Our World, But Wrong (Summer Giveaway #3)

In this third giveaway, up for grabs are three novels of our world, only not as we know it. As with the two Black Library giveaways, I either have multiple copies of these books, or have replaced them with eBooks so I can more-easily take them with me to the US.

To enter, please either email your details to the Civilian Reader address (at the bottom of the page), or leave your name in the comments along with some way of getting in touch with you if possible (Twitter handle or anti-spam-version of an email address, for example).

Unfortunately, this giveaway is limited to UK and EU. Sorry about this, it’s just too expensive to ship stuff further afield. I still intend to run more for North & South America from September.

Giveaway: Tom Pollock’s The City’s Son, Kate Locke’s God Save the Queen, Paolo Bacigalupi’s Ship Breaker & The Drowned Cities.

It’s a short-run giveaway, too, so I’ll be drawing the winners on Wednesday 29th August – one will get The City’s Son, one will get God Save the Queen, and one will get both Ship Breaker and The Drowned Cities.

Please remember to state which one you’re interested in, if you have a preference.

“The Secret Hour”, by Scott Westerfeld (Atom)

Reviewed by Alyssa Mackenzie

Re-release of an excellent YA series

As the new girl at Bixby High School, Jessica Day expected some unwelcome attention. What she didn’t expect was to feel an instant connection to a stranger in the corridor…

Who is this boy dressed in black? And why can she feel his eyes following her wherever she goes?

The answers will have to wait until the sun goes down, for here in Bixby, midnight is the time for secrets; secrets that Jessica is going to find out, whether she wants to or not.

Reading the back of this re-release of Scott Westerfeld’s The Secret Hour (the first in his Midnighters trilogy), you could easily form the impression that this book will have a lot in common with Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight. Given the success of the Twilight series, it’s not surprising that the publisher would choose to highlight their similarities – both tell the story of a teenage girl moving to a small town and finding herself enmeshed in supernatural activity. That, however, is where the similarities end. Readers of The Secret Hour will find a very different kind of novel.

In Bixby, Oklahoma, there is a twenty-fifth hour to every day, compressed into the instant of midnight. Soon after her arrival in Bixby, Jessica learns that she is one of the few people aware of this hour, able to experience the town when time appears to be frozen. She joins Rex, Melissa, Dess, and Jonathan, all awake to the secret hour because they were born at midnight, in a world that is at once exhilarating and dangerous. Westerfeld does an excellent job of evoking this in-between world, both the magic and the horror of it, through Jessica’s first encounters with it.

The novel unfolds through the perspectives of all five ‘Midnighters’, varying chapter to chapter. Westerfeld’s characters are individually well-drawn, and their relationships nuanced. His greatest strength, however, is his representation of their dynamics as a group. In many ways, they fulfil the requirements of a classic group of superheroes. Each character, when in the “blue time” of the midnight hour, has their own special power, which combined with the others enables them to defend themselves against the dangerous creatures that populate this hidden world. However, Westerfeld’s characters resist the easy unity, of both mindset and purpose, that this can imply. Each of Rex, Melissa, Dess, Jonathan, and Jessica experience the secret hour differently, and so relate differently to the group. The very term ‘Midnighters’ suggests a unity that is almost immediately undermined – coined by Rex to describe their group and people like them, it is a label that Jonathon refuses to acknowledge.

The narrative of The Secret Hour is fast-paced and engaging, with Westerfeld revealing the mythology of his world, both fascinating and complex, skilfully throughout the novel. We generally learn things as newcomer Jessica does, which, given the rapidity with which events move, is often piecemeal, and on the run. Even after Jessica is given a lengthy lesson on the nature and history of the Midnighters, we are left with the impression that she – and therefore we – cannot know the whole story. Westerfeld effectively builds revelations about the Midnighter mythology into the tension of his plot, which should leave readers eager to discover not only how his story turns out but also more information about his world.

The Secret Hour is an excellent piece of YA fantasy – an enjoyable read, with a quickly-moving plot set in a well-imagined world, it is a very good introduction to the Midnighters trilogy. The novel was originally published in 2004; this new edition boasts an attractive new cover design.

Highly recommended.

Midnighters Trilogy: The Secret Hour (Winner of the 2004 Aurealis Award for Best YA Novel), Touching Darkness, Blue Noon

"Hood", by Stephen R. Lawhead (Atom)

The Norman conquest of England is complete – but for one young man the battle has only just begun

When Prince Bran’s father is murdered by Norman soldiers, he flees to London seeking justice. The journey is long and hard – and the suffering of those he meets along the way fuels his anger. With his demands dismissed, Bran has no choice but to return home, where a worse fate awaits him. His lands have been confiscated and his people enslaved by a brutal and corrupt regime. Should Bran flee or protect his people by surrendering to his father’s murderers? The answer, perhaps, is known only to the Raven King – a creature of myth and magic born of the forest’s darkest shadows. Stephen R. Lawhead’s Hood brings to life the legend of Robin Hood as never before.

There have been many retellings of the Robin Hood legend, from the film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves to Tony Robinson’s children’s series Maid Marian and Her Merry Men. Some are more irreverent than others. Although a far more literary tale, Lawhead’s Hood also plays fast and loose with the legend. Lawhead lifts Robin out of Sherwood and relocates him in Wales, in the eleventh century, as an early British freedom fighter. Lawhead argues his case for doing so in a short essay at the end of the book, but really, he needn’t have worried. His story speaks for itself. As Lawhead says, the original legend was no more than an amorphous body of popular songs and poems about a lovable rascal whose name was uncertain and who lived someplace on the island of Britain at some unknown time in the past. Lawhead provides evidence to back up his theory that the original source of the legend was Wales, but, like fairy tales, the character of Robin Hood is now part of the collective consciousness and as such, up for grabs.

Hood follows the deposed Prince Bran of Elfael as he grows into a man, on his quest to save his country from the occupying Normans, and avenge the murder of his father. The majority of the familiar characters turn up – Friar Tuck, Little John, Maid Marian – but none of them are as you might expect. The forest that Bran and his band of rebels retreat to is almost a character in its own right: thick, dark and leafy, it has a presence and a magic all its own. It is in this forest that Bran will meet Angharad, a woman of power, and it is here that he will come to know himself more fully. The forest is the home of the mysterious Raven King, and it is this nightmarish figure that seems to be the Welsh people’s best hope against the tyranny of the Normans. But what is the Raven King’s connection to Bran, and is the creature, or Bran, all he seems?

Lawhead’s writing is fast-paced and well-plotted, shifting between the Norman and Welsh perspectives. Characters are well-rounded and the landscape of the eleventh century is vividly detailed. He deals confidently with the legend, and seamlessly adds his own touches to the story.

This is a must-read for fans of Lawhead’s other works, readers of historical fiction, Bernard Cornwell, David Gemmel, Rosemary Sutcliff, Conn Iggulden and Robin Hobb.

Reviewed by Emma Newrick

(Scarlet, the second in the series was published by Atom in August, and the third in the series - Tuck - will be published mid-2009.)