A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab

read by steven crossley

As a gamer myself, it seems abundantly clear to me that the author of this book is also a gamer. As I was reading, I could almost see the rules for the magic system taking form around me (here is the list of magical elements; here is a description of the relationship of the planes on which the different Londons exist; here is the fumble chart for magic items—oh no, wait, you’re dealing with an Artifact, see Index D7).

Also, clearly, here are two player characters with elaborate back stories who have no reason whatsoever to hang out together (clashing alignments, anyone? Plus they come from different planes) and the GM had to go to great lengths to cause the world to not only shove them together without them killing each other, but on top of that to give them a common goal. If you’ve ever been the GM in that kind of situation, you know how annoying it can be. Herding highly territorial cheetahs.

I don’t mean this as a bad thing; quite the reverse. It's something that amused me somewhere in the back of my head as I read.

So: in the book there are four Londons (that we know of), each on a different but intersecting plane of reality. Delilah Bard is a rogue (excuse me, a resourceful and dextrous young woman with a fine appreciation for the moral gray areas of life) who comes from Grey London, where there is no such thing as magic. Kell is a magic user (excuse me, a powerful, acerbic, and somewhat arrogant man with the ability to use runes and words and blood to bend reality and travel between the planes) from Red London, where magic is abundant and the people live in harmony with it.

The two of them come into contact because of a plot originating in White London, which is a cold, miserable place where magic is all about dominance and is gradually bleeding away, along with everybody’s life force. The plot involves an artifact from Black London, which we don’t talk about, because its fate is too horrible.

Kell ends up with the artifact, Delilah swipes it from him, both come to grief in different ways, and horrific hijinks ensue. 

This is a fine fantasy novel with very high-caliber world-building. Recommend.

Down Among the Sticks and Bones (Wayward Children, Book 2) by Seanan McGuire

Note: though this book *could* stand alone, it’s not really meant to; it’s a prequel to Every Heart a Doorway, which is fantastic and should be read first. It’s the story of a very special school: Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children. It’s for children who, like Alice Liddell and Coraline Jones and the Pevensies kids and so on, went through some kind of magical doorway to an improbable realm whose rules (of manners, logic, and even physics) were not our own—and then returned to the real world.

Down Among the Sticks and Bones is the backstory of two of those students, Jack and Jill (or as their extremely rigid parents insist that they be called at all times, Jacqueline and Jillian) Wolcott. They’re twins, born to an emotionally-stunted couple with extremely firm and inflexible views about how children in general and each of their daughters specifically should behave.

Roles are assigned—Jacqueline is the “girly” one, always dressed in frilly dresses and terrorized into keeping them perfectly clean (and into a shyness and timidity that isn’t really natural to her). Jillian, who seems the more physically active of the two, is designated the "tomboy," encouraged to go outside and get muddy and given appropriate clothes for that, whether she likes it or not. Each resents her own role and her twin’s occupation of the role she thinks she’d prefer, and over the years they grow to dislike one another.

They do have a loving grandmother who cares for them and encourages them to love each other and to be exactly who they are, rather than who their parents want them to be. But she’s banished from their lives on their 5th birthday, never to be seen again. The girls are encouraged to think their beloved grandmother didn't love them enough to stay, and they grow up living with that terrible "knowledge."

Once the story gets properly going, the girls find a magic staircase in what should have been an old trunk full of dress-up clothes. Of course they go down it—hundreds, or maybe thousands, of steps down into the earth. At the bottom they find a door labeled “Be sure.” One twin is definitely more sure than the other—but nevertheless they open it and step through, and find themselves on a dark, rolling moor. They pick a direction and start walking--and anything more than that would be a spoiler.

Let’s just say the world they find themselves in is deeply creepy.

I loved lots of things about this book. The world building is definitely its strength, the language is drily quirky, and you can’t help but empathize with these poor kids. However, it’s too slender a book. And it gets that way by skimping on what would, to me, have been the most interesting part: the process by which each girl learns and grows into her new role in their new reality.

If it had been up to me, the book would have been twice as long and included a chapter apiece, for each twin, on each of the five years spent in The Moors that are covered in this book. The twins are such interesting characters, and the Moors are such a fascinating place, that it’s a real disappointment not being able to spend sufficient time with either.

Lacking that, though, it’s still a beautifully-written little story, with numerous archly humorous lines that had me laughing out loud. If you’re a fan of Every Heart a Doorway, you’ll definitely want to read this.

The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman: #tbt review

Full disclosure: I love this series so much that I'm planning to get an alethiometer tattoo when I'm feeling a little more flush. (After the scarlet A and the Deathly Hallows symbol, that is.) My second time through the series (I've read it three times now) was on audio CDs in my car when my kid was 5 years old, and even though it was far too advanced for them at the time, they fell in love with it too. I wrote this review after my second reading but before the third, and long before the prequel was published.

So:

In this alternate universe where people’s souls have a physical reality and manifest themselves outside people’s bodies as animal-shaped “daemons,” and the Magisterium (think of the Catholic Church during the days of the Inquisition) rules politics, morality, and, as far as possible, people's minds, Lyra is an orphan who lives at Jordan College, Oxford. She is being raised haphazardly amid the benign neglect of the professors there and has a good, if chaotic, life.

Then a mysterious relative appears and Lyra saves his life; she ends up with a unique artifact called an alethiometer (the eponymous Golden Compass), in her possession; her friend Roger is disappeared by the much-feared Gobblers; and she is taken to live with the beautiful, self-willed Mrs. Coulter, whom the Jordan scholars obviously fear. Now Lyra needs to learn the nature of the relationship between all of these events, and what they have to do with Dust, a substance whose very existence is inimical to the Magisterium, and which nobody is supposed to know about--least of all a half-wild young girl.

This is an incredibly beautiful metaphysical work (I can't just call it a work of fantasy, though it is that) about the nature of truth and the soul, along the lines of the best C. S. Lewis books--but written by someone with a deep distrust of organized religion and of anybody who withholds important truths in order to control people.

The protagonist, Lyra, is a liar, a teller of tales, and the product of a society based on lies, brought up not knowing the most basic facts of her existence. But she is also intelligent, resourceful, intensely curious, and deeply loyal to her friends. This gets her into trouble, of course, but it may also be, along with her boundless ability to love and her fierce determination to find her disappeared friend, what ultimately saves her and her world.

Five out of five stars. At least.