What I'm re-reading: Rosemary Sutcliff

Well, actually I'm re-reading plenty of stuff, in between reviewing, but this is what I picked up yesterday. I'm not one of those who read her books as a child, though I had heard of her. I discovered her as an adult, as I did Tolkien and C.S.Lewis and others.

As a matter of fact, I had a strange experience not long ago. You see, I'm currently rustling up some Sutcliff books for one of my Year 8 students. They've mostly been sitting on the shelves gathering dust because our kids, while they will read fantasy no problem, are less interested in historical fiction these days and anyway, the covers are all pretty battered. But one of the boys stumbled across Mark Of The Horse Lord, which came out in a snazzy new cover some years ago, and loved it. We were supposed to have the Eagle of The Ninth series, but the catalogue and the shelves told different stories. I found him what I could, but most of our books are just the re-tellings. So when he asked me, once more, for "something like Mark Of The Horse Lord" I was lucky enough to find The Shining Company - the only other non-retelling book we had - and promised him i would get the others. I got to the staff room and excitedly told a colleague, an English teacher of about my age, that I had a customer for Rosemary Sutcliff's books. Imagine my surprise when she asked, "Who's Rosemary Sutcliff?"

"You know - The Eagle of The Ninth?" I prompted, assuming she'd hit her forehead and say, "Oh, yeah, her, of course..." But no. She actually had never heard of the greatest children's historical novelist of the twentieth century! And her an English teacher, old enough to remember... She asked if they were fantasy, because she doesn't like fantasy. No, I told her patiently, Sutcliff's books were not fantasy. They were historical fiction. She teaches history as well. Ancient history, to Year 7 students.

Sigh!

Anyway, I'm having a great time re-discovering Marcus Aquila and his descendants, and if they do produce that wonderful 70s TV series on DVD I'll buy it immediately! I know there's a movie planned, but after what was done to Susan Cooper's Dark is Rising, I'm going to wait and see before I decide whether to see the movie or not.

I've called Chris at the Collected Works Bookshop to ask him to find and pick up the novels for my library so that young Peter can have the same joy as I am having with this series.

BURNT SNOW (The Book of the Witch) By Van Badham

Sophie Morgan and her family have just moved from Sydney to the New South Wales coastal town of Yarrindi. Yarrindi has a lot of secrets among its teen population – but so do the Morgans. When Sophie begins to be attracted to local “bad boy” Brody Meine, a lot of people warn her to stay away, including her own mother, and not entirely because he’s a bad boy….
What is Goth girl Ashley Ventwood’s secret – and how does she seem to know Sophie’s mother? What about the giant crow hovering everywhere Sophie goes? And the horrific events that happen every time she gets close to Brody?

With all the teen paranormal novels out now, this one should do well. I can’t make too many comments on it without spoilers, but the kids will love it, especially the girls who have been reading all those novels featuring vampires, werewolves, faeries, daemons, angels and so on. While reading it, I couldn’t help thinking of what a friend said of Buffy The Vampire Slayer while it was on: “All those demons and vampires and the world coming to an end and it’s, ‘You stole my boyfriend!’ ” That happens a lot in this one. Teenagers will be teenagers, even in the middle of over-the-top events and Sophie, no matter what happens to her, is very worried about who hates her and whether she will look good for Brody at the party. Very believable!
Recommended for girls fourteen upwards.

Kim Stanley Robinson at the Melbourne Writers' Festival

Okay, I know. Kim Stanley Robinson is in town for Aussiecon 4. I will get to hear him speak next weekend. But it has been such a very long time since I have seen a spec fic writer at the Melbourne Writers' Festival and I was desperate to attend something. So I bought a ticket yesterday when I turned up in hopes of finding something to my liking. There was nothing much. I did go to hear a couple of guys talk about their books - one who writes novels based on true stories and one who has written a non-fiction book about his time in the undertaker industry. It wasn't my usual cup of tea, but as a writer of non-fiction who feels the need to tell a story for my young readers, I thought I might enjoy it - and I did, though not enough to buy these guys' books. The only crime fiction session yesterday was in the morning, before I got to town.

So you can imagine how delighted I was to see that an Aussiecon guest of honour would be at the writers' festival. I went to buy a ticket immediately. I hoped I might also see some folk I knew (in the end, I only saw Lucy Sussex, who was conducting the interview, and Tim Richards, who can't make it to the con because he's going overseas).

The panel took place in the BMW Edge theatre, which is a lovely light and airy space overlooking the river. It's also the biggest auditorium in the Fed Square complex. The auditorium was far from full, but I thought:never mind, he'll have plenty of folk to hear him next week!

I found Mr Robinson fascinating. He spoke about his books and why he wrote them as he had. His most recent, which I bought yesterday, is about Galileo being taken to the moons of Jupiter by time-travellers. The author was fascinated by Galileo, about whom no one, he said, had ever written a novel, and by history in general.

He told us about his Mars books, which were written because of his love of the Californian landscape. He also pointed out that the Martian landscape has a similarity to our outback.

I felt like applauding when he mentioned that he wasn't crazy about cyberpunk because it's so pessimistic (and for some political reasons). I remember when I read my first cyberpunk novel and thought, "If that's what the future is going to be like, I don't want to be there!"

It was great to see a spec fic writer at that festival. They haven't, as far as I can recall, had one in a very long time. I'm guessing they wouldn't have this time either, if he hadn't already been in town for the con. I can remember the year they had Ben Bova and Robert Jordan at the same time. Their political opinions were very different and we certainly heard all about it!

Another year, they had China Mieville, who certainly seemed to think a lot of himself. When he was rude about Tolkien's work, I thought: "Mate, if people are still reading YOUR books fifty years from now, you can be pleased with yourself!"

It would be so good if we can have some more next year, but unless there's a con going, I suspect not.

The thing I really miss about the days I used to go to ten sessions at the festival is the children's writers who used to have evening and weekend sessions. Last year, they did have John Marsden on the weekend, but that was it. Ursula Dubosarsky was doing a session today, but as a word-lover, not as a children's writer. Someone, in all these years, seems to have decided no one but kids wants to hear these writers speak, so has put all their sessions during the day, for schools.

It's pretty frustrating if you're a teacher-librarian-children's-writer and can't go during the day. I mean, yes, I took my class last year to hear Andy Griffiths, but it was one session and the way they speak to kids is very different from the way they'd speak at an evening session.

I'm taking my book club to the next Teenage Booktalkers next term. They'll enjoy that.

As for the Melbourne Writers' Festival, I have given up the ten-session bookings and just turn up and see what's going. It's more fun that way.

LITTLE PARADISE By Gabrielle Wang. Camberwell, Penguin, 2010.

Mirabel (Lei An) is a Chinese girl in wartime Melbourne. Her family has been in Australia since the gold rushes, but they are still Chinese, in culture and lifestyle, and her father is a strong supporter of the Nationalist government back home.

When Chinese soldier Jin Jing (JJ) arrives from Shanghai, Mirabel knows she is in love. When JJ is posted back to China, Mirabel follows – and so does adventure...

It’s strange to think that this wartime adventure-romance is based on the true story of the author’s parents. It is very visual: Melbourne during the 1940s, filled with American soldiers, Shanghai in the middle of a civil war, the life of Melbourne’s Chinese community sixty years ago… If no one turns this into a television mini-series, I will be very disappointed.

It’s written in Gabrielle Wang’s usual gentle style and will be very readable stuff for girls from about fourteen upwards. Her heroine would be a good, strong role model, even if she wasn’t based on a real person. The language is not difficult and even medium readers can handle it.

Get it for your teenage girls who enjoy historical fiction.

THE CARDTURNER By Louis Sachar. London: Bloomsbury, 2010

This is the most recent young adult novel from Louis Sachar, author of a large number of books for children and teens, including the delightfully quirky Holes, which became a Disney movie. Like Holes, this one has fantasy elements – just a touch, but fantasy all the same. It’s also quirky, but those are about the only elements the books have in common.

Alton has a rich uncle, Lester Trapp. Grumpy as he is, Lester has to be sucked up to, because he is – well, rich, and Alton’s family is deep in debt.

When Lester goes blind, he needs someone to be his cardturner, to enable him to continue playing bridge, a game in which he is a genius. Alton doesn’t know anything about bridge, but as far as Lester is concerned, that is all the better – he won’t argue!

Taking on the job of cardturner, Alton learns, not only about bridge, a game as complex as chess, but the answers to some mysteries in his family history.

It’s a very readable and quirky tale, with humour and sadness mixed, although I have to say that I found the bridge references confusing, despite the author’s clever device to make it easier. Early in the novel, when he is just starting to get the hang of bridge, Alton says that when he was studying Moby Dick at school, he lost track of what was happening when there was detailed description of life aboard a ship. To make things easier on his readers, he says that every time there’s a complicated bridge description, he will put in a picture of a whale; if you want to, you can skip the detailed description and just read the summary at the end. That’s a good idea, but in the end, if you don’t understand the object of the game, the simplified bits are no easier to understand than the complicated ones.

I found myself skimming over much of the bridge description and just concentrating on the characters and story outline. Those were worth reading the book for. And it’s interesting, anyway, to learn just how complex this game is. Who would have thought it?

It’s touching to see the relationship develop between the boy and his great-uncle Trapp, the back-story in the novel and Alton’s own discovery of just what he can do.

Recommended for very good readers.

THE LIFE OF A TEENAGE BODY-SNATCHER By Doug MacLeod. Camberwell, Penguin Australia, 2010.

The year is 1828. Any doctor who wants to be able to dissect corpses has to rely on the body-snatchers – or resurrectionists, as they call themselves.

Thomas Timewell, the “teenage body-snatcher” of the title, is busy digging up his grandfather, who had wanted to donate his body to science, but been denied, when he encounters his first resurrectionist, known to him only as Plenitude (the body-snatchers give themselves names based on positive nouns). Before he knows it, he is escaping Plenitude’s enemies, being chased by a tattooed woman, blackmailed, bashed over the head and being followed by the Grim Reaper.

Meanwhile, he has to deal with his mother’s laudanum habit, his mother’s friend’s wish to paint him in the nude and go along with his mother and her friends to hear the latest work by an incredibly awful novelist.

If you enjoy Richard Harland’s steampunk tales, you’ll probably like this over-the-top black comedy, which is carefully written in the style of the time in which it is set. It has elements of melodrama, quite deliberate. If you’re giving it to a teenager, it’s intended for teens from about fifteen upwards. Slightly younger readers might also enjoy it, but they will have to be very good readers to pick up all the jokes.

The novel is great fun, so if you just want to read it for your own pleasure, why not? Let the kids get their own copies!

H.I.V.E: Rogue. By Mark Walden. London: Bloomsbury, 2010

At the end of H.I.V.E: Dreadnought, Otto Malpense was left in the hands of the enemies of G.L.O.V.E, international organization of super-villains. In this series, which began with H.I.V.E: Higher Institute of Villainous Education, there are villains and villains. There are the good guy villains and the bad guy villains. G.L.O.V.E represented the good guy villains who just wanted to go around in snazzy black clothes, stroking white cats and making lots of money – but because, in the end, they were villains, there was politicking and backstabbing going on even among them – the cause of some of the drama in later novels of the series.

Otto, who can interface physically with any computer, appears to have gone rogue. He’s now working for the bad guys, and has been involved in some assassinations. Even his school principal, Max Nero, that Dumbledore of the villain world, is ruefully considering ordering his death. Of course, his schoolmates aren’t willing to let that happen – and they have talents of their own…

The first novel in the series presented a sort of Hogwarts for villains. Young potential super-villains were taught how to manipulate the world for their own gain, using their various talents. There was even a sort of Neville Longbottom character, whose genius with plants ended up creating a giant mutant plant that nearly ate the school. It was very funny and there were references to spy movies as well, except that the cat we usually see sitting in the villain’s lap was one of the teachers, trapped in a cat’s body, her jewelled collar used to communicate.

All the novels so far have been entertaining, but they’ve become serious. Characters learn things about their backgrounds they would rather not have known. Characters die. This one has a lot of martial arts in it, as Otto’s friend Wing and Wing’s mentor, the ninja-style woman Raven, go in search of him and encounter enemies galore. It’s certainly exciting – but it’s much grimmer than the original novel and this should be taken into account. There is one more in the series; I can only hope that it doesn’t end in quite the bloodbath that I suspect will happen. There are too many likable characters I’d prefer to see survive!

Page Proof Time!

I've just received the page proofs for Wolfborn! This is pretty much what my book will look like when it comes out. Well, the layout will, anyway. I don't have it bound with a cover, as reviewers sometimes get. It's finally feeling as if it's really, really happening! And after getting my copy of The Worlds Next Door, an anthology of children's spec fic stories published by Fablecroft Press, and finding I'd left one error, I'm going to be a LOT more careful. The editor, Sarah Hazelton, has warned me this is it - my last chance to fix anything before it goes to the printers. She says it's gone to a proofreader, which is good, but I'm taking no chances. And I have found some sentences that don't make sense - well, perhaps I missed them with all the "track changes" lines going here, there and everywhere.

It's all very exciting. The book will be 289 pages long, more than I had expected, if not exactly thick as a brick. That's just a nice length.

And Alice at Dymock's is organising a book signing for me on December 12th. My first as an individual! If I can't sell lots of copies to passers-by at Christmas, when can I?

Stand by for more!

School Book Club and Me

I've tried this before. It never worked. But this year, apart from the usual suspects, we have a strongly-bookloving bunch of Year 7 girls. They consider it cool to hang out in the library and talk to the library teacher about books and reading. One of them even agreed with me that Twilight wasn't particularly scary as vampire books went and asked for Dracula. I couldn't give it to her right away, because it was already out. Her friend had it! :-)

So as they were coming anyway, I revived the Book Club idea. I have around ten enthusiastic young readers who turn up on Wednesday to do book things. Mostly, so far, it's been browsing through new books and choosing from book displays, but this week we actually sat around and talked about books they - and I - had read and I let them know that Edwina Harvey, author of The Whale's Tale, was coming to town and would be speaking to them. Young Willis, who has already written me a superb essay for English - a Year 8 kid! - had read it and spoke enthusiastically about the book. Selena, his classmate, borrowed it. Willis was borrrowing the four-novel volume of Hitch-hiker's Guide To The Galaxy and I told the others about that. I promised Willis I would buy Volumes 5 and 6 if he wanted me to, though I personally hate the fifth novel and the sixth is by the author of Artemis Fowl (they had heard of him!).Thando of 8B wanted to tell the others about a fabulous book she had read called Ten Things I Hate About Me (someone else borrowed that on her recommendation). Her friend Paige wanted to know about Jane Eyre, which she had picked up from the display area. I felt able to explain the concept of Gothic romance - the young woman who goes as a governess (live-in schoolteacher, I explained)to a country home and falls in love with the boss, who has a Deep Dark Secret. I told them I had bought it because I wanted somewhere for Twilight readers to go when they had finished the series. Paige borrowed it. When I saw her yesterday she was quite enthusiastic so far.

I considered it a huge achievement last year when I got Jacinta to read and enjoy two books after she had refused to read even one, and it was - but we do have to look after the good readers too. They're the ones who actually turn up in the library, willingly.

Current plans are to take them to Teen Booktalkers next term, if I can get permission.

The Montmaray Journals Books 1 and 2, by Michelle Cooper. Sydney, Random House, 2010

The first of these two books, A Brief History of Montmaray, came out in 2008, and did very well, winning the NSW Premier's Literary Awards in 2009. This is now out in a new cover, with its sequel, The FitzOsbornes in Exile.

Sophie FitzOsborne, who narrates these stories in a journal, is a princess. She even lives in a castle. The only problem is, it's not much of a castle; her home is crumbling away and the tiny island kingdom her family rules has lost most of its subjects, both to emigration and to the Great War. She lives with her intellectual cousin Veronica, who is writing a history of the kingdom, her little sister Henry (short for Henrietta), Henry and Sophie's insane uncle, King John, who never leaves his room these days, and a housekeeper, Rebecca. Sophie's brother, Toby, heir to the throne, is off at school in England The royal family's lives are kept busy with housework and milking the goat and all their news from the outside world comes in a Basque ship now and then.

The year, in the first book, is 1936, and there is a hint that war might be coming. When a group of Nazis arrives, led by a scholar who really believes the Holy Grail might be somewhere in the crumbling cvastle of Montmaray, their lives change for the worse...

With a sequel called The FitzOsbornes In Exile, it's impossible to avoid spoilers. Sophie and her family have been forced to flee Montmaray for England, where they are now living with Aunt Charlotte, a Montmaray princess who married a wealthy commoner and left her home twenty years ago. Uncle Arthur is now dead, but his money lives on. As a result, ironically, the princesses are able to live like royalty for the first time in their lives. Of course, Aunt Charlotte is setting up their debuts, determined to get Sophie and Veronica husbands. It doesn't help that Veronica is intelligent and left-wing in her politics. She embarrasses her aunt at every dinner party by asking questions that the likes of Oswald Mosley don't want to hear. It helps even less that Veronica is more or less going out with a Jewish left-wing intellectual, her former tutor.This is the era of Neville Chamberlain and other politicians who think Hitler is the best thing that ever happened to Germany and are determined to make peace at any cost. Because the girls are royalty, they meet a large number of famous historical figures, while campaigning for help for Montmaray.

But this is the era of appeasement and the British government is not keen to help. The girls might have to find their own solution.

The two books are a delight. They show history from the viewpoint of characters you care about. There's no historical detail of the kind that might turn off young readers. If they're interested, they can pursue some of the history that Sophie mentions in the course of telling about her own life. The Author Notes at the back of both books give them enough information for them to do so. The class conscious society of Britain between the wars is well-presented.

Recommended for girls from about fourteen upwards.

Copyedit Done!

My novel, first called Bisclavret, now to come out in December as Wolfborn, is getting to the final stages. Cover design done, complete with something called a 'shoutline" and cover blurb, copyedit complete as of today. I was surprised to see some things "corrected" when they weren't wrong, but this was to fit in with the company style manual. I also found some bits that I had got wrong ages ago and somehow missed, in all the writing and re-writing I've done.

Strange, really. This is my tenth book - eleventh if you count the one I wrote last year for a very small publisher who will never get any work from me again ... but that's another matter. Anyway - I have been through the editing/copyediting/proofing stages many times and somehow this feels different, probably because all but two of those books were non-fiction. And the two fiction pieces were children's chapter books, only the length of a short story. You learn so much.

In the past, because it was non-fiction and each chapter told a different story, I could write my book and send it in chapter by chapter, working with an editor as i went along. This one started with a complete manuscript and comments were made on the book as a whole.

That makes for a very different experience.

Still - it's very exciting now that it's really, really happening. I think I might have a very emotional moment when I see my first advance copy. :-)

"Lost In Stories" and Romy

I have checked out my new follower, Romy's, web site at http://lostinstories.blogspot.com and can heartily recommend it to anyone who loves a good book blog with an emphasis on young adult books. It's beautifully presented and the reviews are great. Fairly soon I am going to put it on the sidebar as a regular link, but meanwhile, if you are reading this, please go take a look at this terrific blog. I've already popped myself in as a follower.

MY FIRST BOOK-SIGNING

What a day I had on Saturday July 17!

It’s not that I haven’t done some book-signing before, but usually it’s been a case of trying to flog my children’s non-fiction at a science fiction event, the only opportunity I’ve been given. And if you were at a con and could buy the latest bit of speculative fiction and have it signed, or a children’s book about spies or crime, which would you choose, unless you knew the author personally and wanted to be supportive? (Or you were, say, Jeanette Allen who knew the author, wanted to be supportive AND loved true crime!)

Ironically, I ended up selling more books at Dymock’s last weekend than the YA novelists, because the people who wandered in to buy books brought their small children, not their teenagers. Even Hazel Edwards, who is the best self-promoter I have ever met, ended up signing a whole lot of copies of There’s A Hippopotamus On My Roof Eating Cake and not so many copies of F2M, her new novel, for this reason (not to mention her fans who had read Hippo as children!).

I left Mum’s place early on Saturday morning, picked up some of my Crime Time mini-posters from home (Paul, my publisher, has run out, but I haven’t) and went off to Cheltenham by train, arriving at Southland early enough to take a quick look at what the bookshop had arranged for us.

It was excellent! They had a timetable planned out, balloons outside, our books in the windows – really, more like a mini writers’ festival than a standard bookshop event. I met the organiser, Alice, and had a short chat with her before going off for a coffee and cake – there was plenty of time – until it was time. I rang a couple of people who were coming to assure them it looked like a great gig.

And so it was. Alice told me that when it was time, they would go round up some children for our audience. I was on first, at the back of the store in the children’s section. Before that, a store manager offered to put my stuff into the back room, which I accepted gratefully. He said, “When I was reading your blog this morning…”

Wow! Reading MY blog? Silly me. It was Chuck McKenzie, fan extraordinaire and LiveJournal friend! We’d never met, but it was nice to meet him for the first time.

That shop has a small press stand, which includes one of Chuck’s own books and other Aussie small press titles, including both the Peggy Bright books.

I told him about my novel and he said that when it comes out, they will put it face out on the paranormal fiction stand, which sells about five times more than the SF section. I left a copy of my cover/blurb with Alice, who will see if she can’t organise something for me in December, although at Christmas the place will be overflowing and not much space for signings and such.
When I saw my audience consisted of very young children, probably way too young for my book, I had to change my planned talk. I sat down on one of the tiny stools and asked if they’d rather hear scary stories or funny ones.

“Funny ones!” they chorused, so I told them about the silly people who robbed the Cuckoo restaurant and came home with only a bag of bread rolls, and the very naughty nana – “not like YOUR nana, I bet!” to which they agreed – who had poisoned members of her family. Fortunately, they had elder siblings listening, so I actually sold two copies that morning, signed to the older kids, of course, not the little ones. But the little ones did laugh at the right spots.

On to roaming the shop with copies and mini-posters, and smiling at customers and persuading them to buy my book and get it signed. One lady who thought I was staff glared at me till I assured her I didn’t work there, I was only a writer, then relaxed and bought a copy.

By the time I was signing in the window, I’d sold five copies of Crime Time, then another three. I even sold some books to adults, for themselves! One couple came along and bought two copies of Crime Time – one for the wife, the other for her mother – and a copy of Your Cat Could Be A Spy, which her husband wanted for himself. I sold another copy of Cat to a child, who was fascinated by my story of the cat which had been wired for sound and then killed on the road on its first day as a spy. She went to find her father to buy it. These copies of Cat were actually print-on-demand, which Allen and Unwin is doing now, so had had to be bought on firm sale. They looked fine – just like the originals. I offered to buy any unsold, but Alice assured me they would sell – she asked me just to sign anything unsold, which then had a sticker to say they were signed.

I finally got to meet Grant Gittus, the designer, whom I told that this was the best cover I’d ever had. Grant was wandering around taking photos, which added to the festive atmosphere. He mentioned he knew of a company who could do me some more bookmarks for a reasonable price. I’m going to follow it up. I know stickers are a good thing and I gave away a lot of mini-posters for kids to put on their schoolbooks, but bookmarks always work.

Chuck told me that the book had originally been in true crime because the head office had thought the cover looked adult. I’d thought that too, but as it turned out, later, there was more to it. There was a mistake on the distributors’ web site, which Paul has now fixed.

Anyway, Chuck told me that once he’d put it face out in the children’s section it had sold just fine. He was going to let head office know.

The next gig was at Angus and Robertson at Victoria Gardens in Richmond. That one was just a signing – I have to admit I was relieved; although the morning had been fun, I was tired. The signing tables were set up in the entrance, with a thoughtful bottle of water for each of us (I NEEDED a drink by then!) and a very nice pen for each.

The manager here told me that he’d ordered twenty copies of my book and sold a large number of them in the days before we arrived. He was going to order another ten and invited me to come back for another event. I only sold two that afternoon, but the staff didn’t seem bothered. Again, we signed and put stickers on unsold stock.

After finding my way back to Church Street, I took the tram homewards and went out to celebrate a great day with dinner at the Presse café, including a glass of white wine.

Cheers!

SIX IMPOSSIBLE THINGS By Fiona Wood. Sydney: Pan Macmillan, 2010

Dan Cereill (anagram for “Cinderella”, deliberate) has a list of six things he’d like to see, starting with kissing beautiful Estelle, the girl next door (he’s never met her, but it doesn’t hurt to dream). He believes all six are impossible, with good reason.

He has had to absorb a lot of shocks at once. Dad has become bankrupt, come out as gay and left, leaving Dan and his mother to see everything they own other than the clothes on their backs and a few things they’ve smuggled out, taken away. They do have somewhere to live, because Dan’s mother’s Great-Aunt Adelaide has died, leaving them the use of her hone. It’s a huge Victorian house with priceless antiques in it, but they can’t sell anything, because they don’t own it. It all goes to the Historic Homes Trust whenever his mother dies. Money? Left to the National Gallery. Jewellery? Left to a local shopkeeper.

Then there’s his new school. They can’t afford private any longer, so it’s off to the local secondary school, where he has to start all over again. There are the bully-types, but there’s also sensible Lou (perfect for his friend Fred). And Estelle, who doesn’t seem to like him much, and spends all her time with her two friends.

Still, there’s the Year 9 Social to look forward to, if he can bring himself to go, and stop worrying about his mother, who has started listening to Radiohead while working at her not-so-successful wedding cake business (she keeps talking clients out of getting married).

I began by thinking this one reminded me a little of The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, but Dan is a lot stronger than Adrian. When things eventually take a turn for the better, it’s because he has been working at it. Things don’t just happen to him: he deals with them, as best he can.

It’s seen from the viewpoint of the boy, but I can imagine a companion volume about Estelle and her two best friends, because they are strong characters in their own right.

The title, while referring to Dan’s list, also takes us right back to Lewis Carroll’s White Queen who used to believe six impossible things before breakfast every morning. That, too, was a story of the absurd things that can happen to a child.

The one nitpick I have with it is that I really, really can’t see a school ordering three kids to do a responsible task like arranging the school dance as a punishment. It happens often enough in teen comedy, but is highly unlikely to happen in the real world. In the state school system in which I work, such events are generally arranged by the Student Representative Council with the help of the staff.

Also, teachers come along to supervise the event. In this novel, there are no teachers present on the night, which enables the school airheads to bring along booze and get everyone drunk. Sorry. It doesn’t happen in the schools of the state system. Perhaps it would be allowed in private schools, but I suspect not. A school can be sued if a branch falls on a student in the yard where no teacher is on yard duty; it’s just too much to believe that the school would allow a bunch of kids to take over the gym for the night with no teachers to supervise. There are adults present – the boy’s neighbour and his DJ girlfriend, who help avert disaster - but that’s by chance.

I can understand why the author did it. She needed a drunk scene for one of the characters and a fight which solves some of the problems. But this is just too much suspension of disbelief to ask, and I suspect teen readers might also find it a bit much to swallow.

Still, it’s a funny, gentle story which should work well on the teen market, probably better with girls than boys, but might also work well as a class text.

Maybe they can discuss the unlikely bits as part of the class discussion of the novel.

Of Followers and Posts

G'day. followers and anyone else reading this. I seem to have acquired two followers in as many days, making the number twelve. Several of them I know personally, whether here in Melbourne or through SF fandom - or, in one case, through my classroom - hullo, Dylan! Hope your baby brother comes along very soon now!

Others are mysterious to me. If you have not given a full name, or I don't know you personally, would you like to put in a comment and introduce yourself? And why my blog? I've checked out the other blogs followed with some of them and there are such a wide variety I can't work out the connection.

Just wondering.

Also - I don't seem to have had any real comments in some time, though I have rejected several in Chinese, one which started in Chinese and ended with the word "blog" in English and one which was just ...... I'm wondering if anyone has put in a comment only to have it end up as ...... or Chinese gibberish?

Stand by for some more reviews. I have just finished a young adult book called Six Impossible Things, which is not a seventh volume in the Hitch-Hiker's Guide or a sequel to Alice Through The Looking Glass.

Today I have a gig at Southland Dymock's and Victoria Gardens A&R, to promote Crime Time. Wish me luck, everyone!

MOMENT OF TRUTH. Book 5: The Laws Of Magic. By Michael Pryor. Sydney: Random House, 2010

There’s a war on in the Edwardian alternative universe of The Laws Of Magic. Aubrey Fitzwilliam, son of the Prime Minister of Albion, and his friends George and Caroline, who have spent the last four volumes trying to prevent it, have been recruited as part of the Albionish secret service. War is bad enough in itself, but if this one proceeds for long enough, it will lead to the immortality of the evil Dr Tremaine, former Sorcerer Royal, who has no problem with wiping out as many lives as it takes to perform the magic ritual that will extend his own.

The trio returns to Gallia, scene of their earlier adventures (Heart Of Gold), this time to set up a base for a team of remote magical observers. But nothing ever goes the way it’s meant to go in Aubrey’s world. All bets are off when the three find out what is being manufactured in a Holmland factory belonging to Baron von Grolman …

If you’re worried about this delightful steampunk series going downhill, as series novels tend to do, don’t be. The fun and the action are there, as always, the characters as likable as ever. Aubrey can be worrying about his team-leading skills one moment and how he’s going to tell Caroline his feelings the next. George is still Aubrey’s solid support. Caroline is elegant and deadly; she doesn’t lose control even when in the presence of Dr Tremaine, who killed her father. And she’s still capable of reducing Aubrey to mush with a word.

George, Aubrey and Caroline have come a long way since Blaze of Glory. They have a little way further to go, with one more novel in the series. It will be sad to say goodbye to these characters, and I suspect I will end up going back and reading it all over again.

There is a new cover; the whole series has been re-packaged to appeal to the young adult audience for which it was originally intended, and to have more of a science fiction feel. The brooding Aubrey on the cover looks quite menacing for a young man who hates carrying guns and prefers to use his intellect and his magic, but it’s very striking and should gather a new set of fans for the series.

If you haven’t read this series yet, what are you waiting for? Go and get the lot, with the great new covers!

On Comments in Chinese

What is it with these Chinese "comments"? I know it happens to other bloggers, I've seen it in the Blogger complaint forum, but I'm still not sure why. If it's spam, why do the spammers think they can sell us anything in Chinese?

Every day, I eagerly check to see if anyone has been interested enough in my posts to make a comment - and most days the "comments" are either Chinese or English language spam.

Today there were two.

Sigh!

MADIGAN MINE By Kirstyn McDermott. Sydney, Pan Macmillan, 2010

Alex is in his twenties, in a shared house and working a dead-end job after failing to get anywhere with his art. Suddenly, he runs into childhood sweetheart Madigan, daughter of a wealthy family, who had been taken back to Ireland and wandered Europe after her mother’s death, before returning to Melbourne.

Madigan is beautiful, passionate, far more talented in art than Alex could ever be. And she is very much in love with him.

But Madigan has something deeply weird about her. She moves into his share house and his life, then brings her group of - disciples? Fans? Only Alex can’t see that there’s anything wrong, but even he throws her out when she finally goes too far even for him – and then she commits suicide.

But is she as dead as she seems? Alex suffers blackouts. People he has never met greet him. He has, apparently, done things he can’t remember doing. And it only gets worse….

This could easily be a psychological thriller, but gradually, through flashbacks, the reader realises that there is enough evidence to believe Alex when he says he’s possessed.

It’s an interesting premise, a possession story from the viewpoint of the possessed, and it’s some time before you do accept that he’s possessed and not just crazy – Alex is not exactly a stable person even at the beginning of the novel. My own background has the dybbuk as part of its folklore, but there is a ritual way to get rid of the dybbuk, while Alex seems to find only one very grim way to get her out of his body, if he is willing to do it.

This is a debut novel from a writer who is well-known in Australia for her short horror fiction and has won several awards in this genre. Hopefully, it is just the first in a long career.

So, what is it with all these princesses?

This is something for which we can't blame Stephenie Meyer. Her heroine is, at least, just the daughter of the local policeman. She might land herself a hot vampire boyfriend (or should that be a cold marble-skinned one?), but she isn't a vampire princess or a chosen one (at least - not in the first book. I haven't read the others yet).

I have just received my latest novel in which the heroine, a "normal American teenage girl" suddenly finds out she's a princess of some supernatural realm. I made myself read something else first, so that I wouldn't be biased.

But there's also a new pile of books at my school, to be processed next term, with at least three of these books in it. I think one of them is about a girl who finds she's a Faerie princess and gets a hot boyfriend from the supernatural realm. Vampire princesses are common. The story is as follows: the heroine is about to turn sixteen. She finds out that her parents are not her real parents, or at least her single-parent family is that way because her mother once had a romance with a vampire, a demon or a Faerie. And the father is always, always a king or a prince. Which makes the heroine a princess. And if she doesn't date the gorgeous mystery boy who has turned up in her life, the world will come to an end. Usually, there are bad guys after her, wanting to use her specialness for their own evil purposes.

Buffy, please come back! She may be the teenage "chosen one", but at least she's not a princess. And before the series was over, she found the reason for the "chosen one" and made damned sure that every girl could do what she did.

But, all this said, for the time being at least, the girls love it. So we older cynical girls will just have to accept it.

On the other hand, at least one of the good readers in Year 7 at my school has asked for the original Dracula. She too is getting a little tired of the vampire princesses.

THE MOTH DIARIES By Rachel Klein. London: Faber, 2004

This book was published a long time ago. I'm guessing that it has been sent for review again because there are plans afoot to make a movie based on it. From what I have read, it will be a horror movie, which may or may not be able to show the questions raised by the book.

It’s an interesting read – and a long way from the vampire romances coming out so regularly now.

Set in a boarding school for girls, some time in the 1970s, this very Gothic novel reads like a cross between Carmilla and The Turn Of The Screw. The narrator writes a foreword and afterword thirty years down the track, saying that her psychiatrist has suggested publishing the diary she kept at school, which he has had since treating her. Names will be changed “to protect the innocent”, but we never learn hers at all.

The narrator resents new girl Ernessa, who has taken over her friendship with Lucy Blake, the golden-haired airhead who, nevertheless, helped the diarist settle into the boarding school where she was sent after her father committed suicide (or did he? Was it suicide or murder?). She becomes convinced that Ernessa is a vampire. Ernessa never seems to eat. Her bed seems to be unslept-in. There is a bad smell coming from her room, though only the diarist seems to notice it. Lucy is gradually becoming weaker and weaker. There is, of course, an irony in the name Lucy - the same as Dracula’s victim - although at one point in the novel the diarist sneers at a teacher who suggests she might enjoy Stoker’s book.

The thing is, the narrator is unreliable, much like the one in Justine Larbalestier’s Liar. There are hints throughout the book that she is not quite right in her mind, that, as with the governess in The Turn of The Screw, it might all be in her head. She does seem to find evidence for her beliefs – very compelling evidence – but is she telling the truth, even in her diary? I was expecting a twist at the end – and there was, so make sure you read it all the way to the end, including the “Afterword”. And, to give the author credit, there are clues throughout the novel. She isn’t unfair to her readers.

I’d recommend this book for good readers from about sixteen up.

There are many references in it to classic supernatural fiction, but the one I would suggest handing the reader afterwards is Carmilla, which is mentioned several times and with good reason.

And please- read it BEFORE you see the movie. However good it is - we'll have to see - it may not be able to throw out the same clues.