Bledsoe, Alex: The Hum and the Shiver
The Hum and the Shiver (2011)
Written by: Alex Bledsoe
Genre: Modern Fantasy
Pages: 349 (Trade Paperback)
Why I Read It: I'm not sure where I first heard about this book. I'm pretty sure it was Tor.com, and I know that when I saw the cover and the accompanying summary, I wanted the book in my hands that very instant. Unfortunately, I had to wait until the book's release, and since the book's release was just close enough to my birthday, I decided to wait and see if someone got it for me instead. They did. And the moment I had the book in my hands, I wanted to read it. Immediately. Because it's a rare thing to have a fantasy set in the Smoky Mountains.
Because, you see, I grew up in the Smoky Mountains. I live here still. You can see why I might be ridiculously excited about this book.
The premise: ganked from publisher's website: No one knows where the Tufa came from, or how they ended up in the Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee, yet when the first Europeans arrived, they were already there. Dark-haired, enigmatic, and suspicious of outsiders, the Tufa live quiet lives in the hills and valleys of Cloud County. While their origins may be lost to history, there are clues in their music-hints of their true nature buried in the songs they have passed down for generations.
Private Bronwyn Hyatt returns from Iraq wounded in body and in spirit, only to face the very things that drove her away in the first place: her family, her obligations to the Tufa, and her dangerous ex-boyfriend. But more trouble lurks in the mountains and hollows of her childhood home. Cryptic omens warn of impending tragedy, and a restless “haint” lurks nearby, waiting to reveal Bronwyn’s darkest secrets. Worst of all, Bronwyn has lost touch with the music that was once a vital part of her identity.
With death stalking her family, Bronwyn will need to summon the strength to take her place among the true Tufa and once again fly on the night winds. . . .
Spoilers, yay or nay?: Nay. It's a relatively new book, so I want to leave it unspoiled. However, if you're super-paranoid, just skip to "My Rating," and you'll be fine. Oddly, I'll be talking about how this compares to Graveminder, because they're weirdly similar books, yet I had two utterly different experiences with them.
I didn't read this after finishing Graveminder. I actually read Elantris in between, but wanted to put Elantris down when I got this book in the mail. Because I wanted to read it THAT MUCH.
But it's interesting that these two reviews, Graveminder and The Hum and the Shiver, are being posted one after the other. Because in truth, there's a lot of similarities.
Consider: a small, creepy little town with its own secrets. A heroine who comes home and finds herself fulfilling a role she never wanted to begin with. Also, multiple POVs.
I think it's important to note how expectations will play a huge role in the enjoyment of a book. With Graveminder, I came to it hoping it'd redeem Marr's writing for me, so that I might be able to enjoy her work in the future. I didn't fully realize this until I started reading, but Graveminder was the make-it-or-break-it book for me. I would or would not continue to read Marr's work based on that one book, all because the previous three books of hers I'd read had slid in quality.
Compare that to my experience coming to The Hum and the Shiver. I'd never read the author before, never really heard of him, and the only real pull I had to this book was that it essentially took place where I live. There so much fantasy that takes place in big cities, that when I find anything that happens in my neck of the woods, my expectations go through the roof. While I still maintain it's a fantastic book outside my bias, one of the reasons I adore Cherie Priest's Eden Moore trilogy so much is because it takes place in Chattanooga, TN, which is an hour and a half away from me. I knew the place, so I immediately had a connection on page one. That goes a long way.
Let's get the comparisons out of the way: yes, Bledsoe uses a wee bit too many POVs for my taste in this book. Oh, I'm understating it: Bledsoe uses WAY too many POVs in this book. At times it kind of got away from him, because I wanted to focus more on different parts of the story, characters and world-building, and I had no interest in seeing the world or characters through different eyes. Like Bronwyn's ex, Dewayne Glitterman. Or the asshole cop who was never more than a stereotype (and had me raising my eyebrow with believability for other reasons, which I'll touch on later). I'm still not sure what Don Swayback's role is in this whole piece, but since I know this is the first of at least three books, I suspect this story will play out accordingly, and since we saw the growth of his character in this book alone, I'll forgive it.
So yes, too many POVs. And while I still don't like it, at least there's a sense of closure to this book. All the POVs lead into something that wraps up in some form or fashion. The resolution of the Dwayne Glitterman? The asshole cop? Worth reading their POVs. And on a slightly less morbidly comic note, even the POVs that don't seem to feed into the main story of Bronwyn finding her place int he community seem to resolve in a way that leaves the reader satisfied, even if the reader isn't entirely sure why they went on that particular journey in the first place.
The jury's still out on atmosphere. For starters, I bring too much to the book. Sure, Cloud County is completely made up, as is Needsville (for the record, there's a Sneedville, but no Cloud County), but these imaginary settings are set in the Smoky Mountains (real, I've been there), and mention Pigeon Forge (real, I've been there), and Knoxville, TN (real, I'm there quite often). So my brain could fill in a lot of blanks that another reader may not be able to, if said blanks exist. That's the problem, I don't know, because I'm too close to the setting.
Being too close made me a bit too picky about whether or not Bledsoe REALLY captured the essence of the Smoky Mountains, of the small towns nestled here or there. I read the author bio and saw that he was raised in West Tennessee, which is UTTERLY different, despite being in the same state. Sometimes, I told myself that the author's West Tennessee background came through, like on page 53 when Bronwyn is helped into a Tennessee Titans t-shirt. That's good, and certainly, East Tennessee enjoys Titans football, but our blood runs big orange, and it's more likely it was a Vols t-shirt instead. But if this were set in West Tennessee, that wouldn't be the case. On page 68, where it's spelled out UT Volunteers instead of UT Vols or just simply Vols. That may have been an editorial correction, thinking nobody'd understand who wasn't into college sports, but for me, it reeks of the outside looking in, but not knowing quite how to capture the lingo.
Then again, for someone who's not local, this is hardly going to bug them.
There was a moment with the asshole cop that made me stop and wonder, and this isn't something I would've ever stopped to wonder about until recently, BUT: did you know that if you get arrested for ANYTHING in a National Park, you're not tried and jailed in the local system, but you go to a federal system instead? I didn't know this until about a month ago, but I thought about it really hard when I thought about how the asshole cop acted and questioned whether or not Cloud County was in the National Park or not, because if it was, said asshole cop had no jurisdiction. I doubt this story was actually set in the National Park side of things, but still. I wondered. Again, knowing too much about the setting allowed me to dwell on things that probably wouldn't have crossed my mind otherwise.
And there was a quick moment on page 19 that I didn't buy, why a military officer doesn't apologize and the reason for it. Too harsh, and I just don't believe it. Especially being in the South. In the South, you either apologize whether you mean it or not, or you give someone a go-to-hell look that dares the offended to demand an apology. It's weird like that.
So the jury's still out on atmosphere and setting, for reasons beyond my control. Sometimes, the tight-knit, Southern feeling of love and menace was handled just right. Other times, it wasn't right enough. But I kept reading, and had no issue with continuing to read, other than wishing that a fantasy author would freaking break through and really GET IT on paper. Maybe that fantasy author should be me. And maybe I'm kidding myself that I can do it.
Moving on: the Tufa were rather fascinating, and we get some interesting theories about who they are and why they are. The comparison to fairies felt apt, and I liked how the two warring clans (common in Southern folklore, just think of the Hatfields and the McCoy's) were compared to the Seelie and Unseelie tribes of fairy. What I'm really supposed to take away from that, I don't know. One thing I really wanted was to truly understand the purpose of the Tufa, the point of their magic, which I found rather delightful in its use of music (another bias, admits the former music major). I get enough to be interested and perplexed, and certainly the family dynamics definitely give my brain a little bit of a mindfreak, especially regarding Bronwyn's responsibility to have a daughter with someone of pure Tufa blood (forget the fact she's in love with someone else).
The romance of the story really isn't a romance at all. Characters are attracted to each other, and that is that. The resolution of it, unbeknowest to the characters, is rather fucked up, and it's one of the reasons I look forward to seeing what happens in the next installment. Because while Bronwyn was difficult to like all the time, the other main characters were sympathetic, and I find myself invested in their fates.
Of all the characters, Don Swayback has the biggest growth. I was a little jarred by it at first, and in truth, some of the consistencies regarding his passages I had to cover up using how his Tufa heritage was coming to light. The preacher, for example, meets Don early in the book, and Don acts like a fresh-out-of-college ass, but as Don grows, he acts far more like an adult (which is good), but when the preacher meets him a hundred pages later, he doesn't even recognize him. Odd, but whatever, I'll roll, because apparently embracing one's Tufa heritage means changes in all kinds of degrees. We see this happen to Bronwyn at the end too.
There's a subtle bit of head-hopping in this book, and I'd be remiss if I didn't warn you. it's not so bad that you want to beat your head agains the wall, but it's there, and if you're having a bad day or you're already frustrated with the book, it won't help matters.
By the end of the book, I still had questions. The haint, which was so insistent that Bronwyn remember her time as a prisoner of war. That never really happens, and there seems to be no consequence to that. Hell, for that matter, I'm not sure why she was supposed to remember, what it was supposed to prepare her for. Certainly, the book has a bit of tragedy to it, but I still found the issue with the haint to be a bit of a red herring. The haint played a role in multiple characters' arcs, but for the most important character, it seemed to have the least impact.
My Rating: Worth Reading, with Reservations
I'm not the most objective reviewer for this book, because I'm so close to the setting itself that I either nitpick or can't recognize blanks if they hit me upside the head. At times Bledsoe captures that small, town, creepy Southern atmosphere right on, but it's not always consistent. Still, I was fascinated by the Tufa themselves and wanted to learn more about them: about their music and their magic and how the two intertwined. The characters, while not always totally sympathetic (and some not sympathetic at all), kept me interested for how all their story-lines interacted. I was invested, and I wanted to learn more. It's an interesting read and I'd love to see where else Bledsoe goes with this series (or trilogy), because despite hiccups and flaws, I was still enchanted. And certainly, there are some enchanting moments in the prose.
Cover Commentary: I love this cover TO PIECES. I think it was the cover that caught my eye first, because I thought, "Hey, that looks like the Smoky Mountains!" and then I read the premise and thought, "It IS! It IS the Smoky Mountains!" and then from there I was hooked. But the coloring, the placement of the title (hell, the title itself), and the hunched figure over what I thought was a violin (and it still looks like a violin, though Bronwyn plays a mandolin). For a long time, i thought the figure on the cover was hooded, but upon closer inspection, I realize that's just the trademark, dark Tufa hair. Regardless, gorgeous cover, and I hope the later books in the series/trilogy get the same treatment.
Next up: Daughter of Smoke & Bone by Laini Taylor