Just Finished Reading… Esther by Norah Lofts

 

It was Purim a few days ago. I even went to my local Purim Spiel, (Bageljuice), which takes place every year at the Phoenix Theatre at Elwood College, my school, though the theatre was not built when I was a student there. 

I did read this novel many years ago, but couldn’t get it in ebook until now. To my delight, it is available, though only on Kindle; I prefer Apple Books. Apple Books does have it in audiobook, but not ebook.

Norah Lofts’ books are all historical fiction. There is one about Anne Boleyn. Another one, How Far To Bethlehem, is the Christmas story seen through the eyes of the Magi, who all have back stories and personalities. There is even a reason for the gold, myrrh and frankincense, nothing to do with religion.

Her style is light and very readable. 

This novel is, of course, about Queen Esther, heroine of the Bible book under her name. She is an intelligent young woman who lives with her cousin Mordecai, the two of them reading and discussing books until they need money, then working for a while - Mordecai is a tradesman, Esther is very good at cooking and gets jobs preparing banquets for rich people. 

And one day, the king sends out notices offering his hand in marriage to whichever girl can please him enough, and Mordecai talks her into entering the competition because he has a feeling she might be able to do something important some day. She is chosen, not for her beauty, though she is attractive, but for her brain. And then, as you’ll know if you have read the Bible or seen an Esther film(there are several), she saves her people.

There was an introduction by the author, which must have been added to the ebook, or perhaps a later edition(there are twenty six editions !) because I don’t remember it, and Norah Lofts explains her thoughts behind it and adds that it’s a YA novel. That never occurred to me, but as I’ve said, it’s easy reading. I might even, after this reread, think of it being suited to kids from about twelve upwards.

You don’t have to have read the Bible to enjoy this novel, but I confess I rather like the Megillah. It starts with Persian King Ahasueras throwing a huge party for the rulers of his various provinces, getting drunk(“The king’s heart was merry with wine”) and ordering his Queen,Vashti, to show herself to his guests. When she says no, his advisers beg him to divorce her because otherwise their wives will make their lives miserable. Yes, it’s all there in the Bible! In the novel, Vashti is delighted to get that divorce and flees home to Petra on a mule she brought with her, before her husband can change his mind.

And then there is the villain, Haman, plotting to kill all the Jews in the empire because Mordecai has refused to bow down to him. Of course, he is defeated.

The Megillah is read aloud on Purim, and kids boo Haman and cheer Esther and Mordecai, and make a lot of noise with noisemakers when Haman is mentioned. 

I have a beautiful Megillah which I bought years ago, illustrated. 

I told the story to the kids at my school, as part of a Diversity day. One of my colleagues, with a silly wig, held up signs saying Boo or Hurray at the appropriate spots. When the kids were leaving after school I gave them each a chocolate frog, as giving gifts of food is one of the traditions - as is wearing costumes and doing amateur drama(hence the Purim Spiel). 

The novel is fun, not a work of genius, but well worth a read. 

CBCA Awards 2026. Book 1: Unhallowed Halls by Lili Wilkinson, Allen And Unwin, 2025

The other night, I forgot to attend the annual Night Of The Notables, which is held by the Children’s Book Council of Australia, to announce the long list for the awards. So I looked it up on line.

It’s quite a long list, so here is a link to the Reading’s page.

https://www.readings.com.au/collections/cbca-notables-for-older-readers

When I was a teacher librarian, I only read the list for older readers, as I worked in a secondary school anyway, and sometimes got one of my favourite student readers to read with me and compare notes. Now I’m on my own and even though I do occasionally exchange emails with my former students, they are a bit too old for that. I’m not, and never will be, of course.

I have bought two of the nine so far, and have just finished the first, which was available in Apple Books. That was Unhallowed Halls by Lili Wilkinson.

I remember when she was at the start of her career, writing YA romcoms. They were delightful and funny. She doesn’t write those any more, and hasn’t written one for years. Unhallowed Halls is far from romcom. It’s horror fiction with teenagers in it. There is some romance, mind you.

She is an Australian writer, but her heroine is American. 

Page Whittaker has had some scary things happen at several schools and believes they were her fault. She has some powers she doesn’t understand. One event led to the death of a nasty teacher who was burned to death while Page was trying to protect a friend. Soon after, she is invited to study at Agathaion, a boarding school in Scotland, which is aimed at bright but troubled kids. The others are all from wealthy families, but Page is offered a scholarship, something nobody else has. 

When she gets there, she finds there are some very strange things going on - well, what else would you expect from horror fiction? And there are good reasons for the other kids to be wealthy, apart from a boarding school being aimed at kids with money, but we find that out late in the novel, so no spoilers. She does, however, make some friends, one of whom tells her some background to the school, which is hundreds of years old, and some Scottish myth and legend connected to it. As you might expect, they are important to the plot.

There are a number of twists in the story. They work well. 

Just be aware that this is not an Enid Blyton boarding school and definitely not Hogwarts! 

I’m thinking of nominating it for a Hugo Award, as I’m a member of this year’s Worldcon. 

Available on line and in ebook.

I’m Currently Reading…

 

Mostly, I’m re reading books that I have on my “comfort reading” list, but have found my way back to unfinished works and bought more in ebook. 

I’ve also started reading Alchemised by SenLinYu, which was recommended to me by my great niece Dezzy. Goodness, it’s gruesome so far! But Dezzy likes gruesome. It’s a first novel, which is also in audiobook, and has sold a lot more copies than anything I have ever written. I see it’s based on a Harry Potter fanfic the author wrote, but I don’t see the connection so far. Not remotely Harry Potter, and the original story is no longer up on AO3, so no way to compare. Still, it’s 1000 pages long, and I have a lot of other stuff to read. I asked Dezzy to recommend something I could nominate for a Hugo Award if I liked it. If I do, it’s eligible for two Awards - one for best novel, the other for first novel.

I’m back on Rick Riordan - currently finishing The Lost Hero(Heroes Of Olympus Book 1) and the last book in the Kane Chronicles trilogy. In The Lost Hero Jason, a demigod, son of Zeus, wakes up on a bus next to Piper, a girl who thinks he is her boyfriend, and Leo, who thinks Jason is his best friend, and can’t remember either of them. As it happens, they are also demigods, children of Aphrodite and Hephaestus, and the three of them are taken to Camp Halfbood by Annabeth Chase, who is looking for her missing boyfriend Percy Jackson, and the three of them have to go on a quest. Jason is connected with the Roman gods. In some ways, it’s not very different from the Percy Jackson novels - three teens have to go on a quest before it’s too late, in only a few days, and meet characters from Greek mythology along the way. But I haven’t finished the book yet and it’s only Volume 1. We’ll see.

The Kane Chronicles is a trilogy, centred around Egyptian mythology, so is different from Percy Jackson tales. No Camp Halfblood for the Young heroes of these books. It’s seen from the viewpoint of siblings Carter and Sadie, whose father is Osiris, living as a mortal archeologist before he blows up the Rosetta Stone in the British Museum, and is locked into a coffin. The children have powers, of course, and spend the trilogy encountering Egyptian gods, some helpful, some trying to kill them. I’m enjoying it so far, into the final volume.

My main re read over the last few weeks is Harry Harrison’s hilarious The Technicolor Time Machine. I haven’t finished this in ebook and print book and have also discovered it as a radio play. It’s not in audiobook, alas. 

The story: a film company is about to be audited and closed down. All they need is one spectacularly successful film, but they have only a week to do it. The company’s producer/director, Barney Hendrickson, has met a scientist, Dr Hewett, who has built a time machine prototype and needs financial support to get it going. The time machine is built and used as a prop in a horror movie and is actually cheaper than the prop would be, so the company can now use it to travel into the past to make their historical film cheaply - and on time for the bank auditors to see on Monday. Barney decides to film a story about the Vikings settling in America. He finds out some things that hadn’t occurred to him. 

The radio play, if you are interested, is free to hear on YouTube. It was written by  Chris  Boucher, who was story editor on British SF series Blake’s 7, and wrote some of the best episodes, as well as some Doctor Who scripts, and creating another series, Star Cops. I knew about the play when I sent him a fan letter and he replied. I only discovered it was on YouTube last year. 

I’m awaiting a delivery of the graphic novel, The Life Eaters by David Brin. It’s based on the author’s novella Thor Meets Captain America which, despite the humorous title, is not funny or intended to be. The Nazis brought back the Norse gods. As they are fighting for the Nazis, Loki fights for the Allies. I’m re reading the novella before the graphic novel arrives. My copy will be second hand as it’s not in print any more, and there doesn’t seem to be an ebook, alas! 

There is more, but these books will do for now. I really need to stop buying till I have read some more! 

Currently rereading… Blood And Circuses and Ruddy Gore by Kerry Greenwood

 I’m still rereading the Phryne Fisher books until I get to read the final book in the series.

This post will be about Volumes 6 and 7, Blood And Circuses and Ruddy Gore. Both were filmed for the first season of Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries. If you live in Australia you can watch them on the ABC app iview. They aren’t very close to the novels, but still, worth a watch. And iview is free.

In Blood And Circuses Phryne joins the circus as a trick rider, in order to solve a mystery about the circus’s recent run of bad luck.

There is also a murder, of the half man/half woman, who is killed in bed, asleep. The accused woman, a former acrobat with the circus, had, in fact, killed her abusive husband and gone to jail though she was released recently, so seems the obvious killer. Of course, she didn’t do it, and it’s up to Phryne to find the real killer.

Did I enjoy it? Yes, as usual, though not as much as the other books in the series. It may just be me. I like Phryne, but this is the one in which I think she is the Mary Sue that a friend’s wife accuses her of being. It’s interesting, though, that this is the one in which she has to be poor, and keep her mouth shut when she is groped by a baddie, in order to keep her secret.

In Ruddy Gore, Phryne is on her way to the theatre in the Melbourne CBD and takes a short cut through Little Bourke St. This is still Melbourne’s Chinatown, full of Chinese shops, but in those days people still lived there. They encounter an attack on an old woman and her grandson. Phryne manages to shoo off the attackers by yelling, “The cops!”

The young man, Lin Chung, eventually becomes her boyfriend and a regular character. His family are wealthy silk merchants. They invite her to clean up. Phryne invites him to dinner and continues on to the theatre, where there is a gala production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic opera Ruddigore. The lead actor falls down in a faint on the stage in the middle of the performance and then his understudy also falls down. Both are taken to the hospital. One dies. The producer,Bernard Tarrant, asks Phryne to solve the mystery, although her friend policeman Jack Robinson is also working on the case. There is another mystery involving a G and S star of the Victorian era who was pretty certainly murdered during a performance of Ruddigore - and the killer is still around. 

It is written quite deliberately as a G and S operetta, complete with a long lost child. Kerry Greenwood did that quite often and enjoyed it. 

I enjoyed the book very much and I admit that the first time I read it, I didn’t pick up whodunnit. The telemovie was not very close to the novel - and Lin Chung’s grandmother runs a Chinese restaurant instead of being a silk merchant. He doesn’t become Phryne’s boyfriend, though he does appear in another episode.

I bought a copy of the novel in ebook. My local library has it in audiobook, though it’s always out dammit! 

The next book I’m rereading, Urn Burial, is an Agatha Christie tribute. More next time!

Fan fiction memories!

I first heard of fan fiction in the book, Star Trek Lives! by Jacqueline Lichtenberg and Sondra Marshak (1975). I bought the book from the airport bookshop while waiting for a relative to arrive. Fan fiction seemed like a good idea, so I wrote several stories about the Star Trek characters and submitted them to SPOCK. SPOCK was the fanzine published by Austrek, the Melbourne Trek fan club. It went for about 65 issues and I had stories in nearly every issue.

Trek fan fiction started with an American fanzine called Spockanalia in 1967. The show was cancelled after only three seasons, and fans wanted to have more stories, so wrote their own. Fan fiction is still going strong, mostly online now. There is fanfiction.net and Archive Of Our Own (AO3). You can download the stories, some of which are over 100,000 words long. And you can write your own fan fiction and upload it to the website. There is a lot more variety than when we were publishing SPOCK, which was a general fanzine, no naughty stories.

Speaking of naughty stories, would you believe the very first “slash” story in fan fiction, ever, was written by a member of Austrek, of which I was also a member? I’m not kidding. 

Slash fiction is called that because of the slash between the names “Kirk” and “Spock” when describing this kind of story – or K/S. In these stories, there are relationships between same-sex characters. This is so common these days that nobody thinks twice about it, but nobody had written K/S fiction until...

The late Diane Marchant, a Melbourne fan, was a friend of the entire cast and Gene Roddenberry. She wrote to them often, also visiting them in the USA. She had many American fan friends, and at the end of a letter to one fan friend – just for fun – she wrote a short piece about our heroes in which they – er... do it. She hadn't expected the story to be published, and was horrified when it was; Diane preferred  the relationship between Spock and Christine Chapel. And then people thought slash was such a good idea that they wrote their own, and the rest is history.

Believe it. Everything has to start somewhere, after all. For example, I personally know Paula Smith, the fan writer who created the term “Mary Sue”, which is used everywhere these days – not only in fan fiction – for a female character who is loved by everyone; if not becoming pregnant by the male character of the author's choice and dying, she saves the universe and, possibly, dies. Or marries the hero. Or was a foster sister of Spock. In my opinion, the first Mary Sue was Miramanee in The Paradise Syndrome, who married Kirk, got pregnant and died, but there wasn't a name for that in those days. If you are curious, google “A Trekkie's Tale” by Paula Smith. It's online and very funny. 

I remember how we shared our fanzines at Austrek meetings and borrowed them from each other. In fact, it's how I became a pen pal of Paula Smith. Someone lent me a copy of Paula’s fanzine Menagerie. I got a stain on it, so I ordered another copy from Paula and we started corresponding. The Austrek member who had lent me the fanzine got the replacement copy and said, “Oh, that's not necessary, I don't mind!” They lent it to someone else and never got it back.

As I said, SPOCK was a general fanzine. There were some wonderful stories in it, about our favourite characters. In the early issues, we were just writing about the TV series, because we missed the show. Then the films came out and Star Trek: The Next Generation, and writers got story ideas from those.

There were some fan writers and artists who went on to be professionals. As a professional, of course, you have to create your own universe, but writing fan fiction and articles is a good way to practise your writing. You have to think about the the psychology of the characters and you have to get them right, or someone will write something rude about your story. After reviewing fanzines, I got a lot of free books for reviewing, and sold stories and books as an outcome of my fan fiction.

But a lot of others – writers and readers alike – just like to stick to fan fiction. And that's fine. I still read it, though I don't write it any more. I know of some big name authors who still write fan fiction, under pen names. Once, on social media, I told a well-known writer, Diane Duane, that I had enjoyed her fan fiction in the past. Her reply was: “What makes you think I've stopped?”