Book Review: Liberty Frye and the Sails of Fate

Liberty Frye and the Sails of Fate
by J.L. McCreedy
(to be published May 2, 2016)

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Back in 2013, quite by chance, I happened to come across a  children’s/YA book entitled Liberty Frye and the Witches of Hessen. I wrote a review of it for my blog which I also published on Amazon.  As I felt the story left a door ajar for sequels, I have actually been checking for that a few times. So when recently I received a surprise email from the author, offering me to read an advanced review copy of the second book, I was of course happy to accept! (The request was based only on the author having read my previous review. I don’t know her personally.)

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Just like the first book, I find Liberty Frye and the Sails of Fate to be a pacy, inventive and well written children's fantasy story – also enjoyable for adults like myself, who might recognize references to various other books within that and related genres.

My guess is that The Sails of Fate could also be read as a stand-alone story; but it does refer back to characters, events, objects and ideas from the first book. And I think it now also hints strongly to letting the series continue to become at least a trilogy.

In the first book, Liberty Frye and the Witches of Hessen, Libby's parents took her on a trip to Germany to visit her mum's family there; leading to the rather unnerving discovery that her favourite book, a collection of fairy tales by the famous Brothers Grimm, turned out to be more closely related to reality than she had ever suspected.

Some characters from the first book that reappear in the second are Libby's pet goose Buttercup; her friend Ginny; her dad’s Uncle Frank (inventor of various fantastic machines, including a robot by name of Esmerelda); and an old friend and contemporary of Frank's who used to be a pilot back in World War II. Other ingredients we recognize from the first book are a special tree and its fruit; and a mysterious amulet.

As implied by the title, The Sails of Fate involves a sea voyage. The book starts out with Libby's family (safely back home in the US after the adventures in Germany; and now also officially including Ginny as Libby's foster sister) taking her on an outing for her 11^th birthday. Libby herself is in a rather contrary birthday mood - connected to her finding out in Germany that she is supposed to have inherited supernatural powers, but still not feeling at all in control of that.

The goal for the birthday party turns out to be the seaside (Biloxi Bay, Mississippi), where a large sailboat by name of Liberté is found waiting; with Uncle Frank and his old friend aboard, ready to take the girls on a tour around the bay (while Libby's mum and dad go to buy some things for a picnic).

Aboard the ship, uniquely refurbished by Uncle Frank, he also has another birthday surprise in store for Libby – a special invention, that he has been working on for a long time, and now wants to put to a test in honour of her birthday.

What Frank has forgotten to take into account, though, is the unpredictability of what might happen if you accidentally happen to add magic to a scientific experiment...

While some connections from the first book seemed to grow clearer for me in this one, other threads now seemed to be teasingly left dangling at the end instead. However, as the series seems to be meant to continue, I suppose it may all still be neatly tied up in the end! So I shall reserve judgement on that point for now (and will be looking forward to the third instalment).

For the most part, I think the author manages to keep a good flow throughout the book, with a good balance between elements like suspense, depth, unexpected turns of events, and comic relief. I also like the way she describes Libby's struggle with coming to terms with her magical powers; reflecting the general struggle of growing up and getting to know oneself that we all go through, while learning how best to make use of whatever powers and possibilities we have, in the circumstances where fate happens to take us.

Teaser quote: ”I've been so caught up in what I'm supposed to do or be, that I haven't paid attention to what I already can do, to what's already open to me.”

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I’ll be publishing this review also on Amazon and Goodreads,
with a 4-star rating.

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Musing Monday

Musing Mondays is a weekly meme hosted by MizB

“Do you have people in your life (face-to-face) that are readers like you? Or, do you find that you have to reach out to those online in order to find like-minded folk?”

Being in early retirement since a number of years back, I have to confess that these days, I generally talk to more people online than face-to-face, on any subject…

An additional factor with books though, besides not all reading friends preferring the same genres, is that I read a lot in English, which far from all of my Swedish friends do. However, I do sometimes talk about books both with my brother and with my aunt, both of whom do also like to read English books in English.

I did grow up in a reading environment. My mother, in the past, always read a lot; until her last years (when she found it harder to remember what she read).

My brother and I share a liking for certain fantasy books (he introduced me, for example, to Terry Pratchett’s Discworld). I also sometimes talk books with my aunt (my mum’s sister). She prefers more realistic stories (not fantasy) and keeps up better than I do with contemporary Swedish literature. But now and then we do read and like some of the same novels and mysteries.

My current read is an English classic: The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins (1868) – according to the Wikipedia article, “generally considered the first detective novel in the English language”. (I think I’ve heard that said about other books as well, though…) I’m about half-way into it just now – partly reading on the Kindle, partly listening to the whispersync Audible version (another good one). I do love it when I’m able to keep on reading with my ears when my eyes get tired! : )

Last week (in case you missed it) I posted a review of Peter May’s recent novel Runaway, which I also read that way (some parts on Kindle, some as audio).

Book Review: The Silkworm

The Silkworm (published in 2014) is the second crime fiction novel written by J.K. Rowling under the pseudonym of Robert Galbraith, and ‘starring’ private investigator Cormoran Strike and his (female) assistant Robin Ellacott. (The first was The Cuckoo’s Calling, 2013 –  link goes to my review from back then).

The Silkworm is set in the publishing world. A middle-aged woman, Leonora, comes to Strike’s office to ask for help to track down her husband, Owen Quine; a semi-famous writer, who seems to have disappeared. He’s been known to go off on his own before, but this time he’s been away for ten days without getting in touch. The family situation is getting difficult (they also have a daughter with some problems) and his wife wants him found. Leonora does not seem overly worried that something might have happened to him – she assumes he has probably just gone off on some kind of writer’s retreat, but she does not know where, and she has not been able to find out herself, as her phone calls to people in the publishing world who might know have not been returned. She also mentions, more or less in passing, that there have been some recent unpleasant incidents adding to her distress – someone putting dog excrements through their letter box at night, a strange woman turning up on their doorstep leaving a mysterious message, and another woman following her in the street… Strike decides to take on the case.

One problem with this novel, from reader’s point of view, is that during the first 1/3 or so of the novel, nothing much seems to “happen”; except for Strike arduously limping around a dreary wintry London (he lost half a leg in the Afghan war), meeting various people in the publishing world, and slowly finding out bits and pieces about Quine - all mixed with bits and pieces from Strike’s and Robin’s personal lives, where various developments are also going on. As for the gossip that Strike is gathering from Quine’s acquaintances, it is hard to make out how much is true or false, and what might be important or not.

Then Strike manages to get hold of one of Owen’s previously published novels, and also a secret copy of his last, yet unpublished work. The book proves to have a tedious and gruesome plot full of allegorical names and gory details of a kind I always find it rather tempting to speed-read rather than pay much attention to… In retrospect, though, I must advise readers of this particular book not to skip too hastily through all that, if you want a chance of understanding the rest.

Another piece of advise is not to skip the quotes at the beginning of each chapter. If you take the trouble to look up some of those authors and titles (if you don’t know them already), there are clues there too. (The connecting theme will also be spelled out later within the context of the story, though.)

As I was aware from before, Rowling is also in the habit of hiding clues and hints in the names of characters. In this novel, we’re dealing with double and sometimes even triple layers of that kind, as she lets her fictional writers within the book use similar tactics; although in the more obviously allegorical way, like it was often done back in the 1600s.

At the end, I have to confess I still had difficulties piecing everything together. Even though I did guess at some things, I also realised I had “missed” a lot. But when I went back and reread the first 1/3 of the book again – and especially the parts that I was tempted to just skim the first time – of course the details were there, hidden in all the chitter-chatter that at the time did not seem all that important…

Because of the complexity of this story, with its double or triple plots, and references to old plays using the same techniques – I think this is one novel that could benefit (just like a play) from having a list of characters at the beginning (or at the end). I did not check out the Wikipedia article until after I’d finished the book – to avoid spoilers – but it seems this idea occurred to the authors of that page as well (because they did compile such a list of characters).

I still find myself hesitating when it comes to rating the total reading experience on a 1-5 scale – my problem being that I can’t really say I ‘love’ the whole story as such; but at the same time I do recognise that it is cleverly constructed and did give me a lot to think about. I guess as a compromise I’ll give it four stars.

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As an extra teaser I might add that one result of reading The Silkworm was that I ended up buying the complete works of Virginia Woolf for Kindle (as the complete works did not cost much more than buying one single novel separately!) and am currently reading Woolf’s Orlando: A biography – finding it not only enlightning in relation to The Silkworm, but also (so far = two chapters) a lot more enjoyable than I expected from first looking up the Wikipedia summary…

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THIS WEEK’S RANDOM QUESTION:
How many books, approximately, do you think you have in your personal collection?

I’d say about 700 printed + about 500 e-books + perhaps 100 audio…? (having to admit myself surprised at the number of e-books, even if most of them are free classics!)