Read. Write. Discuss

May 18, 2013

For My Children (1)

For My Children I’ve decided to start a new feature on Read. Write. Discuss. I recently went out of my way to acquire a hardcover first edition of a book that I haven’t even finished reading yet because I knew it was something I would want to hold on to and eventually pass down to my children and grandchildren. It was a beautiful book, with a gorgeous cover and ink-edged pages. The text was beautifully typeset, and the book had a good weight in my hands.

The thought of buying it not just for myself, but for a future generation of people who aren’t even born yet, got me thinking. This isn’t the first time I’ve purchased or deliberately preserved a book for my hypothetical children. I’ve been doing it for years.

It doesn’t take a psych degree to trace the behaviour back to my mother’s influence. She read to me constantly when I was little — every day there would be a foot-high stack of Little Critter and Bernstein Bears books that we’d gone through. Most of those books are now in plastic storage bins in her basement, waiting for the advent of grandbabies so she can pull them out again.

My mother handed down very few of her childhood books to me. She moved around a lot as a kid, and artifacts of her early years are scarce. But as adults, we constantly pass books back and forth. We share a deep desire to empathize with the way certain books affect each other.

That’s why I’m starting the For My Children feature. I want to share with many people the way in which these books-worth-preserving affected me, and how I hope they’ll affect future generations.

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The Book Thief

Acquisition

It seems like a good idea to begin this feature with another book that I bought for preservation before I’d even finished reading. In January 2012 I borrowed The Book Thief by Markus Zusak from the library. I’d seen a glowing review on Goodreads, and since I was in a slump of crummy books, I thought I’d give it a try.

By the time I got to the end of the second page, I was deeply, hopelessly in love with this book. I went out and bought a copy the very next day, but continued to read the library copy because it was already beat up. I didn’t have to worry about scuffing it, bending it, etc. Neurotic, I know. Since then I’ve read the copy I bought — very carefully — at times when I wanted to re-experience certain scenes.

Experience

The Book Thief was unlike anything I had ever read. The prose is nothing short of poetic, and the perspective of the narrator is pure genius. By telling the story of Leisel Meminger and her family from the perspective of Death, Zusak transcends the limitations of time, space, and mortality. While this is very much a story about one family, it is also a story about World War II. Death, omnipresent and immortal, has a very interesting view on life and humanity. The Book Thief moved me like no other WWII book ever did before.

Passing it On

The Book Thief is classified as a YA book and the protagonists are tweens, but I won’t pass The Book Thief on to my children until they’re at least in their mid- to late-teens. It takes a certain degree of emotional maturity to appreciate the story. Readers also have to be comfortable with their own mortality, to a certain extent, to read a story through Death’s eyes. When I was thirteen, I was barely at peace with this radical new thought that everyone I knew, including me, would someday cease to exist. The Book Thief would have freaked me out then. Five years later, I could have handled it. I could have relaxed enough to slip into the prose and become consumed in the story, as I hope my kids will someday.

In researching The Book ThiefI found this interview with the author. The inspiration for the book came from stories passed down by his parents. It’s a nice thought, that stories worth sharing between generations thousands of miles away can inspire others to preserve stories for future generations.

What about your children?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic — what books you’re preserving, what you hope your kids will get out of them. If you’d like to participate in the feature, please link up.



May 18, 2013

Accelerated by Bronwen Hruska

Accelerated Bronwen HruskaEvery afternoon Sean Benning picks up his son, Toby, on the marble steps that lead into the prestigious Bradley School. Everything at Bradley is accelerated, 3rd graders read at the 6th grade level, they have labs and facilities to rival most universities, and the chess champions are the bullies.

A single dad and struggling artist, Sean sticks out like a sore thumb amongst the power-soccer-mom cliques and ladies-who-lunch that congregate on the steps every afternoon. But at least Toby is thriving and getting the best education money can buy. Or is he?

When Sean starts getting pressure from the school to put Toby on medication for ADD, something smells fishy, and it isn’t the caviar that was served at last week’s PTA meeting. Toby’s “issues” in school seem, to Sean, to be nothing more than normal behavior for an eight-year-old boy.

But maybe Sean just isn’t seeing things clearly, which has been harder and harder to do since Toby’s new teacher, Jess, started at Bradley. And the school has Toby’s best interests at heart, right? But what happens when the pressure to not just keep up, but to exceed, takes hold? When things take a tragic turn, Sean realizes that the price of this accelerated life is higher than he could have ever imagined.
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3 coffees

Overall

Accelerated is a very timely book. ADD and ADHD diagnoses are higher than ever, the average American child’s education is a crap shoot, and there seems to be a pill for everything. Accelerated focuses on one family and their struggle with a few difficult questions: How do you make sure your child gets the best chance they can to succeed in this crazy, competitive, over-medicated world?

I’m not really sure how to classify this book. It’s mostly a family drama, but at times it seems like it’s trying to be a thriller. Let’s go with family drama, because as a thriller it would be pretty tame.

Plot

When Accelerated began, I thought it was going to be a family drama. The protagonist, Sean, is trying to keep it together for his eight-year-old son, Toby, in the wake of his wife’s abandonment. The tension between Sean and his ex, Ellie, is a big component of the plot, but not a constant. The main focus of the story is Sean’s struggle with Toby’s school and the question of whether to medicate Toby for inattentive ADD. Accelerated does a good job of spotlighting the questions faced by many parents today. Does my kid really have ADD? Will the meds help or harm? What if they help and I screw up his life by foregoing them? It also raises questions about who makes mental health diagnoses, and how such diagnoses are made. There’s some flawed methodology here, of course. There always is. Science is inexact, frightening as that is.

There were aspects of the plot that I found farfetched and difficult to believe. Serious, life-threatening reactions to ADD meds are very, very rare, but two kids from Toby’s school have them within a two-month period. It was extremely convenient and made it impossible to suspend disbelief.

Characters

Initially I liked Sean, the protagonist. He was very much an average father, trying to juggle a kid and a job while his wife was off on a bender. His insecurities and desires made him real, but in the last chapters of the book I found him very difficult to like. Basically, he acts like a brash teenager and does something incredibly risky. I won’t spoil it, but it’s something that would rightfully screw up anybody’s life. Conveniently, he gets away with it and it all works out in the end (of course). The happy note on which Hruska leaves Sean felt forced.

I do, however, have to commend Hruska for the way she wrote Toby. He actually reads like an eight-year-old kid. So many fictional children end up sounding way younger or older than they’re supposed to be. It’s hard to get kids spot-on, and even harder to avoid the temptation to use them as comic relief or emotional bait.

There was instalove in Accelerated, but Hruska follows it up with an actual relationship, so it didn’t leave a totally horrible taste in my mouth. Maybe it’s better that it was instalove; the romantic aspects of the story didn’t distract from the central plot.

May 17, 2013

Feature & Follow Friday

FF_2013Button-300x300 It’s been a while since I joined in the Feature & Follow Fridays, but I’m trying to get back into it. I’ve discovered some great blogs this way in the past, and hope to find more this summer. Never mind that it’s barely summer here in Canada — now is a good time to start.

Q: School is out! What is your favorite Summer Reading book??

I always tackled long books during my summers off (when I actually got summers off — if you still get those, don’t rush to grow up). I liked having the free time to completely throw myself into a long, epic read. Old favorites include The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer-Bradley — I read this one at my grandparents’ cottage, and my Nan wondered why I wasn’t bouncing off the walls like her other grandkids. Uh, because I was absorbed in an awesome book…

This summer I’m looking forward to reading Wicked as She Wants by Delilah S. Dawson, Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell, and She Rises by Kate Worsley (tour date: June 18th).

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May 14, 2013

From Jetpack to MailChimp

Blog Button Read Write DiscussSome of you might have seen a funny looking email in your inbox this morning. That’s because I’ve switched up my review format, and Jetpack doesn’t enable shortcodes. In light of this, I’ve switched the Read. Write. Discuss. mailing list over to MailChimp. Their RSS-driven campaign tools will ensure that posts are actually readable by email for those of you who subscribe.

What do you have to do? Absolutely nothing. Your subscription information has already been migrated to MailChimp. They will allow you to control how often you receive emails via confirmation link.

Thanks for sticking with me during this transition. I’m sorry for any confusion caused by this morning’s shortcode-laden email.

Cheers!

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Other ways to follow via email:

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May 14, 2013

The Waiting Tree by Lindsay Moynihan

The Waiting TreeEighteen-year-old Simon Peters wants to stand up for the truth about who he is. His love for Stephen is unwavering, but does he have the courage to defend it when his entire church community, including his eldest brother has ostracized him? Trapped in a cashier’s job he hates, struggling to maintain peace with his brothers after their parents have died, and determined to look after his mute brother, Simon puts everyone else’s needs before his own. It takes a courageous act of self-sacrifice on Jude’s part to change both of their lives forever. Jude, who knew that when the fig tree in their yard began to bloom, it was his time to finally be heard and to set Simon free.

3 coffees

Overall
I found The Waiting Tree by Lindsay Moynihan to be a touching read about a troubled family in small-town Louisiana. The protagonist and narrator, Simon, is facing the fallout of being forced out of the closet, and at the same time his entire family is recovering from tragedy. The four brothers must figure out how to pick up the pieces after their parents’ sudden demise, and The Waiting Tree is largely about the struggles they face, and the bitter unfairness of life.
Plot
The Waiting Tree is largely a symbolic journey that Simon must travel within himself. That particular premise may bore readers who crave more action, because Simon accomplishes very little on the outside. This is a story about a young man, beaten down by society and circumstance, deciding to take charge of his life and not sacrifice everything for other people. Simon is pretty passive until he comes to that decision — until he’s forced to make it, really — but when he finally does come into his own, it’s a very cathartic moment.
Writing
I think this book could have benefitted from a little more editing. There were countless descriptions of mealtimes that weren’t really necessary, and at times Moynihan narrates the details of daily life that add nothing to the setting or plot. Overall I think The Waiting Tree could have been more polished; more tightly written.
Characters
I absolutely loved Jude, Simon’s gentle, mute twin brother. Jude has an intellectual disability that prevents him from being independent of his brothers, but he’s very sensitive and has his finger on the pulse of family life.

But as much as I love Jude, I didn’t really care for the other brothers. Paul, the eldest, doesn’t have a single redeeming quality. The reader is pretty much encouraged to hate him, which I think is a little unfair. The villain should always have a human side, in my opinion. The second eldest, Luke, is basically a placeholder character. He’s a doormat, and his role in The Waiting Tree is to take care of someone else whenever Simon isn’t around to do it.

I expected more range from the characters, especially in a book about such serious, gritty subjects.

Similar to...
If you enjoyed these other books, The Waiting Tree might be for you.

May 12, 2013

Sunday Digest 12/05/13

Bookish News

Last week I made a personal resolution to comment on more blogs, and I actually followed through. I stumbled across some lovely blog designs that I never knew were out there because I mainly view posts in feed-reader apps that strip styling. Makes me wish I knew more about HTML and CSS.

And now for three seconds of shameless self-promotion: my book is on sale for 99¢ for the month of May, across all platforms. In the past promos like these have been limited to Kindle (sorry), but this one is available for Nook, Kobo, iBooks, and other epub ereaders as well.

Purchased

I preordered a copy of Wicked as She Wants by Delilah S. Dawson, sequel to the carnie-punk Wicked as They ComeI greatly enjoyed Dawson’s first book, and can’t wait to read Casper’s story.

Wicked as the Wants by Delilah S. DawsonWhen Blud princess Ahnastasia wakes up, drained and starving in a suitcase, she’s not sure which calls to her more: the sound of music or the scent of blood. The source of both sensations is a handsome and mysterious man named Casper Sterling. Once the most celebrated musician in London, Sangland, he’s fallen on hard times. Now, much to Ahna’s frustration, the debauched and reckless human is her only ticket back home to the snow-rimmed and magical land of Freesia.

Together with Casper’s prickly charge, a scrappy orphan named Keen, they seek passage to Ahna’s homeland, where a power-hungry sorceress named Ravenna holds the royal family in thrall. Traveling from the back alleys of London to the sparkling minarets of Muscovy, Ahna discovers that Freesia holds new perils and dangerous foes. Back in her country, she is forced to choose between the heart she never knew she had and the land that she was born to rule. But with Casper’s help, Ahna may find a way to have it all….

May 9, 2013

Ask the Passengers by A.S. King

Ask the PassengersAstrid Jones desperately wants to confide in someone, but her mother’s pushiness and her father’s lack of interest tell her they’re the last people she can trust. Instead, Astrid spends hours lying on the backyard picnic table watching airplanes fly overhead. She doesn’t know the passengers inside, but they’re the only people who won’t judge her when she asks them her most personal questions . . . like what it means that she’s falling in love with a girl.

As her secret relationship becomes more intense and her friends demand answers, Astrid has nowhere left to turn. She can’t share the truth with anyone except the people at thirty thousand feet, and they don’t even know she’s there. But little does Astrid know just how much even the tiniest connection will affect these strangers’ lives–and her own–for the better.

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5 coffees

I came across Ask the Passengersby A.S. Byatt on Owl Tell You About It, and immediately requested it from my library because it looked like just the sort of book I love. Ask the Passengers is the story of high school senior Astrid Jones’s questioning and coming out in small-town Pennsylvania.

Ask the Passengers is narrated in first person from Astrid’s perspective, and the reader has a front-row seat to all her confusion, joy, anger, hurt, and burgeoning sense of self-confidence. Astrid is a lovely narrator because she doesn’t do drama. Where other teenage protagonists might kick up a fuss, Astrid keeps her head down and gets through her issues with dignity. In a genre full of drama queens, I admired her patience and perseverance. She has more than I would in the same situation.

The story is very much about the Jones family as a whole and how they function, how they react to Astrid coming out, etc. They’re all very believable people. Astrid’s mother, Claire, is a complete witch for most of the story, but even in her most unattractive moments it’s easy to see that her bitterness and frustration are caused by her deep unhappiness, which she takes out on other people. She’s not a villain for the sake of being a villain; she’s simply human. Astrid’s dad, Gerry, is present but spaced for most of the novel. He has his own ways of dealing with his dissatisfaction with life — ways that are mostly, ahem, medicinal.

Astrid’s sister Ellis is an interesting figure, because like a lot of fictional siblings, the sisters are often compared to each other. Astrid is the outsider, Ellis is popular. Claire is close to Ellis, but has nothing positive to say to Astrid. Astrid is academic, Ellis is athletic, etc. etc. etc. Their sibling rivalry is both standard and complicated, because their parents and friends tend to pull them in different directions, increasing the tension. There were times when I was disappointed in one of the sisters, but eventually they manage to pull it together.

Ask the Passengers also has an interesting dimension that takes place outside of the main storyline. Astrid sends her love to commuter jets that she sees flying over her town, usually with a particular thought in mind. King affords the reader glimpses of what’s going on in those planes, and how the receipt of anonymous love affects the passengers on board. It was a nice way to pull back from the main story, to show that love really is a uniting force, and to keep all the local drama from becoming too myopic.

I love the honesty of Astrid’s voice, the joy and tragedy that she goes through as she questions her sexuality and eventually comes out. It’s one of the most touching books about LGBT youth I’ve ever read, and I can’t give it a high enough recommendation.

You may also enjoy…

May 7, 2013

The Honest Toddler by Bunmi Laditan

Honest ToddlerBracingly candid, sweetly indignant, and writing with an unchecked sense of entitlement, the Internet’s wildly popular Honest Toddler delivers a guide to the parenting techniques he deems acceptable (keep the cake coming and the apple juice undiluted).

The toddler stage can be a rude awakening for parents, whose sweet infants morph, seemingly overnight, into tyrants ready to turn simple errands into hellish and humiliating experiences. Trying to convince your defiant darling to do something as simple as put on her shoes can feel like going to war. It’s not all blood, sweat, and tears, though. Toddlers can be charming little creatures, with their unfettered enthusiasm, wide grins, and ready hugs. In fact, what makes toddlers so fascinating is their unique blend of cute and demonic behavior. A toddler will take your hand and say “I love you,” then slap you in the face.

Now, The Honest Toddler provides an indispensable guide to parenting that places the toddler’s happiness front and center. Who better to instruct parents on the needs of toddlers than a toddler himself?

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3 coffees

I requested The Honest Toddler by Bunmi Laditan from NetGalley because I’m a fan of The Honest Toddler blog and Twitter feed. I thought THT was an apt form of social comedy, and was looking forward to the book.

After reading the book, I think THT was better as a blog and Twitter feed, because in short bursts this stuff is great. Just like the blog and Twitter, The Honest Toddler is told from the first-person perspective of a righteously self-entitled, badass toddler. In the book, the toddler pontificates on all the things parents are doing wrong (expecting kids to behave in restaurants, setting bedtimes, etc.) and helpfully suggests the things they can do to improve their performance (keep gummy bears on hand at all times, praise your child as a god, etc.).

I think The Honest Toddler is best read in short sittings. If you try to read it at a stretch, the voice of the toddler will start to sound screechy in your head. Don’t get me wrong — the writing is funny and you’ll laugh out loud, but the whole book is basically the same joke. “I’m a little tyrant who thinks the world revolves around me, and you should too! LOLZ!” That’s why I gave this book 3 stars — I was expecting more diversity and originality. I wanted the concept of the Honest Toddler to expand beyond the limits of Twitter and Tumblr. It didn’t really do that, though it is entertaining in its own way.

I suppose it would make a great gift book — not something to take seriously, but good for a chuckle when you’ve got five minutes to kill.

May 5, 2013

Sunday Digest 05/05/13

I know, I know, I didn’t do a Sunday Digest post last week. Nothing much happened, so I couldn’t justify writing a post about… well, nothing. But lots happened this week, so here we go.

Bookish News

I found out (late, as per standard) that The Book Thief by Markus Zusak is being made into a movie. I may have to go live under a rock once the trailer is released if I’m to avoid having any part of The Book Thief ruined for me. It’s one of my top ten favorite books of all time, and I just know Death’s narration isn’t going to translate well to screen. Boo.

Some good news, though: Riffle has finally launched. It took quite a long time, but the site looks beautiful and is very simple to use. It’s going to make doing my Cover Love posts so much easier.

On the Blog

I invested in a new plugin from Code Canyon that makes it easy as pie to install Google Web fonts on your site and assign them to paragraphs, headers, etc. No more picking a font and installing the code manually — I just pick what I want from a handy, searchable sidebar menu, assign what category of text I want it applied to, and presto. Definitely worth the $14. My only criticism is that it automatically pops up when you view your site while logged in to WordPress. I wish the sidebar was automatically closed, and only opened when needed. It’s not like I’m going to reset my fonts every day, after all. Or am I…

I also designed a new button for the blog. It’ll hardly get used except in my WordPress gravatar when I comment on blogs, but I love it nonetheless.

Blog Button Read Write Discuss

Aaaand I gave in and signed up for Bloglovin’. I liked their interface and smartphone app. I was slow to cave in to Google Reader, Networked Blogs, etc. etc. etc. (How many ways to stream a blog feed are there now?). We’ll see if I stick with Bloglovin’, or if it’s just another flavor-of-the-month tool.

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Borrowed and Requested

I found Someone Could Get Hurt by Drew Magary through the Shelf Awareness newsletter. I first fell in love with Drew Magary’s work when I encountered The Postmortal, the most frightening (and probably accurate) apocalyptic novel I’ve ever read. I requested Someone Could Get Hurt (published May 16, 2013) from my library because I love Magary’s style, and I also wanted to compare it to another book I’m reading, The Honest Toddler (May 7, 2013). To be honest, I’m find THT a bit odious and relentlessly screeching, but I’m trying to keep an open mind as I read.

Someone Could Get HurtNo one writes about family quite like Drew Magary. The GQ correspondent and Deadspin columnist’s stories about trying to raise a family have attracted millions of readers online. And now he’s finally bringing that unique voice to a memoir. In Someone Could Get Hurt, he reflects on his own parenting experiences to explore the anxiety, rationalizations, compromises, and overpowering love that come with raising children in contemporary America.

In brutally honest and funny stories, Magary reveals how American mothers and fathers cope with being in over their heads (getting drunk while trick-or-treating, watching helplessly as a child defiantly pees in a hotel pool, engaging in role-play with a princess-crazed daughter), and how stepping back can sometimes make all the difference (talking a toddler down from the third story of a netted-in playhouse, allowing children to make little mistakes in the kitchen to keep them from making the bigger ones in life). It’s a celebration of all the surprises—joyful and otherwise—that come with being part of a real family.

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I also came across Ask the Passengers after reading a review on Owl Tell You About It. I generally enjoy LGBT fiction about young characters, and I’m excited to give this one a try. So far the writing style is very clipped and fast-paced, and I’m learning to get into the rhythms of the story.

Ask the PassengersAstrid Jones desperately wants to confide in someone, but her mother’s pushiness and her father’s lack of interest tell her they’re the last people she can trust. Instead, Astrid spends hours lying on the backyard picnic table watching airplanes fly overhead. She doesn’t know the passengers inside, but they’re the only people who won’t judge her when she asks them her most personal questions . . . like what it means that she’s falling in love with a girl.

As her secret relationship becomes more intense and her friends demand answers, Astrid has nowhere left to turn. She can’t share the truth with anyone except the people at thirty thousand feet, and they don’t even know she’s there. But little does Astrid know just how much even the tiniest connection will affect these strangers’ lives–and her own–for the better.

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I was very excited when my hold on The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker came in. I’ve been salivating over this book for months. When I actually saw it, I got all giddy because the outer edges of the pages are covered in midnight blue ink. It’s the perfect tough for an already gorgeous book like this.

Golem and JinniChava is a golem, a creature made of clay, brought to life to by a disgraced rabbi who dabbles in dark Kabbalistic magic. When her master-the husband who commissioned her-dies at sea on the voyage from Poland, she is unmoored and adrift as the ship arrives in New York harbor in 1899.

Ahmad is a jinni, a being of fire, born in the ancient Syrian desert. Trapped in an old copper flask by a Bedouin wizard centuries ago, he is released accidentally by a tinsmith in a Lower Manhattan shop. Though he is no longer imprisoned, Ahmad is not entirely free-an unbreakable band of iron around his wrist binds him to the physical world.

Overwhelmed by the incessant longing and fears of the humans around her, the cautious and tentative Chava-imbued with extraordinary physical strength-fears losing control and inflicting harm. Baptized by the tinsmith who makes him his apprentice, the handsome and capricious Ahmad-an entity of inquisitive intelligence and carefree pleasure-chafes at monotony and human dullness. Like their immigrant neighbors, the Golem and the Jinni struggle to make their way in this strange new place while masking the supernatural origins that could destroy them.

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May 4, 2013

Trail of Fire by Diana Gabaldon

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A Trail of Fire The fiery trails of tracer bullets, as a wounded Spitfire falls from the sky.

A Jamaican plantation burns deep into the night.

A handful of heroic Highlanders fight their way straight up a vertical cliff to stand on the Plains of Abraham in a fiery dawn.

And a torch burns green, through the eerie surrounds of a Parisian cemetery, down into the mysteries of the earth.
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4 coffees

Brace yourselves; this is going to be a long review.

Since this book is four separate short stories, I’m going to divide the review into four parts. Each story had its individual strengths and weaknesses, so this is the fairest way to do it. The four coffees above represent my impression of the book as a whole. For individual stories’ ratings, see the chart at the bottom of the page. The only over-arcing comment I have to make on A Trail of Fire is that Gabaldon’s writing style is, as always, impeccable. Someday I hope to have a vocabulary like hers.

A Leaf on the Wind of All Hallows

I became a bit grumpy when I realized this story was in the A Trail of Fire collection. I’d unknowingly purchased it for Kindle months ago, not realizing it was in this collection when I preordered the paperback. So a quarter of the book was wasted on me, but oh well.

A Leaf on the Wind of All Hallows is the story of Roger’s father, whose plane went down during World War II. Gabaldon hinted in the main series that it might have gone down over or near a ring of standing stones, and in this story she explores that. It took me back to the first Outlander book, when Claire had to figure out all this time travel business. Only she didn’t travel by way of plane crash, so you can imagine how his situation is infinitely more complicated and traumatic.

This story has some touching notes of romance, but be warned — it is a tragedy. Fans of the series will likely know that going in, since facts about Roger’s parents’ fates have been sprinkled throughout the main books.

The Custom of the Army

The plot. Now here I have to shake my head a little. I’ve never gotten into the Lord John Grey spinoff series, probably because the more I read about him, the harder it is to suspend disbelief with regard to his exploits. He’s simply in the right place at the right time too often. In one of the author’s notes, Gabaldon admits that since Grey isn’t tied down to one place, she often chooses to put him at the most significant military or historical event of a particular year. Well and good, but a life can get too full, you know? That’s how I felt about John being present at the battle of the Plains of Abraham.

The Custom of the Army, in which Grey travels to Canada and participates in the attack against Quebec, felt like reading about drama for the sake of drama. The story begins strongly, but then lapses into contradictions and a time gap that confused me a little. By the end, it felt like a badly thought-out construct in order to get a key character to witness this important historical battle.

My non-spoilery rendition of the Big Contradiction:

Character 1: “There’s a problem, but I didn’t want you to deal with it, so I planned to make excuses for you.”

Character 2: “Wait, I want to deal with it.”

Character 1: “Good, I’ve already arranged for you to travel there.”

…because making plans and excuses simultaneously makes sense. Grey also crosses from England to Canada, all the way down the St. Lawrence to Quebec, in one month. Even in summer, that must have been a damn fast ship. And that problem he went to resolve? It resolves itself in the end. So convenient.

Grey always seems to find someone to hook up with in country, too. I’m not sure how I feel about that, because while it’s a common practice for soldiers, Grey’s particular situation seems to reinforce the stereotype that gay men are promiscuous. Short-term flings might be a necessity of life in the army, when one is constantly moving around, but he rarely forms deep connections, which squicked me a little. But this review is dragging on, so let’s skip over the bit where I explore the counter-argument (that Grey is also awfully prone to broken heartedness when he does get attached) and move on to…

Lord John and the Plague of Zombies

When I saw the title I questioned the need for zombies, even if John does travel to Jamaica during Voyager, but then I thought of the meme “because fuck you, that’s why,” and it all made sense. I find this strategy also solves conundrums like, “Why should I pay taxes?” and “Why is all the wine gone?”

So… zombies. Hmm. It’s an interesting enough topic, and here it works as a nice distraction in order to keep the central conflict from becoming the basis for a full-blown novel. Gabaldon certainly could have gone on for a while in regards to colonial problems in Jamaica. In Lord John and the Plague of Zombies Grey arrives to address a problem of rebellion/theft/terrorism, is promptly distracted by zombies and Obeah-men, and then treks off into the jungle in pursuit of the rebels, who may also be the zombie-makers.

I didn’t really feel satisfied at the end of this story, mostly because it’s a wild ride with lots of drama, but very little resolution. All the problems that were there when John arrived in Jamaica are still there. It’s definitely the weakest of the four stories.

The Space Between

Gabaldon is at her best when writing about tragedy or from a woman’s perspective, and The Space Between has both. Picking up after the events of An Echo in the Bone, the story follows recent widower Michael Murray and convent-bound postulant Joan MacKimmie, Laoghaire’s daughter. The story takes place primarily in Paris, and readers get to see a few familiar faces from the main series — Mother Hildegarde, Jared, Master Raymond, and the Comte St. Germain, among them. One thing is clear from their interactions with Michael Murray: Claire’s reputation in Paris has not dimmed, despite thirty years of absence.

The Space Between feels like it could have been part of the main series. It has the same atmosphere and tone as the Outlander books, and characters have the same propensity to fall into social, criminal, and supernatural tangles. I enjoyed this story the most out of the four, and would probably read it again given time.

I admire the way Gabaldon manages to represent Michael’s grief with believability and sensitivity, yet doesn’t allow it to overwhelm the rest of the plot. The story isn’t about him, per se, though is a very important character. The Space Between is about the Comte St. Germain and his scientific exploits. Much of Master Raymond’s story occurs off-page, though he is clearly valuable to the plot. I hope we get to see more of what he’s up to in Written in My Own Heart’s Blood

In The Space Between, Joan is a bit of a plot device, but since she is about to embark on a spiritual journey and this is a short story, I figure that’s all right. She can’t progress too far in the space of a few days, right? Normally I find religious characters odious and boring, but I rather like Joan. She’s got just enough wickedness in her to make things interesting.

In Summary

I don’t think I’ll ever fall in love with the Lord John Grey series, not even a little bit, but even when plots get farfetched, I have to admire the quality of Gabaldon’s prose. The dearest stories to my heart, though, are the ones that remind me of the central series. I’d recommend Trail of Fire for readers who love both series. If you’re only into one or the other, snag the individual stories as ebooks.

Trail of Fire rating

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