Category: Wicked Cool Overlooked Books

In “a distant time and far-off place,” Cynthia Voight created a dynamic and intense character in a complex society. Unlike her more well-known Tillerman series, where the young Dicey is acting as father and mother for a brood, Voight’s character, Gwyn, has parents – they’re innkeepers at the Ram’s Head, and for peasants, they are fairly prosperous. They have their place in the rigidly controlled medieval hierarchy. In that structure, a woman’s burden is solid and soul-destroying, and completely controlled by the men in the village. Men, whom Gwyn regards with a sort of hopeless and tired envy, have far more choices than women, but even their choices are constricted.

Into her narrow world, a young Lord comes. Separated from his father in a snowstorm, Gadrian, together with Gwyn, is stranded in an abandoned cabin. In the intervening days as they have no other company but their own, from Gadrian Gwyn learns of a whole world beyond the mountains. They learn from each other, at first in small snatches, then in the larger give and take of friendship, she teaches him to fight like a peasant; he teaches her the elegance of the swords. Gwyn teaches him woodcraft, Gadrian teaches Gwyn to read. Little by little they move toward each other as brothers-in-arms, instead of as Lord and peasant. But trusting yourself to another’s swords goes only so far – they are still not equals. Gwyn is reminded of this forcefully when racing back to the Inn. Getting there first — without the Lordling she was meant to protect — leaves Gadrian’s father in fear that his son is dead, and he puts his swords to her throat. From that day, Gwyn loses her trust of the way things work, and that her family can protect her. There needs to be, she sees, another way. People should be free.

There are stories in the village, and in the towns beyond. Stories of a one called Jackaroo, one who shoulders the burdens of the poor, who takes up for the weak, who does not let the Lords fatten upon the lives of the peasants. Such stories are the usual rumors that bring a brief and watery hope to the people, but when Jackaroo finds a gauntlet in the woods like the one worn by Jackaroo, she realizes that he is real… but not in her world. Her world needs a hero, and needs one now. Why can’t she just put on the mask…?

This is a story like Robin Hood, but better, since it’s without the icky Maid Marian, who stood around and did nothing but screw things up, and without the blithe mindless I-can-out-clever-you-all-naah-nah of Robin Hood.

It is hard for Gwyn to put on the mask, hard to set aside the ingrained feminine training where men are revered, the gentry are always right, and she does as she is told, panders for attention from eligible males and considers herself in terms of marriage and nothing else. Further, once she has started down that road, there are paradoxes and traps within doing good for others. Do they deserve it? Will they, in turn, do good to others, or will they simply expect more? Is good, in itself, enough? Why does she have to order people to do right? Why won’t they, as freed people, act in good conscience freely?

I relished the moral implications Voight explored. It’s not easy to ride in and be the hero, yet too often in fiction it is produced as a simple solution. Though the whole thing started as a lark, as a way to take on the Lords and be daring, Gwyn realizes before long that she is ill-prepared for what she has to do, and the people are completely unprepared to be assisted, to change their own lives. And what then?

There were too many like Am among the people, too many who gave up the fight. But what could you expect, when all of life was so hard and hopeless? How could someone fight and know he never would win? And who was the enemy? Could a man fight off a long winter or a dry summer? No more than he could fight against the Lords. Aye, the people could not manage without the Lords, they were children unable to take care of themselves…. Why should Jackaroo take such risks, for such people…. Aye, she had no choice in the matter any more. (p. 226)

The novel ends with several rapid twists of plot that may confuse the reader who isn’t following closely. Mistaken identities crop up, as suddenly Gwyn is not the only masked rider – there’s more than one Jackaroo, and they’re all riding for their own reasons. The Lords want someone to hang for it, though, and hang someone will. Will she be in time to save everyone? Does everyone need to be saved? Is there truly a purpose to wearing the mask?

Well, you’ve got to read the story to know for sure. One promise, though: it’s wicked cool.

The book, by the time I read it, was probably eleven years old. There had been reams of other YA novels printed, awards awarded, and the author had gone on to many other things.

You have to understand how it was, though. Books — fiction books — were for me the rarest gold. I grew up without fairytales, without science fiction (with the notable exception of the original Star Trek reruns on TV. When we were allowed to watch TV.), and certainly without a concept of fiction directed towards my age group. Unless it was a Reader’s Digest Condensed Book, or a sort of Guidepost/Chicken Soup/missionary story, I had to find it at school. Of course, at school, there was tons of great non-fiction (Molly Pitcher: Girl Patriot,
copyright 1952 was a favorite), but I never had as much time for curling up and reading plain old stories – wildly fictional, partially true, entirely ridiculous – as I wanted. So, it was with considerable jealousy that I regarded my cousin, Dee Dee.

Three years younger than me, and the girl had everything. I remember it was at a family function — there were radio-controlled cars, lots of relatives talking and laughing, and the kids all underfoot. I was bored, and eeled my way under a low closet rail in my cousin’s gaping closet, where I sat, hidden, and cranky. I looked around at the surfeit of …frippery that had exploded everywhere, and I found, on the floor, bent and discarded, a paperback book.

It was short. It had a yellowy-greenish sticker on it, which I ignored, and the cover had a picture of a girl, and a little boy, and a massive bird which arched up like a bridge behind them. I opened to the first page, and read.

Somewhere in West Virginia, there was a girl with orange sneakers who hated her ugly this-is-what-we-can-afford shoes, and thought her dad hated her: just like me. I was almost ten.

I considered stealing that book. My father bellowed up the stairs for me, and I had only read the first few chapters. Sara Godfrey’s hair wasn’t looking good, but something worse was going on — Charlie thought he’d heard the swans, and had left the house to go after them. Charlie was “retarded,” which is the word the book used. I was worried sick, and it was time to go. Indecision! I stood with the book in my hand, and my cousin bounced in.

“Is this your book?” I asked her faintly, trying to summon a feeling of apology.

“Oh, Mom bought that. You want it? You can have it,” she said with the cheerful disregard of someone whose mother bought them books all the time. (This is not to say my mother did not. We just didn’t have money for books. We went to the library, and were steered toward non-fiction… and Snoopy, God bless him. I think I’ve read every Peanuts book that exists.)

I probably should have double-checked with an adult, but that wasn’t going to happen. I tucked it under my shirt, into my waistband, crossed my arms, and went home. I fell in love with Betsy Byars and The Summer of the Swans. I read that paperback until it disintegrated.

“A picture came into her mind of the laughing, curly-headed man with the broken tooth in the photograph album, and she suddenly saw life as a series of huge, uneven steps, and she saw herself on the steps, standing motionless in her prison shirt, and she had just taken an enormous step up out of the shadows, and she was standing, waiting, and there were other steps in front of her, so that she could go as high as the sky, and she saw Charlie on a flight of small difficult steps, and her father down at the bottom of some steps, just sitting and not trying to go further. She saw everyone she knew on those blinding white steps, and for a moment everything was clearer than it had ever been.”

The Newberry Project describes the book’s illustrations and references as a little dated, but the story itself as “timeless.” And yes – that yellowy green “sticker” was the Newberry Medal, which I disregarded entirely. This book was the very first YA novel I ever read — and there were many years after in which I dutifully read what well-meaning and ennobling, character-building, intelligence-expanding, and perfectly good nonfiction that was put before me (and it was perfectly good, and I enjoyed it… but you always want what you are told you can’t have, don’t you?), but this was — the first feast that led to me sniffing after other book crumbs, other ‘truths’ that existed devoid of the rigid structure of fact.

What was your first? Do you remember?

Stay tuned for more Wicked Cool Overlooked Books (now with zombies and hillbillies!) around the kidlitosphere!

It’s time for another episode of Wicked Cool Overlooked Books, brought to you by the genius that is Colleen of Chasing Ray.

W.C.O.B. takes place the first Monday of the month, and normally I don’t participate because… well, I’m not sure I know from “wicked cool,” really, but “overlooked,” I discover all the time, so I thought I’d give it a go this month.

It’s super easy to overlook good fantasy, because the genre is notoriously… prolific. Tor is the unheralded king of flooding the market with what can only be described at times as the veriest pulp fiction — and because of this largess, people occasionally assume that all fantasy novels are poorly scripted, badly written, over-dramatic and filled with stock characters: shining white mind-speaking horses, blue eyed ingénues, lusty heroes, evil warlocks and vague, dusty wizards. While there are legions of damsels-in-distress and riding to the rescue types of novels that are enjoyably escapist, not all of them present female characters as entirely lacking. For instance, Lawrence Watt Evans’ Ithanalin’s Restoration, one in a series of novels set in Ethshar, is the story of 17-year-old Kilisha, a wizard’s apprentice who is bored out of her mind. The wizard Ithanalin is horribly slow to teach her anything of any use, and Kilisha wonders if she hasn’t made a mistake in apprenticing herself to him with his grubby robes, his wife and kids and his safe, sleepy pace. Everything changes, however, when the wizard makes a minor mistake in an animation spell that has major repercussions. Ithanalin’s body is frozen in stasis, and his spirit flees… into a few inanimate household objects, Kilisha discovers later. Suddenly she’s in charge of fixing… everything. The wizard’s wife, Yana, and their three children are counting on her.

Funny, frothy, and a little screwball, this is a simple story that encompasses one person’s growth and fast-forward growing up in a charming style. Evans’ treatment of his female characters is always positive – even as he shows their attitudes for what they are. His work is always fun for me to read.

(And, if you read the novel and account for all of the… furniture in it, the title begins to make a horrible kind of sense: Ethan Allen’s restoration. And then you groan and realize what an awful and twisted mind the author has! Argh!)

My second W.C.O.B. is the second-to-last solo book that fantasy powerhouse Andre Norton published before she died. (The one second book in this duet was co-authored.) Cinderella, Snow White and Sleeping Beauty’s stories all seem to collide and combine into an intriguing blend in Scent of Magic.

Willadene is a talented orphan whose life at her Aunt Jacoba’s Wanderers Inn is a misery. She is ill-treated as a scullery maid, her skill at aromatics is offended (as the kitchen — and the Inn — reek), and not only that, her Aunt has decided to marry her off against her will to someone foul. Willadene finds the way to escape through apprenticing herself to Halwice, the herbmistress of Kronengred, after Willadene’s keen sense of smell saves the woman from a magical trap – but Halwice’s sponsorship also puts Willadene into the path of political intrigue and another kind of danger.

Like Ithanalin’s Restoration, this story slides comfortably into the known, with a Ducal Court, evil aunts, worldly spies, a dashing prince and an innocent princess, but it also has that touch of Norton’s genius with enigma, including the character of Ssssaaa, who knows… everything somehow.

Every once in awhile it’s a lot of fun to go back and rediscover some of the fantasy classics. If you’ve never heard of either of these two, I wish you joy of them, a tall glass of something cool, and a suitably soft hammock. Cheers!

It’s time for another episode of Wicked Cool Overlooked Books, brought to you by the genius that is Colleen of Chasing Ray.

W.C.O.B. takes place the first Monday of the month, and normally I don’t participate because… well, I’m not sure I know from “wicked cool,” really, but “overlooked,” I discover all the time, so I thought I’d give it a go this month.

It’s super easy to overlook good fantasy, because the genre is notoriously… prolific. Tor is the unheralded king of flooding the market with what can only be described at times as the veriest pulp fiction — and because of this largess, people occasionally assume that all fantasy novels are poorly scripted, badly written, over-dramatic and filled with stock characters: shining white mind-speaking horses, blue eyed ingénues, lusty heroes, evil warlocks and vague, dusty wizards. While there are legions of damsels-in-distress and riding to the rescue types of novels that are enjoyably escapist, not all of them present female characters as entirely lacking. For instance, Lawrence Watt Evans’ Ithanalin’s Restoration, one in a series of novels set in Ethshar, is the story of 17-year-old Kilisha, a wizard’s apprentice who is bored out of her mind. The wizard Ithanalin is horribly slow to teach her anything of any use, and Kilisha wonders if she hasn’t made a mistake in apprenticing herself to him with his grubby robes, his wife and kids and his safe, sleepy pace. Everything changes, however, when the wizard makes a minor mistake in an animation spell that has major repercussions. Ithanalin’s body is frozen in stasis, and his spirit flees… into a few inanimate household objects, Kilisha discovers later. Suddenly she’s in charge of fixing… everything. The wizard’s wife, Yana, and their three children are counting on her.

Funny, frothy, and a little screwball, this is a simple story that encompasses one person’s growth and fast-forward growing up in a charming style. Evans’ treatment of his female characters is always positive – even as he shows their attitudes for what they are. His work is always fun for me to read.

(And, if you read the novel and account for all of the… furniture in it, the title begins to make a horrible kind of sense: Ethan Allen’s restoration. And then you groan and realize what an awful and twisted mind the author has! Argh!)

My second W.C.O.B. is the second-to-last solo book that fantasy powerhouse Andre Norton published before she died. (The one second book in this duet was co-authored.) Cinderella, Snow White and Sleeping Beauty’s stories all seem to collide and combine into an intriguing blend in Scent of Magic.

Willadene is a talented orphan whose life at her Aunt Jacoba’s Wanderers Inn is a misery. She is ill-treated as a scullery maid, her skill at aromatics is offended (as the kitchen — and the Inn — reek), and not only that, her Aunt has decided to marry her off against her will to someone foul. Willadene finds the way to escape through apprenticing herself to Halwice, the herbmistress of Kronengred, after Willadene’s keen sense of smell saves the woman from a magical trap – but Halwice’s sponsorship also puts Willadene into the path of political intrigue and another kind of danger.

Like Ithanalin’s Restoration, this story slides comfortably into the known, with a Ducal Court, evil aunts, worldly spies, a dashing prince and an innocent princess, but it also has that touch of Norton’s genius with enigma, including the character of Ssssaaa, who knows… everything somehow.

Every once in awhile it’s a lot of fun to go back and rediscover some of the fantasy classics. If you’ve never heard of either of these two, I wish you joy of them, a tall glass of something cool, and a suitably soft hammock. Cheers!