The Valiant

Written by Lesley Livingston

HarperCollins

978-1-44344-628-0

372 pp.

Ages 13+

February 2017

It should have been an auspicious day for Fallon, youngest daughter of the Celtic king Virico, chief of the Cantii tribe of Prydain.  She was turning seventeen and becoming old enough to become a member of her father’s royal war band. Moreover, Maelgwyn Ironhand, her fighting partner and best friend, had pledged his love to her.  But some backroom dealings and a murder send Fallon in pursuit of vengeance and sadly captured by slave traders and on her way to Rome, the city of their enemy and the killers of her much-revered older sister Sorcha.

The slave master Charon takes a surprising interest in Fallon and, after the ship they take across the Mare Nostrum is beset by pirates and Fallon fights alongside the legionnaires sent to escort the cargo, she also becomes the interest of Decurion Caius Varro.  This is especially so after Fallon and Elka, a girl of the Vaini tribe of the north, are sold as a pair to the Ludus Achillea, an academy for female gladiators, lead by the Lady Achillea.  There she is advised to “Kill your past and bury it deep in the earth of your heart” (pg. 135).  But the past keeps rearing its ugly head, bringing those she thought long gone into her present, and demanding her attention if she is to surmount them and become valiant in the future.

From a heart-pounding chariot manoeuvre to the murder of her beloved Mael to the arenas of the Rome and the appalling trafficking of humans as  chattel, The Valiant plunges readers into other worlds in time and space and mood.  The Valiant, like life for Fallon and her compatriots, is not for the faint of heart.  There is a brutality and ruthlessness necessary for their survival that must be balanced against the hedonism of those in power.  But Lesley Livingston focuses on the women as strong  and shrewd, with most finding a way to accept their fates and make them work for them.  There’s Elka who acknowledges to Fallon that with war and with life

“There is only forward. Only tomorrow. No yesterday, no going back.  And nothing of value is left behind, so nothing is truly lost.” (pg. 73)

And there’s Kassandra, a fellow slave girl, who gives Fallon her sandals when an accident permits potential escape.

“This was a girl who would choose to stay chained if it meant that her odds of survival were even so much as a hairsbreadth better.  And there was strength in that choice–the sheer, bloody-minded will to survive no matter how dreadful the circumstance.  Maybe honor wasn’t always something won by a blade, I thought.  And maybe it couldn’t be so easily stripped away, even in servitude.” (pg. 67)

Like all Lesley Livingston’s YA fantasy including her Wondrous Strange and Once Every Never series, The Valiant is an epic read of another world–here historically-based–offering a story of a gladiatrix that might or might not have been possible.  In fact, Lesley Livingston’s afterword discusses the known history of gladiatrices (plural of gladiatrix) and her own creation of “the realm of “what-if” where fantasy meets history.” (pg. 375)  With The Valiant, Lesley Livingston, in her impressively-evocative writing, gives readers a front seat in the arena, glory and guts and even a love story included in the price of admission.

Bone, Fog, Ash & Star: The Last Days of Tian Di, Book Three

Written by Catherine Egan

Coteau Books

978-1-55050-593-1 (pbk)

978-1-55050-594-8 (pdf)

312 pp.

Ages 9+

For release October 2014

When Catherine Egan began her high fantasy series The Last Days of Tian Di with Shade &Sorceress (Coteau, 2012), everything was new to twelve-year-old Eliza Tok: who: learns she is the Shang Sorceress, as were her mother and grandmother; discovers her Magic; clashes with the Nia, the entrapped Xia Sorceress; befriends Charlie, the shape-shifting Shade; and connects with Faeries, Mancers, Witches, Cra, Dragons,and other assorted characters.

Now turning 16, Eliza continues to study Magic with the Mancer Foss in the Great Sand Sea, the home of her father's people, the Sorma. After The Unmaking (Coteau, 2013), Eliza is loathe to have any part of the Mancers at the Citadel, most especially Kyreth whose aim has been to control her and her powers. Unfortunately, Kyreth has other plans, including sending fog-like assassins, the Thanatosi, to murder Charlie and force Eliza back to the Citadel, where he would orchestrate her marriage to a Mancer and ensure an heir, a new Shang Sorceress.

To keep Charlie safe (though he has now lost his ability to shape shift), Foss and Eliza take him and Nell to the Realm of the Faeries where Jalo, a Faery smitten with Nell, gives them sanctuary. Too bad Jalo's mother, Tariro, hates humans and is determined to murder Nell to keep her son away from her.

Foss and Eliza return to the Citadel, with Eliza ready to take on the war they've chosen with her.  Even with a new Supreme Mancer, Aysu, Eliza realizes that Kyreth is still at work.  Exploring, she discovers her grandmother and Kyreth's wife, Selva, alive but under a Curse. Granddaughter and grandmother help each other and Eliza is sent to gather the Four Gifts of the Ancients, the Gehemmis, one of which Selva had been stealing when cursed.

So begins Eliza's newest quest, to retrieve the four Gehemmis and learn of the Magic contained within, and to find her future, wherever or with whomever it may rest.

If Shade and Sorceress is all about newness, and The Unmaking looking deeper into those that appear to be good or evil, then Bone, Fog, Ash & Star is about loss.  It's about making choices that may cause pain to others or heartbreak to one's self, that may confuse or antagonize those who are your allies, and may result in turning one's back on the innocence and trust of youth.  While Eliza grows into herself as a Shang Sorceress, finally recognizing the Magic she can accomplish and the hard choices she must make, she has lost some of the wonder of her youth, the wonder that allowed her to share in new worlds wholeheartedly, regardless of the possible dangers.

"You don't remember the loss, not exactly, but you cling to those you love with such ferocity, you would die for them, because the memory of the first loss is buried within you, and it defines you." (pg. 240)

Nia may be pointing out Eliza's loss but others in Bone, Fog, Ash & Star will undergo similar experiences, ranging from small sacrifices and mishaps to life-altering ruin and the ultimate loss, death.  Nell, who'd been amazed at the grandeur of the Faery Realm's Illusions, begins to lose some of her wonder of the supernatural. Charlie, who loses that which defined him as a Shade, must find a way to reconcile that loss with what is left for him to be.  There's the Blind Enchanter who gave up his sight and song for seeing the Sparkling Deluder. And Rea, Eliza's mother, who gave up and still gives something important up to be with her husband.  Loss is the substance of life. It is only luck that keeps it at bay as long as possible. Or the pen of a true spellbinder, like Catherine Egan.

Though Catherine Egan does provide a short epilogue with a joyous scene to close The Last Days of Tian Di, the reader will also feel a great loss. It's inevitable. We've followed and cheered for Eliza, afraid for her goodness and choices, and longing for the love she feels to be realized.  After travelling alongside this young Shang Sorceress and woman through three epic volumes, we can only hope that her unwritten life is as prodigious as this written one has been.  For that, we can only thank Catherine Egan for the courtesy she has extended to us in sharing it.

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Check in tomorrow when CanLit for LittleCanadians welcomes author Catherine Egan for a guest post about villains titled, "Isn't he scary?  Isn't he beautiful?"

Now you have to read the whole series, don't you think?

Raging Star (Dust Lands, Book 3)

Written by Moira Young

Doubleday Canada

978-0385679244

448 pp.

Ages 12+

May, 2014

Proclaimed as "Better than The Hunger Games" (MTV's Hollywood Crush), Moira Young's trilogy Dust Lands embeds the reader in a dystopian world that has the characters struggling first with brutality then survival and finally retribution in this final book, Raging Star.  Set in motion with the abduction of Saba's twin Lugh in Blood Red Road (Doubleday, 2011; reviewed here), Saba has endured life as the cage-fighter known as the Angel of Death, met Jack and the Free Hawks who help her free Lugh, and then part ways as she and Jack attempt to rebuild connections with others, all within the threat of the Pathfinder's establishment of New Eden (Rebel Heart, Doubleday, 2012; reviewed here).

Saba has become the unofficial leader of a motley resistance group that includes Lugh, her younger sister Emmi, the deaf boy Tommo, the raider Creed, Free Hawk Ash, Ike's beautiful Molly and travelling medicine man Slim.  In secret collaboration with Jack who has infiltrated the Tonton, Saba works to sabotage the Pathfinder's (DeMalo's) plans for a new world he has envisioned.  While young teens are paired as Stewards to settle on plots of land in New Eden, babies and children are raised at Eden House to become Stewards, and slaves are used to construct roads and bridges, Saba is unsure of the efficacy of destroying the Pathfinder's work by violent means.  It doesn't help that she is conflicted by her feelings for Jack, who seems less loving to her, and DeMalo, who convincingly suggests that all her friends and family would be safe if she would agree to be his.

Still, encouraged by the very images DeMalo uses to impress others of his vision of a new world, Saba suggests the idea of using non-violence to ensure a New Eden that accepts all, gaining power through bringing families and loved ones together again.  As shrewd as that plan may sound, not everyone believes it to be so.  But Saba has grown as a sister, a leader, and a friend, and she knows to draw on all her skills and experiences to keep those she loves safe while offering hope for a better future. Sadly, as determined as she is, trust is an issue that she still hasn't resolved.

While dystopian literature is hot everywhere, only Moira Young takes readers into a society so unfamiliar in its way of speaking, vocabulary, and way of doing things that it becomes a true representation of life in a post-Wrecker world. We are the Wreckers, those who developed the technology and advances of planes and cars and structures that only exist as ruins or remnants. The Wreckers who dragged the world through global warming, leaving the land a dust bowl of sand storms and infertile soil. And with a crumbling society, education and schooling would have crumbled as well, leaving few characters speaking the English of our Wrecker world. Deciphering their literal and oral vocabulary, from shooters and firesticks to long-lookers and trackways, and spellings such as fer, yer, and git, make it clear that their world has been built on the vestiges of another time and culture. 

With Raging Star, Moira Young has ensured Dust Lands a critical spot on any top ten list of dystopian literature.  Don't be fooled by its lack of film adaptation, not yet any way.  Dust Lands will surpass all other dystopian literature by virtue of its chaotic world, fallible characters, including their relationships, and honest representation of the world we're bringing about through our actions, greed and arrogance.  We can only hope Dust Lands remains a world of literature, not our future.

The Unmaking: The Last Days of Tian Di, Book Two

Written by Catherine Egan

Coteau Books

978-1-55050-559-7

248 pp.

Ages 9+

September, 2013

Epic. That's what The Unmaking, Catherine Egan's sequel to Shade and Sorceress, the first book in her The Last Days of Tian Di series, is.  Epic. When I reviewed Shade and Sorceress (here) over a year ago, I knew that I was reading something special.  I compared it to Harry Potter.  The Unmaking is even stronger: in its writing, its plotting, its ability to snatch the reader away from reality and deliver him or her to a land of magic, curses, faeries, dragons, sorceresses, wizards, shape-shifters, and ordinary humans.  Hold on for a fantasy ride like no other.

When Shade and Sorceress ended, Eliza was still being schooled as the next Shang Sorceress by her grandfather Kyreth and the other Mancers at the Citadel.  Her mother, Rea, the former Shang Sorceress, has returned, without any memory, and lives with Eliza's father, Rok, with his people, the Sorma. And although Nia, the evil Xia Sorceress, got her hands on the Book of Barriers, she is still trapped in her Arctic prison. Or she was. Now she's out for revenge.

Not surprising that Nia seeks out the Triumvira, consisting of the Oracle of the Ancients, the King of Faeries and Swarn, the Warrior Witch, who had banished Nia to her prison. But her revenge also includes Kyreth, revealing her previously unknown relationship to the Supreme Mancer. (You'll need to read the book for that detail!)  Having been visiting first Swarn to learn of potions, forging weapons and deflecting barrier, and then the Oracle, Eliza returns to the Citadel to find the Mancers turned to stone and Nia releasing a hideous creature of her own Making (an Ancient power).  Nia's monster, created from the finger she sliced from Rea's hand, is a formidable foe, and Eliza must find a way of neutralizing it before it goes after her mother.

Sadly, Charlie, Eliza's Shade companion, is seriously injured and Nell, Eliza's human friend, enlists the help of the helicopter-flying police constable, Ander, to deliver him to the Cave of Healing.  In Tian Xia, they find the evidence of Nia's revenge: Swarn's house burning, slaughtered dragons, and the ruins of the temples of the Faithful.  They also make the acquaintance of a Faery, Jalo, who has been sent by the King of Faeries to retrieve the Oracle and Swarn to protect them from the Xia Sorceress.

But, Nia is already moving onto the Realm of the Faeries, intent on destroying Malferio, their King and her former consort. Because of the King's purges of his subjects and his dastardly deeds against others, including his current Queen, Nia is able to convince others to assist in overthrowing him.

It must be a faery illusion that Catherine Egan manages to squeeze a tale of such epic proportions into a mere 268 pages. My bare bones synopsis here doesn't even mention Eliza working with a wizard who is cursed to forget everything he knows every 29 minutes; the baby dragon that Nell is relentless about saving; Jalo's manipulative mother who worries about her son's interest in Nell; and Swarn's battle with Nia in the Hall of the Ancients.

The battle of good vs. evil may be the foundation of The Unmaking but there are so many layers of skirmishes and antagonisms as well as alliances and allegiances that enrich that theme, not the least of which is the question of who is bad or good.  As the story develops, beyond even those few layers, so too do the motives of the characters, transformed with new experiences and revelations.

There are not enough words to provide a complete review of Catherine Egan's The Unmaking.  When you enjoy it, you'll understand my failing here.  Epic is still the best descriptor.

The Grave Robber's Apprentice

by Allan Stratton
HarperCollins Canada
978-0-06197-608-7
256 pp.
Ages 10-14
March 2012

Far from the menace suggested by Allan Stratton's title, The Grave Robber's Apprentice is merely the occupation which an infant boy, retrieved from a jewelled chest awash on the shore, is anticipated to fill by his rescuer, Knobbe, a grave robber.  After twelve years, Hans knows very little about himself, except that he does not want to be a grave robber.  On the other hand, Angela, the twelve-year-old daughter of the Count and Countess von Schwanenberg knows that she wants to write and perform her marionette plays in all the courts of Europe.  But, when Archduke Arnulf decides that Angela will become his next archduchess upon her thirteenth birthday, their lives take an unexpected turn.

While Knobbe uses tales of the Necromancer, an evil sorcerer who speaks to the dead, to keep Hans in line, Angela seeks out this Necromancer to help her evade her fated marriage to the iron-handed (literally) Archduke.  Her plan to use a potion to mimic her death is thwarted by the Necromancer who betrays her to the Archduke.  Luckily, Angela is saved from suffocating in her crypt by Hans, who begs to join her in saving her parents from the Archduke.

Along their journey to the mountain refuge of Peter the Hermit, a wise man who had named Angela at birth, Hans and Angela are hunted by the Necromancer and his unsavoury minions, Weevils.  With the help of some extraordinary new friends, Hans connects with his past, Angela rescues her parents, and both children help restore order and integrity to the Archduchy.

Though an unusual plot for Allan Stratton, whose emotionally-charged books Chanda's Secrets (Annick Press, 2004) and Chanda's Wars (HarperCollins, 2008) address tough issues of AIDS, child soldiers and civil war, The Grave Robber's Apprentice actually feeds Allan Stratton's passion for theatre, particularly the Stratford Shakespeare Festival.  In his Acknowledgements, Allan Stratton describes his love of classic storytelling and attending shows and working, both on stage and behind-the-scenes, at Stratford.  As such, all the features of classic tales - an evil entity, weak-willed followers, the requisite royalty, a secret, some magic, and a quest or two - with the added flavour of Shakespeare's comedies and tragedies come together in The Grave Robber's Apprentice.  As the author eloquently draws the reader along, following the purposeful Angela to right the wrongs done by the Archduke, and Hans who haphazardly becomes enlightened about himself, Allan Stratton provides the charming theatricality of fairy tales and plays as the vehicle to advance the tale to its happy ending. (Come on, you knew there would be a happy ending, didn't you?)

Moreover, it's a reader's delight to identify the hidden references made to the much-loved classics.  Intimations to Shakespeare's Macbeth (e.g., the Necromancer's three prophecies), Romeo and Juliet (e.g., a potion to mimic death), The Taming of the Shrew (e.g., Bianca, and "no taming of the shrew"; pg. 231) and L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful World of Oz (e.g., "I'm melting! I'm melting!"; pg. 266) are but a few examples, and I fully intend to reread the book just to reveal a few more.

And, if you're still not sure that The Grave Robber's Apprentice is the amalgam of fairy tales and Shakespeare but instead a dark, menacing tale of thievery, let this last note convince you.  True to form, Allan Stratton starts the story with "Years ago,..." (that's "Once upon a time," right?) and ends it with the "The End."  How classic is that?

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In this author talk video, uploaded by Harperkids, Allan Stratton shares more about The Grave Robber's Apprentice and his writing.

  Uploaded by HarperKids on March 13, 2012 on YouTube