The Passenger » Review

"Hide-and-seek may just be a game, but it's a game you ought to know how to play."

[redacted][redacted] says these words to one of her third grade students.  It's a typical lesson from Miss [redacted].  She is an odd teacher — obsessed with teaching the kids about road maps.  "Let's say you're in Olympia, Washington, and you want to drive to Boise, Idaho.  How would you get there?" She has them read From the Mixed Up Files of Basil E. Frankweiler for English Studies, because it's the only book she liked as a kid.  She is renown in their small town for diving into a freezing lake to save a drowning child.  But Miss [redacted] has only been in town for a few months... and she'll be off again.  Soon.

Her name is not [redacted][redacted].  Nor is it Tanya Dubois.  At some point in time she's answered to those names and more — but her real one?  Some things are best left forgotten.

When The Passenger begins, we don't know why our protagonist is running, just that she must again, after her husband suffers the accidental death of falling down the stairs.  "Tanya" says goodbye to her lover and hits the road, navigating fake IDs, bank account transfers, and car swapping with practiced disease.  We get the sense that this is a game "Tanya" is familiar with, but has never really warmed to.  She's like a hunted animal, jumping at every twitch of a shadow in a truck-stop diner.

Tanya is knocked out of her uncomfortable, if familiar, orbit, however, by a mysterious woman named Blue, who has smarts and skills on par to rival the law-eluding Tanya. For a while I thought The Passenger was going to become a Thelma and Louise-esque caper.  Or worse, something akin to the maudlin sentimentality of Where the Heart Is.  Then something happened that tore that theory apart.  And then Lisa Lutz ripped my assumption up into a few more pieces.

You have to give the author credit.  I had no idea which way the story would twist and turn.  At its worst, I call this an "aimless plot."  At its best it is a "sketch-oriented novel." Our heroine wandered from place to place, identity to identity, with only slight, slight plot development with each go around.  This was either a very brave or very foolish decision for a thriller.

After a certain point though, a very certain point, I had to keep reading.  I'm so glad I did, because our ending was worth the winding road it took to get there.  Granted, the tying together of all our loose threads was quite abrupt, but the manner in which it was presented to us fit with our heroine's character arc.  I've had enough. I'm through.  Let me tell you everything now.  

Compared with her previous works, The Passenger is a marked departure in tone for Lutz.  There are no big laughs in this book — the mood is more somber.  We've gotten glimpses at this side of Lutz's writing before, especially when Izzy is at her low-point in each Spellman book, but we've never seen such consistent low moods before. It's an interesting move — the sign of an author who likes to switch things up for herself. What Lutz keeps and passes on from her previous work, however,  is her sophisticated writing ability, her gritty real-world detail, and her in-crisis characters.

I recommend The Passenger now, having ended it, with confidence.  At the beginning of the book, midway, even three quarters through, I would have hesitated.  This is very much a book that all comes together at its endgame.  I can only hope readers stick with the ride to its end.  The destination is worth the journey.

Curio » Review

Those who follow my reviews know that I have a weird relationship with steampunk.  I never seem to like books featuring mechanical fantasy, and yet, I keep trying, striving, to find gems in this troublesome genre.  Over and over again, I start a steampunk book and wind up with a DNF — Did Not Finish. I had some high hopes for Curio — pretty cover, ooooh — but I should have known better.  This book might be the one to make me give up on steampunk forever.

Curio has a very complex — okay, complicated — premise.  We have an alternate version of the United States, magician-scientists, potions that allow people to digest food, a town with strict rules enforced by whippings, a cabinet leading to a world of living machines called "porcies"...  It was all too much for me to take in.  My imagination wouldn't stretch that far. My common sense kept interrupting, piping up, but that doesn't make any sense!

Complicating matters was the pace of the book.  Curio starts out with an exciting scene of two teens racing to make it home before curfew.  We don't know what will happen if they fail, just that the consequences will be very bad. After that initial scene, however, the pace staggers at an alarming rate. The prose gets slogged down by tedious description.  We're told about every color that crosses our protagonist's eyes, every thought, every sensation... There needed to be editing to remove all of the unnecessary language — badly.  

All of this may have been tolerable, though, if not for the blandness of our protagonist, Grey.  She was a husk.  Early on in the book, she acts in a way that was clearly supposed to make readers admire her, but I was left cold.  Her actions weren't that impressive. We're told ad nauseam by other characters that Grey is special, but we were not shown that in any interesting or unique way.

Earlier on, I was going to recommend Curio for fans of Incarceron and Sapphique, two popular books in the YA steampunk niche, but now I hesitate to recommend this book in any capacity.  To put it frankly, I was not intrigued, not delighted, not interested.  I was frustrated and bored.

The Viper and the Urchin Review

This book came to my attention when the author emailed me, saying she'd seen that I'd reviewed and liked Lindsay Buroker's self-published Emperor's Edge series, and would I be interested in reviewing her own book, which held similarities to Buroker's work?

Well.  As an utter fanatic of The Emperor's Edge and its sequels, I search ceaselessly for books that recapture Buroker's style and magic.  Of course, I wrote the author back, saying yes, please send me your book!  At once! — I mentally added.

Now, having finished reading it, I can say that The Viper and the Urchin was a short, solid start to what looks to be a series with potential.  It indeed holds similarities to Buroker's Emperor's Edge —  they are both set in a industrial fantasy setting, with mild steampunk elements.  There are assassins, whose names both end in "us" — although Jeanjean's deadly alchemist Longinus is decidedly different from Buroker's consummate killer, Sicarius.

I didn't know what to make of Longinus at first.  I was slow to wrap my head around such a foppish — at times foolish — assassin.  As the novel drew onwards, I began to find him slightly endearing, although the brevity of the book, 262 pages, was not enough to explain his motivations for killing fully. He seems to be a gentler soul, so why is he drawn to murder? Besides [spoiler]it being his family's trade.[/spoiler] I hope my questions regarding this will be answered in Jeanjean's upcoming installments.

Longinus was not the only protagonist, however.  He shares narration with Rory, an 18 year-old city urchin who harbors ambitions of becoming a great swordsman, like her idol, the Scarred Woman.  Rory was your typical scrappy heroine, who has a heart of gold buried beneath the law-breaking behavior adopted to help her survive the cruel streets.  She discovers some embarrassing information about Longinus, and blackmails him — her secrecy in exchange for lessons in dueling.

Neither of these characters really flew off of the page for me, but I do have hope that they'll slowly be built up over time.

Where The Viper and the Urchin really impressed me was its political intrigue.  The story takes place in a tiny, muggy, little country called Damsport, which used to be the property of an empire about 45 years ago, give or take a decade.  Independence was won by Damsport's young Marchioness who then made a series of brilliant political maneuvers, turning Damsport into an international trade center.  When the empire tried to take Damsport back into the fold, the little country waged a Thermopolyae-esque stand, in time for its allies to push the empire back.  The emperor has been bitter ever since.

This aspect of the story really held my attention.  Going forward, it seems as if the politics will continue to develop, which is excellent.

The style of writing was good, at times showing signs of beginner wobbles, but solid all the same.  I particularly liked a descriptive passage that described Damsport's Wet Market:

The Wet Market was the centre of the Great Bazaar, and therefore the very heart of Damsport. But whereas most hearts pulsate, pumping out life’s blood, Damsport’s heart dripped.  Live fish and crustaceans dripped sea water onto the cobblestones, and dead fish dripped murky viscera. Blood dripped from meat cleavers, whey from cheesecloths, ale through the cracks of poorly constructed barrels, and piss from table legs, attesting to the passage of a stray dog.

Milk dripped from jugs, from udders, from chins; berries dripped juice, makeshift awnings dripped leftover rainwater, and priests dripped holy water. Sweat dripped from the faces of porters, bent under heavy loads, wine dripped down the chins of those checking its quality, and snot dripped from children’s and old men’s noses.  Fat dripped from sausages, dripping dripped from fried fish, vinegar dripped from prawn dumplings, eaten by hand straight from enormous bamboo steamers. Beer dripped from spilt tankards, mud-coloured tobacco water from water pipes, wine from broken bottles, brandy from over-hurried gulps, fire liquor from glasses dashed onto the cobbles, tea from teapot spouts, and more urine dripped from over-refreshed men.

All of it drip-drip-dripped onto the Wet Market’s cobblestones, found its way to the gutters, and trickled off along each of the Twelve, gathering speed thanks to the gentle downward slopes, and carrying the lifeblood and stench of the Wet Market out to the rest of Damsport.

A tad long-winded, but very evocative!

All in all, I give The Viper and the Urchin 3.5 stars — I liked the book and intend to follow the series, but the brevity of the novel and its subsequent lack of development makes me hesitant to rank it higher.  However, The Viper and the Urchin left me wanting more — truly a good sign. I very much look forward to seeing how Celine Jeanjean unfolds her debut series.