Coraline, I think, I would’ve been into bigtime as a kid: I loved (and still love) stuff that was scary but not gruesome, and Coraline fits into that niche with classics like The Witches. (Sidenote: I must’ve read The Witches a hundred times as a kid. I subsequently developed a terror of women with seashell noses, and I can’t wait for Guillermo del Toro’s adaptation.)

Much like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Coraline is about a young girl who ventures into a strange land, but where Wonderland is eccentric-creepy, Coraline’s otherworld is creepy-creepy. It’s ruled by the Other Mother, a sinister matriarch with buttons for eyes. Gaiman smartly declines to reveal too much about the origins of the Other Mother and her powers, or about the nature of the mirror world Coraline winds up in, and it’s the mystery that makes it spooky.

Also highly recommended: Henry Selick’s film adaptation of Coraline, which is also wonderful.

My copy of Coraline is part of the Bloomsbury Phantastics range, and includes several of Gaiman’s short stories. Some of them I’ve previously read, either online or in Fragile Things, but even the ones I’d come across before are definitely worth re-reading. The highlights are Sunbird, about an epicurean club whose members decide to eat a phoenix; October in the Chair, which ties nicely with The Graveyard Book; and Don’t Ask Jack, a genuinely unsettling tale about a spooky jack-in-the-box and its effect on the lives of the children who own it. (It’s one of the shortest stories in the collection, but also the scariest.)

I realise that at this point it’s cliche to profess one’s adoration of Gaiman, but: he is such a great writer.

The first two books in the series, The Knife of Never Letting Go and The Ask and the Answer, stand out for their inventiveness, their fierce pace, and their vivid characters. Monsters of Men meets their standard, then ups the stakes, then ups them again, and then again. There are a billion points in the story where I didn’t think Ness could ratchet up the tension any more – and then he does.

Avoid spoilers, if you can. I’m not giving anything away, so, vague summary ahead: Monsters of Men is about young people coming into power, guided by those who are in power already (and who, in most cases, have been corrupted by it). Our heroes Todd and Viola are mostly back together again, in the sense that they share many more scenes than they did in Ask and find ways to communicate even when they’re apart, but they’re still constantly buffeted and battered by the competing forces of Mistress Coyle and Mayor Prentiss.

Who, by the way, is the strongest and most difficult character. Is he really the villain of this story, or is he its hero? Ness doesn’t answer that question (and nor should he), instead crafting a character who is at once charismatic, paternal, untrustworthy and chilling. Which is just the way it should be. Of all the characters in Chaos Walking, the Mayor will stay with me the longest.

(And maybe Manchee. Love that dog.)

Kudos to Ness for avoiding the drippy sentiment that often plagues finales (Deathly Hallows, anyone?), but he does cheat a few times: a lot of the support characters feel stand-in-ish, and a couple of the plot twists seem like they’ve been thrown in for shock value rather than to enhance the story. (Particularly the very final twist, which came thisclose to ruining the whole series for me. Ultimately, though, Ness turns it into a very satisfying conclusion.)

I’ve been lucky with the series: I only started reading it in the month leading up to Monster’s release, meaning I didn’t have to wait a year between instalments like everyone else. I literally read all three entries one after the other. So I’m not sure what the feeling is in the Chaos Walking fanbase – but I have a feeling they’ll like the final book as much as I did.

About two-thirds through Ask I thought, “I am enjoying the shit out of this book, but it’s not as good as The Knife of Never Letting Go, because it’s the second entry in a trilogy, and second entries in trilogies are by nature the weakest”.

Then I got into the finale and ohmigod. I took it back. This book could not have ended on a more heart-pounding note, or a more intense cliffhanger, without being sold with a safety warning. Our heroes Todd and Viola evolve so powerfully during the story that the contrast between their characters at the beginning of the book and their characters at the end is as sharp as a slap to the face on a winter morning – and yet their growth feels totally unforced and organic. Superbly played, Ness.

If you haven’t read Knife, skip over this non-spoilery-I-hope plot summary: so, Todd and Viola are separated (meaning that Ask is told from the first-person perspective of both, an interesting change from book one) and each come under the guidance of powerful leaders who seek to pull them apart. War, totalitarianism and terrorism ensue, along with some utterly fascinating good vs. evil stuff – this is one of those rare books where you’ll find yourself siding, actually siding, with the bad guys. Partly because pretty much everyone is one of the bad guys, even (occasionally) Todd and Viola.

If there’s one problem with this book, it’s that my Australian twang ruins the alliteration of its title. The Arrrrrsk and the Annnnnswer. Stupid accent.

I cannot wait to read book three, Monsters of Men. Thank god it comes out in less than a month. Unless it really sucks (unlikely), Chaos Walking is destined to become one of my very favourite trilogies.

And really one of those books that spits in the face of the (stupid) idea that books about kids are just for kids. Sure, the story told in Knife is an exciting adventure – but it’s also complex, and mature, and a lot bleaker than you’d expect if you didn’t know a lot of about so-called young adult literature.

It’s also a story I’ll shy away from saying too much about, since half the joy of reading it is unravelling it yourself. Basic premise: it’s the tale of Todd Hewitt, a boy fast approaching the birthday that will make him a man. All his life Todd has resided in Prentisstown, a place ravaged by the Noise: a germ that broadcasts the thoughts of men to everyone around them. And it only affects men – all the women in Prentisstown are dead.

You’d think that there couldn’t be any secrets in a world where men hear each other’s thoughts, but very early on Todd discovers this isn’t so – everyone has been lying to him, even his loving guardians Ben and Cillian (a gay couple whose homosexuality is only cleverly alluded to), and these lies propel Todd out of his hometown with a vicious enemy on his heels.

The sheer momentum of The Knife of Never Letting Go is even more unrelenting than that of The Hunger Games; every time I put this book down I felt a restless impatience till I opened it up again, and even while reading it I frequently had to resist the urge to skip ahead to the next page. But Knife has an extra depth reminiscent of His Dark Materials, not to mention some scenes that are genuinely traumatic – after one bit I literally had to put the book down for a while (and if you’ve read the book, you’ll know which bit I mean without having to be told).

Todd has a vivid, memorable voice overflowing with ain’ts and (intentional) mispellings, though Ness also excels at writing support characters – the best of these is Todd’s talking, pooing dog Manchee, though even people who only appear for a couple of pages (such as Hildy, and the mayor of Prentisstown) are deftly drawn.

Knife is the first entry in the Chaos Walking trilogy, which I reckon I’ve started at exactly the right time – by the time I’ve finished with book two, The Ask and the Answer, it won’t be long to the release of book three, Monsters of Men.

Time is the better of the two, because the stakes are higher: war is close, Holmland is dangerous, and the romantic tension between Aubrey and Caroline is more electric than ever. (Seriously, if they don’t at least share a chaste kiss in the next instalment, I will die.)

These are good books, though I do have one complaint. And it’s a biggie.

The villain of the piece – who I won’t name, because it’d spoil the end of Blaze of Glory, though I will refer to him as “he”, which isn’t really a spoiler since almost all of Laws of Magic’s major characters are men¹ – is not a formidable enough opponent for Aubrey, our protagonist. I don’t mean that in the sense that the villain isn’t powerful; we’re constantly reminded of his power. I mean that he’s not a compelling villain.

In Word of Honour the villain runs around concocting plots intended to spark a world war, basically as a means to securing his own power. (His motives are revealed in more detail in Blaze, though again, I don’t want to spoilt it.) But he’s a villain because we’re told he’s a villain – he doesn’t really do anything especially villainous. And even when he does appear on the page, he’s a bit two-dimensional. “Evil and smug cackle, I have you in the clutches of my nefarious plan now,” etc.

In Time of Trial Michael Pryor attempts to rectify this by expounding on the villain’s backstory, revealing details about his family and background. Though it’s still unsatisfying – who is this guy? Why is he like this? How come he doesn’t just kill Aubrey? I’ve read all four books in the series so far and I don’t really have a sense of the bad guy. He’s just “the bad guy” to me, and I want him to be more. (In Pryor’s defence, I have the same beef with Lord of the Rings. Sauron = zzzzz.)

1. Note: that’s not the say the series has no strong female charaters, because it does, just that most of the major characters have penises. Which fits the books’ early-20th century setting.

White Teeth

But seriously: White Teeth is a great book. There’s a reason it won scads of awards upon its release in 2000. It’d been hovering on my I-Really-Must-Get-Around-To-Reading-This list for years, and I’m pleased I did – especially given it’s not usually the sort of book my young adult-loving self would normally get into.

It’s a tricky book to sum up succinctly, so I’m stealing a synopsis:

At the center of this invigorating novel are two unlikely friends, Archie Jones and Samad Iqbal. Hapless veterans of World War II, Archie and Samad and their families become agents of England’s irrevocable transformation. A second marriage to Clara Bowden, a beautiful, albeit tooth-challenged, Jamaican half his age, quite literally gives Archie a second lease on life, and produces Irie, a knowing child whose personality doesn’t quite match her name (Jamaican for “no problem”). Samad’s late-in-life arranged marriage (he had to wait for his bride to be born), produces twin sons whose separate paths confound Iqbal’s every effort to direct them, and a renewed, if selective, submission to his Islamic faith.

That doesn’t really do it justice. The plot is sprawling, both geographically and historically; there’s characters I liked (Archie, Irie, Niece of Shame), characters I hated (Samad – why anyone would want to be friends with him is beyond me); and Smith gets across a real sense of a thriving multicultural city, and what a slippery term “multicultural” actually is.

I read most of White Teeth in airports and on planes on my way back from New Zealand. If you’re looking for a book you can disappear into for hours-long stretches, this is perfect stuff.

So in this instalment – the second in the series – our hero Aubrey Fitzwilliam and his chum George Doyle leave “Albion” on a trip to “Lutetia”, the beautiful capital city of “Gallia”. (Laws is set in an alternate universe where a) magic is real, and b) everywhere has a different name, so England is “Albion” and Paris is “Lutetia”. It even has its own “Exposition Tower”. Hee.)

Aubrey reunites with the beautiful Caroline Hepworth – who’s kind of like Hermione Granger, if Hermione were all aloof and kick-ass – and discovers a plot to destroy Lutetia and spark war across the Continent.

The right word is “rollicking”. In Gold author Michael Pryor expands the world he created in Blaze, crafting an adventure that’s immensely captivating (even in the bits where the plot feels like it’s treading water).

Pryor is not only a writer who makes me want to read, he’s a writer who makes me want to write. And now on to book three, Word of Honour!

The Laws of Magic novels, of which Blaze of Glory is part one, are about Aubrey Fitzwilliam – a very rich, very clever, very absurdly named English toff who attends a posh boarding school and is the son of a prominent politician. By rights I should hate him. But I don’t, and I think it’s because Michael Pryor is playing with the conventions of a genre I once loathed.

And doing an awfully good job of it. For example: Aubrey’s best chum George constantly calls him “old man”. And at one stage he dresses himself up as a street urchin called Tommy Sparks. Tommy Sparks! Brilliant.

Superficially, Laws of Magic is a lot like Harry Potter: both are about slight, dark-haired, magically gifted teenagers with a knack for landing themselves in the thick of mysterious events. But Blaze of Glory is rife with a political intrigue that’s absent from the Potter novels (from the early ones, at least): it’s set in an alternate universe in the early 20th century, as “Albion” is on the verge of war with “Holmland” (stand-ins for England and Germany, respectively).

Aubrey and George are invited to a shooting weekend at the Crown Prince’s palatial country estate, joined by politicians, aristocrats and foreign diplomats. Aubrey foils an attempt on the Prince’s life when he discovers a golem sent on an assassination mission – but who sent the golem, and why?

The subsequent investigation cracks along, bringing Aubrey and George into encounters with many sharply written, memorable characters. Foremost among these is Aubrey’s romantic interest Caroline Hepworth (though she’s not nearly as interested in him), who’s rather Hermione-esque – if Hermione were not merely intelligent  but also aloof, elegant and skilled at hand-to-hand combat.

The magic in Laws is a complicated business. In Harry Potter it bothered me a little that casting spells seemed to involve little more than waving a wand; here, spells must be cast with an almost mathematical precision, and the complexity of all those variables and parameters is satisfying. Aubrey is a magical prodigy, of course, but his skill is not limitless. A botched magical experiment has separated his body and his soul, and the danger he’s put himself in and his attempts to fix himself are constant threads in the story.

Quibbles: some of the plot twists are contrived even by the standards of the genre, particularly a scene where Aubrey and co. just so happen to visit a fitness club that’s the scene of a violent confrontation between Holmland spies, secret agents and magical operatives. And the book’s editor should’ve given the manuscript another once-over before it went to print, because it’s strewn with typos and repeated words – not many, but enough to be distracting.

Blaze’s climax lacks a real oomph, but this didn’t really bother me because Pryor has crafted  such a rich fantasy world – it’s so compelling that I bought part two, Heart of Gold, before I’d even finished part one. It’s inventive, witty, and a fine read.

(PS, I have no idea why there’s a phoenix on the cover. I waited the whole book for it to appear, and it never did. Weird.)

Shades of Grey, the first entry in a new trilogy, is a bit of a departure from Fforde’s previous series, Thursday Next and Nursery Crimes. They were both rampantly silly (and I use the word in the best possible way), and while Shades doesn’t lack any of their inventiveness, something about the tone feels a little more mature. If you can even say that about a book with such a wild premise:

The novel is set in a future where society is divided by colour. Not race – literally colour. Citizens are sorted into classes based on what spectrum they best perceive: examples include the supercilious Yellows,  bossy Greens and unlucky Greys, who can’t perceive much colour at all and lumped at the bottom of the social order. A rigid hierarchy of Prefects and rules forms a society that’s reminiscent of a more colourful, decidedly English version of Airstrip One.

Our hero is 20-year-old Red Eddie Russett – everyone’s surnames are dictacted by their colour – an affable, dopey goody-goody who’s banished to the outer fringes to complete a chair census after he dares to suggest a more efficient method of queueing. (This kind of deadpan silliness is Fforde’s hallmark.) In his new home of East Carmine, Eddie meets Jane, a hot-tempered grey with a retrousse noise who reveals the ugly underbelly of society. She also has him eaten by a giant carnivorous plant, but you’ll have to read the book to find out why.

Shades of Grey is a blast (I’m a Fforde fanboy. Can you tell?), but be warned: the story takes an extremely long time to get started – the first half of the book is devoted mostly to worldbuilding, which is fascinating but occasionally frustrating. And avoid if you’re not a fan of books that are transparently set-up for a sequel, because the ending of Shades will just tick you off.

“Equal parts fun and funny… William Kostakis is an evil genius.” Is what I’d say if I’d been asked to write the cover blurb.

It’s true. I like my LOLs witty and cruel, and Loathing Lola is loaded with both. You know you’re onto something when you can make a funeral scene hilarious.