Category: Fantasy

Clariel

by Garth Nix

Harper, 2014. 382 pages.

I’m crazy about Garth Nix’s other books about the Abhorsens of the Old Kingdom, Sabriel, Lirael, Abhorsen, and Across the Wall. So I preordered Clariel. My copy came in the very day I was told I get to be a Cybils first round judge for Elementary and Middle Grade Speculative Fiction. I needed to get reading for the Cybils, but I couldn’t resist reading Clariel first.

According to my review, I read Lirael ten years ago. No wonder I don’t remember the character Clariel turns out to be (which Garth Nix tells us at the end). I did remember some details about the Old Kingdom, such that the Abhorsen can walk into Death and that Charter Magic holds the kingdom together, and Free Magic creatures are dangerous and evil. All that would be quickly learned if you decided to start with Clariel, since it is, after all, a prequel.

However, I’d rather people started with Sabriel. I think it’s a better book and will win more fans than Clariel. Clariel gives us something of a downer of a story, epitomized in the tagline printed on the cover: “A passion thwarted will often go astray. . . .”

Clariel has come with her parents to the capital city of Belisaere, where her mother enjoys honor as the greatest Goldsmith in the kingdom. Clariel hates it, and wants to go back to the Great Forest. But her parents have other ideas. They are related to the King and the Abhorsen, and her parents want her to marry the governor’s son and become the next Queen.

The Charter Mages her parents engage to tutor Clariel promise to help – if first she will do them a small service and help them find a Free Magic creature they believe is lurking in Belisaere, probably connected with the governor.

“But how can I help?” asked Clariel.

“Like many of the Abhorsen line, you have a strong affinity for Free Magic, and great potential to wield it,” said Kargrin. “The rage is one indicator of that, and there are other signs within you. Like seeks like, and once it becomes aware of you this creature will seek you out in order to augment its power. It is the nature of such things that they must test each other, and the lesser fall under the will of the greater.”

So Kargrin uses Clariel essentially as bait to bring out the Free Magic creature. The consequences are more than he bargains for.

This is the first of the Old Kingdom books Garth Nix has written that I didn’t love. Though his writing still captivates me, the story is too sad for me. There’s some awful violence and some vengeance – and it’s just not as uplifting as the other Old Kingdom books. And indeed, “passion thwarted will often go astray,” but I found it sad to read about.

This book doesn’t tell as many of the details of how the Abhorsens travel in Death and how the bells work and how the Charter works, so it might be confusing to those who haven’t read the earlier books. So even though the action takes place before Sabriel, I’d still recommend beginning with Sabriel. Then if you’re like me, you’ll be so hooked on the Old Kingdom, you’ll read anything written about it, even if it does seem a bit tragic.

I was very happy to read at the end that Garth Nix is now working on a book about Lirael and Nicholas Sayre, and what happens to them after Across the Wall.

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Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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The Song of the Quarkbeast

by Jasper Fforde

Harcourt, Boston, 2013. Originally published in the United Kingdom in 2011. 289 pages.

I love Jasper Fforde’s books. His writing is always quirky, and in this book it’s also quarky. (Sorry, couldn’t resist.)

The story follows after The Last Dragonslayer. Jennifer Strange is still managing the Kazam Agency, but magic in the Ununited Kingdoms is on the rise and the agency is doing better. That is, until Lady Mawgon accidentally gets turned into stone. Then their rival, the Blix Agency, challenges them to a bridge-raising magical duel, and their very agency is on the line. And Blix isn’t afraid to play dirty – having the wizards of Kazam arrested or otherwise incapacitated.

The details are what make Jasper Fforde’s books so much fun. Here are some choice bits:

Since the Kingdom of Snodd granted licenses not by age but by who was mature enough to be put in charge of half a ton of speeding metal, no male under twenty-six or wizard ever possessed a driver’s license. Because of this I was compelled to add taxi service to my long list of jobs.

Or about magical licenses:

I didn’t say anything more, but we all knew the consequences of operating without a license were extremely unpleasant. The relationship between the populace and Mystical Arts practitioners had always been one of suspicion, not helped by a regrettable episode in the nineteenth century when a wayward sorcerer who called himself Blix the Thoroughly Barbarous thought he could use his powers to achieve world domination. He was eventually defeated, but the damage to magic’s reputation had been deep and far-reaching. Bureaucracy now dominated the industry with a sea of paperwork and licensing requirements. Reinventing sorcery as a useful and safe commodity akin to electricity had taken two centuries and wasn’t finished yet. Once lost, trust is a difficult thing to regain.

Or a bit of history thrown in, explaining a magical job:

The point of the Fourth Troll War had been pretty much the same as the first three: to push the trolls back into the far north and teach them a lesson “once and for all.” To this end, the nations of the Ununited Kingdoms had put aside their differences, sending 147 landships on a frontal assault to “soften up” the trolls before the infantry invaded the following week. The landships had breached the first Troll Wall at Stirling and arrived at the second Troll Wall eighteen hours later. They reportedly opened the Troll Gates, and then – nothing. All the radios went dead. Faced with uncertainty and the possible loss of the landships, the generals decided to instigate the ever popular Let’s Panic plan and ordered the infantry to attack.

Of the quarter million men and women in action during the twenty-six-minute war that followed, only nine were not lost or eaten. Colonel Bloch-Draine was one of them, saved by an unavoidable dentist appointment that had him away from his landship at the crucial moment of advance. He retired soon after to devote his time to killing and mounting rare creatures before they went extinct. He had recently started collecting trees and saw no reason why this activity shouldn’t be exactly the same as collecting stuffed animals: lots of swapping and putting them in alphabetical groups. Clearly, moving trees around his estate was not something he could do on his own, and that was the reason Kazam had been employed.

Or the information about Quarkbeasts:

“They don’t so much breed as replicate,” I explained. “They divide into two entirely equal and mirror-opposite Quarkbeasts. But as soon as they do, they have to be separated and sent a long way from each other – opposite sides of the globe, usually. If a paired positive and negative Quarkbeast meet, they are both annihilated in a flash of pure energy. It was said that Cambrianopolis was half destroyed when a confluence of paired Quarkbeasts came together and exploded with the force of ten thousand tons of Marzex-4. Luckily, Cambrianopolis is such a ruin, no one has really noticed.”

And there’s more!

The Once Magnificent Boo stared at me intently. “Are you ready to be confused?”

“It’s how I spend most of my days at Zambini Towers.”

“Then here it is: Quarkbeasts breed by creating an exact mirror copy of themselves – and since the Mighty Shandar created only one Quarkbeast, every Quarkbeast is a copy of every other Quarkbeast, only opposite.”

“I was blown backwards yesterday,” I said. “Is that the same thing?”

“No, and if I were you, I would stay that way. It will save your life.”

“Right. But wait a minute.” I looked at the picture of Q26, the one that paired to produce mine. “If Q27 is the mirror of Q26 and Q28 is the mirror of Q27, then why don’t Q26 and Q28 look the same? Aren’t alternate generations identical?”

“No. It’s more complicated than that. They create identical copies of themselves in six different flavors: Up, Down, Charm, Strange, Top, and Bottom. All are opposite and equal, but all uniquely different and alike at the same time.”

“I don’t understand any of this.”

“I have problems with it still, after twenty years,” confessed Boo. “The complexities of the Quarkbeast are fundamentally unknowable. But here’s the point: There can only ever be thirty-six completely unique yet identical Quarkbeasts. If they divide in such a way that all the combinations are fulfilled, they will come together and merge into a single quota of fully quorumed Quarkbeasts.”

“What will happen then?”

“Something wonderful. All the great unanswered questions of the world will be answered. Who are we? What are we here for? Where will we end up? And most important of all: Can mankind actually get any stupider? The Quarkbeast is more than an animal; it’s an oracle. It assists in mankind’s elusive search for meaning, truth, and fulfillment.”

That should give you the flavor. If you’re ready for some clever but silly fun, I highly recommend this and all of Jasper Fforde’s other books.

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/song_of_the_quarkbeast.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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