Guest Post: “Post six. Sweet and Dandy: Toots and the Maytals (Chapter: Six days later - A conversation about Ska)” by Celine Kiernan

Into the Grey is a ghost story about twin brothers, Pat and Dom Finnerty, whose lives are turned upside down by the loss of their home and by a subsequent haunting. The book has quite a few chills, there’s quite a bit of political history in it, much exploration of death and loss – but there’s also a lot of love and kindness in it, a fair few laughs and a lot of bravery. I thought I’d have a bit of fun with that side of the book on this blog tour, so these posts will be all about music! Why certain songs feature in the story, what they mean to me, what memories are associated with them etc . Into the Grey is set in the Irish seaside town of Skerries in 1974, all the songs featured are evocative to me of both that time and that (very real) place. As you will see, they all speak very much to the story, too, and to the characters and the rather desperate situation with which they find themselves entwined.

“The Rebel Prince”, by Celine Kiernan (Orbit)

Reviewed by Alyssa Mackenzie

The gripping conclusion to The Moorehawke Trilogy

Wynter is at last reunited with the exiled Prince Alberon, as he plots insurgency from his forest encampment. But she is losing faith with her companions, as they attempt to drive Alberon’s plans in different directions.

Caught between Razi’s complex diplomacy, Alberon’s desire for martial strength and Christopher’s fierce personal loyalty, Wynter finds herself torn. Can she combine these philosophies, and find a way to heal the rift between king and heir? Or will each side destroy the other, causing Wynter to lose everything she holds dear? She fears the answers lie veiled in conflict and loss.

Regular readers of this site will know that I loved the first two books of the Moorehawke Trilogy. With a gift for building both personal and political conflict, Kiernan set herself a hefty task for her final volume – at the end of The Crowded Shadows, there seemed to be innumerable questions and problems to be resolved, all in some way depending on the ambiguous figure of Alberon, the necessary final confrontation with Jonathan, and the ‘bloody machine’ that haunted the first two books. In this last book, Kiernan ably rises to the challenge she has set herself – The Rebel Prince does not disappoint.

For the first two volumes of the trilogy, Alberon emerges as a contradictory character. On the one hand, he is the sweet, loving boy who had been Wynter’s playmate and Razi’s devoted younger brother Kiernan showed through Wynter’s memories. On the other, he is the apparent betrayer of his father, forming alliances with enemies to Jonathan’s crown and plotting his overthrow. True to form, when she does bring him to the page in person, Kiernan does a fine job of creating a nuanced, authentic character. ‘Albi’ is not always appealing; he is harsh, arrogant, and uncompromising. However, in every respect, we see how his character – both the good and the bad – has been formed by the life experience that has differed markedly from that of Razi or Wynter. He is politically pragmatic, occasionally to the point of ruthlessness, in sharp contrast to Wynter’s and Razi’s idealism. While Wynter and Razi see his actions as the cause of the instability of the kingdom, Albi is aware that their position has always been unstable:

“Our own great-grandfather wrest this kingdom from William of Comber. Our historians now call it a legitimate reclamation of title, but let us for one moment admit it for what it actually was, shall we? Two men with big sticks pummeling each other over land – and the man with the biggest stick won. A king only remains a king for as long as he can outsmart, outrun or outfight his opponents ….”

Wynter at one point describes Jonathan’s kingdom as “This small island of tolerance. This little flame of hope in the dark.” The questions that each of the characters in The Rebel Prince must grapple with are what they are prepared to sacrifice – whether it be pride, power, or principle – in order to preserve it, and whether they risk destroying the very kingdom they hold dear in their attempts to keep it safe. In politics – in war – do the ends justify the means? Does political expediency outweigh personal betrayal? Kiernan deftly raises these questions through her narrative, as each character struggles to come to terms with the crisis at hand while also trying not to lose sight of their own ends.

As soon as Wynter and her companions arrive at Alberon’s camp, the plot begins to move quickly. Events build to an almost break-neck speed, with situations constantly changing and circumstances becoming more dire, whether through errors on the part of characters or sheer bad luck. As in the earlier books in the trilogy, Kiernan constantly raises the stakes and increases the danger for her characters. There was actually a point at which I thought to myself, “Ok, things are already so bad, from now on nothing more can possibly go wrong” – and then, of course, something did. The story races towards its climax with the building momentum of a boulder rolling down a hill – the final hundred pages are impossible to read slowly.

As satisfying as I found the book as a whole, I must admit to being at first a little disappointed with the war machine when it was finally explained. I had built it up in my head to be some impossibly twisted and potentially mystical device of torture. However, in keeping with Kiernan’s world – where magical elements like ghosts, talking cats, and werewolves are present but not paramount – the reality is at once more prosaic and more chilling. It is a testament to Kiernan’s writing that the horror with which she invests the machine does not, by the end of the novel, seem remotely unwarranted.

With a fast-placed plot, well-drawn characters, and a brilliantly-imagined world, The Rebel Prince is a pleasure to read. Kiernan is a gifted storyteller, and The Moorehawke Trilogy is a debut series to be reckoned with.

Highly recommended.

The Moorehawke Trilogy: The Poison Throne, The Crowded Shadows, The Rebel Prince

Celine Kiernan’s Website

“The Crowded Shadows”, by Celine Kiernan (Orbit)

Reviewed by Alyssa Mackenzie

Book two of the Moorehawke Trilogy

Wynter Moorehawke has fled the dangers of court for bandit-infested forests, seeking exiled prince Alberon.

But more than just thieves lurk in these shadows. Every tyrant and zealot who has ever threatened the kingdom is sending emissaries to meet Alberon, whose motivations seem unclear.

Razi and Christopher had also set out to track Alberon, and find Wynter as enemies close in. With a savage wolf clan on their heels, they must seek sanctuary with the nomadic Merron. But this leaves them enmeshed in a net of sinister black magics and forbidden ritual. Their safety and the kingdom’s future will depend on a web of alliances and hostilities. And Alberon and his war machine sit at its heart.

In The Poison Throne, Kiernan’s debut, Wynter Moorehawke returns home to find her childhood friend Alberon, the heir to the throne, fled from the palace and apparently plotting to overthrow his father. In this environment, she joins Alberon’s half-brother, Razi in carefully navigating the newly-perilous world of King Jonathan’s court. When I read it in May, I knew I’d be reading the next books in the Moorhawke Trilogy as soon as I could. Kiernan combined nuanced, engaging characters with a compelling and fast-paced plot, and the novel left me eager to read more. In The Crowded Shadows, I was pleased to find Wynter’s story continuing in fine form.

This second novel picks up soon after the first left off, with Wynter alone in the wilderness on a quest to find Alberon. Even after she is again in the company and under the protection of Razi and Christopher, she lives with the constant threat of physical danger. The three find themselves caught between the Loups-Garou, a sinister clan of nomadic slave-traders and mercenaries (also known as ‘Wolves’, they are the “wolf clan” mentioned in the synopsis above), and the Merron who, while apparently friendly, hold their own physical and emotional perils for the three friends. In an interesting contrast to the first book, in which Christopher is a naïve outsider whom both Razi and Wynter feel impelled to protect, with the Merron it is Christopher alone who can see the dangers that they present clearly, having been raised by a Merron tribe.

In The Crowded Shadows, Kiernan introduces a number of different peoples into Wynter’s world, most notably the Loups-Garou and the Merron. Each of the two is evoked in brilliant detail, with their own traditions, attitudes, and, in the case of the Merron, language. Kiernan has drawn extensively from Irish Celtic tradition in creating the Merron, and their spoken language is adapted from modern Irish.

[Included with the novel is a short piece by Kiernan on “Merron Religion, Ritual, and Hierarchy” that you can also read here. For an interesting account of how she came up with the Loups-Garou, see Kiernan’s post here, but I would recommend reading The Crowded Shadows first, as it does contain some spoilers.]

As the scene shifts from the enclosed world of Jonathan’s court, we see the imaginative work that has gone into Kiernan’s world-building fully realised. Kiernan’s world is a re-imagined medieval Europe, in which the conflicting concerns of many kingdoms, tribes, and factions – whether religious, moral, or mercenary – are held in a precarious balance, largely due to the alliances initiated and maintained by King Jonathan. Once again, Kiernan does a brilliant job of intertwining the political stakes of her world with the personal concerns of her characters: for Wynter and Razi, reconciling Alberon and his father will not just reunite a beloved friend with his father; it may save their kingdom and those around it from political disintegration.

However, while the political crisis that drives the action of the trilogy is still very much present – for one thing, the Merron tribe with whom Wynter, Razi, and Christopher find safety is acting as emissary from a neighbouring kingdom to Alberon – I found The Crowded Shadows to be more concerned with raising the personal stakes for the characters. Once they leave the court, the focus of the story shifts from the political history that has led to the crisis to the personal histories of the three main characters. Kiernan continues to reveal tidbits of information about Jonathan’s and Lorcan’s pasts, but the emerging back-story of the younger generation is much more prominent.

Kiernan uses this back-story to great effect, building tension and deepening motivation for her characters. Alberon, whose personality and motivations are still mostly unknown, is at least partially revealed to the reader through Wynter’s memories. We learn more about his relationships with Wynter and Razi, and their relationship with each other, and so gain further understanding of the urgency that drives them to find their missing friend. We also get a lot more information about Christopher’s past, and his relationship with Razi, which is by no means as simple as it might appear.

Kiernan does not shy away from brutality: she includes scenes of occasionally shocking violence, and puts her characters through intense emotional and physical duress, challenging them to overcome experiences of intense fear and pain. Christopher’s past is especially painful, and the longer they spend with the Merron, and the nearer the threat of the Loups-Garou becomes, the more he is forced to face his past experiences. Kiernan does not spare her characters from the consequences, foreseeable or otherwise, of their decisions: they must repeatedly make difficult choices, where even the right decision can lead to unhappiness and guilt.

As in The Poison Throne, the atmosphere of the novel is tense, and the pace is brisk. Kiernan does a good job of maintaining the sense of tension and danger she established in her debut, despite the dramatic shift in scene and characters. Her characters are still on precarious ground, trying at once to survive in a situation that they don’t entirely understand and to accomplish their own ends. There is no place of safety or stability for her characters: even the developing relationship between Wynter and Christopher, which in itself promises to be quite sweet and simple, is complicated by the brutality and instability of their environment and Christopher’s past.

In The Crowded Shadows, Kiernan has written a brilliant follow-up to The Poison Throne, with complex and nuanced characters, and a fast-paced plot that made this book nearly impossible to put down. By the end of the novel, Kiernan wraps up the main story-arc; however, it is towards the eventual meeting with Alberon, and the necessary final confrontation with Jonathan, that both the personal and political threads of its plot are driving – there are a wealth of questions to be answered and uncertainties to be resolved in the trilogy’s final instalment.

Wonderful writing and story-telling.

Highly recommended.

The Moorehawke Trilogy: The Poison Throne, The Crowded Shadows, The Rebel Prince (review forthcoming)

“The Poison Throne”, by Celine Kiernan (Orbit)

 Review by Alyssa Mackenzie

The first instalment of the exciting new Moorehawke Trilogy

Young Wynter Moorehawke returns to court with her dying father. But her old home is cloaked in fear.

The once benevolent King Jonathon is now a violent despot, terrorising his people while his son Alberon plots a coup from exile. Then darkness spreads as the King appoints Alberon’s half-brother Razi as heir. Wynter must watch her friend obey his father’s untenable commands, as those they love are held to ransom.

And at the heart of matters lies a war machine so lethal that none dare speak of it. The kingdom would belong to its master, yet the consequences of using it are too dire to consider. But temptation has ever been the enemy of reason.

The narrative of The Poison Throne unfolds through the perspective of Wynter, a character who embodies many contradictions within her world. She is a woman and also a high-ranking apprentice to her father, a carpenter, and a commoner practicing a trade, with a title and a position in court. Most importantly, because she is returning to the court after a five-year absence, Wynter is at once a knowing insider, skilled in the arts and manoeuvres necessary for survival there, and a newcomer completely unprepared for the world in which she finds herself. Kiernan uses this aspect of Wynter’s perspective to great effect, developing the image of the kingdom as it once was through Wynter’s memories, even as she reveals the extent to which it has changed.

The atmosphere and pacing of the novel are both excellent. At first, the action unfolds slowly, as the strained and threatening mood of the court is revealed to both Wynter and the reader, but the pace quickly picks up, and it seems that every few pages, something is introduced to alter the stakes for the characters. This quick pacing adds to the atmosphere of the novel, creating a world in which everything is precarious. Each new event changes things dramatically for the characters, putting them in a constant state of instability, in which they are, as Wynter’s father Lorcan observes, constantly reacting rather than acting of their own accord:

“React, react, react. No time to plan, no time to organise any kind of defence, before the earth shifts, and the tides turn, and we’re on the move again.”

Kiernan’s characters are well-drawn, and their interactions complex. For me, one of the most compelling relationships in the novel is the one between Lorcan and Jonathon, which at once allows Jonathon the depth of character that prevents him from being merely a one-dimensional villain, and reveals a shared history that is crucial to the political situation at hand. Kiernan’s greatest strength is the extent to which she allows the essentially political action of her novel to play out through the relationships and actions of her characters. Because of the close relationships Wynter and her father have with King Jonathon and his family, each and every political act in the novel has, for them, a personal resonance, and each piece of information arrives charged with emotional as well as political significance.

Early in my reading of The Poison Throne, I had a few reservations. I found myself somewhat baffled by Wynter’s reactions to other characters; specifically, her initial distrust of Christopher, with very little real cause, and her intense devotion to Razi, who she has not seen or heard from for five years. However, as I read on, and the nature of the world of the court and Wynter’s history with Razi was revealed, these concerns faded away.

There are a few kinks in the writing that need to be ironed out (for example, a tendency to over-use specific adjectives when introducing new characters: “tomcat” for Christopher and “shock-haired” for Jerome occur all too often when these characters first appear).

Overall, however, this is a great read, and I look forward to the rest of the trilogy.

Highly recommended.

For Fans of: Trudi Canavan, Robin Hobb, N.K. Jemisin, Glenda Larke