Read Recently -- October
Vampirates: Demons of the Ocean by Justin Somper
No relation.
It is the year 2505, and life is exactly like it was in Victorian times. Our heroes are two children being raised by their widowered, lighthouse-keeper father, who sings them to sleep with a sea chantey threatening to sell them to hideous, vampiric monsters. Curiously, they still think of him fondly when he dies (technically, 7 years later) and, faced with a number of unlikeable options, decide the right solution to their problems is to steal his small boat and set out to sea without checking the weather. A storm wrecks their boat and casts them into the sea. The boy, Connor, is rescued by Pirates and soon becomes one of them. The girl, Grace, is picked up by the titular vampire pirates (who never seem to do any actual piracy while we are with them), and though the mysterious, veiled captain tries to shelter her from the rest of his crew, she is soon endangered by the reckless, evil Lieutenant, Siddorio. Plus, she misses her brother, and wants to be reunited with him. But with the whole sea between them, and the vampirates next, is that even possible?
This one suffers a bit from, I think, over-trying. It manages some nice darkness for a kid's book, but lacks a real sense of menace. Threats are disposed of much too easily. Also, the point of setting it in the distant future is kind of lost when everything is just like the past. Why not set it in the past instead, and avoid the dissonance? Overall, the book is never more than moderately interesting, and I won't be back for the sequels. That makes this one sllightly not recommended.
King Rat by China Mieville
An early effort by Mieville, definitely urban fantasy. Saul Garamond comes home to London after being away on the coast for several days. He had left in the wake of a quarrel with his father, and he gets home to find his father apparantly not there. The next morning, though, when the police break in and arrest him, he learns that his father is in fact dead, murdered by defenestration, and Saul is the number one suspect. He is rescued from the lockup by a mysterious, scruffy figure, who soon reveals himself as the titular king. King Rat has come for Saul because Saul's mother was King Rat's sister, which makes Saul both his nephew and, yes, half-rat. This turns out to offer a lot of advantages in terms of climbing walls and maneauvering around the city like a low-powered superhero, as well as an ability to eat anything without getting sick and being able to avoid the vision of passers-by. But things are not all good; King Rat hasn't rescued Saul out of the goodness of his heart. He has a problem. An old adversary has arrived in London, someone King Rat can't fight on his own. A piper . . .
In some ways, this is typical Mieville, while in others its something different from his usual. It is an urban fantasy, in that it's set in our own world with something else hiding around the corners and in the gutters. On the other hand, it's got human/rat hybrids. I dunno. I liked it. If you haven't liked Mieville's otherworldly fantasies, you might give this one a try and see if it'll do.
Recommended.
Widdershins by Charles deLint
It means, "counter-clockwise", okay?
In the wake of the Onion Girl, Jilly Coppercorn is having a hard time of things, what with the wheelchair and all. She's depressed, she's staying home too much and worrying her friends, and her boyfriend, Daniel, is too perfect. She has to break up with him. Her old friend, Geordie Riddell, is hanging around the fair folk who lurk in a suburban mall after closing, playing music for their revels and enjoying a FWB relationship with their leader, a seer who has put a spell on Geordie to keep him from going away because she has forseen danger for him if he does. When challenged, she lifts the spell, and Geordie winds up playing with a band whose fiddler has hurt her arm. He asks Jilly to come along to a show just outside town, and she agrees. They both have a wonderful time, but in the middle of the night Jilly disappears. This precipitates a crisis as Jilly's friends with supernatural abilities (and there are a lot of 'em) go looking for her. In the background, not coincidentally, someone seems to be trying to stir up trouble between the Native spirits and the Fair Folk immigrants.
I enjoyed most of this book (I mean, come on. It's deLint), but I had some problems with it. For starters, the whole purpose of the story is to bring Jilly and Geordie together and I am of that small group of deLint fans (I may be the only one in this group) who, while liking both characters, doesn't like them as a couple. Second, I had some problems with the ending which I don't know if I can talk about without spoiling it. Let's just say it's a little pat. Then there's a bit where Joe Crazy Dog and some of his cousins bust into the Fair Folk court and start throwing their weight around, trying to pressure the Queen into helping them find Jilly. I think we're supposed to approve of Joe's actions, but he comes off to me as a collossal asshole -- and I like Joe. You add in the fact that it's all his fault that Jilly's gone in the first place and, well, he gets no sympathy from me.
Overall, I found the book a mixed pleasure. There's enough there for deLint fans (at least, those who haven't utterly tired of Newford yet), and for them it's certainly recommended. For newcomers to his work, though, this is no place to start.