The Madness Underneath (by Maureen Johnson)

A big part of the charm of Maureen Johnson’s first Shades of London installment was the very successful mix of humor (typically Johnson witticisms in the dialogues) and a scary story arc. As such The Name of the Star could almost have been a story on its own: good set-up, good story development, and a fitting ending to the main plot,… except of course some of the characters belonged to the Secret Ghost Police and there were oodles of possibilities to franchise this and make it into a series,… which Johnson did.

The Madness Underneath picks up just a few weeks after the very eventful finale of The Name of the Star. We find Rory in Bristol, and no longer in London, to recover from the Ripper attack. Because she can’t really come clean about what really happened (“Yeah, so I was attacked by a ghost, and now I have these really freak ghost-zapping powers.”) without being put in the loony bin permanently, the therapy sessions she has with her therapist aren’t really that successful. Rory feels the need to open up, but there really isn’t anyone. However, for a reason that will become clear later on, her therapist decides that the best for Rory might be to go back to London and pick up her old life again, have some sort of “normal” routine again. The entire first half of the book is actually a very convincing rendering of Rory as a victim of a violent crime (even though she doesn’t really want to be considered as a victim) and her having to come to terms with what happened. Once she is back at Wexford she (consciously or not) pushes away her old friends. That means that this book is a Jazza- and Jerome-light book (not to mention that also Boo and Callum are well…afterthoughts really). I totally believed “Rory as a victim” the first 150 pages of the book. I bought it. It made sense why she’d be the whiny talkative Rory rather than the funny talkative Rory. Hey, if you’d been stabbed by the ghost of a serial killer you might be whiny too!  Unfortunately, this aspect of characterization might also be a reason for this book to be accused of suffering from “middle book syndrome” (of a 4-part series, that is), though.

Anyway, I can pinpoint exactly where Johnson lost the cat…. Actually, there were two things. The first occurred when it became clear that she is basically setting Wexford up as the Hellmouth (Like, the cracks? Really?).  Still, that in and of itself could have worked, when done right, and more importantly exclusively… Sadly, that doesn’t happen. Let me explain. The book starts with a murder. This murder plotline is abandoned for about 150 pages to focus on Rory and her settling back into school but not really being able to just resume her “normal” routine of studying for exams and all that school stuff because of all the shit that happened to her there. Now, one would hope that the second part of the novel were about that prologue murder right (that’s also how the first book was structured, btw)?

But is it? Mèh…not so much. There are a few hints here and there, but the main subplot is my second (and main) beef with this book: that totally lame-ass subplot involving a therapist and a cult. Had Johnson focused on just the one subplot – that of the murder and “the madness underneath” – this book would have been so much more exciting (without losing the victimization of Rory aspect of the book) and believable. However, as it is now, Johnson will have a hard time trying to reconcile the Buffy subplot with the True Blood subplot. I dunno, I can’t shake the impression that this books reeks of (dare I say it?) derivativeness …

In any case, this book is clearly not as developed as the first book.  Maybe with some more attention to structure (and pacing! I hate it when all the action is crammed into the 30 or so last pages of a book!), it might have been possible to successfully “conclude” this “madness underneath” murder? This book is a mere 290 pages (as opposed to the first book, which was more than 370 pages), so it just really seems only half a book.  The cat still gives this book 3 stars, though, because as always, Johnson’s writing style is very engaging, and she just has you going page after page. I’m not pleased with how half-finished this book seemed, but I’m definitely interested enough to continue with the series.

 

PS. Cover photo taken @ Soul Coffee (lemon-lime lemonade & cassis-lime lemonade)

Midwinterblood (by Marcus Sedgwick)

Two souls who long to be reunited through time is in short what Marcus Sedgwick’s Midwinterblood is about. It all starts on the mysterious Blessed Island in the year 2073 with journalist Eric Seven visiting the island and intent on writing a story about a place where apparently no children are born and people are rumored to live forever. On Blessed Island he meets a young woman, Merle, who he feels strangely drawn to although he doesn’t quite know why. At the close of the first tale, the reader ends up with more questions than answers, questions that are slowly answered by going back in time… seven times, until we get to the beginning of their destined love.

As per usual, Sedgwick’s prose is sparse and seemingly simple, which gives it its unsettling and haunting feel that most people call “gothic” (and after all, this is not just a book of love, but also one with quite a lot of violence, blood, death…). Somehow, Sedgwick always manages to give his books an almost poetic quality and Midwinterblood is no exception to this. I’m sure that Sedgwick will be accused of trying to outsmart himself with his attention to structure, genre, language and mood. But that’s not taking into consideration how engrossing this book (and many other of his books) really is: you just can’t stop reading and that’s the mark of a true artist right there.

Any Sedgwick book needs to be savored rather than devoured, though. His atmospheric prose is of the type that lingers. Blending the contemporary (e.g. the use of present tense alternated with the use of past tense for the narration of the 7 tales) with the traditional (these stories are what gothic horror tales would have been like at the heyday of “the gothic novel”!), he is so unlike many present-day “fantasy” writers, who churn out formulaic fantasy fodder. Sedgwick, on the other hand is – to use Aidan Chambers’ words – a true author and not a writer and he’s obviously not concerned with pleasing a certain type of audience, but rather in producing a work of art. Revolver, Blood Red, Snow White, Midwinterblood… all of these share this common urgency. And it works! It works for kids, it works for teens, it works for adults!

Light (by Michael Grant)

It seems the cat is suffering from Gone fatigue…  Leaving a year between installments just didn’t seem like such a good idea. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I still finished this book is record time, but it was more of a “let’s see how this ends and we’re over and done with it” kind of thing, than a “Wow, what a great and earth-shattering conclusion this really is!”

If you’ve made it till Fear – the previous book – you’re obviously going to read Light, so it’s not as if Michael Grant will lose any readers because of this book, but I doubt he’ll make any new fans either. Somehow the fights, the explosions, the violence… all of it doesn’t seem as grand anymore as in some of the previous books. The utter evil that Penny seemed to be in Fear, for instance, is somehow lost now. The only real “villain” is Gaia – the gaiaphage – but (and I blame this on Gone fatigue – she (or it) s no longer as convincingly bad as she was for instance when Caine or Lana were under its spell. Now that the gaiaphage is ‘out in the open’, so to speak, the evil that comes from her seems…expected, and her wanting to kill all and everything just for the sake of it, without any other obvious plans for what comes after… well it’s a mute sort of evilness.

Also, all the fights and near misses are just that: another fight, and another explosion, and people are just running around from Perdido Beach to wherever the gaiaphage might be next and then they fight some more, and run some more, and… you know, what was once über-electrifying (“wow, he/she fights like that, how neat is that!” or “you have got to be kidding me, killer mutant worms?????” and edge-of-your-seat excitement , is now almost normal (even the fact that some beloved characters die!) and yes, I hesitate to say it… a chore to get through until you get to the end game.

And actually, when you think about the end game and the ultimate fight… for a lot of these characters there was no conclusion, and as a result this whole last book even seemed anti-climactic, which is a weird feeling to have when your main villain is defeated, right?

Oh, one final note. The cat bought Light in a Waterstones store in Canterbury (England). Waterstones apparently got a bunch of signed books. So yeah!

Short Cuts

I Will Save You (by Matt de la Peña)

Kidd Ellison has the worst of lives. Away from the mental facility Horizons where he ended up after his mother killed herself (after she killed her abusive husband), he now lives in a tent on the beach, employed by Mr Red. In I Will Save You Matt de la Peña plays with narrative timelines as the reader has to figure out the links between Kidd and Olivia, Kidd and Mr Red, and especially Kidd and Devon, a guy Kidd met at Horizons but who now also turns up at the beach.

The book actually starts at the end of it all, when Kidd somehow pushes Devon off of a cliff, and then goes back to tell the entire story in flashback, memories, dreams and notebook entries (Kidd writes in his philosophy of life notebook). This disjointed chronology may throw you off at times, but it actually enhances the sense of desperation Kidd feels. The only thing this broken and vulnerable kid wants it to save Olivia, but when the mysterious Devon arrives and starts his devious schemes, everything Kidd wants is threatened. Even though you know from the start that something is up with Devon – there are clear hints throughout the book – I’m sure some readers will still be shocked at the ultimate twist at the end of the book.

I was a bit surprised to see this listed as a YALSA Quick Pick for Reluctant Readers, because it’s not exactly a “quick read”. On the contrary, it really does require some effort from the part of the reader. I don’t see my reluctant readers picking this up ‘quickly’. In any case, I Will Save You is a deeply moving and engaging book about a boy with an extremely troubled past and whose future is far from bright. Definitely one of the saddest books in a long time…

4 stars

 

My Swordhand is Singing (by Marcus Sedgwick)

Marcus Sedgwick is a cat favorite. One of the only writers to successfully publish work for children and young adults, his foray into the ‘darker’ genres is remarkable. In My Swordhand is Singing Sedgwick takes on the myths of the vampire. In his version of the age-old myth, there are no melodramatic romances. There are also no shining and sparkling über-creatures and irresistible doe-eyed maidens. Instead, Sedgwick focuses on the folktales that have been told all over the world, all through the ages. He sets his story in the 17^th century in the dead of winter somewhere in Eastern Europe. We get the story of a father, Tomas – a drunk – and his son Peter, both woodcutters and not liked by the villagers where they have settled. In this tale we get gypsies and the evil of the Shadow Queen. In this tale we get the ‘hostages’ (vampires), who’re only after one thing and it’s not making out with the living!

Sedgwick’s horror is so different from the fantasy horror that is usually associated with Vampire stories these days. If anything, it looks like for once we get a writer who has done his homework researching ancient folklore instead of romanticizing it. My Swordhand is Singing is by no means Sedgwick’s best work, but it already shows what this unique writer will attempt in later books too: a focus on setting (eerily so), an interest in the past, and gothic-like retellings of old tales.

3.5 stars

The Marbury Lens (by Andrew Smith)

Andrew Smith’s The Marbury Lens starts off in the harshest of ways as a contemporary urban horror story in which 16-year-old Jack gets too drunk at a party and in a weird turn of events ends up being kidnapped by a horrible man, Freddie Horvath. Horvath consequently plays brutal mind games with him, molests him and intents on doing so much more than that… Jack narrowly escapes death and in the aftermath of this kidnapping he and his best friend Connor actually kill Freddie Horvath. Yes, you get kidnapping, attempted rape and murder all in the first 50 pages of this book… but that’s only the start because things are about to get much much worse…

Jack is left with the conflicting feelings of relief and guilt when he leaves for London to spend some time there checking out a school with his friend Connor (who will join him a few days later, which means Jack’s on his own at first). The entire Freddie Horvath experience only seems like a horrific prequel to what is about to happen once Jack arrives in London. A mysterious man, Henry Hewitt, slips him a pair of weird glasses and soon Jack realizes that looking through them takes him into a whole different – ugly, brutal, devastating – world: Marbury.  From then on out, Jack is progressively slipping into and out of worlds: the world “here” and the one in Marbury. Looking into the glasses has other side effects: Jack is starting to experience time loss, he gets sick every time he comes back from Marbury. And even more questions arise: is Henry Hewitt who gave him the glasses real or is he just imagining him? And what about Connor? Why and how is it possible that in one world Connor is his best friend and in that other world Connor is like a vicious beast who tries to kill him? And what about the girl he’s met in London, Nickie? What is her link to Marbury? Why can’t she see Marbury through the glasses? The plot of this book is so dense (I haven’t even mentioned Seth and the ghost plotline and Ben and Griffin, Jack’s friends in Marbury) that you’ll be on edge just to grasp what’s happening from page to page.

Despite the fact that the cat was definitely compelled to read on, reading The Marbury Lens, cannot be called a very “pleasant” experience (not that every reading experience should be a “pleasant” one, of course). The main emotions that kept coming back were indeed negative. There was confusion because you want to know how everything is tied together and it seems like you won’t get that resolution you’re after. Is there a reason why you get the elaborate Freddie Horvath prelude? How is Seth tied to Marbury and to Jack? But it’s also a seriously disturbing and unsettling book, which in turn instilled me with feelings of unease and anxiety. Not only is the world of Marbury one of utter rage and violence and desolateness, the world that Jack lives in “here” and where he could have been the victim of someone like Freddie Horvath is seriously disturbed as well. Yet, the most obvious thing fucking up the cat’s reading experience came from Jack’s mind. Jack’s the main focalizer of the story and we’re definitely getting his story in the most un-straightforward way. For the most part we get the story through his first person narrative, but at some points he refers to himself in the third person and his narration becomes so disjointed that it is really indicative of his bizarre state of mind and his ever escalating lapse into a mental wasteland, and it left this reader wondering how much of what I was reading that’s going on in Marbury was “real” and how much was actually Jack’s coping with a very traumatic experience.

The cat doesn’t what to go into authorial intent too much – plus I haven’t read the sequel Passenger yet – but Andrew Smith lifts a little bit of the veil in a Q&A with Publisher’s Weekly: “In writing the story though I never for a moment entertained the possibility that what was happening to Jack wasn’t real. I always wrote, from my perspective, that everything that was happening to him was absolutely real.” If that really is the case, then it will be interesting to see how and why Seth’s linked to Jack, whether Henry Hewitt will make another appearance and whether there’s more to Nickie than we’ve seen so far… Even though The Marbury Lens reading experience inspired negative emotions, it’s intriguing and enticing enough to make me want to read the sequel. That is the strength of a true author.

The Marbury Lens is the type of book that will split its readership in half: it will have the most ardent lovers who will hail Andrew Smith as one of the most promising visionary authors today, but at the same time it will have the most zealous haters who can’t get past the darkness of this true horror story. The reasons for these strong emotions, though, might not even be all that disparate. The Marbury Lens is definitely a book that delves so deep into the darkest corners of the human psyche – corners that one reader will acknowledge truly exist – that it’s both scary and alluring to read about. Other readers will just abhor these dark corners so much that they can’t get past those nauseating feelings they get and will not even acknowledge how deeply different this type of book is from other psychological sci fi. Is it really sci fi even? Yes, in part, I mean seriously: glasses that show you a different world? Seems pretty far out to me! But also: no not really, because we don’t exactly know how much of everything is “real” in the world of the book, or just real in the mind of the protagonist(s), and as such it is more of a psychological thriller than a sci-fi fantasy horror tale…  Po-ta-to, po-tah-to…

The Marbury Lens is a book that divides, for sure, but all props go to Andrew Smith for attempting a whole different type of thing here. However, to be truly honest, The Marbury Lens does feel incomplete (the how and why or raison d’être, if you will, of Marbury *if* it’s an actual place, for one) and considering that it’s only the first part in a series of books can only be a part of the explanation. It also feels like Smith bit off more than he could chew. What The Marbury Lens really lacks at this point in the narration is a sense of cohesion, something to ground everything. This of course is something the cat hopes to get in the sequel…