The Grey King by Susan Cooper

The Grey King by Susan Cooper

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


The really upsetting one. I'd been calling it that in my head all along, but I didn't realize I didn't actually remember why. It turns out this upset me so much as a child that I literally blanked out the relevant details; I remembered about two pages before it happened, in the same horrible swooping lurch that Will experiences as he realizes something bad is about to happen. Animal harm, man, that shit fucks you up. /profound.



Anyway. I found this intensely interesting. It follows on very well from Greenwitch, like the next sentence in an argument. Which is how a series ought to work, in an ideal world.



My understanding of this book is filtered through two contrasting scenes. One is Will and Bran questing for the harp, coming before the three hooded powers and answering the riddles set them. There's something so constrained about that scene, so bloodless and controlled with the representatives of the polls of magic fulfilling their assigned roles. As a child, I found it hugely confusing that Merriman is one of the hooded figures; he's on their side, so why does he make them go through the song and dance? Because he has to, because the scripted magic prophecy says he must, and he is an Old One, so he does. (BTW, if anyone would care to educate me on what significance the three riddles have, I'd love to hear it. Their content, I mean -- they have always been entirely puzzling to me, and I did not stop to Google this time like I meant to).



Contrast that with the other scene of riddles asked and answered: Bran screaming at his father in the hut on the hillside, demanding to know who he is and where he came from. The complete opposite of bloodless and constrained. This book is like that -- the magic has that stilted, staged feel of predestiny, while the parallel human story is messy and wildly alive. The Grey King might roll out his menacing fog, and I'll grant you he's creepy. But the most profound, awful evil in this book for my money is purely human. And for all Will is the questing hero, the greatest kindness and bravery aren't his. They're John Rowlands's, and Bran's, and most profoundly, Bran's father's.



It all really works. See John Rowlands talking to Will about the coldness of the Light. This book really digs into what we've only seen in glimpses before about how the Light is fighting for mankind while being profoundly outside it. Try and picture Will screaming at anybody, demanding the secrets of his history. Doesn't work, does it?



Humanity has a range, a resonance in the book that the people of power just don't. Will's most profound moments for me come early, when he is still amnesiac and in a fundamental way, not himself, just a boy. Will gets his memory back and instantly steps out of the center of the emotional arc, which belongs almost entirely to Bran and his connections.



Which is another thing -- why the hell is Bran albino? I've always wondered, and I figured an answer would come to me on this reread, but nope. There's the obvious -- Cooper is using physical disability as a marker of strangeness. Bran's appearance works that way in the narrative -- it's code for a different level of strangeness, of out-of-placeness. But is that all? It's implied very very fleetingly in the next book that Herne the Hunter is actually an incarnation of Arthur, and that's where Bran gets his looks -- really not sure what to make of that.



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Unclean Spirits by MLN Hanover

Unclean Spirits by M.L.N. Hanover

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Daniel Abraham under yet another pseudonym. Typical urban fantasy setup -- attractive and disaffected girl in her twenties inherits untold wealth when her estranged uncle dies, and also his supernatural fight with creepy demon thingies.

I always react a little . . . complicatedly to men writing female POV urban fantasy. And by "always" I mean here and for Tim Pratt, the only other example that springs to mind. These guys write books that actively respond to all the bitching I do about urban fantasy written by women -- need better worldbuilding, less bad sex, tell me more about the cool magic -- and it obscurely pisses me off. That it's happening, that I'm categorizing it that way, etc. A lot of women's urban fantasy is pretty crappy, but it's hugely popular, and in the same way I try not to judge the romance field, I don't want to judge urban fantasy as inferior just because it's a women's literature. Women like things! That's okay! And then these guys come along and write stuff that is higher quality in many respects, and it pisses me off that my brain takes their stuff more seriously without passing go. Like it's more urban fantasy and less paranormal romance just by having a dude's name on the cover, and like that's automatically a good thing. Complicated, like I said, and I don't really know what to do with it.

(Though I find it obscurely pleasing that the guys tend not to do hugely well with the female POV urban fantasy, in a market sense).

Anyway. File this one under 'wanted to like more than I actually did.' It's doing some amusing things. The heroine has the requisite ridiculous name (Jayne pronounced Zha-nay, doncha know), but everyone spends the entire book mispronouncing it. Ha. And she also has a lovely habit of calling men on their patronizing bullshit, including an excellent "I already walked away from my real daddy, what the fuck do you think I need you for" speech. But . . . eh. The romance is irritating, the plot straightforward and uninspired, the characters relatively static. Nothing to see here.

Daniel Abraham is a better writer than this. Hell, James S.A. Corey is a better writer than this.




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