Agent 6, by Tom Rob Smith

Agent 6

Agent 6 is the last book in a trilogy detailing the trails and travails of Leo Demidov, former MGB agent. I am sorry to report that it doesn’t compare to the previous two books. Those first books were marvelous portraits of life in Soviet Russia. As you read, you felt at least a piece of the fear and paranoia of that time. But by the time we’ve rejoined Leo Demidov in 1965, everyone feels tired and disillusioned. There’s a keen sense of how pointless it all is. Perhaps this was the author’s point, that all the terror and suspicion were pointless. But after the high drama of the first two-thirds of the series, this book was kind of a let down.

The first part of the book shows Leo living as low profile an existence as possible with his wife, Raisa, and two adopted daughters. As Leo has slipped into obscurity, his wife has rise as a teacher. We find her arranging a joint American-Soviet concert in New York. Leo suspects something will go wrong, but this is dismissed as his old paranoia from his days working for the MGB. Raisa flies to New York with her girls and students. Everything seems normal until Elena, the younger of the two daughters, sneaks away to make contact with a former Soviet sympathizer. She convinces him to make a speech during the concert. It’s clear she has no idea that she’s just a small part of a larger conspiracy–until thing go wrong and not only is the sympathizer murdered, but so is her mother.

All this takes up the first third or so of the book. One would think that the rest of the book would see Leo ferociously pursuing the case, seeking justice (more likely retribution) for his wife. Instead, he is forced to accept the covered up version of events. Neither the Americans or the Soviets want anyone rocking the boat. And so Leo lays low, for seven years. In 1973, he makes a run for the Finnish border but is caught. An old friend protects him from the gulags or execution, but he ends up exiled to Kabul. If he stirs from that city, his daughters will be punished, too. So Leo stays put, comforted by an opium habit.

When we see Leo next, it’s 1980 and the Soviets have invaded Afghanistan. Leo is training new secret police for the pro-Soviet government, but it’s readily apparent that the Soviets are not going to win. There are not nearly enough Communists in the country for it to succeed. Not only that, but the resistance is too well entrenched, to well supported. Above all, they know how to fight on their own terrain and the Soviets have no clue how to deal with them. Things do get exciting during this section of the book. How could they not? But you have to wonder, as the reader, what about Raisa?

***SPOILERS BEGIN***

Smith does eventually get back to Raisa, after Leo manages to finagle a defection to the United States. From here the book slides into its long conclusion. Leo uses his access to the FBI archives (they let him in to try and clear up some mysteries to the past) and a friend who serves as an interpreter to find out what happened the night his wife died. He finally locates the mysterious Agent 6 (who doesn’t deserve to have a book named after him as he doesn’t feature much in the story). Agent 6, a sinister FBI agent from the first part of the book, reveals that Raisa died as a result of a stupid attempt to get a photograph to be used in propaganda. The wife of the murdered sympathizer arrived at the police station were Raisa and her daughter were being held in order to kill the FBI agent that she blamed for hounding her husband into poverty. Raisa was hit by a stray bullet. The FBI agent delayed calling the ambulance to preserve the cover up story, allowing her to die.

And that’s it. Raisa died because she was a convenient scapegoat. There was no great conspiracy; it was just bad luck. Leo torments himself for more than a decade because of a minor, pointless, stupid, little plot.

You see why I’m disappointed with the way this book turned out?

***SPOILERS END***

I can recommend the first two books in this series with no problems. They’re not just good mysteries, but they are great historical fiction. I’d only recommend this book for fans who can’t abide unsatisfied curiosity.

Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon, by Mark Hodder

Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon

The third Burton and Swinburne adventure almost brings the series around full circle to where it began–almost, but not quite. By the end, I was worried that this might be the last book in the series. But Hodder leaves room for the this extraordinary world and its extraordinary characters to rewrite history once more.

The Burton and Swinburne books are a wildly complicated steampunk/alternate history. I tried to explain the plot to someone yesterday only to realize that the job would require a ream of graphing paper to work out the time lines, plots, and motivations. Or they could just, you know, read the series.

The Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon picks up almost immediately where the second book ends (which picked up where the first book ended). They could almost be seen as one massive book that was published in three parts they work together so well. After the second book, it’s clear that the British get their hands on the remaining Eye of Naga before their enemies do. Sir Richard Francis Burton is to lead the expedition into the Lake Region of Africa, racing his former colleague John Henning Speke, who is working for the Germans. Before he can even leave Old Blighty, however, he faces assassination attempts and sabotage.

The expedition is only one part of the book. Before long, Hodder introduces another thread to the book. This thread begins in 1914, not 1863. And the narrator of this thread is, inexplicably, Burton, too–inexplicable because Burton died in 1890. That’s not the only historical paradox in this thread, either. The Great War had been going on for a long time. Europe is lost. The British Empire only consists of the central African city of Tabora and the surrounding territory. The British have few weapons and few men left to fight. The Germans have terrible biological weapons that have decimated them. History as we know it has seriously gone awry and Burton has landed smack in the middle of it with some crucial parts of his memory missing. His only companion in this reality is war correspondent named Herbert George Wells. It’s clear that this later reality is a consequence of all the time travel paradoxes of the previous books. Time has snarled up into a nasty Apocalyptic tangle.

Hodder takes us back and forth between 1863 and 1914, ratcheting up the tension as he goes. There are so many close calls in this book that you have to keep reading just to see who lives and who dies as Hodder prunes back his cast of characters. I can’t say much more without getting dangerously into spoiler territory, not just for this book but for all three. Instead, I have to say that these books are highly entertaining and thought-provoking reads. Each new book deepens the story by revealing new layers to what started out as one man trying to erase a smudge on his family’s history and subsequently derailing history. I marvel at Hodder’s ability to convincingly creating such a wildly complicated story.

The Leopard, by Jo Nesbø

The Leopard

Jo Nesbø has no problems beating up his protagonist, I’ll say that much. Harry Hole has lost a finder, broken and later dislocated his jaw, and given himself a Glasgow grin–not to mention the fact that he’s a raging alcoholic that has lost his long term girlfriend and unofficially adopted son, his father is dying, and he fell in debt to a Hong Kong triad. Apart from the Glasgow grin and the jaw dislocation, all this happens before this book starts.

The Leopard starts with a Norwegian police officer arriving in Hong Kong to retrieve our battered hero. There is a serial killer on the loose in Norway, and Harry is only person the Norwegian police think can solve it. Harry, however, is very, very reluctant to take on the case. He seems content to finish the job of destroying himself with opium and horse racing on the other side of the world. Because this would be a very short book otherwise, Kaja Solness convinces Harry to come back to Norway, if only to say goodbye to his father.

Once back on his old stomping ground, Harry can’t resist picking up the case. For a miracle, he also manages to avoid going on any benders. Nesbø’s books are full of twists and here’s the first one. Harry’s Crime Squad is competing against the national Kripos for the right to investigate murders. The Kripos, under the odious Bellman, have managed to make a convincing case to the Ministry of Justice. For now, all murders are their turf. Harry and his minuscule team (one detective and one forensics expert) have to investigate on the quiet to that the Kripos don’t find out about it.

With all this hovering over him, Harry has to work on puzzling out a bizarre series of murders. The killer is a serial killer, but only in the strictest sense. There’s no ritual, none of the other hallmarks of serial murder. The victims are not selected because of who they represent, but because they might have witness something. They’re murdered with different methods. There’s no timeline. And then the twists start. I think Nesbø has outdone himself with this one. The plot is utterly fantastic, but so well written that you have to believe it.

Even if the rest of the book weren’t up to par (and it’s well above), the ending would be worth sticking around for. The climax of the book takes place in Goma, Congo and partly on the sides of Mount Nyiragongo, a deadly volcano. The ending of this book is terrifying. The book up to this point has shown you that the killer is capable of extraordinarily sadism against his victims. Nesbø keeps tension going right up until the resolution. Since he’s killed off supporting characters before, there’s no guarantee that it’s going to be okay this time.

And on that note…I’m going to stop talking about the plot. The Leopard is a mystery; you’re going to have to read it for yourself if you want to know what happens.

Thematically, the thing that struck me about this book was manipulative people can be. Everyone wants something in this book and most of them aren’t afraid to wheel and deal or hurt people to get them. Bellman wants to be at the top of the heap and will blackmail or threaten anyone to get it. The killer wants revenge. Harry’s boss wants to preserve the status quo. Kaja wants love. And Harry, I think Harry wants redemption. He just has no idea how to get it and how to stop blaming himself for his failures. This is other thing I like about Nesbø’s books. You get a terrific mystery, sure, but you also get deep, carefully drawn characters. If you can handle the gore, these books are excellent.

The Kingdom of Gods, by N.K. Jemisin

The Kingdom of Gods

When I started N.K. Jemisin’s Inheritance trilogy, I had no idea that the story would end on such a fantastic note. The first book was spectacular, but I thought that the other two books would continue Yeine’s journey. But each book has functioned like puzzle pieces that fit together to tell a larger story; you have to read them all to see the big picture. In this final volume, we see–perhaps–where everything was headed in the first place as Sieh transforms from child/trickster godling to a god in his own right.

The Kingdom of Gods begins some decades after the events of the previous book. We meet up of Sieh again. Sieh is the godling of children and tricks, but he hasn’t been an innocent for a long time. The years of his captivity have left their marks. Near the beginning of this book, he meets two children who are the descendants of his enemies. After a game goes awry, the two children ask him to swear an oath of friendship. The oath also goes awry and Sieh turns mortal. After millennia as a child, Sieh finally has to grow up and he is not happy about it.

As the story progresses, we learn that there is a larger conspiracy going on but most of the action stays with Sieh as he learns how to negotiate the mortal world without his powers and without youth. To get a sense of the politics, you’ll really need to read the first two books in the series because there is a lot of history to explain. The short version is that many of the hundred thousand kingdoms that make up this world are sick of kowtowing to one family–especially a family that spent 2,000 years abusing their authority. Behind this conspiracy is another one, even older, as a godling tries to force his way into godhood. The upshot of it all is that not only is the political situation unstable, but the world itself is in danger as the godling manipulates the universe by tapping into the power of the Maelstrom, the chaotic heart of creation itself.

The Kingdom of Gods is a very affecting read. Jemisin plucks at the heart strings throughout as we watch a perpetual child grow up. The ending is utterly gripping. Because it is the end of the trilogy, there is no reason to keep characters alive for another spin across the pages. Readers will have no idea what will happen and I ended up reading far too late into the night just to see what happened. This is an excellent trio of books and I’m already looking forward to seeing what Jemisin comes up with next.

When She Woke, by Hillary Jordan

When She Woke

I hate to say it, but Hillary Jordan’s When She Woke does not live up to its premise. There’s a blurb on the back that describes it as Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter by way of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. It’s pretty accurate in terms of the plot, but the writing style is not up to par to pull it off.

Let’s get the plot out of the way. Hannah Payne (e.g. Hester Prynne) is punished for having an abortion by having her skin turned red by a virus. As Hannah reflects on her punishment, we get more details about her world. It’s America in the future, after a disease destroyed women’s fertility. Evangelists and religious fundamentalists are in charge. Hannah grew up in a very religious home somewhere in Texas. Until she found herself having an affair with a married man and getting pregnant, she never questioned the rules or her beliefs. To protect her lover, she has an abortion and is almost immediately caught. When she refuses to name her lover or her doctor, she is sentences to 30 days in jail at 16 years of being red.

I have to admit it’s a pretty effective punishment. Different kinds of criminals are given different colors, so you can see what someone did on their face. Instead of locking them away, “Chromes” live in ghettos and try to get along as best they can. Once Hannah is released, her father tries to help her by getting her into a halfway house for female Reds. Hannah is almost immediately cast out when she objects to the psychological torture the nutty religious owners inflict on their charges. After that, Hannah falls into a network that can help her get to Canada and get her punishment reversed.

This could have been a very interesting book, even it if does rip off The Scarlet Letter and The Handmaid’s Tale. But there is no subtext to this book. Characters’ emotions and motives are explicitly explained, repeatedly. There’s very little left for the reader to puzzle about or ponder on. Secondly, the backstory is told in such a way that it comes off as a rant more often than not. If this book is meant as satire or allegory, it feels more like a smack upside the head about how religion is evil. Consequently, the people this book should reach will just get pissed off and not read it.

On the plus side, I didn’t take me long to read.

From Hell, by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell

From Hell

I’ll be the first to admit that this is an odd book to read over the Christmas holiday, but Alan Moore’s From Hell is a deeply thought provoking graphic novel. I finished it almost two weeks ago and I’m still turning it over in my head. From Hell presents the theory that the Jack the Ripper murders were actually part of a joint royal-Freemason cover up, perpetrated by Sir William Gull.

The theory presented by From Hell posits that Queen Victoria’s grandson has made a secret marriage with a lower class woman and had a child with her. A group of prostitutes find out about it and decide to blackmail the grandson’s friend. The blackmail plot works its way up the pipeline until the Queen orders her personal physician to take care of it. Gull does, in spectacular and psychotic fashion, to “send a message” so that no one will try anything like this again. The murders seem to trigger some latent madness in Gull, because while the murders become increasingly horrific, the message never seems to get sent in the way it was intended. Gull disappears into Masonic visions and dies, in this version, in an asylum.

Plotwise, the book follows the chronology of the murders. It’s told from multiple perspectives. We get Gull’s angle. We get Inspector Abberline’s perspective. And we get the perspectives of some of the Ripper’s victims, which are gutwrenching to read because you know precisely what’s going to happen to them. You want to reach inside the book and warn them, get them to safety. Gull’s narrative is hard to read, for more that one reason. The less obvious one is that when he gets to theorizing and expounding, he pretty much disappears up his own ass. Abberline’s narrative, for me, was a lot more enjoyable to read.

Abberline is a bulldog of a detective and pretty much honest, which is impressive considering all pressure around him and considering what the rest of the Metropolitan Police are like. When I read Patricia Cornwell’s nonfiction book about the Ripper, Portrait of a Killer, I pondered on how difficult it would be to investigate serial murders in pre-forensic times. As Moore notes in his appendix, the police had to rely on witness testimony for the most part. Fingerprints weren’t even used at the time. Investigators have a hard enough time now solving serial murders. In 1888, it would have been well nigh impossible unless you caught the killer in the act. I can understand why they weren’t solved at the time because they didn’t even have a concept of the psychology of a serial murderer.

I want to say a word about the artwork. One might think that having this particular tale illustrated would make it too horrific to read. But Campbell’s work is fairly restrained–apart from the sex that crops up in the narrative. But when it comes to the murders, Campbell shies away from being completely explicit. (For which I am deeply, grateful.) It’s still pretty awful, but not as awful as the actual crime scene photographs. Even after more than a century, those are bad enough to make me nauseous.

Moore really did his homework. It’s impressive the way that he dovetails his story to the history. The appendices at the back are just as fascinating as the novel itself. As I read them, the theory sounded like the Ripper murders might actually have happened this way. I’m still unconvinced personally. There’s just too much, well, frenzy, to the murders. There’s no symbolism in them. They sounded, and still do, to me like sheer butchery. This was the only false note for me in the book, where the elegantly constructed theory runs up against the brutality of the actual Ripper murders. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m no expert. I know more about the Ripper murders than I really want to. So for me, From Hell remains a fascinating theory.

We Need to Talk About Kevin, by Lionel Shriver

We Need to Talk About Kevin

Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk About Kevin is going to haunt me for a while. Even though you know what’s going to happen at the end, Shriver throws in a heartbreaking twist that, honestly, nearly had me in tears. Along with the dread the Shriver builds and builds as the narrator approaches that climax, that narrator also meditates on blame, hindsight, and–above all–guilt. Reading the dust jacket, you might think that this book is a product of its time, of those few years there were so many school shootings at the end of the millennium. But I think this book has a timeless quality in that, we are always going to wonder where human evil comes from. We’re still wondering about Jack the Ripper and Hitler, aren’t we?

The narrator, Eva Khatchadourian, tells her story in a series of letters to her husband, Franklin, over the course of a handful of months. She tells him of her life now, after that Thursday. (She always puts it in italics.) Once, Eva was a successful travel writer, with her own company that published a series of books for low budget travelers. In their mid-thirties, Franklin started to pester Eva about having a child. Eva gave in eventually, but she confesses to serious reluctance. She was never maternal. She didn’t know what she was doing but, to a certain extent, she fell for the propaganda that of course she would love her own child.

Kevin, it becomes clear, is a sociopath. Even as an infant, he delighted in tormenting just about everyone. The first nanny quit after a day and they were blackballed from the agency after two years. Because Kevin behaves differently around him, and because he so wants to have a perfect family, Franklin believes that there is nothing wrong with Kevin. He thinks that Eva is exaggerating or is always thinking the worse of the boy when she tells him what the little spawn is up to. Reading about Kevin’s early years, I was reminded of my mom’s stories from kindergarten about the the boy in her class who, even at the age of six, had the look of pure evil about him.

Later, Eva writes about a civil suit lodged against her by of the parent of one of her son’s victims. Because that parent so desperately wants someone to blame, they allege that Eva’s bad parenting is the cause of Kevin’s actions on that Thursday. Eva admits that she was a bad mother, but I think that’s only because she thinks that good mothering is natural. She was not a natural parent. Part of that admission, I also suspect, comes from the fact that she can’t like the little jerk. She doesn’t love him the way other parents love their kids. But when you have a kid like Kevin, how can you teach him to feel empathy? To care about the feeling of others? She did everything she was supposed to, and Kevin still killed 11 people at the age of 16.

Eva was one of the few people who could see through Kevin’s facade but, how can you predict something like that? He was very, very careful and very, very cunning. Even with hindsight, there were only a few things that could have tipped even the most suspicious person off. When I read Kevin’s line from that day (“Sure you don’t want to say good-bye to Celie one more time?” (p. 365)), even I read it as just another sarcastic comment. Now that I’ve finished the book, that line chills me to the bone.

This book, in my reading, asks two vexing questions (with a lot of corollaries). First, what does it mean to be a good mother? What’s normal when it comes to being maternal? For Eva, with her deep seated reluctance, it never comes naturally. She expected to love him when he was born. (But again, with a kid like Kevin, can you ever hope to be a normal parent?) She freely admits that she resents the little shit. To the extent that Kevin is able to feel, he seems to resent her right back. And there is little doubt that Kevin is aware of what he is doing when he torments others. He knows what he is doing is wrong.  He destroys a room that Eva put together with care, because he can’t understand why people get attached to anything. He doesn’t like anything or anyone, but Eva is the only one he will admit this to. Later, he begins to commit small acts of violence against other kids (always without witnesses and no one can ever definitively prove anything). He talks a girl with eczema into clawing at her own skin until she bleeds. He kills his little sister’s pet and then, worse, destroys her left eye with drain cleaner. And then, there’s that Thursday. So again, the sub-question again, how do you teach empathy to someone who is incapable of feeling it? How can you punish someone who isn’t attached to anything and who you don’t dare hit?

Parenthood is a source of serious anxiety for people. In my observation, there are so many parents trying so hard not to mess up their kids. There are those parents who compete with each other to be the best, to raise the best kids. With all this pressure, is it any wonder that Eva feels the stress she does? That she feels such severe guilt? She seems to get as much punishment from the people of her town as Kevin does in his juvenile facility. For some reason, no one seems to see the depths of Kevin’s sociopathy–perhaps because everyone gave the little schmuck wide berth when he was on the outside, as if they sensed something was seriously off about him.

The second question that this book addresses–though not in such depth as the questions about motherhood–is: where does the evil to commit acts like this come from? Is it purely mechanical? Are sociopaths missing parts of their brain? Or are they created by their upbringing and their environments? As I said above, we’re still asking this question about some people. And I don’t think we’ll ever get a definitive answer. In the case of Kevin, Shriver shows that some people were probably always going to go bad. They were born that way. No amount of care or mothering will change them, because sociopaths don’t think the way we do. Perhaps with some criminals, upbringing does play a part.

Like with most people, who you are is probably a combination of both nature and nuture. But that still doesn’t answer the question of where real evil comes from. The most clinical answer I can think of is that they’re missing parts of their brains or psyches, especially those parts that allow us to feel for each other, to make attachments, to sympathize. They’re probably also missing those parts that make us want to belong, to follow society’s basic rules. Without at least those two parts, there’s nothing to stop them from committing whatever atrocities they can think up.

Throughout the book, various characters ask Kevin why. He gives as many answers as he has askers. The only time I think we get close to a real reason is when Kevin admits to his mother that it’s been so long that he doesn’t really remember. To me, that means that it wasn’t just one thing and/or there was no reason that we can really understand. Kevin has an evil in him. It was going to come out sooner or later.

We Need to Talk About Kevin is going to haunt me for a while.

The Tiger’s Wife, by Tea Obreht

The Tiger's Wife

Téa Obreht’s The Tiger’s Wife is a book you could spend years unpacking. There is a central plot, but the action of this book curls around that small plot so that what really grabs you is all that back story rather than what’s happening in the novel’s “now.”

The plot that frames the novel is simple enough to explain. A young doctor, Natalia, is on her way to an orphanage after her country split itself apart in a war when she learns that her grandfather has died in a small town. Her grandmother is adamant that Natalia retrieve his belongings, which she does after tangling with some local gypsies who are in the process of locating and reburying a long dead cousin. While all this is going on, Natalia tells her grandfather’s story, of his meetings with the deathless man, and his relationship with the tiger’s wife of the title. Through telling his story, Natalia tells the story of her country during the twentieth century, a story that reflect the history of any number of southern Eastern Europe.

Two things really struck me about this book, and they both have to do with the role of specific kinds of stories. First, there is the recurring theme of superstition. Superstition is everywhere in this book. Aside from the fact that this book is very definitely set in the twentieth and possibly early twenty-first century, there are scenes with villagers that sound like they could have happened any time in the last thousand years the way they go on about devils and rituals.

Superstition provides an explanation for crop failures and too long winters. The tiger that roams the ridges and kills livestock is a devil, and the deaf-mute girl they call the tiger’s wife is his accomplice. The tiger and his wife give the villagers a tangible target for their worry and their hate, rather than the actual, complex causes. Even in Natalia’s present, superstition is still there. The gypsies she tangles with are reburying their cousin because they believe that cousin is haunting them and causing their children to get sick. When she tries to reason with them, she hits a brick wall time and again until she gives in and helps them (though she does it on the condition that they bring their kids into the local clinic for treatment).

Obreht shows the reader repeatedly how stubborn people are about their traditions and beliefs. The only way that anyone can achieve a real solution is to manipulate those superstitions. Said another way, you just have to go with it to get anywhere.

Second, there is the inescapable grasp of history. This country is steeped in it’s own history in a way that I don’t think a lot of Americans have felt. I certainly haven’t. The stories and adventures and tragedies of the pass stick around in this country. Several characters remark on the fact that they have always either been at war or are recovering from one and waiting for the next one to begin. As Natalia tells her grandfather’s history, there are connections and hints of connections. Everything is tied together: her grandfather, the butcher who brought the tiger’s wife to the village, the apothecary, and the tiger itself. Though told separately, they’re really the same story–just told from different perspectives and at different points.

Perhaps it’s because I’ve moved around a lot, or I’ve lives in biggish towns and cities all my life, I’ve never felt the connection to a place the way that the characters in this book do. This novel shows how the current generation has roots that stretch back over the decades and centuries. Though Obreht never names the country where this novel is set, it feels very real, like this country could really exist. After reading this book, I wonder what it would be like to have roots like that, to live somewhere where my family has lived since anyone can remember. On the one hand, I think it could feel very smothering, as though you have to shoulder the mistakes of your ancestors because everyone can remember them. On the other, I can see how one could feel a strong sense of belonging, to be a part of a rich history and tradition. In this book, I think the role of history is that it provides a slightly more rational way of explaining how we all got where we are.

My reading of all this is that The Tiger’s Wife is about the conflict between superstition and reason, and about its symbiosis. It’s a very complex tale, and I think it would take a couple more readings to parse it all out.

I want to end this review with a very arresting passage from the end of the book, because I can’t express what Obreht has done in this book nearly so well as Obreht did originally. But I think this passage reflects that symbiosis between rational, objective history and irrational, subjective superstition:

There is, however, and always has bee, a place on Galina where the trees are thin, a wide space where the saplings have twisted away and light falls broken and dappled on the snow. There is a cave here, a large flat slab of stone where the sun is always cast. My grandfather’s tiger lives there, in a glade where the winter does not go away. He is the hunter of stag and boar, a fighter of bears, a great source of confusion for the lynx, a rapt admirer of the colors of birds. He has forgotten the citadel, the nights of fire, his long and difficult journey to the mountain. Everything lies dead in his memory, except for the tiger’s wife, for whom, on certain nights, he goes calling, making that tight note that falls and falls. The sound is lonely, and low, and no one hears it anymore. (337*)

* From the 2011 Random House hardback edition.

Tiffany Aching series, by Terry Pratchett

I read these during November, but they’re too good to let pass without a post. Terry Pratchett has long been a favorite author of mine. But I think he has achieved something special with the Tiffany Aching series. This quartet of novels, I think, should be required reading for every young teenage girl. The witch-in-training, Tiffany, is a great role model for young girls because of her high levels of common sense and her strong sense of responsibility.

The Wee Free Men

The first book in the series, The Wee Free Men, takes place when Tiffany is nine years old. She is the daughter of a long line of shepherds who have lived on the Chalk for centuries. Tiffany is capable, above all else. She’s not particularly nice, in that she does not suffer fools gladly and she doesn’t care overmuch for her snot factory of a younger brother, but she does care deeply in her own way. Even at nine years old, Tiffany wants to see justice done. When her brother is kidnapped by fairies, she does everything in her power (and even some things that she thought were beyond her) to get him back. It might sound a little grim, but this book is hilariously redeemed from that grimness by the Wee Free Men of the title: six inch high pixies that will steal everything that isn’t nailed down. (If it is nailed down, they take the nails, too.) The Wee Free Men help Tiffany in her quest had provide the reader with some typical Pratchett-like comic relief. At the end of the book, Tiffany realizes that she has what it takes to be a witch. In Pratchett’s Discworld, that means that you’re willing to do what needs to be done, what is right.

A Hat Full of Sky

In the second book, A Hat Full of Sky, Tiffany begins her apprenticeship and learns more about the practical side of witchcraft. (About 97% of witchcraft in this world is practical.) After her first magical battle in the first book, Tiffany finds family visits, veterinary medicine, and all the rest dull and–frankly–beneath her. She wonders, if she is capable of magic, why should she be the one to clip lonely old men’s toenails? I supposed you could say that, while the first book was about doing what needed to be done because no one else could, this book is about learning how to deal with the responsibility of power. That is, just because you can, it doesn’t mean that you should. Tiffany learns that lesson the hard way when she is possessed by a spirit that seems to be composed entirely of pride. Once again, Tiffany is assisted in her fight by the Wee Free Men.

Wintersmith

In the third book, Wintersmith, Tiffany continues her apprenticeship and learns an important lesson about what happens when you don’t stop to consider the consequences of your actions and the dangers of thinking you know everything. It’s a small thing, just a dance. But when Tiffany jumps into the middle of an age’s old ritual, she suddenly finds herself responsible for some seriously unseasonable weather and the bitterest winter anyone has ever seen. With the help of the Wee Free Men, Tiffany has to put the balance of the seasons back to rights. It’s a hard lesson, owning up to your mistakes and then fixing them–especially when the screw up is on this kind of scale. While other adults could have helped get her out of the jams of the first two books, there really isn’t anyone else that can help put things right. Even the Wee Free Men can’t do much more than give her minor assistance.

I Shall Wear Midnight

In the last book, I Shall Wear Midnight, we find that it’s not Tiffany who needs to learn a lesson–but her people. This is the darkest book in the quartet. In this book, Pratchett conjures a terrifying villain: the Cunning Man. The Cunning Man used to be a person, before he became the personification of people’s fears of witches. As the Cunning Man begins to manifest once more, Tiffany is being worked to the bone, doing all the unpleasant tasks of taking care of people that other people just don’t want to do. And she does it all without so much as a thank you. More than that, some people actually start to resent her. They feel that she bosses them around. She makes them uncomfortable. She does have the help of the Wee Free Men and of the more senior witches in the land, but once again, there are some things that Tiffany has to do herself. She is only one who can defeat the Cunning Man. It is rather satisfying how things start to fall apart when Tiffany can’t fulfill her self-appointed duties and people learn how much they need her. Even though it’s a dark book, it has a delightfully warm ending.

I really wish that these books had been around when I was younger. Tiffany is a such a strong person, that I think she inspires strength in others. With a few exceptions, like Katniss Everdeen, there are few other female role models in young adult fiction that I think are truly great. If you know a young girl in need of something to read, recommend these.

The Road to Bedlam, by Mike Shevdon

The Road to Bedlam

Mike Shevdon’s The Road to Bedlam picks up some nine months after the first book. Niall is learning to be a warder while his girlfriend gestates their first child. This sequel is just as interesting and enjoyable to read as the first book in the series. It builds on what the first book started, giving more details into an alternate past where the British government made a pact with their more outre inhabitants.

Shortly after the introduction catches us up on Niall’s life to date, it divides into a couple of different plots. First, Niall’s daughter by his first wife is involved in an accident at school that later–apparently–takes her life. But Niall soon learns that she has been abducted by people who know how to block his magic. Second, enemy Feyre arrive for “peace talks” and proceed to chase Niall’s girlfriend, Blackbird, across London and Shropshire. Third, Niall is sent to investigate weird happenings in small fishing town. It’s all rather a lot to keep track of, but it makes for a thrilling read.

After Blackbird is saved from her pursuer and the mystery in the fishing town are wrapped up, there is a fantastic climax at Porton Down. Even if the rest of the book weren’t that great, this ending would more than make up for it. Not only are the fight scenes gripping to read through, but Shevdon also reveals more of his secret history. As in the last book, there are references to an eight hundred year old agreement between the British government and the Feyre. In this book, we learn that maybe, just maybe, that agreement is starting to crack. The humans might be looking for a way out of their deal. If nothing else, this revelation will bring me back for the next book.