Review: Saving Francesca, by Melina Marchetta

Francesca is in Year Eleven in St. Sebastian's, in the first year that the school opened to girls. She had a social network and a comfortable place at her previous school, but it only went to Year Ten. Most of her friends went to Pius, but St. Sebastian's is a better school. So Francesca is there, one of thirty girls surrounded by boys who aren't used to being in a co-ed school, and mostly hanging out with the three other girls who had gone to her previous school. She's miserable, out of place, and homesick for her previous routine.

And then, one morning, her mother doesn't get out of bed. Her mother, the living force of energy, the one who runs the household, who pesters Francesca incessantly, who starts every day with a motivational song. She doesn't get out of bed the next day, either. Or the day after that. And the bottom falls out of Francesca's life.

I come at this book from a weird angle because I read The Piper's Son first. It's about Tom Mackee, one of the supporting characters in this book, and is set five years later. I've therefore met these people before: Francesca, quiet Justine who plays the piano accordion, political Tara, and several of the Sebastian boys. But they are much different here as their younger selves: more raw, more childish, and without the understanding of settled relationships. This is the story of how they either met or learned how to really see each other, against the backdrop of Francesca's home life breaking in entirely unexpected ways.

I think The Piper's Son was classified as young adult mostly because Marchetta is considered a young adult writer. Saving Francesca, by comparison, is more fully a young adult novel. Instead of third person with two tight viewpoints, it's all first person: Francesca telling the reader about her life. She's grumpy, sad, scared, anxious, and very self-focused, in the way of a teenager who is trying to sort out who she is and what she wants. The reader follows her through the uncertainty of maybe starting to like a boy who may or may not like her and is maddeningly unwilling to commit, through realizing that the friends she had and desperately misses perhaps weren't really friends after all, and into the understanding of what friendship really means for her. But it's all very much caught up in Francesca's head. The thoughts of the other characters are mostly guesswork for the reader.

The Piper's Son was more effective for me, but this is still a very good book. Marchetta captures the gradual realization of friendship, along with the gradual understanding that you have been a total ass, extremely well. I was somewhat less convinced by Francesca's mother's sudden collapse, but depression does things like that, and by the end of the book one realizes that Francesca has been somewhat oblivious to tensions and problems that would have made this less surprising. And the way that Marchetta guides Francesca to a deeper understanding of her father and the dynamics of her family is emotionally realistic and satisfying, although Francesca's lack of empathy occasionally makes one want to have a long talk with her.

The best part of this book are the friendships. I didn't feel the moments of catharsis as strongly here as in The Piper's Son, but I greatly appreciated Marchetta's linking of the health of Francesca's friendships to the health of her self-image. Yes, this is how this often works: it's very hard to be a good friend until you understand who you are inside, and how you want to define yourself. Often that doesn't come in words, but in moments of daring and willingness to get lost in a moment. The character I felt the most sympathy for was Siobhan, who caught the brunt of Francesca's defensive self-absorption in a way that left me wincing even though the book never lingers on her. And the one who surprised me the most was Jimmy, who possibly shows the most empathy of anyone in the book in a way that Francesca didn't know how to recognize.

I'm not unhappy about reading The Piper's Son first, since I don't think it needs this book (and says some of the same things in a more adult voice, in ways I found more powerful). I found Saving Francesca a bit more obvious, a bit less subtle, and a bit more painful, and I think I prefer reading about the more mature versions of these characters. But this is a solid, engrossing psychological story with a good emotional payoff. And, miracle of miracles, even a bit of a denouement.

Followed by The Piper's Son.

Rating: 7 out of 10

Review: One Fell Sweep, by Ilona Andrews

This is the third book of the Innkeeper Chronicles series, and this isn't the sort of series to read out of order. Each book contains substantial spoilers for the previous books, and the characterization and plot benefits from the foundation of previous installments.

Sean has not fully recovered from the events of Sweep in Peace. Dina is still unsure about the parameters of their friendship, or whatever it is. But some initial overtures at processing that complexity are cut off by a Ku with far more enthusiasm than sense arriving in the neighborhood on a boost bike at two in the morning. A Ku with a message from Dina's sister, asking for help.

One Fell Sweep moves farther and farther from urban fantasy in setting, although it still uses the urban fantasy style of first-person narration and an underground group of misfits who know the "real truth" about how the world works. This story opens with a rescue mission to another planet (aided by Dina calling on favors from previous books), and then segues into the main plot: a hunted species of aliens approach Dina for aid in accessing a solution to their plight, one they've already paid dearly for. The result is an episodic and escalating series of threats, both inside the inn and in some away missions. This is much more entertaining than it had any right to be given the repetitive structure. There isn't a great deal of plot here, and much of it is predictable, but there's a lot of competence porn. And I like these people and enjoy reading about them.

This series isn't philosophically deep by any stretch, but Andrews does do a good job of avoiding pitfalls and keeping it entertaining. For example, the aliens are being hunted by religious fanatics who think killing them will send their executioners directly to paradise, but this isn't as close of an analogy to real-world stereotypes as it may seem in a brief description. Andrews mixes enough different sources together and gives the aliens enough unique characterization that the real-world analogies are muted at best. If there is a common theme, it's a suspicion of hierarchical religions, or just about any other hierarchical structure. (I suspect it's obviously American.)

The main new characters in this entry are Dina's sister and her sister's daughter, both of whom are a delight. Andrews is very good at the feeling of family: Dina and her sister are very different people with very different interests, but they have a family similarity and mutual knowledge that comes from growing up in the same house with the same parents. And Dina's sister is just as competent as she is, albeit in somewhat different ways. She's spent much of her life with what this series calls vampires (more like religious Klingons with some of their own unique traditions), and she's raising a half-vampire child who managed to entirely escape my normal dislike of child characters in adult books.

It's also a refreshing change from a lot of urban fantasy that Andrews doesn't drag out the love triangle established in the first book. For once, the resolution obvious to the reader appears to also be obvious to the characters.

I would say that this book is again a notch above the previous books in the series. Sadly, the climax involves a deeply irritating section that sidelines Dina in a way that I found totally out of character. Key parts of the conclusion happen to her rather than because of her. Given that the agency of the protagonist is one of the things I like the most about this series, I found that disappointing and difficult to read, and thought the way that event resolved was infuriatingly dumb. Andrews is mostly above that sort of thing, but occasionally slips into banal tropes. The grand revelation about the hunted alien race was also just a little too neat. In both cases, I would have appreciated more nuanced messiness and internal courage, and less after-school-special morality.

But other than some missteps at the end, this is another surprisingly good book in a series that is much more fun than I had expected. It's darker and more serious than Clean Sweep, but still the sort of book in which you can be fairly certain nothing truly bad is going to happen to the protagonists. Just the sort of thing when one is in the mood for highly competent characters showing a creatively wide range of villains why they shouldn't be underestimated.

There's a clear setup for a sequel, but neither the title nor the publication date have been announced yet, although there's apparently an upcoming novella about Dina's sister.

Rating: 8 out of 10

Review: The Tiger's Daughter, by K. Arsenault Rivera

Shizuka is the heir to the Hokkaran Empire, daughter of the empire's most celebrated poet (her father) and its greatest soldier (her mother). Shefali is Qorin, one of the horse people, daughter of the ruler of the clans in all but name. Their mothers slayed a Demon General together and were the closest of friends. When they were introduced at the age of three, Shizuka tried to kill Shefali. Then they started sending letters to each other. By the time they met again at seven, they were inseparable.

This was the second epic fantasy novel inspired by China (well, more Japan in this case) and Mongolia that I read within a couple of days. The other one, Elizabeth Bear's Range of Ghosts, was tightly controlled, careful, and structured, mixing character growth with foreboding glimpses of the antagonist. The Tiger's Daughter is a sprawling, rambling story with a ridiculous frame, full of larger-than-life personalities, expressions of devotion, dramatic stands, impulsive choices, angry denouncements, and unshakable loyalty. It has all the feelings about its characters, and it's much more interested in those feelings than in the structure of the story.

It's a glorious mess and I loved it unreservedly.

There is no way this book should have worked as well as it did, particularly on me. The story frame is an extended "as you know, Bob" retelling of events to a character who was there for 90% of them. Later in the book, there is an unhealing wound story line and some disturbing body horror, two of my least favorite fictional tropes. There were a few parts of this book I found difficult to read. And yet, I loved it anyway. There is something utterly delightful about Shizuka and Shefali's relationship: the rock-solid certainty of it underneath all the drama, the sense of both of them against the entire world if necessary, and the beautiful balancing of Shizuka's aggressive, dramatic arrogance and Shefali's quieter, cautious determination. The unique friendship between their mothers adds more depth, both as a role model and as a contrast. Under all of that sprawl, this book is doing so much work with unapologetic female power and female relationships.

One key to the success of The Tiger's Daughter is that it's unashamed of its feelings about its main characters. This is a book about two very different women and their brilliant, blazing relationship. That is what this book is about, not fighting off a great evil, saving the world, or tracing a coming-of-age story, and it is completely unapologetic about it. The two protagonists do not postpone relationship work to fix some larger problem. They don't sacrifice their relationship for the realm. Each of them is the most important thing in the world to the other, they act accordingly, and they dare the world to make something of it. It's not an uncomplicated relationship: there are moments of depression and despair, misunderstandings, and repeated cases of Shizuka promising things she can't deliver. But there's a solidity, a sense that this book is not going to rip this relationship apart because it would be more dramatic or would be a growth experience.

It's a type of love at first sight, it's perhaps not the most realistic relationship (although what does that mean in a world of demons and gods and strange powers?), but Rivera commits to it and doesn't back down, which gives the story a glorious strength.

I don't think this book would have existed in traditionally-published epic fantasy twenty years ago. You might see characters with Shizuka's skill with swords or Shefali's inability to miss an arrow shot, but Shizuka wouldn't also be the finest calligrapher in the land (and her mother would be the poet and her father the soldier, even if she were still female). And, more centrally, the characters would be focused towards a goal: fighting off a great evil, defending a kingdom, overthrowing a bad ruler. Relationships and story structure would have been bent towards a coming-of-age story, probably focused on a man, that was all about power and responsibility and training. Even urban fantasy, which is more willing to add romance, tended towards a similar arc.

This has changed, and I think that's wonderful. I don't have the critical background to pinpoint where it changed first (I have a personal theory that it's related to the growth of the fan-fiction community, but it's just a theory), but it's given us more books like this where the goal of the characters is to be happy together and glory in their power and skill. They're not apologetic about it, they don't have elder mentor figures in whose shadows they live and whose instructions they have to follow, and they make their own lessons from mistakes instead of being handed analysis by others. And they own every last decision, for good or for ill. There's no overriding fantasy, no guiding prophecy, no unexpected manifestation of powers outside of their control. Just decisions and consequences, where emotions and logic both play a part. This book doesn't have the structure of a romance, but it allows for romance motivations alongside epic fantasy motivations and it's a better story for it.

The Tiger's Daughter has some messy first novel problems, is occasionally overly dramatic, has several tropes I personally find uncomfortable to read, and is full of "most powerful in the land" fantasy wish fulfillment. But I adore these people and would happily read about them for days at a time. The ending is absurdly artificial and yet still had me grinning in delight. What's wrong with wish fulfillment, anyway? Isn't fulfilling wishes a good thing?

I've already pre-ordered the sequel.

This book reaches a definite conclusion, but leaves a lot on the table for a series. Followed by The Phoenix Empress.

Rating: 8 out of 10