A Review of The Unnaturalists by Tiffany Trent

In a steampunky new London powered by “myth,” a substance which is supposedly mined but actually has far more dire origins, Vespa assists her father in studying and even stuffing the Unnaturals, beasts like the Sphinx and little sylphs. But these imperialist scientists are denying what a boy named Syrus and his fellow Tinkers camping out on the edge of town already know—that the Unnaturals are sentient and are being exploited by the Empress in horrible ways.

The book is a dystopian fantasy, but it doesn't have a futuristic feel, so don’t let the genre make you think you'll be getting the usual post-apocalyptic fare. Instead you'll feel like you're in the nineteenth century as you follow Vespa’s perils and her attraction to a young Pedant named Hal, along with Syrus’s creepy adventures as he tries to fulfill the request of a great Unnatural in the forest to find the witch who lives in the city. Of course, that would be Vespa, but witchcraft is forbidden, and there’s a reason hers is just now beginning to make itself known. Then there’s her father’s assistant, the slimy Charles, who is also more than he seems. A group of vigilante magic-makers called Athena’s Architects rounds out the picture. Well, not counting a variety of creatures, including a particularly awful type of werewolf.

Vespa first meets Syrus in a way guaranteed to make her distrust him, which complicates matters when he finds out he must bring her to the forest. Hal is also not at all forthcoming about his plans, which leaves Vespa scrambling around trying to find out what’s going on. What she does learn changes everything she’s ever believed in. Here's a look at Vespa the young scientist as she travels through the Forest, where magic still hides:

The Wad and I both nod and follow him outside. Trees rustle their flaming robes along the road. We're in the Forest. Instinctively, I make the sign against irrationality to protect myself from pixie infestation. It's all I can do, since we've had no time to don nullsuits, if Father and Charles even remembered to bring them. Most young ladies my age would be terrified if they found themselves so unshielded on a Forest road that's likely teeming with Unnaturals.

I like Vespa for the most part, though I think Syrus is the more interesting character. The interplay between these two and Hal makes for good storytelling. One thing that struck me, though, is that Vespa’s story is told in first person, while Syrus’s is told in third person. It isn’t that distracting, but it just seems like an odd choice.

A major theme of the book is the clash between magic and science, or the numinous and the rational. Vespa starts out as a logical, scientific young lady, but she soon learns that the facts she’s been told about the world aren’t especially factual. She also discovers that she is not who she thought she was, and neither, in his way, is her father. This seems like a nice bit of symbolism for young adult readers who are busy trying to define themselves as someone other than their parents.

The Unnaturalists is a good read for anyone who enjoys steampunk and historical fantasy of the YA variety. Join Vespa in discovering that science isn’t everything, and magic is real.

Note for Worried Parents: This is a YA book, but I don’t think there’s any reason it can’t be read by older middle grade readers, especially 10- to 12-year-olds.

A Review of Horten's Miraculous Mechanisms by Lissa Evans

Quest books based on puzzles and clues really only work if you get caught up in the main character's desire to find the answers. Fortunately, that's what happens in Horten's Miraculous Mechanisms: Magic, Myster & a Very Strange Adventure. In this book originally published in Great Britain, Stuart's parents move him to Beeton, the town his father's family is from. Stuart's initial dismay and boredom are not relieved by the girls next door, triplets who spy on him and publish his activities in a neighborhood newspaper. They are, however, relieved by the discovery of a mystery involving Stuart's great-uncle Tony.

Tony was a magician and, being short (like Stuart), his stage name was Teeny-Tiny Tony Horten. The magician disappeared unexpectedly after being accused of being responsible for his fiance's death in a fire. He left his nephew, Tony's father, a message hidden in a puzzle box along with eight threepenny bits.

I have to go away, and I may not be able to get back. If I don't return, then my workshop and all it contains is yours if you can find it—and if you can find it, then you're the right sort of boy to have it.

Affectionately, Your uncle Tony

P.S. Start in the telephone booth on Main Street.

As it turns out, Stuart's father didn't even find the message because he was not the right sort of boy to have it. But Stuart is. He finds the message and begins following a treasure trail of old mechanisms, inserting a threepenny bit in each one when he can and getting further clues. Then April, one of the girls next door, starts following him, as does a greedy woman connected with his uncle's magician past. Stuart also meets a kindly elderly woman with another sort of connection to Teeny-Tiny Tony.

The other piece of Stuart's heritage is that there used to be a factory where the Hortens made mechanisms. Some of the machines are kept in the Beeton city museum, but Stuart runs into trouble when he tries to get at them. Oh, and Uncle Tony's house, which contains clues and possibly the missing workshop, is about to be demolished. It all comes to a head during Beeton's summer festival. Meet Stuart and April in the park by the bandstand and see what happens...

Stuart is your basic nice Everykid, while the secondary characters are a good bunch. About the only flat character is the villainess, and since you'll find yourself wanting to flatten her with a cartoon steamroller, that's not too terrible, after all.

At first this book seems to be about mechanisms, not magic, but as Stuart learns, there is magic associated with the mechanisms, the threepenny bits, and the long-ago disappearance of the magician. (The combination of magic and mechanicals is what I wish we'd seen a bit more of in Hugo Cabret, actually.) This is a small book, even in trim size, but it's a perfectly satisfying read even as it opens the door to a sequel. The codes and puzzles Stuart must solve may appeal to a different sort of reader than the usual fantasy fan, giving the story a broader, more unusual appeal. Touches of steampunk, Oz, and Edward Eager: I think you'll like this one!

Note: If you enjoy Horten's Miraculous Mechanisms, try The Inventions of Hugo Cabret, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Flies Again, and R.L. LaFevers' Theodosia series.

A Review of The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne M. Valente

It didn't surprise me to see that the jacket quote on this book is from Neil Gaiman, who says, "A glorious balancing act between modernism and the Victorian fairy tale, done with heart and wisdom." After all, Valente's book reads like a cross between Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Gaiman's own Coraline. (Which is ironic, since Coraline has been compared to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. But structurally, Valente's book is really much more Alice-like than Coraline is.)

In case you weren't aware, Valente is the writer of dark, beautifully strange and successful adult fiction, most notably The Orphan's Tales: In the Night Garden and Palimpsest. She wrote this, her first children's book, in a series of crowd-funded online posts, reminding me of the way her Victorian predecessor, Charles Dickens, first wrote his books—as magazine serials. Then The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making got its due by winning a 2009 Andre Norton award. In a publishing story for the 21st century, the book contract followed.

The book itself is mostly not 21st century in tone, except for an overall stylistic cleanness and a subtle tongue-in cheek feel. Valente's ornate approach and her love of props like smoking jackets and velocipedes hark to the steampunk subgenre (or "mythpunk," as she has half-jokingly called her work). In any case, when young September runs away from the dullness of washing her mother's teacups and playing with her family's "small, amiable dog," she does so with a fine heartlessness that the author informs us is typical of children:

One ought not to judge her: All children are heartless. They have not grown a heart yet, which is why they can climb tall trees and say shocking things and leap so very high that grown-up hearts flutter in terror. Hearts weigh quite a lot. That is why it takes so long to grow one. But, as in their reading and arithmetic and drawing, different children proceed at different speeds. (It is well known that reading quickens the growth of a heart like nothing else.) Some small ones are terrible and fey, Utterly Heartless. Some are dear and sweet and Hardly Heartless at all. September stood very generally in the middle on the day the Green Wind took her, Somewhat Heartless, and Somewhat Grown.

Yep, there's an intrusive narrator commenting along the way. This technique sometimes backfires or is overdone, but here it feels completely of a piece with the rest of the Victoriana.

But on with our plot: A girl named September agrees to be taken to Fairyland by the Green Wind, a Harsh Air who rides the Leopard of Little Breezes. He issues various warnings, e.g., "Obviously, the eating or drinking of Fairy foodstuffs constitutes a binding contract to return at least once a year in accordance with seasonal myth cycles." None of this deters September, who is, after all, wearing an orange dress.

She liked anything orange: leaves; some moons; marigolds; chrysanthemums; cheese; pumpkin, both in pie and out; orange juice; marmalade. Orange is bright and demanding. You can't ignore orange things. She once saw an orange parrot in the pet store and had never wanted anything so much in her life. She would have named it Halloween and fed it butterscotch. Her mother said butterscotch would make a bird sick and, besides, the dog would certainly eat it up. September never spoke to the dog again—on principle.

Hmm, I'm only on page 6, and I keep finding things I want to quote you. This is a very good sign, though not a very good way to write a book review (I remark, in rather Valente-ish tones). Suffice it to say that September goes on to meet three witches, one of whom is a wairwolf and the husband of the other two. She agrees to retrieve a magic spoon for one of the witches, mostly because she wants a storybook-type quest. She next meets a wyvern with its wings chained who becomes a quest companion. But even as this author seems to do something ordinary when it comes to fantasy, she doesn't: The wyvern turns out to be the son of a wyvern and a library. His name is A-Through-L, though he lets September call him Ell.

September and Ell come across a golem made of various kinds of soap and nearly get eaten by Glashtyns while crossing the river. September does lose her shadow, bargaining for the life of a Pooka child who looks like a jackal cub. Then she reaches the capital, and rather than obtaining the magic spoon, she finds herself sent on a dire quest by the terrible Marquess, the dictator of Fairyland who at first glance looks like a little girl crowned in ringlets. September does manage to rescue a marid boy named Saturday on her way out of town.

Of course, the Marquess has given September a deadline, and the best way to cover a lot of ground fast is by lassoing a mount from a herd of migrating velocipedes. "Remember, they are fast and tall and vicious! Many have perished or, at least, been roundly dumped off and bruised in the attempt to travel by wild bicycle." These dangerous, magnificent beasts are one of Valente's best creations, as is the woman who regularly rides with the herd, Calpurnia Farthing.

September's adventures grow still more dangerous after she reaches the Autumn Provinces. I will give you one more passage as Valente's narrator introduces these lands:

I suppose you think you know what autumn looks like. Even if you live in the Los Angeles dreamed of by September's schoolmates, you have surely seen postcards and photographs of the kind of autumn I mean. The trees go all red and blazing orange and gold, and wood fires burn at night so that everything smells of crisp branches. The world rolls about delightedly in a heap of cider and candy and apples and pumpkins, and cold stars rush by through wispy, ragged clouds, past a moon like a bony knee. You have, no doubt, experienced a Halloween or two.

But, we learn, our autumns are nothing more than pale imitations of the richness of autumn in Fairyland. (Ahem: "a moon like a bony knee"? I am in awe of that metaphor!)

Only autumn is the harbinger of winter, and therefore of chilly death. Following a feast with some slightly unnerving spriggan scholars, September ventures into the woods to find what the Marquess has sent her for, a treasure in a glass casket. There September meets her own death, a small creature at first. Until it grows bigger.

That's a taste of what's in this book, but you'll find so much more. Valente's Fairyland is both beautiful and dangerous, a place where life and death rub shoulders more often than you might wish. September has blithely chosen the road to heartbreak, and she certainly has her heart wrenched a time or two in this story. There is a dark streak in the book, the reason I mentioned the Coraline comparison above. Valente seems very interested in the idea that "the dark and the light go together," as my mother likes to put it.

Make no mistake, blood is required in this book. But then there is a magic key that flies around trying to catch up with September throughout her journeys, and it is nothing less than a shining scrap of winged hope. Which makes September something of a Pandora, I think.

Some of the edgy touches that crop up in Valente's tale are presented tongue-in-cheek. For example, there's a running joke about how September misunderstands the clause about not eating fairy food. ("Witch food must be okay! And dragon food! And...") We learn, too, that human visitor September gets classified as Ravished, kind of like Persephone, rather than as a changeling or a child who has merely stumbled through a hidden gate (or wardrobe!). I suppose it's technically because the Green Wind is bit of a rogue and lures her away, though that's certainly the extent of it.

Speaking of ravished, what ravishes me literarily is freshness, or what I call the F Factor. A book that's pleasingly new in its style, voice, description, language, metaphors, plot, and/or characters makes me swoon every time—and The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making qualifies on all counts.

Note: The book is illustrated by one of my favorite illustrators of all time, Ana Juan. And check out the very cool book trailer.

Note for Worried Parents: The book is a little dark, but it's no stronger than Coraline and is much more of a fantasy story than a horror one. Some mournfully deep/painful notes are sounded in spots; however, younger MG readers might miss that stuff altogether, to tell you the truth!

A Review of The Iron Thorn by Caitlin Kittredge

This author isn't the first adult writer to cross over to YA, but so far she's one of the best. Steampunk, urban fantasy, alternate history, dystopian fiction, romance, gothic novel, you name it: The Iron Thorn combines the best of all these subgenres, throwing in one of those genetic ticking clocks plus an actual ticking clock that's the nerve center of an entire house made of magic-infused gears. Which is to say, if you liked Fever Crumb, Leviathan, Lament, and Twilight, you should take a look at Kittredge's new YA offering.

As the jacket flap puts it, "Aoife's family is unique in the worst way." Her mother has gone crazy and is in an insane asylum, while her beloved older brother lost his mind, too, nearly killing Aoife before running away.

Aoife lives in the dark city of Lovecraft, where she studies in the strict school of engineers, applying reason and science to practical problems as the city's great Engine beats like a malevolent heart beneath it all. Her fellow student and best friend, Cal, stands by her, but even he is uneasy when it appears that Aoife herself will lose her mind when she turns sixteen. The city authorities, as represented by the Proctors, also have their eye on the girl, which is a very bad thing.

Then Aoife gets a cryptic message from her brother Conrad and sets off to find him, presumably at their father's home in a village to the north. Crossing the city, let alone the countryside, is a dreadful prospect, considering the threat of death or capture from monsters like the nightjars and government spies in the form of clockwork ravens. Fortunately, Aoife and Cal find a scruffy guide named Dean, who has secrets of his own. He knows a guy with an airship, and it appears he won't sell them out to the monsters that live in the sewer system, so off they go.

The little company eventually reach the house where Aoife's father lived, only there's no sign of him or of Conrad. Of course, Aoife has never met the man. And his house turns out to be very strange indeed. That's even before Aoife has her first encounter with the fairy realm, whose denizens—most notably a fey named Tremaine—may prove to be the greatest threat of all. But Aoife, despite her growing attraction to Dean and her loyalty to Cal, will do anything to get her brother back. Anything.

This book is a thoroughly marvelous tale, one of my favorites so far in 2011. In fact, I felt that my experience of YA horror/steampunk/dystopian fantasy was refreshed by reading The Iron Thorn. I also appreciate how the main plot thread comes to a satisfying conclusion, even as new problems set us up for the next volume in this series. In addition, for those of you looking for romance, Aoife's interactions with Dean aren't cliché in the least; they're clever and bumpy and real (with Cal acting sweetly jealous, to boot).

I guess about the only thing that threw me off even a little would be the logistics of Aoife's role relative to the fey, especially her use of magic in the book's climax; however, close enough. The rest of the book more than makes up for a bit of trouble in that regard.

Here's part of Aoife's description of the marvelous clock in her father's mechanical house:

On the opposite side of the long narrow room was a leviathan clock—a full-bodied, intricate machine, much different than a pocket chronometer. As I watched, the hands swung in a parabolic arc, their wicked spiked finials grinding to a halt at twelve midnight. The chimes let out a discordant, muffled bong.
The hands swung again, and I stepped closer, watching them trail across the clock face like compass needles that had lost north, the unearthly ticking echoing loud enough to vibrate my skull. Each numeral was actually a tiny painting, wrought in delicate ink. A naked girl lying sleeping on a stone. A great goat with the body of a man sitting on a throne. A circle of figures in a dark forest who wore the sign of Hastur, the heretical Yellow King, whom cultists worshipped before the necrovirus. According to Professor Swan, and who knew where he got his stories from?
...Friendly as the library was, the clock was a monstrous thing, a machine of bloody teeth.

I know you're all wondering how to pronounce the main character's name, so I looked it up: that would be ee-fa.

Now, please get your shivers on and enter the alarming world of Aoife's Lovecraft!

Note for Worried Parents: This is a book for teens. The horror elements are pretty horrific, and there's some teen attraction with eventual kissing.

Update 8-17-11: Check out this interview with the author on The Enchanted Inkpot!

Steampunk and the New Romantics

Steampunk was supposed to be the next big thing in YA, but it isn't. Why not? I've been toying with a theory, and now that I've read both Leviathan and Behemoth by Scott Westerfeld, I'll toss it out there and see what you think.

First of all, steampunk is a little tough to define, but it usually contains one or more of the following: (1) alternate history, (2) clockwork (automatons, vehicles, monsters, etc.), (3) a Victorian setting (mostly British, but sometimes European or even American, as long as it's nineteenth century).

The question being, what kind of readers would like this stuff? Answer: grown-ups. We're talking Pride and Prejudice or Sherlock Holmes fans, for one thing. Certainly historical fiction fans, and that's often a group that doesn't include the under-18 crowd, who are busy reading about the ADHD offspring of Greek gods battling harpies in modern NYC. Or maybe reading stories about teen heartbreak in your average high school, texting and all. These readers prefer their supernatural adventures to take place in a small town in Washington in the 21st century, not in London in the 1800s.

As for the appeal of steampunk, don't you think it might be a bit of a backlash from the sheer weight of all this contemporary technology, from the overwhelming streamlined-ness of the Ipod and the Ipad? Contrast clockwork, where you can actually see the gears and hear them turning, to the sleekness of our current tech, where you need a microscope and a college degree to figure out what the machine is actually doing. Call it the new Luddite movement or simply call it a wave of nostalgia, but I'm wondering if steampunk is really a revolt against, well, that cell phone which can not only call Japan from Chicago in seconds, but can play a movie, ruin a career, or reveal a decade's worth of diplomatic secrets at the touch of a few keys.

Then again, the Luddites aren't a great comparison. A better one might be the Romantic movement. My high school students have been reading about how the Romantics embraced poetry, medieval themes, and ruffled shirts as a backlash against the machines and pragmatism of the Industrial Revolution. There's a romance to steampunk that makes it feel similar to me at this point in time.

Of course, steampunk is also a delightful alternative to a decade of Harry Potter and another decade of teen vampires, for those of you who want a change in your sci-fi/fantasy every so often. It's either that or dystopia right about now! (With dystopian books arguably forming a chronologically symmetrical rejection of today's high-tech, out-of-control world.) So I, for one, do like steampunk. I'm just not sure it has much appeal for kids and teens, most of whom are deeply, happily engaged in this tech-toy landscape.

For those of you who are grown-ups and the occasional steampunky kid, check out Chasing Ray's wonderful steampunk roundup from the past week. See also Charlotte's Library, with a look at steampunk offerings for MG/YA in 2010. And once again, I'll recommend the list of steampunk books for children by Heather M. Campbell at School Library Journal.

Image from Paper Street Supplies.

Steampunk Link

For those of you who've been wondering what the heck steampunk is, or for those of you who are already in love with this sci-fi/fantasy subgenre and have, for example, read both Leviathan and Behemoth by Scott Westerfeld, here's a fabulous annotated list of titles from picture book to YA from Heather M. Campbell at School Library Journal. She also includes web resources. Thanks to Charlotte's Library for the link! (Image from Ubersuper.)

A Review of The Boneshaker by Kate Milford

Natalie loves machines. She helps her mechanic father in his shop, repairing motorcars and bicycles and trying to build clockwork machines like a small flyer. It's 1914, and Arcane isn't an ordinary small town. The crossroads is a place of power, where the devil once battled an old musician for his soul and lost.

At least, that's the story Natalie's mother tells her, but is it true? As The Boneshaker progresses, we learn not only that the story is true, but that the uncanny Doctor Jake Limberleg's Nostrum Fair and Technological Medicine Show has something to do with demons, as well.

Natalie, whose biggest concern up till now has been her inability to ride the odd bicycle her father has rebuilt for her, the titular boneshaker, now has a whole new set of worries. With her friends, she begins to explore the eerie doctor's medicine show. What she discovers frightens her, but things get even worse when her brother and father decide to bring her ailing mother to the medicine show for treatment.

The author builds her story—and the suspense—beautifully, pulling readers deeper into Natalie's all-too-appropriate fears about Dr. Limberleg and the "paragons" who accompany him. Meanwhile, Natalie's continuing efforts to ride the boneshaker lead us to a final chase scene in which she must ride the bike on a wild night-time journey to save her town and everyone she loves.

Milford gives us fun details like the time Natalie tries to sell a single bee to the town's shopkeeper, along with curious details such as the miniature automata inside Dr. Limberleg's trailer or the way the front left wheel pops off of every vehicle that comes into Arcane through the crossroads. And the medicine show, a kind of carnival, is described nightmarishly well.

The characters here are as marvelously strange as the medicine show. We get to know Old Tom Guyot, the elderly black musician who challenged the devil and won; a devious drifter named Jack (whom you might recognize from folklore); a mysterious rich man who isn't quite human; and stalwart townspeople like the pharmacist and Natalie's friends Alfred and Miranda.

You'll find that Kate Milford has a way with words. Here's Natalie's first glimpse of the flame-haired doctor:

Something about this man seemed...out of place in the general store. It was hard to say where a man like that might belong, but he surely didn't belong here.
He was taller than anyone she knew, and he wore an old-fashioned frock coat like her grandfather wore in old pictures: long and flared at the bottom and too heavy for a summer noon. He carried a tall silk hat under one arm, and there was something odd about his hair, too; the way it stood off his scalp was like the way her hair billowed when she dunked her head underwater.

But, evil though he seems, there is more to Dr. Limberleg than readers first suspect. For that matter, Natalie discovers there is more to her own self than she had previously realized. Natalie solves the problems in Arcane in difficult and thoughtful ways, achieving far more than a victory over her uncooperative bicycle.

Milford's work hints of magical realism and Alfred Hitchcock's subtle touch rather than today's scare-a-minute horror stories. A rich and shivery historical fantasy—or what I like to call rural fantasy—The Boneshaker will appeal to kids who are willing to take the time to watch fear unfold in increasingly unnerving detail.

(Listen to the old Charlie Daniels Band song, "The Devil Went Down to Georgia," for an earlier take on the American musician's-pact-with-the-devil legend. And here are the Muppets performing the song!)

Note for Worried Parents: In addition to mature themes relating to the serious illness of a parent, The Boneshaker features pacts with the devil and demonic horror elements. It's definitely creepy, which explains the publisher's suggested reading range of 10 and up.

I requested this book from the Amazon Vine program after hearing about it on The Enchanted Inkpot. The Boneshaker will come out on May 24.

A Review of Mothstorm by Philip Reeve

I wonder if I can typeset the title of Philip Reeve's third book in this steampunk series correctly. Yes, it's Mothstorm: The Horror from Beyond Uranus Georgium Sidus. When your older sister is a proper Victorian lady—or likes to think she is—she will surely be unwilling to use the term “Uranus,” even if she is running the engineering room of your spaceship.

Reeve is probably best known as the author of The Hungry City Chronicles, a dystopian sci-fi series for teens in which Earth’s cities roll around on ginormous tractor feet devouring smaller cities. His more recent book, Here Lies Arthur, casts a cynical eye on Arthurian legend and is a Carnegie Medal winner.

Larklight: A Rousing Tale of Dauntless Pluck in the Farthest Reaches of Space, Starcross: A Stirring Adventure of Spies, Time Travel, and Curious Hats, and now Mothstorm, are positively rollicking in comparison to Reeve’s work for older readers. Reeve, surely one of today’s most innovative children's book writers, has imagined a world in which stoic British children ride spaceships and encounter B-movie aliens in the skies over Victorian England. (Mere matters like how to breathe are blithely set aside, just so you know.) Within this context, Reeve has a great deal of fun, throwing in icthyomorphs of the high aether (space fish) as well as pigheaded bureaucrats, old salts and helpful aliens of various kinds. There are a lot of muttonchop sideburns and elegant moustaches in these books—the latter so elegant, in fact, that the twirling ends of one such moustache are supported by small helium balloons. Which should give you an idea about the writer's sense of humor.

Reeve casually makes the children’s mother a Shaper, essentially a goddess. And while the setup is wonderful, the best thing about Mothstorm and its predecessors is those children, Art (Arthur) and his older sister, Myrtle. Art recounts most of their adventures, but occasionally throws in a chapter by his sister. So you get, for example, “Chapter Eighteen: In Which I, Miss Myrtle Evangeline Mumby, Shall Take Up the Reins of This Narrative, Since Art Was Too Affected by the Sad News I Brought from Mothstorm to Observe Anything Which Happened During Our Voyage to Mercury,” and then you come to “The Real Chapter Eighteen: Our Voyage to the Tin Moon, as Told by Art Mumby, with None of the Slushy Bits.” I should note that Myrtle is much inspired by Miss Whipham's A Young Lady's Primer, while Art draws courage from The Boys Own Journal. He explains at one point, "Remember, Charity, we are British, and there is nothing that good old British Pluck cannot accomplish!"

As in the first two books, the intrepid Jack Havock plays a part—think Indiana Jones, only a teenage boy with a somewhat begrudging crush on Myrtle. Most of Art’s dreaded “slushy bits” have to do with Jack and Myrtle’s romance, which is usually interrupted by a battle or the need to rescue people.

Mothstorm recounts the story of a mysterious cloud appearing out by Uranus (AKA Georgium Sidus). The two known colonizers of that planet, a missionary named Cruet and his daughter Charity, have sent a warning message and then lost contact with the rest of the British space empire. Art and his family soon set out to discover what has happened to the Cruets, and they find themselves at war with a new alien invasion, one specifically targeting their mother and her work.

Philip Reeve wraps up so many ongoing plot threads here that I can’t help wondering if the series is finished. We even get to meet Queen Victoria herself, although that stately woman nearly foils Art’s attempt to save the world while she is suspended upside down from her own Christmas tree. Which reminds me—I forgot to mention the holiday setting of this third book. A few pages into Mothstorm, you’ll know you’re in for a good time when Mr. Mumby whispers, “Thank Heaven you’ve arrived! A most vexing thing has happened. The Pudding has gone Rogue!”

Book Riff: Move Over, Steampunk!

In looking back over the children’s fantasy books I’ve been reading for the last few years, I think I see a new trend forming on the horizon. And, unless you count Charlaine Harris’s Southern Vampire books for adults, which I don’t, I am proud to say that children’s literature is leading the charge on this one.

Do half a dozen books make for a trend? Possibly—read Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point and draw your own conclusions. Me, I’m going to go out on a limb and at least predict a new trend, a subgenre I like to call rural fantasy. Now, “rural fantasy” isn’t nearly as cool a term as “steampunk” (e.g., Phillip Reeve’s Larklight and sequels), but it seems an apt counterpoint to the recognized subgenre of “urban fantasy,” as practiced in young adult literature by Delia Sherman, Charles de Lint, Will Shetterley, and Holly Black. (I’ll admit I thought about the term “backwoods magic,” but it felt just a little too Hatfield-and-McCoyish.)

Savvy is the most recent example and has gotten the most recognition so far. Joseph Helgerson’s Horns and Wrinkles (2006) is number two, I would say. A less well-known book, Marly Youmans’s Ingledove, is another contender, along with its predecessor, The Curse of the Raven Mocker (2003). Another example of rural fantasy would be Magpie Gabbard and the Quest for the Buried Moon, by Sally Keehn (2007), as well as Keehn’s earlier work, Gnat Stokes and the Foggy Bottom Swamp Queen (2005). The Witches of Dredmoore Hollow by Riford McKenzie (2008) is the last book on my list.

I suppose we could add Jodi Lynn Anderson’s May Bird and the Ever After (2005), along with its sequels, except that the rural girl who is its main character spends most of her time in the land of death, not her home town, which I’m guessing makes it Bangsian fantasy instead. (Anderson has since gone on to write Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants-type contemporary realism about teenage girls in a rural Southern setting with her Peaches trilogy.)

I hope the Southern belles and the Appalachian folks won’t mind that I’m grouping their work together under one heading, but it does seem to share a similar sensibility. And just what is that sensibility, you may ask? Why, it’s pluck, dagnabbit! Much as I love classic British fantasy, it’s great to see someone come along with a new take on magical storytelling. Not that we’re talking about cross-Atlantic rivalry, but an American tall tale flavor permeates the books I’ve mentioned, particularly Savvy and Magpie Gabbard and the Quest for the Buried Moon.

Savvy is arguably the most successful of the group. Rather than being grandly elven, its magic is on the home-cooked side: members of the Beaumont clan have talents like going back in time twenty minutes whenever they sneeze or saving snatches of music in mason jars. Though Mibs Beaumont’s brothers’ talents are more awe-inspiring—channeling electricity and calling up storms—even those gifts have a kind of front porch feel in this particular setting. It only takes a traveling Bible salesman with his troublesome stock of pink Bibles to complete the picture. If Savvy had a guardian angel, I imagine it would be Sid Fleischman’s McBroom, all dolled up in overalls and wings. Savvy is getting a lot of much-deserved critical attention, including a recent Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor Award.

Of the two Appalachian tales, Ingledove is dark where Magpie Gabbard and the Quest for the Buried Moon is light, although both are quest stories. Moody, atmospheric Ingledove features an orphaned girl who travels the mountains with her older brother, seeking answers about her mother’s hidden homeland of Adantis. When her brother is attacked and then stalked by an evil creature in the guise of a fey young woman, Ingledove must go to the Witchmaster for help. Together they journey beneath the mountain, looking for a cure before spirit-poisoned Lang can be completely destroyed. Marly Youmans creates an unusual mix of Celtic and Cherokee magic in this book.

Sally Keehn based Magpie Gabbard and the Quest for the Buried Moon in part on two English fairy tales, one about the lost moon and another called “The Three Heads in a Well.” And speaking of body parts, Keehn’s book has a great first line: “Dear All and Sundry, I mean to visit my brother Milo and give him back his foot.” Magpie Gabbard is so rollicking it makes Savvy seem tranquil by comparison. You should know that Granny Goforth has a prophesying kettle, Gabbard honey has teeth-whitening properties, and goblins have stolen the moon. But Magpie is more than equal to tracking down the moon, let alone ending a backcountry feud and returning her brother’s foot.

Joseph Helgerson’s Horns and Wrinkles opens with Claire being dangled from a bridge over the Mississippi River by her cousin Duke, who has just swiped her box turtle, to boot. When he drops her but she floats her way down, while Duke takes a tumble of his own and ends up sprouting a rhino horn, Claire concludes that “Something rivery is happening.” We soon discover that Duke has to perform a highly unselfish act to keep from turning into a rock troll. Fortunately, the plot turns out to be more adventuresome than instructional. I look forward to reading the sequel, Crows and Cards, due out in April 2009.

I was less impressed by The Witches of Dredmoore Hollow, although I’m hoping Riford McKenzie will pick up steam in his next offering. He has such a great name, for one thing! And his main character, Elijah, is quite promising, as are some of the details of the boy’s encounter with his witchy aunts, who take an inordinate interest in the appearance of Elijah’s first chin hair. Turns out Elijah’s mother never told him she comes from a family of witches and that she is the cause of them losing their magic. Elijah has always been a chicken, but when he observes strange happenings in the family cemetery and then his parents disappear, he finds out his everyday worries have seriously underestimated the potential for real trouble.

So—what are we to make of this sudden sprouting of fantasy set in the backwoods, the back hills, or the back forty? I think one explanation is that writers have felt a need to distance themselves from Hogwarts. It seems that after the first wave of imitation died down, J.K. Rowling inadvertently prompted another kind of Renaissance in children’s fantasy writing, a backlash that is giving us fresh and welcome books to read, including the ones in the infant subgenre I’ve described. Will the woman’s influence never stop?

Of course, it’s only been a few paragraphs and I’m already starting to think about changing the name of this possible subgenre to “tall tale fantasy”—maybe that way we could include Shannon Hale’s graphic novel, Rapunzel’s Revenge, which might otherwise fall under Westerns. Another upcoming fantasy that sounds like a Western is Patricia Wrede’s Thirteenth Child, part of her new Frontier Magic series. (Shades of Josh Whedon’s Western sci-fi show, Serendipity!) Still, any which way you slice it, seems like Americana is taking over fantasy right about now... What do you-all readers, writers, parents, and librarians think about that?