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How I Found This
Book: This was actually an ARC
sent to me by the lovely
Laura Anne
Gilman. She was looking for, as she put it,
galley slaves to read galleys and ARC copies, I posted on
her LJ I was interested, and I got free books out of the
deal. The internet is a beautiful place. I can’t tell you
how glad I am that I signed up, because frankly I would have
been mad at myself for the rest of my life if I’d never read
this book. I cannot wait to see more in the Frontier
Magic series, YA or not YA, good writing is good
writing.
The Good:
So the good, where to start really? Strong but still
believable and sympathetic female lead? Check! Beautiful
World Building full of neat touches I hadn’t seen before and
ideas I’d wished I’d dreamed up? Check! A vast and
believable
alternate history that unfurled before me without
ever feeling like info dump? Double Check! Characters with
language all their own? Check and check. Without giving
anything away, this is, simply put, the best coming of age
western steampunk fantasy adventure I’ve ever read, and I’m
a big fan of
Weird West.
Wrede does an amazing
job of giving the reader the feeling that Eff, the
first person
narrator speaks with a dialect from the times,
without it ever
getting in the
way of the reading. Beyond that, her pacing is just
brilliant. As I commented to my husband while reading, “Ten
years just flew by for this little girl, more or less, and I
don’t feel like it was rushed, that I missed anything, or
that it wandered around like I so often do with time
spanning fantasy.” He said something like, “yes dear,” and
let me get back to my studious reading.
As a mother with a
daughter myself, I couldn’t be more excited to know I’ll be
able to hand this book to my budding frontiers’ woman some
day and know that the main character Eff is someone she can
look up too without me worrying about it. At a pivotal
moment in the book, when Eff decides what she wants to do
with her life, making a huge step in her development, I felt
this motherly swell of pride as if Eff were my awkward
teenage girl, and now, she’d grown up and made a good
choice, so I didn’t have to worry about her anymore. What a
great feeling to get out of a book. Ms. Wrede, seriously,
when do I get more of this story?
The Bad:
In the interests of fairness, I’d have to say there was a
time or two when Eff’s worrying and fretting got to be a
little nerve racking. Sometimes it seemed it was just an
endless cycle of her worrying over nothing, being reassured
by someone she respected, but then going back to worrying a
few pages later. Of course, just as soon as that feeling
flared up, I remember back to when I was an awkward teenage
girl, how I worried about everything and was just so sure I
would ‘just turn out wrong’ and Eff’s worries seemed less
silly. I’d say that’s about the only thing that stood out as
why this book was YA instead of just fantasy. I still want
to give props to Wrede, however, for remembering the
sentiments of that age in a way I hadn’t even without been
all that far removed from my teen years myself.
Who Will Like This
Book: If you know a tween or teen
girl who’s nervous but special, only she doesn’t know she’s
special, get her a copy of this book immediately. If you
know any youngin’ who likes Harry Potter but isn’t all that
into the sheer Britishness of the Potter series, get them
this book. Get this book for women you know with daughters,
I’d be curious to see how many other moms got the same swell
of pride I was hit with. And most importantly, if you like
the Weird West, you ignore the YA category and go get this
book for yourself. No, really. Go ahead. I’ll wait right
here.
Who Won’t Like This
Book: Some of Eff’s more
unreasonable girly traits and worries might turn off a young
boy, but I think so much of the story is just so
adventurous, it might not matter to them. Other than that, I
can’t come up with any good examples. No really, read this
book. |
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Filamena was raised in the late 1920s, educated
privately in a small and cosy cottage in the British country
side by Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot. Of course, not being
British, nor having been born yet, she couldn’t stay there
long. (An early crush on a man named Holmes helped to speed
along the escape. He wasn’t interested.)
So, she hitched a ride on a whaling vessel and
headed back to the states. In hindsight, she suspected
people named ‘Ishmael’ were not to be trusted. Getting into
grade school, she immediately found boys and decided that
boys were good. Especially if they were made of paper. After
more than a few torrid affairs, (Pinhead, Lestat, and Randal
Flagg coming to mind) Filamena found her one true love in
the form of a boyscout who went by the name of Marlowe. The
relationship was doomed, with Marlowe being nearly forty
years her senior.
It is rumored that she has since been seen
stumbling around in second hand stalkings on the arm of a
Tyler Durden, but that rumor cannot be confirmed. Also, she
is a working writer and mother of one. (Not Tyler’s.) |
