Genre: retellings

A- #BookReview: Queen Macbeth by Val McDermid

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
A- #BookReview: Queen Macbeth by Val McDermidQueen Macbeth by Val McDermid
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, retellings, Scottish history
Series: Darkland Tales #5
Pages: 144
Published by Atlantic Monthly Press on September 24, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Shakespeare fed us the myth of the Macbeths as murderous conspirators. But now Val McDermid drags the truth out of the shadows, exposing the patriarchal prejudices of history. Expect the unexpected . . .
A thousand years ago in an ancient Scottish landscape, a woman is on the run with her three companions – a healer, a weaver and a seer. The men hunting her will kill her – because she is the only one who stands between them and their violent ambition. She is no lady: she is the first queen of Scotland, married to a king called Macbeth.
As the net closes in, we discover a tale of passion, forced marriage, bloody massacre and the harsh realities of medieval Scotland. At the heart of it is one strong, charismatic woman, who survived loss and jeopardy to outwit the endless plotting of a string of ruthless and power-hungry men. Her struggle won her a country. But now it could cost her life.

My Review:

Shakespeare, for the most part, did an excellent job of writing stories that made an indelible imprint on the public consciousness – and still do. It’s pretty much impossible to hear the name “Macbeth” and not think of the version of both the title character AND his lady as ambitious traitors and multiple murderers driven by supernatural forces and haunted by ghosts.

Just as it’s nearly impossible to think of Richard III without having Shakespeare’s portrayal of an evil mastermind who killed his nephews and lost his crown – in spite of the evidence that has come to light refuting nearly all of it.

Shakespeare’s stories are just better, and considerably more memorable than the actual tales that history tells. Whoever he was, he was damn good at his job. Part of which was to please the powers-that-be of his day, so that his plays could continue to be produced and performed – and so that he could keep himself out of prison and his head attached to his shoulders.

Which is where the genesis of many of Shakespeare’s historical plays, including both of the above, comes in. Just as Richard III was a real, historical figure in English history, so too was Macbeth a real, historical figure of Scottish history.

A figure about whom little is known, because the historical Macbeth lived in the early to mid-11th century and there isn’t much in the historic record. Probably something to do with that being the historical period known as “The Dark Ages”.

Shakespeare lived, and wrote, in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, nearly 600 years later. He based many of his historical plays on Holinshed’s Chronicles, a famous – but later considered infamously inaccurate – ‘comprehensive’ history that was published in Shakespeare’s time.

In other words, Shakespeare made a lot of things up, and a lot of the things he didn’t make up were based on the things that Holinshed made up.

Which is precisely where this retelling of the Macbeth story comes in, told not from Macbeth’s perspective or even featuring Macbeth as the central character, but instead told from the perspective of Gruoch, Macbeth’s, ‘lady’, or more historically correct, his ‘queen’.

Although, as seen from this point of view, it seems that Gruoch may have been the prime mover of events after all, with the help of her own coven of ‘witches’. Which may explain precisely why Shakespeare reduced her to a secondary character – and a villainous one at that.

Escape Rating A-: I picked up Queen Macbeth because this is the second retelling of the Macbeth story from Gruoch’s perspective, set in something much closer to the historical context, to be published this year. The other being Lady Macbeth by Ava Reid.

While the two books come out of very similar premises, they surprisingly don’t resemble each other at all. Lady Macbeth leans quite a bit on the supernatural/paranormal potential that derives from Shakespeare’s version, with family curses and chained witches and imprisoned seers – with a dragon lover as Gruoch’s reward for dealing with Macbeth. Her version makes Macbeth the villain and Gruoch a victim who finally takes matters into her own hands.

This version, Queen Macbeth (which I personally liked a bit better), hews closer to what is known about the historical figures and the original time period. Gruoch and her ladies are always in danger of being called out as witches, but their witchcraft is of the herbal, medicinal and occasionally poisonous variety. One seems to have visions of the future that often, but not always, come true – but that’s as far as the supernatural element seems to go.

Mostly, it’s that Gruoch and her women are intelligent, educated and independent, and as is known from the witch trials of centuries later, that’s was often all it took for women to be condemned as ‘unnatural’ and in league with the forces of evil.

The story of this Gruoch and her Macbeth tells a story of political machinations, true partnership and enduring romance – even as it includes a happy ever after, of a sort, that is plausible based on what is known but unlikely – and makes for a satisfying, if somewhat open ended, conclusion for the reader.

Howsomever, as little as this version of the Macbeth story owes to Shakespeare, in the reading of it it seems to owe considerably more to a different chronicler. Specifically, this reader at least saw a lot of resemblance to Guinevere’s story in Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur (The Death of Arthur). Although, again, with a considerably happier ending, if only because there’s neither a Lancelot or a Mordred to mess things up.

I’m aware that I keep talking ‘around’ this story instead of ‘about’ this story because a) it’s not exactly new, it’s part of the literary trend of telling classic stories from a female perspective that was popularized by Madeline Miller’s Circe a few years back, and 2) the circumstances that surround this particular participant in that trend grabbed me more than the story itself. A fascination that only grew when I learned that this book is the latest in a series of Darkland Tales, which reexamine and even re-imagine some of the darkest chapters of Scottish history by 21st century writers. The other stories in this series so far, Rizzio by Denise Mina, Hex by Jenni Fagan, Nothing Left to Fear from Hell by Alan Warner, and Columba’s Bones by David Greig, all intrigue me, but particularly Rizzio with its connections to the court of Mary, Queen of Scots.

They all look like stories to turn to on a dark and stormy night, and I plan to do exactly that when the mood strikes.

#BookReview: Lady Macbeth by Ava Reid

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B+ Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: Lady Macbeth by Ava ReidLady Macbeth by Ava Reid
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: Gothic, historical fantasy, historical fiction, retellings
Pages: 320
Published by Del Rey on August 13, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Ava Reid comes a reimagining of Lady Macbeth, Shakespeare’s most famous villainess, giving her a voice, a past, and a power that transforms the story men have written for her.
The Lady knows the stories: how her eyes induce madness in men. 
The Lady knows she will be wed to the Scottish brute, who does not leave his warrior ways behind when he comes to the marriage bed.  
The Lady knows his hostile, suspicious court will be a game of strategy, requiring all of her wiles and hidden witchcraft to survive. 
But the Lady does not know her husband has occult secrets of his own. She does not know that prophecy girds him like armor. She does not know that her magic is greater and more dangerous, and that it will threaten the order of the world. 
She does not know this yet. But she will.

My Review:

This is another story we think we know.. We certainly do know how it ends, thanks to the Bard and “ Out, damned spot! out, I say!” although we usually get it wrong and misquote it as “Out, out damned spot!”

But do we really know anything at all? Shakespeare certainly played fast and loose with any history he got near, whether for dramatic license or to please the current monarch or, if at all possible, as much of both as he could cram into four acts.

Lady Macbeth observes King Duncan (Lady Macbeth by George Cattermole, 19th century)

Lady Macbeth, as a character in the play, comes off as an evil, villainous, witch – whether she actually practiced witchcraft or not. But was she really – and whether or not she was, how would Shakespeare know?

Because as much as we tend to think that all the past is just jammed together in a big ball of timey-wimey bits, the reality is that FIVE CENTURIES separate the historical Lord and Lady Macbeth from Shakespeare’s dramatically licensed interpretation.

In other words, he didn’t actually know a damned thing and neither do we, making his version entirely fictional and this book a thoroughgoing reinterpretation of that well-known fiction. This is a case where we don’t even know what we think we know.

So what do we have here? Lady Macbeth, the book in the hand and not the play in the mind, is part of the phenomenon of telling – or rather reinterpreting – a well-known story from the perspective of a female central character. A character who was either silent or just hard done by  in the male-centric version that put a man in the center of a story that may not even have been his in the first place – and didn’t bother to reckon with the restrictions and assumptions that hedged around women’s lives.

This Lady Macbeth, while she is certainly a schemer, is mostly scheming for her own survival in a world that makes her the property of her scheming father until he sells her to her murderous husband.

To put it another way, she’s doing the best she can to stay alive with the tools she has – her beauty, her position to a VERY limited extent, and the reputation her father has created for her as a powerful witch.

Which she might very well be, after all.

Escape Rating B+: I picked this one up and surprised myself by getting immediately stuck into it and couldn’t put it down. So definitely tick off the box for compelling. At the same time, I had the feeling that I’d read this one before. Not exactly this book, but something very much like it in its reinterpretation of a familiar character, and its female-centric but not feminist perspective.

(If you’re wondering – as I was – it reminds me of The Nightingale’s Castle by Sonia Velton, which gives Countess Bathory a similar treatment. Also, her portrait of Lord Macbeth reads like it owes a lot of its physical description to Henry VIII of England – which was just a bit weird. Plausible based on the limited information about the historical ‘King Hereafter’, but still odd to read.)

On the one hand, what makes this work is that we’re inside Lady Roscille Macbeth’s head, so we see her motivations and her mistakes, and intimately understand why she does the things she does. At the same time, we see her inexperience and naivete, because the poor girl is only 17 and a stranger in a strange land at that, when she is forced to marry Lord Macbeth.

One thing that her perspective emphasizes very clearly is that his is the power, not hers, no matter her reputation. Her choices are always circumscribed by his complete power over her very existence. He has all the choices – at least at the beginning. Towards the end it’s his previous acts that constrain those choices, not hers.

(Her angst over the things she has done, and their effect upon her ‘soul’ may go on just a bit too long for 21st century readers as it certainly did for this one. The past is another country, they did things differently there.)

In the end, she was the dagger, often, but he was always the hand wielding it, which is not at all what the play would lead one to believe. And has led most readers and viewers, over the centuries. Seeing that possibility, that perspective, through the eyes and mind of that dagger, kept me riveted to the story – as if at knife point.

A+ #BookReview: A Sorceress Comes to Call by T. Kingfisher

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A+ Reviews> book reviews
A+ #BookReview: A Sorceress Comes to Call by T. KingfisherA Sorceress Comes to Call by T. Kingfisher
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: Dark Fantasy, fairy tales, fantasy, horror, retellings
Pages: 336
Published by Tor Books on August 6, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

A dark retelling of the Brothers Grimm's Goose Girl, rife with secrets, murder, and forbidden magic
Cordelia knows her mother is unusual. Their house doesn’t have any doors between rooms, and her mother doesn't allow Cordelia to have a single friend—unless you count Falada, her mother's beautiful white horse. The only time Cordelia feels truly free is on her daily rides with him. But more than simple eccentricity sets her mother apart. Other mothers don’t force their daughters to be silent and motionless for hours, sometimes days, on end. Other mothers aren’t sorcerers.
After a suspicious death in their small town, Cordelia’s mother insists they leave in the middle of the night, riding away on Falada’s sturdy back, leaving behind all Cordelia has ever known. They arrive at the remote country manor of a wealthy older man, the Squire, and his unwed sister, Hester. Cordelia’s mother intends to lure the Squire into marriage, and Cordelia knows this can only be bad news for the bumbling gentleman and his kind, intelligent sister.
Hester sees the way Cordelia shrinks away from her mother, how the young girl sits eerily still at dinner every night. Hester knows that to save her brother from bewitchment and to rescue the terrified Cordelia, she will have to face down a wicked witch of the worst kind.

My Review:

The name of that sorceress who comes to call on Hester Chatham and her brother the Squire is “DOOM!”.

That’s not what she was christened with – assuming she was christened at all. Or baptized or anything like that because she’s clearly evil. This evil has a name, and it’s Evangeline. She’s hoping to change that to Mrs. Squire, but in order to get her way she’ll have to get past the Squire’s sister, Hester.

Evil is sure that Hester will be a pushover – or she’ll simply push her over a balcony. After all, she’s done it before. She even does it right in front of Hester to one of Hester’s dearest friends.

But evil, as that saying goes, only triumphs when good men stand by and do nothing. Evil’s magic is such that most of the men, including the Squire, are quite literally standing by and doing nothing as she has utterly ensorcelled them – or at least the ones she thinks are important.

Seeing her friend die, watching her brother succumb to the sorceress’ seductive magic, discovering that the sorceress’ daughter is ANYTHING but her mother’s accomplice, spurs Hester to ACT. To do whatever she can and however she must in order to save her brother, her friends and even the sorceress’ desperate and despairing daughter.

All their lives hang in the teetering balance.

Escape Rating A+: This wasn’t what I expected, although having read quite a bit of the author’s work, I probably should have. I also had zero recollection of the fairy tale the story is loosely based on (The Goose Girl if you’re curious too), and that didn’t matter a bit, although if the idea of that drives you bonkers there’s a summary in Wikipedia, which some Wikipedian needs to edit to include this book in the list of adaptations.

Kingfisher writes both fantasy and horror and often in that mushy middle between the two. While this one is in that middle, it leans more to the fantasy side the way that the equally awesome (and award-winning!) Nettle and Bone did, rather than hewing closer to the horror side the way that her Sworn Soldier series (What Moves the Dead and What Feasts at Night) does.

Not that the acts that the sorceress commits are not plenty horrific – because they completely, utterly and absolutely are. But the way the story works its way out of her evil feels more like a fantasy. It also specifically feels a bit like a very specific fantasy, Miss Percy’s Pocket Guide to the Care and Feeding of British Dragons by Quenby Olson. I’m certain that Hester and Miss Percy would be the very best of friends – and would have PLENTY of common ground to talk about!

I certainly enjoyed both stories for the same reason, their marvelous middle-aged female protagonists who take terrible matters into their own hands – after a bit of quite reasonable and reasoning reluctance – in order to get the best of the evil bitch attempting to put them down so they can save the day.

Which is when I felt like I got hit with a clue-by-four, to the point of chagrin that I didn’t figure out a whole bunch of things sooner. Not the way that Hester got the best of the sorceress, but rather the way that the story as a whole worked. And, as I mulled things over more than a bit, the way that Nettle and Bone and What Feasts at Night and a LOT of the author’s work, well, works.

The stories are feminist by example rather than by hitting the reader over the head with feminism. They simply show that women are beyond capable of doing all the things that men do, including being insufferably and thoughtlessly and selfishly and unironically evil

Meanwhile, the male characters serve in secondary roles. You know what I mean, the roles that women normally fill. In this story, and now that I think of it in much of the author’s work, women fill the big parts and do the big things, while men are the assistants, the helpmeets, the love interests, the dupes, and the fools. They’re sidekicks. And even, as in the case of Hester’s brother the Squire, they can be TSTL.

Which he absolutely is. He’s just lucky that Hester absolutely is not.

The icing on the cake of this story is that the Squire merely gets a lucky escape, while Hester is the one who deserved and certainly earned a glorious happy ever after.

#BookReview: Daughters of Olympus by Hannah M. Lynn

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: Daughters of Olympus by Hannah M. LynnDaughters of Olympus by Hannah M. Lynn
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: fantasy, mythology, retellings
Pages: 336
Published by Sourcebooks Landmark on July 9, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

A daughter pulled between two worlds and a mother willing destroy both to protect her...
Gods and men wage their petty wars, but it is the women of spring who will have the last word...
Demeter did not always live in fear. Once, the goddess of spring loved the world and the humans who inhabited it. After a devastating assault, though, she becomes a shell of herself. Her only solace is her daughter, Persephone.
A balm to her mother's pain, Persephone grows among wildflowers, never leaving the sanctuary Demeter built for them. But she aches to explore the mortal world--to gain her own experiences. Naïve but determined, she secretly builds a life of her own under her mother's watchful gaze. But as she does so, she catches the eye of Hades, and is kidnapped...
Forced into a role she never wanted, Persephone learns that power suits her. In the land of the living, though, Demeter is willing to destroy the humans she once held dear--anything to protect her family. A mother who has lost everything and a daughter with more to gain than she ever realized, their story will irrevocably shape the world.

My Review:

Whether gods make men in their own image, or the other way around, either way it’s NOT a compliment. But it does explain a whole damn lot about the behavior of Zeus and his Olympians.

This is not a pretty story. It’s a reminder that the versions of Greek mythology we all read in school were sanitized to the max and absolutely written from a male perspective. That’s pretty much the only reason I can think of for the cavalier treatment of Zeus’ utter lack of faithfulness to his wife. Not to mention how many of the females who bore his demi-god and demi-goddess offspring said “NO” and ran as far and as fast as they could – even if that wasn’t enough.

So it’s not a stretch to believe that Zeus raped his sister Demeter to create Persephone. It’s all too typical of his behavior. Also utterly infuriating.

Which made Daughters of Olympus a fascinating rage read, because it made me look at something that was a familiar and even beloved part of my childhood reading in an entirely new and retrospectively furious way.

Escape Rating B: I ended up with mixed feelings about this book. At first, I was all in with Demeter’s point-of-view of the way things worked in her world – or rather, the way they mostly didn’t and she always ended up suffering at the hands of her brothers and fellow Olympians. Particularly Zeus. ESPECIALLY Zeus.

To the point where she spends centuries hiding away from her brother, her fellow Olympians, and the whole damn world. As much as I wanted her to stand up and take charge of at least her own fate and destiny – that’s not the way the myths go.

It’s only when the story switches to Persephone and after she is kidnapped by Hades at that, that we start seeing something different emerge – even as Persephone rails against Hades and the fate her father Zeus’ bargains have condemned her to.

What makes this retelling of Greek mythology work is that we see the old familiar stories from the perspective of characters who don’t have their own voices in the versions we originally learned. However, this is a feminine perspective and not a feminist one – regardless of which one the reader might prefer.

Meaning that Demeter and Persephone may be the predominant voices of this retelling, but their agency is still significantly limited. They can run, they can hide, but they can’t overpower – at least not until Demeter takes the reins of her own power to enact a different but still traditional feminine aspect – that of the protective, and if necessary avenging – mother.

So, if you’re looking for a retelling of familiar stories from a different perspective – but not expecting a different ending, Daughters of Olympus has an interesting tale to tell – particularly after Demeter finally breaks through her isolation to find her daughter and Persephone picks up the reins of the power that Hades is willing to give her.

Just don’t expect the story to end differently than we already know that it does. In that respect it’s similar to Kaikeyi by Vaishnavi Patel, in that a traditional story is told from the perspective of an often overshadowed female character, but the outcomes are not and cannot be changed.

Dammit.

#BookReview: Lost Ark Dreaming by Suyi Davies Okungbowa

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: Lost Ark Dreaming by Suyi Davies OkungbowaLost Ark Dreaming by Suyi Davies Okungbowa
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: dystopian, mythology, post apocalyptic, retellings, science fiction
Pages: 192
Published by Tordotcom on May 21, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

The brutally engineered class divisions of Snowpiercer meets Rivers Solomon’s The Deep in this high-octane post-climate disaster novella written by Nommo Award-winning author Suyi Davies Okungbowa

Off the coast of West Africa, decades after the dangerous rise of the Atlantic Ocean, the region’s survivors live inside five partially submerged, kilometers-high towers originally created as a playground for the wealthy. Now the towers’ most affluent rule from their lofty perch at the top while the rest are crammed into the dark, fetid floors below sea level.

There are also those who were left for dead in the Atlantic, only to be reawakened by an ancient power, and who seek vengeance on those who offered them up to the waves.

Three lives within the towers are pulled to the fore of this Yekini, an earnest, mid-level rookie analyst; Tuoyo, an undersea mechanic mourning a tremendous loss; and Ngozi, an egotistical bureaucrat from the highest levels of governance. They will need to work together if there is to be any hope of a future that is worth living―for everyone.

My Review:

Noah’s Ark isn’t the only, let’s call it an ancestral tale, of a great flood that once upon a time, a long, long time ago, wiped out civilization as the variations of ancient civilizations that existed then knew it.

In other words, Noah wasn’t the only mythical being who built an ark, and our Bible isn’t the only religious document, myth or legend where such an event was recorded and/or told and/or remembered.

This has all happened before, and it will all happen again.

Which is, in its largest frame, the story in Lost Ark Dreaming. Because the flood itself has already happened again. This is the story about the creation of the ark that will save humanity as backward as that may seem.

It’s about the form that the ark will take this time – and about who it will save. If anyone is worth saving.

That part is the story of Lost Ark Dreaming in its smaller frame, of the story being told in its ‘here and now’ – a near-future, drowning, dystopia and the tiny group of outsiders, heroes,and potential saviors who may have to die to bring a message of hope to people that need it more than they recognize – no matter how much the earthly powers-that-be reassure them that all is well.

Because all is far from well, and the foundations of anything that once might have approached that well are crumbling around them – literally – and taking everyone and everything with them. Again.

Unless this Ark can manage to carry them all. At last.

Escape Rating B: This is a story that travels in layers, come to think of it a bit like the decks of an actual ark. It’s also an SF story that toes right up to the line of fantasy – or at least to mythic retellings – but doesn’t exactly go over that line. At least not completely.

At first, setting is both very SFnal and rather familiar. The Pinnacle is just the kind of ossified, stratified society that develops in stories about generation ships on long voyages. It reminded me more than a bit of Medusa Uploaded or Braking Day, in that generation after generation has lived on in this one, remaining, isolated structure and over the decades people have become locked into the places that their parents were born into as the elite levels become further and further out of touch from the people who lives they control.

(This is the point where I wanted a little bit more of the background that there just isn’t room for in a novella. The worldbuilding is tight and solid but very insular, which left me wondering a LOT about the rest of humanity as we know it and whether there’s any contact with the rest of the world – if there still is one above the waves.)

The protagonists represent the various strata of that society, as well as the desperation of those who have risen through some of the possible ranks to maintain their level of comfort and the contempt with which those who have achieved or been born into those middle-levels treat the literal “lowers” who live below them and maintain the structure that they ALL rely on.

At the same time, the way that the “midders” treat the “lowers” and the way that the “uppers” defer maintenance and budgets for the nitty-gritty but absolutely and literally fundamental infrastructure reads entirely too much like the way that governments have always operated and probably will centuries from now as well – if there are any, that is.

In other words, the whole thing is headed straight for a ‘perfect storm’, and so are we because their now isn’t all that far in our future.

What lifts the story up and out of the mire is where the fantasy/mythic retelling elements come in – in ways that will remind readers of Rivers Solomon’s The Deep and Leslye Penelope’s Daughter of the Merciful Deep. Because the humans in the tower are not the only people who need to find a way out of the vicious cycle. All the denizens of the deep have to do is find a way to communicate and find common ground with the ‘towerzens’ who are still willing and able to listen.

It felt like there were two stories in Lost Ark Dreaming, two great tastes that in the end did go great together.  I got hooked by the SFnal setting, some readers will get caught up in the ‘hero-tale’ of the outsiders finding a way to get past the structures that keep their people isolated, while others will fall for the idea of the drowned and the lost finding a new form of life and all the myths and legends they have gathered up in that making.

That the whole thing is wrapped up in a tale of fighting the odds against a repressive dictatorship makes the whole story that much more compelling.

In the end, the conclusion of the story is one of immediate triumph and long-term hope – but it doesn’t have to work out that in the long run but it could all STILL be happening yet again. It’s left for the reader to decide. Which I am, still.

Review: The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch by Melinda Taub

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> blog tours> book reviews
Review: The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch by Melinda TaubThe Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch by Melinda Taub
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, retellings
Pages: 400
Published by Grand Central Publishing on October 3, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

A sparkling, witchy reimagining of Pride and Prejudice, told from the perspective of the troublesome and—according to her—much-maligned youngest Bennet sister, Lydia.
In this exuberant reimagining of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Lydia Bennet puts pen to paper to relate the real events and aftermath of the classic story from her own perspective. Some facts are well known: Mrs. Bennet suffers from her nerves; Mr. Bennet suffers from Mrs. Bennet, and all five daughters suffer from an estate that is entailed only to male heirs.
But Lydia also suffers from entirely different concerns: her best-loved sister Kitty is really a barn cat, and Wickham is every bit as wicked as the world believes him to be, but what else would you expect from a demon? And if you think Mr. Darcy was uptight about dancing etiquette, wait till you see how he reacts to witchcraft. Most of all, Lydia has yet to learn that when you’re a witch, promises have power . . .
Full of enchantment, intrigue, danger, and boundless magic, The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch, has all the irreverent wit, strength, and romance of Pride and Prejudice—while offering a highly unexpected redemption for the wildest Bennet sister.

My Review:

I have to confess something. I’m not all that fond of Pride and Prejudice. I did like it when I listened to it, but I didn’t LOVE it the way that so many readers do. Mrs. Bennet drove me as far around the twist as she clearly did Mr. Bennet, which just made the whole thing hard to take. So I’m not a huge fan.

Now that I’ve got that out of my system, let’s get into this new P&P reinterpretation, The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch. Which, in spite of not being nearly as scandalous as Lydia Bennet claims they are, turned out to be a surprising amount of fun.

At the heart of this reimagining of the classic is that bit that comes after the comma in the title. Lydia Bennet was ALWAYS scandalous, at least as far as society’s definitions were concerned. That’s not exactly news, although even the reasons she courted all that scandal and exactly how she fell into it are considerably different here than they seemed to be in the original.

And it’s all due to that one little word, ‘Witch’. In this look at the Bennet family, it’s not a metaphor, and it’s absolutely not a way of saying ‘bitch’ without actually saying it. Lydia Bennet, the disgraced and disgraceful youngest Bennet daughter, is an actual, practicing (although sometimes not nearly enough) witch.

As is her aunt – and a surprising number of the women around Longbourn. Her aunt is her first teacher, the local coven are her first sisters in the Craft, and young Lydia doesn’t learn nearly enough from either of them.

Which leads to all the trouble she eventually finds herself in. Because nothing and no one she meets is exactly what they seem – and Lydia is much too young and naive to figure that out before it’s much too late.

Escape Rating B: This wants to be Lydia Bennet’s redemption story. Or rather, the way it’s written, as Lydia’s confessional to an initially unnamed party, Lydia thinks it’s her redemption story when it’s actually not. It IS a confession, of sorts, but it’s a self-justification story. It’s her long-winded explanation of everything that happened and why it happened the way it did. It’s her attempt to win forgiveness. A forgiveness she only proves herself deserving of when she DOESN’T send the damn thing.

Lydia’s long-winded confession – it’s not that the book itself is long-winded but Lydia IS rather fascinated with the words coming out of her pen – occasionally interspersed with Lydia’s perspective on the events that are happening around her while she’s writing about the things she’s already done that brought her to this point, does an excellent job of pulling the reader into Lydia’s thoughts and her world.

Whether she actually manages to justify any of her behavior is an entirely different story, but it’s fascinating to watch her try.

In the end, Lydia comes off as naive, pragmatic and expedient in equal measure. She does the things she does because she feels her acts are the only possible choice she has at the time, and it’s only afterwards that she sees that she’s made terrible mistakes. Not because she’s a terrible person, but because at the time she simply doesn’t know any better. It reminds the reader rather forcibly that Lydia is ONLY 15 in a world that sheltered young women to what now seems an impossible and unconscionable degree.

The thing that made this work for me wasn’t the strong link to Pride and Prejudice, but rather the strength of its story of female friendship and sisterhood, and its reminder that in the end, the villains are merely human and that humans are the true monsters after all. (The witchy politics reminded me rather a lot of Her Majesty’s Royal Coven in spite of the two centuries that lie between their settings.)

So if you’re a big fan of P&P, this reimagining of the classic – with witches and talking cats! – takes the story in a magical direction but doesn’t go over the top to the place that Pride and Prejudice and Zombies camped out to. It doesn’t hew quite as closely to the more realistic interpretation in The Other Bennet Sister by Janice Hadlow but still puts a new spin on a very familiar character.

I still don’t really like Lydia, and her mother is a straight-up nightmare, but this story did give me a much more sympathetic understanding of Lydia’s character although her parents and their relationship still drive me batty. Howsomever, while I still may not like Lydia, this paranormal perspective of her story does put her in a whole new light – and it’s a whole lot of fun into the bargain!

Review: Thornhedge by T. Kingfisher

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> audio reviews> audiobooks> book reviews
Review: Thornhedge by T. KingfisherThornhedge by T. Kingfisher
Narrator: Jennifer Blom
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss, supplied by publisher via Libro.fm
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: Dark Fantasy, fairy tales, fantasy, retellings
Pages: 128
Length: 3 hours and 43 minutes
Published by Tor Books on August 15, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

From USA Today bestselling author T. Kingfisher, Thornhedge is an original, subversive fairytale about a kind-hearted, toad-shaped heroine, a gentle knight, and a mission gone completely sideways.
There’s a princess trapped in a tower. This isn't her story.
Meet Toadling. On the day of her birth, she was stolen from her family by the fairies, but she grew up safe and loved in the warm waters of faerieland. Once an adult though, the fae ask a favor of Toadling: return to the human world and offer a blessing of protection to a newborn child. Simple, right?
If only.
Centuries later, a knight approaches a towering wall of brambles, where the thorns are as thick as your arm and as sharp as swords. He’s heard there’s a curse here that needs breaking, but it’s a curse Toadling will do anything to uphold…

My Review:

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful princess who was cursed by an evil fairy godmother to prick her finger on a spinning wheel’s spindle and sleep for a century – along with everyone else who inhabits that castle. This isn’t that story. That’s the story that was made from this one, when the truth needed to be spindled in order to make the story fit a more conventional mold.

Because in all the stories, evil is supposed to be ugly and anyone beautiful must be good. Which is what makes it a story, because in truth, evil often wears a very pretty face – all the better to hide the rot within. But that’s not the way the story is supposed to go – so it didn’t.

The truth, or at least this version of the truth – is considerably different – as the truth generally is.

Toadling has watched seasons change and years pass beyond counting, guarding the thornhedge that surrounds the darkling woods that encase the decaying castle where the beautiful princess sleeps a troubled, enchanted sleep. Once upon a time, Toadling was human. Once upon a time, she might have been that princess.

Once upon a time, she made a terrible mistake that put her exactly where she is, standing guard, doing her sometimes human, sometimes toad-like best to perform her self-imposed duty of keeping the princess safe – and keeping everyone else safe from the princess.

Just as Toadling is almost, almost sure that all knowledge of the lost princess and the crumbling tower has slipping out of time and mind of the rest of the world, her sanctuary is invaded in the kindliest and most annoyingly frustrating – at least for Toadling – way possible. The knight Halim has a burning need to solve the mystery. If there’s a princess imprisoned in the crumbling castle, he’ll certainly rescue her – after all, he is a knight – if not either a very good or very successful one. But his primary motivation isn’t the princess, it’s solving the puzzle.

Which, in the end, he does. Just not the way that Toadling feared. Or even worse, hoped.

Escape Rating A: Thornhedge is a fractured fairy tale. In fact, Thornhedge and A Spindle Splintered are fractured versions of the same fairy tale, that of Sleeping Beauty. But they have been fractured along very different fault lines.

It’s because they start with different questions. A Spindle Splintered asked whether there were ways for Sleeping Beauty to escape her destiny, and what would happen if she tried, and then proceeded to play out those variations across the multiverse.

Thornhedge goes back to the beginning of the story and asks a fundamental question about why it was necessary for the princess to be ensconced in that castle so thoroughly in the first place. The answer to that question sets the fairy tale entirely on its head but also makes the story considerably more interesting.

Instead of a ‘fridged’ heroine who gets top billing but does nothing to earn it, we get a lovely story about friendship and duty and guilt and spending a lifetime making up for someone else’s mistakes and cleaning up after someone else’s messes and finally, finally participating in your own rescue.

Because this isn’t really the Sleeping Beauty story at all, but in a totally different way than Sleeping Beauty wasn’t actually Sleeping Beauty’s own story.

Instead it’s a story about friendship and guilt and learning to be – not who you are supposed to be, but who you really are. That the lesson turns out to be just as much for Halim the Knight as it is for Toadling the fairy is just the teeniest, tiny part of what makes Thornhedge such a lovely read.

Or in my case, reread. I read this for a Library Journal review a few months back, and loved it as I do all of T. Kingfisher’s work, but not quite as much as I did Nettle & Bone. Listening to it now brought all the best parts back – particularly the perspective of the princess turned Toadling in her frustration, her longing, and her utterly justified anger at everything that brought her to this pass. Including herself.

The way in which she rescues herself, and Halim, and finally gets the future she wants now and the home she wants later, was beautiful. As is Toadling, even if neither the reader nor Halim notice it at first. Because this is Toadling’s story, and she’s the heroine, and heroines are supposed to be beautiful. So she is, and so is her story.

Review: The Cleaving by Juliet E. McKenna + Giveaway

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A+ Reviews> blog tours> book reviews> Giveaways
Review: The Cleaving by Juliet E. McKenna + GiveawayThe Cleaving by Juliet E. McKenna
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: Arthurian legends, fantasy, historical fantasy, retellings
Pages: 400
Published by Angry Robot on May 9, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Four women, four destinies – the future of King Arthur's court…
A new, feminist retelling of the Arthurian legends
The Cleaving is an Arthurian retelling that follows the tangled stories of four women: Nimue, Ygraine, Morgana, and Guinevere, as they fight to control their own destinies amid the wars and rivalries that will determine the destiny of Britain.
The legendary epics of King Arthur and Camelot don’t tell the whole story. Chroniclers say Arthur’s mother Ygraine married the man that killed her husband. They say that Arthur's half-sister Morgana turned to dark magic to defy him and Merlin. They say that the enchantress Nimue challenged Merlin and used her magic to outwit him. And that Arthur’s marriage to Guinevere ended in adultery, rebellion and bloodshed. So why did these women chose such dangerous paths?
As warfare and rivalries constantly challenge the king, Arthur and Merlin believe these women are destined to serve Camelot by doing as they are told. But men forget that women talk. Ygraine, Nimue, Morgana and Guinevere become friends and allies while the decisions that shape their lives are taken out of their hands. This is their untold story. Now these women have a voice.
Juliet McKenna is an expert on medieval history and warfare and brings this expertise as well as her skills as a fantasy writer to this epic standalone novel.

My Review:

The story (or legend, or myth, or history) of King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table is one of those “tales as old as time.” Whether one considers it a myth, or a legend, or a bit of fictionalized or fantasized history, there’s something about the story that speaks to generation after generation, and has since Sir Thomas Malory compiled his now-famous Le Morte d’Arthur back in the 15th century.

A compilation which was itself based on an earlier popular “history”, Geoffrey of Monmouth’s 12th century History of the Kings of Britain. All of the elements we now recognize as part of the Matter of Britain, King Arthur, Merlin, Guinevere, Lancelot, the castle at Tintagel, the sword Excalibur and his final rest in Avalon are all in that 12th century tale, just as they are in this 21st century reimagining, The Cleaving.

Some stories, and some characters, are so profoundly immortal that they must be reinterpreted for each generation and the story of King Arthur is one of those tales. Each generation has reinvented the “once and future king” for over EIGHT centuries so far.

There’s no sign of that stopping any time soon. Rather the reverse. The Cleaving, with its gritty medieval setting and its female-centered perspective on the deeds and misdeeds of the arrogant and autocratic and all-too-frequently abusive men they were supposed to serve and obey, shows the reader a somewhat more-plausible version of a story we all believe we know and love. The Cleaving tells another, rather different side to a legend and makes it all that much more “real” and even believable by that telling.

And it’s going to inform and inflect (or possibly infect) the next generation of tellers of this beloved tale. As it so very much should.

Escape Rating A+: The Cleaving is a compelling conundrum of a book. On the one hand, the story of King Arthur and his knights has been told, and retold, over and over, to the point where it forms one of the foundational tales of western literature along with a considerable number of the archetypes therein.

But very much on the other hand, in order to be considered a good book right now, The Cleaving has to be, and very much is, considerably more than merely a rehash of a story we already know. So it has the hard work of being a book where readers will already know how the story ends, while needing to tell its familiar story in a way that is fresh and new and will appeal to the audiences of its time and not just play on the nostalgia of those already familiar with the story.

The Cleaving succeeds in dancing on that very high and narrow tightrope by telling the story from the perspective of the women who usually exist as mere ciphers in its background while the men perform all the deeds of derring-do and conduct all the important business of their realms.

What The Cleaving does with the familiar story doesn’t change the story nearly as much as an earlier explicitly feminist and fantastically magical version – Marion Zimmer Bradley’s ultra popular The Mists of Avalon – did. Rather, The Cleaving takes that original story of men doing manly things and shows it from the perspective of a group of intelligent, influential women who performed as society forced them to in public – while maintaining their own thoughts and their own council behind the scenes.

It’s a portrait that feels more realistic to a 21st century reader without stretching the bounds of anachronism. These women were expected to manage complicated households, oversee large budgets for those households, keep everything running smoothly whether their lords were in residence or not – and even act in place of those lords when they were away – as many often were.

That level of intelligence and capability can’t be faked for very long at all without being found out. On the other hand, public subservience is easy to fake just by schooling one’s expressions and keeping one’s mouth shut except to be agreeable and above all, meek. It would require getting used to the sensation of swallowing one’s own tongue rather a lot, but it can be done. Especially in front of men who would be inclined to believe it anyway.

So in public they all seem meek, mild and accepting of the inevitable. Because the abuse they suffered, whether physical or emotional, was inevitable. Their choices were few. But in private, they mitigated what damage they could. Even if it wasn’t nearly enough.

So Uther, with Merlin’s connivance, rapes Ygraine while wearing her beloved husband’s face. With Merlin’s connivance, the child of that rape becomes king. With Merlin’s connivance, a whole lot of things happen that probably shouldn’t. (There’s a possible interpretation of this version of the Arthurian legend as Merlin interfered with a whole lot of things that he should have left well enough alone and karma is a bitch.)

Because of the way the story plays out, and just how much the queens are influencing events when the men are too busy pillaging to pay attention, even though we know how the story ends we don’t know how it gets there, and it keeps the reader turning pages to learn what is different and what remains familiar when told from a formerly hidden point of view.

Based on this latest variation of these seemingly eternal legends, we’re clearly not done with Arthur yet. Is it possible that this is what was truly meant by that sobriquet, “the once and future king”?

~~~~~~ GIVEAWAY ~~~~~~

Thanks to the publisher, Angry Robot, I’m giving away one copy of The Cleaving to one lucky US or UK commenter on this tour!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Review: White Cat Black Dog by Kelly Link

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
Review: White Cat Black Dog by Kelly LinkWhite Cat, Black Dog: Stories by Kelly Link, Shaun Tan
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Genres: fairy tales, fantasy, horror, retellings, science fiction, short stories
Pages: 272
Published by Random House on March 28, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Seven ingeniously reinvented fairy tales that play out with astonishing consequences in the modern world, from one of today's finest short story writers--MacArthur "Genius Grant" Fellow Kelly Link, bestselling author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist Get in Trouble
Finding seeds of inspiration in the Brothers Grimm, seventeenth-century French lore, and Scottish ballads, Kelly Link spins classic fairy tales into utterly original stories of seekers--characters on the hunt for love, connection, revenge, or their own sense of purpose.
In "The White Cat's Divorce," an aging billionaire sends his three sons on a series of absurd goose chases to decide which will become his heir. In "The Girl Who Did Not Know Fear," a professor with a delicate health condition becomes stranded for days in an airport hotel after a conference, desperate to get home to her wife and young daughter, and in acute danger of being late for an appointment that cannot be missed. In "Skinder's Veil," a young man agrees to take over a remote house-sitting gig for a friend. But what should be a chance to focus on his long-avoided dissertation instead becomes a wildly unexpected journey, as the house seems to be a portal for otherworldly travelers--or perhaps a door into his own mysterious psyche.
Twisting and winding in astonishing ways, expertly blending realism and the speculative, witty, empathetic, and never predictable--these stories remind us once again of why Kelly Link is incomparable in the art of short fiction.

My Review:

Perhaps it’s a lingering fondness for the old Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons, but I’ve always had a fondness for properly Fractured Fairy Tales. As the author of this collection has long been a writer I intended to read but never quite found the appropriate ‘Round Tuit’ for, this collection seemed like the perfect opportunity to indulge in a bit of cartoon nostalgia while discovering an author I’d heard of – often – but never actually read.

Also, there’s a cat in the title so I figured that I couldn’t possibly go wrong reading White Cat, Black Dog. And I did not.

There are only seven stories in this collection, each based on a different, but frequently familiar, fairy tale. As with all collections there are exceptions to the rules – but always interesting ones.

Of those seven stories, my favorite was the first – and titular story, “The White Cat’s Divorce”. I’m not at all familiar with the fairy tale it was based on, The White Cat, but this is one where I honestly didn’t care. It’s a story where the reader does guess what’s coming fairly early on, but it’s such a glorious delivery of just desserts that one doesn’t mind. Also, the concept of a clan of talking cats running a marijuana farm and dispensary is just too funny for words.

My next favorite story was “The Lady and the Fox”, based on Tam Lin, which I DO remember. It’s probably the story in this collection where the grimdark is on the lightest shade of darkness, as it’s a holiday story that leans into the warmth of the season and does result in at least the possibility of a happy ending. The romance at the heart of the story could go either way after the end, but by ending where it does it is possible for the reader’s mind to wrap the whole thing in the glow of its season.

The story that creeped me out the most was “The White Road”, based on The Musicians of Bremen, a fairy tale which rings only a faint bell. Its setup actually has a lot in common with Station Eleven, but it’s not a pandemic or lawless scavengers that come creeping for those who stray into the wrong places or in the wrong ways, but rather a road that comes for the dead but can be put off by really good – or even really hammy acting.

Several stories hit the middle of their road for me. “Prince Hat Underground” just went on too long. I loved the concept, even though it reminded me more of Orpheus and Eurydice than its intended fairy tale. Something about it just didn’t work for me, although many readers loved it. My feelings about “The Girl Who Did Not Know Fear” were similar in that it also did not work for me.

“The Game of Smash and Recovery” was supposed to be a take-off of Hansel and Gretel and I just plain didn’t see it. It did remind me of a combination of Medusa Uploaded and In the Lives of Puppets, which made it a very weird place to be even though the fairy tale was fractured completely beyond recognition.

Last, but not least in either size or scope, is the final story in the collection, the story that includes the titular Black Dog, “Skinder’s Veil”. This story about a waystation for the denizens of fairy and the house-sitter substituting for an absentee owner who may or may not be Death and who may or may not be a dead-ringer (pardon the pun) for its protagonist had a fascinating premise as well as characters who told some equally fascinating stories. And who probably would feel right at home in Bill Willingham’s Fables. I liked the story a lot as I was reading it, but at the end it felt like something had either just slipped through my grasp, or that the entire point of the thing was in the implications it left behind.

Ultimately a fascinating conundrum but too puzzling to be a favorite. Which may very well sum up my thoughts about the collection as a whole – but I’m glad I read it just the same.

Escape Rating B: In any collection, there’s usually at least one story that doesn’t work for a particular reader, and that was certainly true for this reader. Howsomever, a sign of a good collection is that when one looks at reviews for it, that story or two that turned out to be not quite what the individual hoped are different for each reader.

And that’s certainly true with White Cat, Black Dog.

So, if you’ve been meaning to become acquainted with this author, or curious about the work of someone who won one of the MacArthur “Genius Grants”, White Cat, Black Dog is a great place to be introduced to Kelly Link and her eclectic tales that merge fantasy, SF, horror and the most classic of classic fairy tales into a twisty, spellbinding whole, this is a great way of going about it.

Review: The Crane Husband by Kelly Barnhill

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B+ Reviews> book reviews
Review: The Crane Husband by Kelly BarnhillThe Crane Husband by Kelly Barnhill
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook
Genres: fantasy, horror, magical realism, retellings
Pages: 128
Published by Tordotcom on February 28, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Award-winning author Kelly Barnhill brings her singular talents to The Crane Husband, a raw, powerful story of love, sacrifice, and family.
“Mothers fly away like migrating birds. This is why farmers have daughters.”
A fifteen-year-old teenager is the backbone of her small Midwestern family, budgeting the household finances and raising her younger brother while her mom, a talented artist, weaves beautiful tapestries. For six years, it’s been just the three of them—her mom has brought home guests at times, but none have ever stayed.
Yet when her mom brings home a six-foot tall crane with a menacing air, the girl is powerless to prevent her mom letting the intruder into her heart, and her children’s lives. Utterly enchanted and numb to his sharp edges, her mom abandons the world around her to weave the masterpiece the crane demands.
In this stunning contemporary retelling of “The Crane Wife” by the Newbery Medal-winning author of The Girl Who Drank the Moon, one fiercely pragmatic teen forced to grow up faster than was fair will do whatever it takes to protect her family—and change the story.

My Review:

There is a group of tales in Japanese folklore about a crane who returns a favor to a man. The best known of those tales is The Crane Wife. This story isn’t exactly that one for any number of reasons, quite possibly the least of which is that in this case it’s the husband who is the crane. The question of whether this crane husband is or is not returning anything remotely like a favor to the woman who makes herself his wife is open to one hell of a lot of questions.

Questions that her teenage daughter is left behind to answer – after her mother flies away.

The story in The Crane Husband perches almost gracefully at the sharp, pointy end of the pyramid between magical realism, fantasy and horror. Alternatively, it’s just plain horror about a teenager coping with too many adult issues by processing them through mythmaking.

Or both.

On the surface, it’s the story told by a nameless teenage girl as she watches her mother become enraptured by a crane who turns into a man in the dark of night. Her mother, an artist who has always seemed to be barely in touch with the real world, gives her every waking attention and her every thought and care to her crane husband. She turns so deeply inward as well as orients so totally on the shapeshifting crane that she stops doing any of the tasks necessary to keep their tiny household barely afloat.

Her daughter does her best, just as she has been doing since her father died, to manage the sales of her mother’s stockpiled art – of which there is little – as well as managing the food and the finances in general just to keep the lights on and to keep both herself and her little brother fed and clothed and sent to school.

Even as she watches her mother self-destruct. Until the girl finally comes to the pragmatic and necessary conclusion that her mother can’t be helped and that she herself is probably too damaged to save but that her adorable, winsome, six-year-old brother still has a chance.

If she acts before it is too late for them all. Unless it already is.

Escape Rating B+: The story on the surface may or may not be the real story, and that’s the part that keeps the reader guessing – or at least kept this reader guessing – even after the last page was turned.

It could be myth coming to life, meaning that the surface story is the true story. That her mother gave herself over to the crane in the hopes of finding a magical escape from the farm and the children that she should have taken long ago. And can’t resist now that she has found another way.

Very much on my other hand, this is also a story about a teenage girl keeping her family together in the face of her only remaining parent’s criminal neglect. While she is stuck watching her mother’s abuse at the hands of a charismatic and dangerous man who will certainly turn to her once he tears and beats her mother into an early grave.

That the girl turns to the language of myth to tell the story to herself as a coping mechanism would be as reasonable a solution as anything can be in the situation she’s enduring. Especially as the version we’re reading is the version she’s telling herself twenty years after her mother left. Or died.

Or turned into a crane and flew away.

Whether her story is an exercise in rationalization, a tale of outright horror or something in the middle haunts the reader as the tale draws to its conclusion. Along with the now adult girl’s still plaintive search for the brother she failed to save after all.