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.

BLOOD FEUD By Alyxandra Harvey. London: Bloomsbury, 2010.

This is a sequel to My Love Lies Bleeding, set only a few days later. The vampire Drake family are now the royal family of the vampire community – that part of it, of course, which is not connected with the Hounds, the Host or the nutty Hel-Blar. The Host, led by evil vampire Montmartre, has been trying to capture Solange, now Princess Solange, the only girl born to her family in nine hundred years, so that Montmartre can be the next king. In the last novel, Solange managed to survive her change to vampire state (it’s a genetic thing in her family) with the help of her friend Lucy, a vampire hunter who became Solange’s boyfriend and a party of Hounds, led by French girl Isabeau St Croix.

Isabeau, as we learn in this book, had survived the French Revolution and her time in the streets of Paris, only to be turned into a vampire in London, by evil British vampiric earl, Greyhaven, who had then left her buried for two hundred years before she was rescued by the Hounds and brought to America (in this world, vampires don’t seem to have any special problems with crossing water, any more than they vanish from mirrors). The previous novel was centred around Solange and Lucy; this one is about the blossoming romance between Isabeau and Solange’s brother Logan.

Montmartre hasn’t given up, of course. And Isabeau discovers that Greyhaven is still around and helping him.

The author has taken trouble over vampire culture and legend. I suppose there would be some if vampires were born as well as made. Some things I found a little strange. The Hound culture seems to be very ancient, connected with female shamans – shamankas – and dogs, but, though it’s set in America, there doesn’t seem to be any Native American connection.

Of course, there were people in North America before the Native Americans – they may have been responsible for killing off all the prehistoric animals whose remains have been found. Maybe they were even vampires – who knows? But the Hounds seem to speak Welsh! This needs some explanation and perhaps this will happen in the next novel. And I’d like to know how genetic vampires age. The family matriarch, a mediaeval Frenchwoman, is still around, somewhere, but there doesn’t seem to be anyone else that old. Isabeau still looks eighteen, but she was turned. Will Logan stay eighteen? Will his mother stay Queen forever unless someone stakes her? It’s no wonder Tolkien made an “out” for his immortal Elves, or they, too, would have had the problem of Mum and Dad being around forever, telling you what to do! (As it was, 2000-year-old Arwen still had to do her father’s bidding).

Never mind. The series is fun. It takes itself a whole lot less seriously than many others of this genre. Logan is turned on by the fact that Isabeau can really kick butt. And vampires stake each other! Isabeau rolls her eyes at those pretentious vampires who carry polished stakes, when her comrades just sharpen sticks. There are cheeky references to such things as Buffy The Vampire Slayer, though there are probably a lot of teenagers out there who haven’t heard of Buffy(Pity about that).

The first book has been popular in my library and I have every intention of putting this one in as well. In fact, there's a student waiting for it right now...

THE WILDKIN’S CURSE By Kate Forsyth. Sydney: Macmillan, 2010.

This is a so-called “companion volume” to The Starthorn Tree, which I haven’t read, but it doesn’t matter. It can be read as a stand-alone story, though it is set some years later.

The novel is set in a world in which there are different types of people – the aristocratic starkin, the lower-class hearthkin and the wildkin, who are more or less human, but with an Elvish feel about them –pointed ears and magical abilities. There are Faerie-type beings in the forests and the air, who are associated with the wildkin. In the first novel, a group of teenagers set off on a quest to rescue the brother of one of the characters, who was in an enchanted sleep. This time, the children of those characters are on a quest to free wildkin Princess Rozalina, whose starkin father is keeping her locked up in a tower and has plans for her. The fate of the entire country depends on what they do – but Princess Rozalina is dangerous, though not intentionally. Her prophecies always come to pass. Always.

Kate Forsyth is the author of a large number of award-winning children’s fantasy novels and it’s not hard to see why they won prizes. She creates characters you can care about. I don’t generally like quest novels, but this one is not about an elf, a long-lost prince a bad-tempered dwarf and a couple of bickering warriors going after a magical object. The characters are human. They love and hate, they get tired and cold and hungry.

She has also worked carefully on her cultures and background. The society is a strange mixture of Middle Ages and eighteenth century France. She uses whatever bit of history is convenient for her story. Somehow, it works. And it works, also, as a cracking good adventure.

Excuse me. I’m off to find a copy of The Starthorn Tree, so I can see where it all began.

SILAS AND THE WINTERBOTTOMS By Stephen M. Giles. Sydney: Macmillan, 2009

On a tropical island called Sommerset, rich – and nasty - old Uncle Silas Winterbottom is dying. He has been out of touch with the family for years. Now three younger Winterbottoms, Milo, Isabella and Adele, have been summoned to the island, told that he will be leaving his fortune to one of them and has not yet decided which one.

Each of the children has his or her own agenda – but so does Uncle Silas. And his agenda has nothing to do with giving away his fortune to any of them…

This is an over-the-top Gothic tale with tongue planted firmly in cheek. None of the characters is particularly believable, but they’re not meant to be. It’s just a little hard to believe that all this stuff could happen in the present day, even with all the explanations about why no one could so much as get on the phone let alone use the Internet, but then this is not the first book of which this can be said and at least this writer does explain it, unlike some others. And it is deliberately over-the-top.

Kids are likely to enjoy the exaggerated characters and storyline, including Uncle Silas's pet crocodile.

If they do enjoy it, there’s a sequel. Stand by.

LEVIATHAN By Scott Westerfeld. Illustrated by Keith Thompson. New York: Simon Pulse, 2009

Imagine a world in whuch Charles Darwin discovered DNA way back in the 19th century. It might be somewhat like Leviathan, an adventure set at the very beginning of World War I, in a world where genetic engineering is in full swing – but only in Britain and a number of other countries allied with it. Some prehistoric animals, such as woolly mammoths, have been brought back from extinction, but the genetic engineering has mostly been used to create living technology. Double-muzzled dogs are used to sniff for hydrogen in the giant living airships. “Mammothines” are used for transport. Krakens are useful to the British Navy.

Most impressive are the airships, created from whale DNA and home to an entire ecosystem that keeps them going and strange creatures from stingless bees to “flechette” bats, which eat figs containing metal flechettes and then excreting them to fight the enemy.

In the Austro-Hungarian Empire live the “Clankers” whose technology is more like our own, though they use “Walkers” that look more like something out of the Star Wars movies than like the tanks in our world.

The two protagonists are Deryn, a British girl who has disguised herself as boy to be able to join the navy and fly in an airship, and Alek, the (fictional) son of Archduke Ferdinand and his wife Sophie, whose assassination started the war in both universes. The two meet when Deryn’s ship, Leviathan, is grounded in the Swiss Alps. The two groups have to use their combined technology to survive, with the help of Darwin’s scientist grand-daughter (and yes, she was a real person, though she didn’t travel with a pet Tasmanian Tiger) who herself is on a secret mission. Be warned: it ends on a cliffhanger, with another volume promised.

I must say, Scott Westerfeld is one of the few writers who could convince me that this sort of technology would be around so early, but then, he was also the only writer who ever convinced me that vampires might be possible, if their condition was based on the real world of parasites. The idea of living technology is not original; Harry Harrison did it in his Eden series of novels, in which the dinosaur-killing comet never hit and the more intelligent dinosaurs developed their own civilization based on genetically-engineered living technology.

But the Eden novels took the ideas in a different direction. And this one has the charm of the steampunk genre, along with the alternative universe “what if one thing in history had been different…?”

This is a ripsnorter of an adventure, beautifully illustrated by Keith Thompson, who has contributed gorgeous plates of the kind produced in books published at the time in which the novel is set, and endpapers which feature an elaborate map of Europe, showing where Clanker and Darwinist technology is used.

I’m sure it will be fine in paperback, but if you can get hold of the hardcover for yourself or the young adult in your life, do so, for the full experience.

On Subscription Renewals and Special Offers

Last year I renewed a subscription for my library, a magazine the kids love to read. We got a special offer, $49.95 for twelve issues! This year, we got another "special offer" - the same amount for a whole ten issues! Yay! But ONLY if we subscribed NOW. Two months ahead. It took me ages to get through to the publishers to clarify. They kept answering every question except the one I had actually asked: what happens if I don't take advantage of your fabulous offer? Do I pay more but still get 12 issues? Are you cutting back to ten issues a year? And whoever was replying refused to give me a name to speak to. It may be I was hearing from more than one person, but still...

Finally, someone admitted that they were cutting down to ten issues a year and I had to renew, because they STILL haven't told me what I have to pay if I leave it till August, the date we really are due and I have had enough of this back and forth.

I have to take my hat off to this company's marketing division, though :"Let's send them a whiz-bang special offer and hope they don't notice we've cut the goods back AND we get all the interest on the payment in the meantime." Take from your customers and make it look like you're doing them a favour. As far as I'm concerned, I would have preferred to get a message saying, "We're cutting back, but if you renew now we can keep it at the old price." I would still have taken up the offer, but not had all the annoyance.

Ah, well.

Addendum: Today I got in to work and found a new message from the company offering TWELVE issues for the same price as the previous one. After I'd faxed through the order for the ten.

I rang up the company and spoke to a nice gentleman who fixed it for me and promised an invoice in a few days. I got his name. When you get a competent person on the other end, you don't want to lose them.

ASIM Back Issues

If you're reading this and live in Australia, Andromeda Spaceways is selling random back issues - a bundle of twenty for $60, including postage. That works out at $3.00 a copy. Even if you subscribe, you can always give them away to friends and family. We're trying to raise some money and get rid of back issues before Aussiecon 4. The issue we're taking there will be #47. I've arranged the art with the wonderful Greg Hughes, who has agreed to do all the art for that issue, including the cover, and there will be some very good stories in there. But we need to get rid of some back issues!

I don't usually promote stuff here, but we've all been working hard on this magazine and it's worth promoting.

if you're interested, go take a look at the web site on

THE BOY/FRIEND By R.M. Corbet. Girlfriend Fiction 19. Sydney: Allen and Unwin 2010

Robert (R.M.) Corbet has written fiction for young adults for some time. His last Girlfriend Fiction novel, the romantic comedy Fifteen Love, was actually a re-packaged earlier novel, but this one is brand new. Like Fifteen Love, it is straight romantic comedy rather than a novel with some romance included.

Somewhere in the suburbs of Melbourne (Brunswick?) live best friends Maude and Lou (named for Louis Armstrong, in his musical family). They have lived on the same street all their lives, built a tree-house together and spent hours under the now-cut-down willow trees on the banks of the Merri Creek. Unexpectedly, Lou has asked Maude on a date. Thrown off-balance, she hasn’t taken it seriously, hurting Lou’s feelings.

What now? Does she want him after all? How does she compete with the gorgeous new member of his experimental punk rock band? Or the other female member of his band, who has extremely long legs and is an expert in setting up equipment? What does she do about the clingy Andy?

Of course, this is Girlfriend Fiction. All goes well, with the help of Lou’s sister, a rusting old BMW and a bunch of big hairy bikies.

Mr Corbet certainly enjoys writing over-the-top fiction – and who can’t remember the boy/girl friendship that changed when the boy suddenly noticed you were a girl? I still have the first gift I was given by such a boy, red-faced with embarrassment, when we were twelve…

George Ivanoff's book signing

George Ivanoff, author of the novel Gamer's Quest, which I have reviewed on this blog, has asked me to let it be known that he will be doing a book signing on the weekend (see below). George is a very funny, entertaining speaker and with luck, he will read from his novel - he also has some actor training.

If you have any children or teens in your life and want a birthday gift or very early Yuletide present, this might be a good time to go along.

Eastland is in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne and you can get there easily by train - you can see it from Ringwood train station.

Where and when:

Location: Angus & Robertson Ringwood bookstore (Shop L026a) in Eastland Shopping Centre, Victoria
Date: Saturday 8 May 2010
Time: 11.30am-12.30pm

Right book for the right person

I deal with this every now and then: finding a book for a student who doesn't like reading. Last year, it was Jacinta and a Girlfriend Fiction Book. As it happens, she read two books, willingly, that term. Perhaps she hasn't read any more since then, but you never know. One of the books was my crime book, Crime Time.

After parent-teacher night this time, a year 10 girl came to see me. She told me, lip quivering, that she was under orders to read more. She had come to - shudder! - borrow a book.

I asked her, first, what she had last read and enjoyed, which I usually do to help me.

"I've never read a book in my life!" she wailed. "No, Miss, it's true! Well, except for primary school..."

And then she muttered that, actually, she had read something that morning, during her teacher's absence from Literacy class, that she wouldn't mind borrowing, if she had to read a book.

Guess what it was?

Crime Time: Australians behaving badly. :-)

Well, it has done very well in libraries. School libraries especially. I am very flattered to know that a girl who avoids reading is willing to read my book.

Pity bookshops didn't know how to display and promote it.