A Review of The Broken Lands by Kate Milford

In this prequel to The Boneshaker, a young card shark named Sam teams up with a girl named Jin who’s a Chinese fireworks maker to defeat an evil takeover of New York City. The chief villain here is Jack, who is the secondary villain in The Boneshaker. However, we see relatively little of Jack himself in The Broken Lands. Rather, two awful beings named High Walker and Bloody Bones (or just Walker and Bones) have been sent on ahead to prepare the way for Jack to take over nineteenth-century New York City.

Milford spends quite a bit of time showing us what these villains are up to, which provides a chilling counterpoint to what Sam and Jin are doing as they race to save the city. The two young people are aided by a few men who hang out at a saloon called the Reverend Dram, among them another character from The Boneshaker, a grizzled black musician named Tom Guyot. Apparently New York City has ten secret protectors, and the bad guys are trying to wipe them out. Unfortunately, Walker and Bones are rather successful, which ups the peril. And it's no ordinary peril; what we get is devilish magic being turned on New Yorkers. For example, Walker starts killing people in a truly terrible fashion just to draw out the city’s guardians. And here is the scene in which Bones makes his appearance:

A wind kicked up along the beach, sending hats and skirts and blankets whirling. The black-eyed man shoved his flying hair out of his face and stepped back. Where the pile of bones had been, a swirling mass of sand was collecting into shape. The shape spun like a little tornado, pulling sand and pebbles and stray bits of seaweed inward, collecting broken shells, snips of paper, and twigs of driftwood, creating a denser and denser cloud that hovered at about the level of the black-eyed man’s knees. It began to throb, to shift and pulse and mold itself. Little by little, it began to take shape. The wind flowing up and down the beach began to diminish. The dark shape, still indistinct and fuzzy at the edges, unbent itself. A tall man stood up.

But let’s consider our two heroes. When the book begins, something unusual is happening to Sam: he is being beaten at his own game. His card sharking and the man who beat him will come into play later in the book. Next we meet Jin, first seen through Sam’s eyes. (And yes, there’s a little romance blossoming.) She travels with her grandfather and another man, making fireworks and putting on shows with them. She sneaks a recipe from a strange, ancient book of fireworks that her grandfather owns, then makes fireworks that are more than a little magical. Sam and Jin are both appealing characters—and they are not the same old, same old, either.

Nineteenth-century Coney Island and other parts of New York, with an emphasis on the nearly completed Brooklyn Bridge, make a marvelous setting for an ominous otherworldly threat. The grand hotel Milford includes is especially effective.

The Broken Lands is fairly dark and serious, but it is an entertaining read. Fans of The Boneshaker will appreciate it, and those who are new to Kate Milford’s work should read both books. Milford uses the new book to add to the oddly supernatural version of historic America that she is creating. For example, we find out more about the crossroads and travelers of a certain magical persuasion. The author's work might be closer to magical realism than to traditional fantasy; it definitely includes an element of horror. If you like your historical fantasy with a touch of brimstone, take a look at The Boneshaker and The Broken Lands.

Note for Worried Parents: This is a book for teens. It has some gruesome violence, black magic, and oblique references to child prostitution. None of this is gratuitous, however, though the book does build in creepiness. I would recommend The Broken Lands for readers ages 12 and up.

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.