Book Log 30/2013 - Anne Lyle: The Alchemist of Souls

Set in an alternate Elizabethan Britain where Elizabeth has married, produced heirs and is now widowed. Voyagers to the new world have found a race of non-human skraylings who have a strange kind of magic that humans have barely fathomed. One of these talents is the ability to be reborn. It's against Skrayling law to be reincarnated as a human, but renegade skraylings exist. known as guisers, and they are dangerous.

Skrayling-human politics are finely balanced. The crown appreciates Skrayling trade - even depends on it - while at the same time fearing the strangers. The Skraylings also have their own internal political struggles and factions.

When Mal Catelyn, well-born but now a down-on-his-luck soldier of fortune, is hired as bodyguard to the new skrayling ambassador to London, it's not by accident. He has to overcome his own prejudices against them and guilt for what his family once did. He's on an even steeper learning curve when he also gets hired by Walsingham, the queen's spymaster. A job he can't refuse. Mal's in a tricky position, a secret Catholic, he has to hide his faith, but he has other secrets, too. His twin brother Sandy, incarcerated in Bedlam, is just one of them, but what he learns from the Skrayling ambassador turns his world upside down and gives him an even bigger secret to guard.

Set in late Elizabethan London, this novel goes from the Tower itself to the backstreets of Southwark and the disreputable milieu of the theatre where there's young Coby, who also has a secret to hide. Coby, Mal's friend Ned, Ned's lover Gabriel and Mal himself are all on a collision course with the skraylings and the plots that surround them.

A hugely enjoyable read with well drawn, realistic characters, a setting that feels well-researched and a race of aliens who are inscrutably different. It made me want to go straight on to the second novel in the trilogy, Merchant of Dreams.

Book Log 31/2013 - Tanya Huff: The Wild Ways

I like Tanya Huff's writing a lot. That I didn't quite engage with this book as much as I'd hoped is a puzzle because it has all the right ingredients. It's Tanya Huff. It's about the Gales, so beautifully launched with The Enchantment Emporium. Having said that I didn't engage with it, there's much to like about this book. Its main character is Charlie, one of the younger Gale girls, and a wild talent who can use her magic to walk 'between' places via the woods, and has a handy line in quick charms to solve (almost) all problems. Charlie's a guitarist and singer in a folk band and when she gets a call she steps into a band full of old friends who are doing the summer festival trail in Nova Scotia.

Hell, that should be one more reason for liking this book. I've played folk festivals in Nova Scotia.

Unlike, Charlie, however, I never come across a distraught selkie whose sealskin had been kidnapped . It's a blackmail thing. The selkies are protesting Carlson Oil's plans to drill offshore close to a protected island and Carlson has hired a witch to steal the selkie skins and hold them to ransom to halt the protest. Unfortunately for Charlie the witch for hire happens to be one of the fearsome Gale 'aunties', also a wild talent and scary as all hell.

Charlie drafts in reinforcements - in the shape of Cousin Jack, a dragon prince, raised in the Under-Realm, but most definitely a Gale Boy. Trouble with Gale boys is that you can never tell if they're going to go bad or not. Fifteen is the age where they are judged, and Jack is fourteen and confused. He knows how humans behave, but even when he's in human form he's really all dragon. Hungry dragon. And he's a sorcerer as well, which practically condemns him in the eyes of most of the aunties.

Since everyone's been keeping a close eye on him Jack's been wearing a mental straight-jacket, so Charlie figures a bit of freewheeling roadie-ing and some space to be who he really is, might help him to decide whether he's going to pass or fail the aunties' final test. Besides, it's always good to have a dragon on the team when you're going up against Auntie Catherine and a selkie-skin-stealing oil company.

This not only a story of Jack's growth towards Gale-hood, but also Charlie finally accepting responsibility for her wild powers.

So, the final verdict? Well worth reading if not quite as good as The Enchantment Emporium. I do, however, look forward to more stories of the Gale family.

Book Log 32/2013 - Anne Lyle: The Merchant of Dreams

I'm in the middle of writing at the moment, which generally means my own reading suffers as I can't comfortably read fiction when I'm writing different fiction, however a trip to London and back gave me eight hours as a pasenger in the car and I'm afraiud I was antisocial enough to seize on the opportunity to read The Merchant of Dreams.

The second installment of Mal Catlyn's adventures, beginning about a year after the events in Alchemist of Souls. Mal finds a party of skraylings in the Mediterranean, shipwrecked, captured by the locals and now dead by their own hand. When Kiiren is called away from the skrayling haven on Sark to replace the dead ambassador ona mission to Venice, Mal's brother, Sandy, sometimes all brother, sometimes all skrayling, is released into his care. Sandy is much improved, but he'll never be the brother Mal wants him to be.

Mal, in the meantime has been, at Walsingham's command, settling in to his new estates in France where he's an English ear at the French court. His 'manservant', Coby is more than she seems and there's a huge attraction between her and Mal, but she won't give up her male guise and he won't treat her as female until she does since the punishment for homosexual love is death. (Not that this seems to worry Mal's friend, Ned, and his lover Gabriel.)

When Mal is sent to Venice by Walsingham to spy on the Kiiren's trade mission,  he takes Ned and Coby is left to look after Sandy, but Sandy soon puts himself (and Coby and Gabriel) in desperate danger. Fleeing London, heading for Mal's estates in France they get kidnapped and the tangled knots begin to tighten.

The plot is satisfyingly convoluted with Mal, Coby, Sandy, Ned and Gabriel eventually coming together again in time for the major events to unfold, and there's a nicde payoff. Second books can be difficult, but this is handled deftly and the story expands beyond London to a well-researched late sixteenth century Venice. I like that Mal doesn't always make good decisions, but one decision here seems out of character. I'll wait to see how that resolves in the third book.

Highly recommended.