rise above the complicated mess she has gotten herself into. The book moves along with grace and style, and the story is about a community that needs to love and care for all its members, with understanding, and with a heart, and a soul.

Book Review Shuggie Bain

 Shuggie Bain, by Douglas Stuart

    Shuggie leads a sad and depressing life. 

    So does his alcoholic mother, his cheating, abusive father, his sister, and his lost-soul older brother. Indeed, this novel is full of sad and depressing people, words which also describe this ultimately disappointing book.

    None of the characters is a good person. Except for his siblings, who are minor players, you cannot root for any of them -- even Shuggie, a child who is bullied and struggling with the perception that he is not like other boys. But his character has little life of his own; although he appears to be the novel's protagonist, he seems more of a supporting character meant to showcase the fears and faults of others. 

    The child ignores reality and keeps believing his mother will eventually recover from her disease. His love for her is rarely reciprocated -- and when it is, never for very long.

    What also makes this book disappointing is that it is the 2020 winner of the Booker Prize. Usually, even being longlisted for the prize is a good sign that it's a book worthy of your reading list. This is the first time I have found that not to be the case.

    Set in Glasgow, Scotland during the 1980s, the  novel shows the changing economy of the times, as working class jobs dry up, and people fall into poverty and despair. Shuggie is a young boy growing up with the slow realization that he is gay in a paternalistic, macho culture. His mother is a self-absorbed drunk seldom available for him. His abusive father has mostly abandoned the family. Shuggie, bullied at school, alone at home, struggles to survive.

    On a positive note, the book is well written and pulls you in. But it never hits a satisfying point.

    It doesn't follow Shuggie's inner struggles and turmoil. Rather, it emphasizes the bigotry and hatred he is subjected to on a more-or-less daily basis.

    Such bitter neighbors and schoolmates are the novel's focus -- and the downtrodden working class community Shuggis is a part of is not treated with kindness or sympathy. Their poverty and despair may come from a changing economy that considers them castaways -- this is the era of Reagan and Thatcher, after all -- but the author fails to connect them to this larger social decline. 

    Instead, their poverty, malice, and despair are shows as their own fault. From pilfering coins from gas meters, to stealing whatever is nearby, to using others for their own gain, the characters are portrayed as without morals. 

Book Review: The Ninth Child

The Ninth Child, by Sally Magnusson

     This book about a Scottish faery tale is so readable because it is based on a true story.

     There really was a Scots minister by the name of Robert Kirke. He really did die under mysterious circumstances in 1692. He really was the first person to translate the Bible into Scots Gaelic, and he really did hand-cut the epitaph for his wife's gravestone, which still stands in the cemetery in Aberfoyle, Scotland.

 

     More importantly for this story, though, is that Kirke was a folklorist, who collected and wrote down the tales of the Good People. It was this work that got Kirke into trouble with the faeries. The tale is that when Kirke died, the faeries stole away his body, replacing it with one of their own. They kept him from his heaven until he performed a task in repentance.

      It is this legend -- which the great Scots author Walter Scott had a hand in spreading -- that Magnusson imagines is true, and she writes the conclusion. 

       Fast forward to 1856. Isabel Aird is a doctor's wife, a lady of leisure and fashion, a city woman. Her husband, bored and looking to expand his medical knowledge, takes a position out in the country, as the Scots attempt to blast through the rocky highlands to bring fresh water to Glasgow.

    She is frustrated as she tries to adjust to life as a country wife. She misses the luxuries of an urbane society, but she comes to enjoy the trails and fields around her home. She manages to accept the country people, and some of them enjoy her, but they can never quite put aside their suspicions of her. 

   Of course, at some point, Mrs. Aird and Rev. Kirke meet and develop a relationship. It's an uneasy one, full of missteps and mistrusts. Each is unsure of the future and the social acceptance of their friendship.

    The tale is mostly theirs, but it brings in various subplots that tie into the story. There is Mrs. Aird's inability to give birth, as she has had eight miscarriages -- and during the book, she again becomes pregnant. Her desire to have a child is strong, and her society's judgment troubles her. She attempts to branch out, and expresses a wish to learn medicine and help her husband, who too often responds with a patriarchal flippancy.

    Yet, she is surrounded by strong women: There's Kirsty McEchern, a co-narrator who provides the voice of the Highlanders whose culture Mrs. Aird moves in with. Florence Nightingale is making her own waves in the world of medicine, and Mrs. Aird sees her as a living example of what women are capable of. Victoria is the queen, a mother and a sovereign, and her strength and equal personal relationship with  her husband, Prince Albert, is a strong contrast to the lifestyles of  Mrs. Aird and most of the women of their time. 

    It's a multi-faceted book, one that will leave you thinking about it long after you've read the last page.