Archives » YA fiction

Limbo Lodge by Joan Aiken

Red Fox Books, 2000, 222 p.

After her adventures in The Stolen Lake, Dido Twite is trying to make her way home to England on the Royal Navy ship HMS Thrush. She gets diverted on to a smaller ship going to the island of Aratu to help look for Lord Herodsfoot, an envoy searching out games for the ailing King James III back in Britain. On board she meets the ship’s Doctor, Talisman van Linde, whom we later find is actually a woman, Jane Talisman Kirlingshaw, born on the island but miraculously preserved from a fall from a precipice by landing on a Dutch trading ship being swept past in a tsunami following an earthquake. Talisman was subsequently brought to Europe where she trained as a doctor. Her presence is essential to the plot as she is the daughter of its Sovran King John (once known as John Kirlingshaw) and his long dead island wife Erato.

On their way to Limbo Lodge, the palace where King John has lived kept almost in seclusion since Erato died, obstacles are put in the way of Dido and Talisman both, as the King’s brother Manoel Roy seeks to prevent Talisman succeeding as titular ruler since he desires the position for himself. The islanders they meet, who by and large are helpful, are presented sympathetically by Aiken, as are their beliefs.

This is the longest book so far of The Wolves of Willoughby Chase sequence but never drags. Aiken draws her characters sparingly but effectively.

 

Pedant’s corner:- “feel even dryer” (drier,) “where she had gown up” (grown up,) “Mr Ruiz’ residence” (Ruiz’s; plus other instances of Ruiz’,) “a trading schooner who will receive her cargo” (schooner which will receive.) “None of the group were aware of” (None … was aware…,) “to take anything with them Plates, bowls, baskets of fruit” (needs a full stop after ‘them’.)

The Stolen Lake by Joan Aiken

Jonathan Cape, 1981, 270 p.

This picks up the story of Dido Twite after Night Birds on Nantucket, the third in Aiken’s ‘Wolves’ trilogy. She embarks on His Majesty James III’s* ship Thrush en route for Britain. The ship is diverted to South America by a message requiring Captain Hughes to respond to a request for help from Queen Gunevra of New Cumbria. This South America was colonised by ancient Britons when the Saxons invaded Britannia. New Cumbria’s two neighbouring kingdoms are called Lyonesse and Hy Brasil.

Dido is befriended by the Thrush’s steward Mr Holystone but Captain Hughes has little time for her. Nevertheless, on landfall Hughes wants Dido to accompany him to the Queen’s court. New Cumbria is a strange place where girl children between five and fifteen are absent – said to be prey to flying creatures named Aurocs, so many girls are sent away to avoid this fate. Queen Gunevra desires the British to persuade King Mabon to restore her lake (which he removed as ice-blocks in retaliation for the abduction of his daughter Elen on her return from education in England.) Gunevra expects Dido to claim to be Elen to satisfy him. She wants the lake back so that her husband will be able to sail back to her across it, something she has been awaiting for hundreds of years. This referencing of the story of King Arthur is exploited further in the rest of the tale during which Dido as usual meets people who wish to do her harm.

The characters tend to the cartoonish but its intended readership (YA readers) will not mind about that.

*In Scotland this would have been James VIII.

Pedant’s corner:- A fair bit of the dialogue was in non-standard English. Otherwise, nothing to report.

A Stitch in Time by Penelope Lively

Piccolo, 1978, 157 p.

Nowadays this would be called a YA novel but it is well worth reading by adults. It is exquisitely written from a pre-adolescent’s point of view. Maria Foster is an only child somewhat neglected by her parents. In her head she talks to animals and inanimate objects and they answer back. She finds them more companionable than any adults she knows.

The book starts with the family on a car journey to take a holiday at Lyme Regis. On arrival at their rented house she can hear both a swing squeaking and, later, a barking dog which no-one else can.

Next door there is a large family also on holiday. Their boisterous behaviour discomforts Maria’s parents but from the vantage point of a tree at the edge of “her” house’s grounds she finds them intriguing. On a trip to the beach she is delighted by the fossils – particularly the ammonites – she finds and begins to learn their names from a book. Martin from next door discusses them with her and they become friendly.

On a visit to their landlady Mrs Shand’s house she notices a sampler stitched by a Harriet Polstead but completed by her sister Susan in 1865 and notes the resemblance to the house in the sampler to the one she is living in. In her head she begins to construct a tragedy which must have befallen Harriet involving a landslip by the beach. Her discovery in the garden of the remains of the swing compounds her forebodings. (Aftbodings?)

Her hearing of the swing and the dog is a light touch of fantasy lending the story an atmosphere of oddness but the writing is clear, precise and excellently done with the characterisation of everyone involved pin-sharp.

This won the Whitbread Children’s Book Award in 1976. I can see why.

Pedant’s corner:- “between hedge and a somewhat unkempt shrubbery” (between a hedge and,) reptilean (x 2, reptilian.)

Predator’s Gold by Philip Reeve

Scholastic, 2004, 316 p.

Predator's Gold cover

I spotted this in one of the local libraries that’s within a few miles of Son of the Rock Acres (there are actually six – only one of which the good lady has not yet checked out – plus several more within ten miles) and since I felt like a relatively undemanding read while still cogitating on my review of Beta-Life for Interzone and Bring up the Bodies I borrowed it.

It contains more adventures of Tom Natsworthy and Hester Shaw in the world of Municipal Darwinism familiar from Mortal Engines. Here Tom and Hester are forced to flee the Green Storm, a militant offshoot of the Anti-Traction League, and land on the city of Anchorage whose margravine Freya, a teenage girl forced into rule by the untimely death of her parents in a plague, takes a fancy to Tom. Hester flies off in a fit of jealousy and betrays Anchorage’s location to the predator city Arkangel before being kidnapped by agents of the Green Storm. Tom is also kidnapped: by some Lost Boys, experts in burgling the wandering cities. Adventures ensue before our heros are reunited and return to try to save Anchorage from its fate.

This being a “young adult” book the subsidiary characters are drawn with broad brush strokes but are still recognisable people for all that. Not that Reeve is a slouch in the characterisation department. In the course of Predator’s Gold Freya and Hester undergo a fair degree of development.

The concept of Municipal Darwinism doesn’t withstand a moment’s scrutiny, of course. It isn’t meant to, but is a glorious device to allow the playing out of Tom’s and Hester’s relationship and the examination of issues of morality against a backdrop of jeopardy. The Lost Boys – under the direction of the nefarious “Uncle” – are a clever conflation of situations from Oliver Twist and Peter Pan.

The book is a delight throughout. (But does the cover not bring to mind Tintin books?)

Pedant’s corner:- One instance each of quick and slow being used as adverbs rather than adjectives, one opened set of brackets which wasn’t ever closed and a solitary typo, desciptions for descriptions. Reeve gets plus marks though for the word gowk and the diæresis in “Aëro engines.”

Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve

Scholastic, 2002, 295 p.

Mortal Engines cover

For a thousand years cities have been mobile, traversing the dried up land in search of smaller urban entities to consume. This system is known as Municipal Darwinism and apparently has a set of rules. (There are, though, pirate towns which disregard these.) There is, too, an Anti-Traction League, settled towns safe in Asia behind an impregnable wall. The League has agents who work against the Traction towns.

Reeves has some fun with his premise. Panzerstadt-Bayreuth is a wonderful name for a predatory city, as is Tunbridge Wheels for a smaller ambulatory town. The text is also peppered with adapted phrases such as, “a rolling town gathers no moss,” with a curious emphasis on Hull; “like a bat out of Hull,” “Bloody Hull!”

Tom Natsworthy is a lowly member of the Guild of Historians in London, in thrall to the principles of Municipal Darwinism. His encounter with his – and London’s – hero, Chief Historian Valentine, draws him into a series of adventures after he witnesses an attempt on Valentine’s life by a mutilated young girl, Hester Shaw. In the aftermath both he and Hester are thrown out of London – Hester by her own hand, Tom at another’s – on the so-called Hunting Ground, forced together by this circumstance. In typical children’s book fashion both Hester and Tom are children (young adults here) who have lost their parents. By contrast the other main narrative focus in the book – apart from Valentine – is his daughter Katherine; but she has lost her mother.

Told in a mixture of past and present tenses, the book tracks the evolution of Tom’s and Katherine’s awareness of Valentine’s character (Hester was never in doubt) and even the principles of Municipal Darwinism itself – all among a welter of airships, men resurrected as machines, bullying pirates with pretensions to civility, and rediscovered weapons. As with many a Young Adult novel the pace is relentless, the pages incident packed.

Throw aside any notions of doubt about how a predatory system such as the Municipal Darwinism portrayed here could last for a hundred – never mind a thousand – years and also any quibbles about the level of characterisation (London’s Mayor, Magnus Crome, is a little one dimensional,) the piling on of incident and an occasional lack of subtlety. Broad brush strokes are arguably necessary in YA fiction. Mortal Engines is totally engaging, while still carrying the monitory subtext that appearance and demeanour are no clue to underlying character.

Pedants corner: Reeves has the resurrected man named the Shrike tune his ultra-red sensors. This turns out to be a heat-seeing system. That would be infra-red, below red, then; ultra-red, beyond or above red, is just plain green (in terms of primary colours) – or at a pinch, orange.

free hit counter script