Girl In a Cage -- Jane Yolen and Robert J. Harris, 2002 (read 27-30 June 2007)

I read this more than a month ago now, but it's stuck with me, as any good book does. Yolen and Harris do a marvelous job of pacing Marjorie Bruce's tale and of making it feel viscerally real. Marjorie's story is Scotland's story, and the story of Scotland's people; politics and daily life are woven together, and Marjorie learns that both require her considerable personal courage. Marjorie's narration moves back and forth between the long days of her captivity and the breakneck months leading up to it, allowing us to see not only her acts of valor and intelligence, but the ways she has learned to refine and govern these powers.

Girl in a Cage is apparently the second book in a planned quartet of Scottish history. Its story and characters stand alone, but I'd like to read the other books in the series; this one conveys so well the legendary victories and crushing defeats of Scottish wars against England. I'm reading other books now, about much later Scottish history, but my mental images are still very much affected by Yolen and Harris's images of rebellion, perilous flight, and noble pride.

I, Coriander -- Sally Gardner, 2005 (read 20-26 June 2007)

I was going to stop with two new reviews tonight. I know I'm way behind on posting reviews of what I've read, but really, it's time for me to go shower -- or at least get off the computer.

I'm putting off the last few pages of Outlander for this! Which, come to think of it, might be why I'm doing it; I have to wait until tomorrow afternoon at least before I can get my grubby hands on the copy of Dragonfly in Amber I requested from the library.

But my proximal excuse is that I just re-encountered the perfect quotation to complement the next book I'm due to review.

I had trouble getting into I, Coriander. I made a few false starts at the first chapter, and only really started reading at the last minute before the book was due at the library.

I had to check out another copy the same night I returned it. Here's one of the reasons why:

Fairy tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.

-- G. K. Chesterton

Gardner's world of magic is weird and disturbing even when it's beautiful, and it's frequently ugly. The things that happen to Coriander outside the magical world are the same way. What I ended up loving about this book -- what had me, in my mind, standing up and cheering for Coriander -- was this: She begins as a little girl, shocked by a sudden swing in the course of her life, and terrified of very real threats to her safety. She grows, not just into herself, but into someone who confronts her life's demons face-to-face. (And she does it without breaking character!)

I can imagine this book working magic in the life of an abused child, not least because it's not syrupy medicine, but a story anyone can fall into.

The Legend of Lady Ilena -- Patricia Malone, 2002 (read 21-24 June 2007)

I have a lot of different favorite kinds of books. The Legend of Lady Ilena is several of them!

• Believable historical fiction: Well, Ilena is completely fictional; we have no evidence that anyone like her existed. It was a stroke of genius, in my opinion, to situate her lightly in Arthurian times, a setting where it's easy for modern readers to suspend disbelief. I'm easily annoyed by implausible details in historical fiction, so I really appreciate books that suck me into the past without making me stub my toes on what a normal person would consider minor errors. Of course, any writer of historical fiction has to make a lot of things up; what matters to me is that the fiction harmonize well with what we do know. Ilena is strong and smart and very much of her own time.
  
  
• Strong women who really fit into the stories being told about them: See the last sentence above. It helps, as I said, that we don't know too much about sixth-century Britain, and it probably helps me that so much of what I do know is colored by all the historical fiction I read growing up. I also have a decided weakness for lady knights -- not the easiest characters to write into real history! Whatever their story, it's always a great pleasure for me to read characters I both like and believe in.
  
  
• Traditional stories re-explained: Malone has managed (against the odds!) to contribute something really new to the masses of historical fiction set in Arthur's time. She's done it in part by avoiding Arthur himself, leaving him a vague, faraway presence, but she's done it well.
  
  
• Just plain good writing: This is one of my basic litmus tests, of course. To really love a book, I have to enjoy its prose and its characters and the world it creates. It certainly helps if there are lines that makes me grin both with humor and with revelation. I don't know if Malone is the first one to have this insight, but I loved her idea that the unearthly barking of Hearn's Hounds (the ghostly hunt at Halloween-time -- you might remember it from The Dark Is Rising) might be the same sound as the honking of migrating geese.
  

I just love literary craftsmanship of all kinds.

I'm looking forward to checking out Malone's second Lady Ilena book; the Amazon reviews suggest that it won't be disappointing.

Anna of Byzantium -- Tracy Barrett, 1999 (read 17-18 June 2007)

Continuing my series of historical novels about strong young women...

I'm inclined to compare Anna of Byzantium to I, Claudius; I think the common theme I'm seeing is women behind the throne.

My favorite history professor always held up the BBC miniseries of I, Claudius as surprisingly historically accurate, particularly in its portrayal of the details of daily life among Roman aristocrats. I don't know as much about Byzantium as I do about Rome, but Anna seems to me to be accurate in much the same way: a creative, yet basically faithful, filling-in of personalities and events left out of the historical record.

I did have a hard time believing that Anna would have been so carefully educated to rule; still, Barrett defends the idea nicely. She also suggests that her version of Anna's education is partly a consequence of the way she compressed some major events in Anna's life into her adolescence. We know Anna was a scholar of politics and the author of the Alexiad, a major chronicle of Byzantine history, but she completed it when she was 55; I think she may have had plenty of years as an adult to educate herself in history and philosophy, and to cement this education with her keen observation of Byzantine politics.

Hattie Big Sky -- Kirby Larson, 2006 (read June 16, 2007)

A quick and compelling read, obviously. Hattie Big Sky gets off to a bit of a slow start -- too much backstory all at once, I think. The ending comes so abruptly that it doesn't quite make sense; Hattie's attitude and plans seem to change so swiftly and so completely. On the other hand, maybe that's not so surprising; Hattie is independent and adventurous enough to strike out for Montana alone at sixteen, so why shouldn't she be ready for another adventure?

I liked most of the characters Hattie meets, even some of the ones who do evil things, and I liked hearing about all of them. This book sheds a wonderful light on Montana frontier life, and on the kinds of relationships that made life possible on the frontier.

It's lovely mental exercise to compare and contrast Hattie Big Sky with Laura Ingalls Wilder's books. Both are fictionalized versions of real pioneers' lives. Their main characters have different family situations and live at least a generation apart. They face different political challenges, but the challenges of the prairie, and the ties of friendship and kinship that make it liveable, are strikingly similar. Hattie Big Sky gives us a small, richly detailed slice of one woman's life, where the Little House books (and their sequels) give us a drawn-out saga. The lives of the Little House protagonists are no less intensely lived than Hattie's, but there is more room to spread historical detail out over many books, so they are a bit gentler to read. I wish we could have a whole series about Hattie's life!

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation (Volume 1: The Pox Party) -- M.T. Anderson, 2006 (read 11-15 June 2007)

I can't say too much about this book on this blog, because Adam is just about to start reading it. It's an entertaining and horrifying book. The style is reminiscent of Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, although it's less deliberately creaky and less self-conscious. It's also, therefore, less full of in-jokes with the reader -- creaky and self-conscious can be well used.

At first, Octavian Nothing's action is also reminiscent of Quicksilver; Anderson and Stephenson are toying with some of the same elements of early modern society, including scientific societies. It soon becomes clear, however, that while Octavian Nothing may indeed be "Neal Stephenson for young adults," it's not "Quicksilver for young adults"; its themes (liberty, slavery, betrayal) and its plot (no spoilers!) are all its own.