At the start of August there was a glut of new books on the shelves; most of them having rich covers and intriguing blurbs. The one I chose to give a chance was Skylark by Megan Spooner. I picked it up first for the cover, second for the blurb and third for grabbing me with the first page.

In a spectrum of purples and a collage of cityscape, forest and filigree iron work, my first impression was a positive one. On the bottom of the front cover there’s also a quote in what looks to be Latin (the google translator doesn’t like it though) that reads Vis in magia in vita vi ~ In magic there is power and in power, life.~

The goodreads.com blurb reads as such…

Her world ends at the edge of the vast domed barrier of energy enclosing all that’s left of humanity. For two hundred years the city has sustained this barrier by harvesting its children’s innate magical energy when they reach adolescence. When it’s Lark’s turn to be harvested, she finds herself trapped in a nightmarish web of experiments and learns she is something out of legend itself: a Renewable, able to regenerate her own power after it’s been stripped.

Forced to flee the only home she knows to avoid life as a human battery, Lark must fight her way through the terrible wilderness beyond the edge of the world. With the city’s clockwork creations close on her heels and a strange wild boy stalking her in the countryside, she must move quickly if she is to have any hope of survival. She’s heard the stories that somewhere to the west are others like her, hidden in secret—but can she stay alive long enough to find them?

This book reminded me of those wise quotes about following your own path and blazing your own trail, because that’s basically what Lark does for a large portion of the story. She learns to survive in an unknown environment, overcomes her fears and adapts in a mostly believable manor.

Some elements of Lark’s survival seemed a tad convenient but I was able to forgive this for the sake of the action sequences and the urge to turn the page to find out what happens next. The pacing varies, but is slowed only to create tension in a really effective way.

I was impressed by the vivid images of the ‘outside world’ through the eyes of a terrified Lark. The contrast between the City and the Iron Wood is quite significant, and speak volumes about the way they are ruled.

I keep trying to think of books or movies to compare Skylark to and the only thing that comes to mind is the slightly demented sequel to The Wizard of Oz, Return to Oz. Clockwork devices and people who aren’t what they seem are the main similarities.

Spooner is ahead of the curve when it comes to this breed of sci fi. She’s definitely a trail blazer and I look forward to reading the sequels Shadowlark and The Leaden Sky.

www.meganspooner.com

Hardcover, 344 pages

Published August 1st 2012 by Carolrhoda Lab

ISBN 0761388656 (ISBN13: 9780761388654)

Ambelin Kwaymullina loves reading sci-fi/fantasy books, and has wanted to write a novel since she was six years old. She comes from the Palyku people of the Pilbara region of Western Australia. When not writing or reading she teaches law, illustrates picture books, and hangs out with her dogs. She has previously written a number of children’s books, both alone and with other members of her family. The Interrogation of Ashala Wolf is her first novel.

1.    Your first novel, The Interrogation of Ashala Wolf (The Tribe #1) was released this year. Prior to that, you wrote and illustrated a number of acclaimed children’s books. What prompted your shift to YA fiction, and the novel format, and which do you most enjoy writing?

I suppose I don’t really think of moving to YA fiction as being a shift, because I have wanted to write a novel since I was six years old, it just took a while to get there! I’m not sure I could even say I enjoyed much of the writing process for the novel, because it involved a lot of long, long nights and thousands of cups of coffee – I did actually wonder if I should thank my coffee machine in the acknowledgements section of the book. But I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything. In many ways writing a novel is a lonely process, but in others I was never alone. I was with Ashala – sharing her experiences as she fought to escape the detention centre and protect her Tribe from the government. It was often a shock to look up from the computer screen and see the furniture of my lounge room instead of the crisp white walls of the detention centre, or the tuart trees of the Firstwood.

2.   Ambelin, you get to showcase two creative talents, as a writer and illustrator. Which interest came first and what are your earliest memories of engaging in creative activity?

My earliest memories are of writing. Art came later, in my teens. I wrote stories from a very young age, and they tended to fall into one of two categories – either fantasy stories, or stories based on the antics of my brothers. My little brothers were pretty much always up to something, so there was never a shortage of things to write about.  The behavior of one character in The Interrogation of Ashala Wolf in particular is influenced by the kinds of tricks my brothers liked to play when they were young. I think anyone who’s ever had a totally irrepressible younger sibling will probably identify with the character of Jaz.

3.   What were some of your favourite stories growing up, and how do you think they have influenced your writing?

I loved any story where people travelled to, or lived in, another world – so picture books like Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are, fantasy stories by Tamora Pierce and, later, the post-apocalyptic Obernewtyn series by Isobelle Carmody.

I always knew I wanted to write about other worlds too, about the possibilities of different realities, different futures. What has always really inspired me about speculative fiction is the way that it explores problems we have in this world and brings us face to face with the great failings and the great promise of humanity, even though it’s set in times and places so far removed from ours (or perhaps not so far removed!).  Ashala is a sixteen year old girl who has to deal with the systemic discrimination of a society that views people with abilities as a threat. Although there’s nowhere in the ‘real’ world where people get locked away for having abilities (at least not as far as I know), Ashala is far from the only teenager ever to experience injustice or discrimination. Ashala fights against her oppressors and eventually triumphs over them, and I like to think that we could all eventually triumph over injustice too, in whatever form or time or place it exists.

4.    Which of your fictional characters Burns Brightest in your mind and why?

I love them all – but it is Ashala who I feel the closest to. The story is told from her perspective, and she’s the one whose voice guided the story, and whose thoughts and feelings I experienced the most as I was piecing the narrative together. It’s hard not to feel close to someone when you’ve stood by their side at some of the worst and the best moments of their life, when you’ve felt their pain and their joy. The Interrogation of Ashala Wolf is very much Ashala’s story. I just got to tell it, as best as I possibly could.

‘Friends don’t let friends date vampires.’

Mel and Cathy couldn’t be more different, but they have been best friends for years. Cathy is sweet, loves books and is fascinated by vampires while Mel can be ornery, likes solving other people’s problems and feels that vampires are best kept at a distance. Despite their differences, they have only ever fought once; at least before the vampire shows up.

Francis Duvarney is a vampire with a million questions who enrols in Craunston High. He is old-fashioned and chivalrous; but Mel soon suspects that he has ulterior motives, especially where Cathy is concerned.

When she decides to solve this problem, as she has so often solved others, questions begin to pile up and she ends up finding a lot of things she hadn’t expected. Among them, a boy named Kit who can make her laugh, and has the most unusual family background she has encountered.

There is a lot to love about this self-aware, satirical novel. For me, it starts with the authors. I have adored Sarah Rees Brennan’s writing from before I even knew her as Sarah Rees Brennan. She has a fantastic blog that captures so much of her humour and passion for – well, everything, that I really think the people who don’t know about it are missing out on life. Justine Larbalestier caught and held my attention with her amazing book, Liar. Two pages in and I already knew that it would trump sleep that night. Their characters have such strong voices that it’s impossible not to listen.

Team Human is no exception. Mel’s voice is distinctive and unforgettable. She is something that Young Adult sadly lacks; a funny, witty girl who values laughter more than drama. As I mentioned earlier, she can be inclined to irritability, but even that she will turn to humour rather than sulking. Once Mel meets Kit, she only gets better. With Kit she has a kindred spirit, someone to appreciate her humour and to bounce it off of. He is still his own person though; slightly strange and while he admires her he doesn’t think that she is always right.

Something that Brennan and Larbalestier do consistently is write minorities. Whether it be ethnicity, gender or sexuality, they try to not only include them but also to give them starring roles. All of the thought that they’ve put in to the nature of discrimination really helps them out in Team Human. Humans and vampires are not legally segregated; but there is a space between them that neither party seems willing to breech. Vampires have narrow ideas of what humans are, and humans have narrower ideas about vampires. The novel is too friendly to ever get preachy, but tolerance is lauded.

Unlike Brennan’s Demon’s Lexicon and Larbalestier’s Liar, Team Human was slow to get into. Character development began straight away, and there was humour from the start right through to the end; but the plotline didn’t pick up until a several chapters in. If I had been able to love Cathy as much as Mel does, I would have enjoyed the slow start. Cathy and Francis were the only burr in the side of this otherwise incredible book. They lacked the vivacity of Mel and her other friends. Cathy’s conversations with Mel never fizzed and sparkled like Kit’s did. I found myself wondering why Mel was friends with Cathy in the first place. Ironically, I think that Cathy was deliberately written this way. To be in love with a vampire, she had to love stagnation; and Cathy does not change.

Fortunately, all of the other supporting characters were gems. Kit’s mother, Camille, and her friends and neighbours deserve their own book. Mel’s sister, too, stands out for me more than she should, given the small part she plays. In fact, all of the families were brilliantly thought out and written; they each had their own brand of crazy and their own way of loving and protecting each other.

Team Human juxtaposes the choices – human or vampire – in such a way as to make either of them valid options depending on each individual. Some readers have classed it as a parody making gentle fun of the new vampire genre out there, but it goes beyond that. The novel offers Kit’s very human attractiveness against the lure of the forbidden vampire in a manner that is far too self-aware to be regarded as anything less than satire. By the end of it though, I have to say that I’m Team Human all the way.

Team Human – Sarah Rees Brennan and Justine Larbalestier

Allen & Unwin (July 3, 2012)

ISBN: 9781742378398

Jaclyn Moriarty grew up in Sydney’s north-west with four sisters, one brother, two dogs and twelve chickens. She studied English and Law at the University of Sydney and later wrote a PhD thesis at Cambridge on Children, Law and the Media. She has worked as a media and entertainment lawyer but now writes full time, dividing her time between Montreal and Sydney.

1. Our reviewer, Renee, has just read A Corner of White and describes it as, ‘a seamless tale of dual universes, dual protagonists and contrasting lifestyles’ that mixes ‘contemporary realism’ with ‘epic fantasy and magic’. (I can’t wait to read it!). Can you tell us more about where the idea for the story originated.

Thank you so much  (to both you and your reviewer).  The story came to me when I was living in Montreal, Canada.  A friend gave me a notebook that was covered in soft red suede, and that folded out to reveal a row of coloured pencils. I took it to a café on a snowy day, meaning to do my regular work, but instead I started to draw pictures with the coloured pencils.  The pictures turned into an imaginary world called the Kingdom of Cello.  Years later I returned to the Kingdom of Cello for this book.

2. You’ve done a lot of study, predominantly in the field of Law; and your first degree combined English and Law. How has your study and legal career influenced your work as a writer? Do you do a lot of research for your fiction?

I think that studying and working in the law might have helped to make my chaotic mind more ordered.  Not much though.  It also sharpened my awareness of the facts that: there are usually multiple layers to the truth, truth can be distorted and twisted in unimaginable ways, people live through the strangest kinds of heartbreak, and a world of story can lie behind a single line.

3. You say that you’re happiest when you’re ‘in (your) study and the writing’s going well and (you) can hear (your son), Charlie, giggling downstairs’. What gets you into the flow and into that zone? What do you do to get yourself back on track, when and if the words aren’t coming to you?

That’s funny—now Charlie has started school and we’ve moved to a single-level apartment.  So I guess I don’t hear him giggling downstairs while I work any more.  These days, I think that running around the block or dancing in the living room before writing, and then eating chocolate and drinking peppermint tea while writing, are essential for getting me ‘in the zone’. I also think that this is nothing more than superstition and a chocolate addiction.  But I’m not giving it up.

I still haven’t figured out what to do when the words aren’t coming—sometimes I make myself write anyway, even though the sentence are clunking along, and then delete all of that when it starts working again; sometimes I try writing something completely different, like a journal entry or poem or short story; and sometimes I listen to music/dance/bake cakes/cry/go insane/send a lot of text messages/eat a lot more chocolate.

4. Which of your fictional characters Burns Brightest in your mind and why?

At the moment it’s probably Elliot Baranski, who is the hero of the Colours of Madeleine trilogy.  The characters who usually stay in my mind are the ones who are the most troubled and confused, like Lydia Jaakson-Oberman from Finding Cassie Crazy (or The Year of Secret Assignments) and Bindy Mackenzie from The Betrayal of Bindy Mackenzie.

Madeleine Tully lives in Cambridge, England, the World – a city of spires, Isaac Newton and Auntie’s Tea Shop. Elliot Baranski lives in Bonfire, the Farms, the Kingdom of Cello – where seasons roam, the Butterfly Child sleeps in a glass jar, and bells warn of attacks from dangerous Colours. They are worlds apart – until a crack opens up between them; a corner of white – the slim seam of a letter.

As I do so love to create these comparisons, I shall proudly state that I found Jaclyn Moriarty’s A Corner of White to be the book baby that would result from John Green and Neil Gaiman coming together to write a novel. And trust me, this is a compliment indeed!

Moriarty weaves a quite seamless tale of dual universes, dual protagonists and contrasting lifestyles in such an original and vibrant fashion that even when there were inevitable questions and moments of confusion, the sheer delight of this journey overshadowed everything else. It should also be noted that for the first instalment in a series, there was an overriding sense of satisfaction and containment within the novel, which is very rare for a series opener.

Effectively combining elements of contemporary realism with a splash of epic fantasy and magic, A Corner of White depicts the experiences and struggles of Madeline, who resides in The World (our world) and Elliott, a resident of The Kingdom of Cello (not our world!) Both are teenagers, however the wider cast of characters in both universes spans all ages and offers insight into a variety of human experiences and emotions. While the novel’s core focus on two teenage protagonists will no doubt see this classified as a young adult title, I do feel sincerely that it could effectively cross over into the adult age bracket.

The novel’s tone and sensibility was easily one of its most engaging and entertaining factors; there is a pervading and surprising sense of humour throughout, often quite tongue-cheek, which had me smiling and giggling continually. There are even slight ‘meta’ moments within the narrative, with Madeline’s character being in doubt of Elliot’s existence and often asking him if his ‘Kingdom’ includes such common fantasy tropes as “some kind of strong-willed princess with rebellion on her mind?” These were incredibly fun to recognise and enjoy!

Both the characters of Madeline and Elliott were incredibly sympathetic and relatable in their own, unique ways and both had worthwhile journeys to undertake; seeing their connection with one another was equally as interesting as seeing their individual lives unfold. Within all of the novel’s characters, there was always a strong sense of these people as human beings, incredibly flawed and genuine, and this was refreshing and admirable.

Finally, the fantastical aspects of the novel were wonderfully obscure and strange, and it was very deliberate and gradual reveal of the ‘laws’ of this universe that made Moriarty’s creation so memorable. The Kingdom, with its violent colours and its changing seasons, is both a place that repelled and intrigued me.

Just as Madeline and Elliott came to feel about their relationship with one another, I am heartily glad and thankful to have encountered A Corner of White, and I very much look forward to the continuation of the series.

A Corner of White – Jaclyn Moriarty (The Colours of Madeline,  Book One)

PanMacmillan Australia

ISBN – 13 – 9781742611396

400 pages

September 18, 2012