reviews 14+Secondary/Adult continued


stupid; although Britain is in a period of anti-EU sentiment, she has to enquire, “Is the Czech Republic in the EU?” The parents will surely amuse readers, as will Mum’s sister, Aunt Rose, who is a kind of ultra-Green, late Sixties hippy, never seen with the same colour hair twice. So far, she has traded in three husbands, as well as her polluting car which she’s swapped for an elderly horse called Bertie Wooster. She is absolutely on Jason’s side and warmly empathetic towards young Sam too. These


broad-brush characters


work fine as comedy; maybe they will persuade readers that they should not be taking this novel too literally. The problem comes with Boyne’s treatment of Jason and Sam as they make their complex journeys through the plot. Sam, who struggles with dyslexia, is vulnerable at school, finding it difficult to make friends until he meets Laura, the daughter of Mum’s rival for the leadership of her party. Boyne creates an engaging, hesitant tenderness between them.


Jason/Jessica and Sam are


convincingly aware and subtle in their affection and care for each other, even as they negotiate misunderstandings and anxieties – their relationship is so nuanced that they seem not to belong in the same book as their parents. Boyne writes about them in a different register, without comic exaggeration. Inevitably this contrast diminishes the seriousness of Boyne’s exploration of transgendering. In the later chapters, things change.


As the news of Jason’s transitioning becomes public, Mum and Dad confront their own failure to listen and support; they become the concerned parents they might have been if not blinded by political ambition. There are, of course, consequences still to be played out.... GF


The Disconnect HHHHH


Keren David, Barrington Stoke, 978-1781128558, 224pp, £7.99 pbk


Esther is aged sixteen, in Year 11 at a London secondary school. She lives with her mother and step-father. They own a Middle-Eastern café. Her biological father and her older sister Rosa live in New York. Rosa has a new baby named Zach. Esther has seen her sister with her child only on photographs posted to her mobile phone. A wealthy woman named Irene Irvine


makes a generous offer. Any pupil in Esther’s school year can win £1000 by refraining from using their smart phone for six weeks – and providing evidence to support the claim. For emergencies each contender may retain an old fashioned non-smart phone. Naturally the pupils in Year 11 are attracted to the prospect of the money but also terrified. How can anyone survive for six weeks without using a smart phone? Esther decides to


enter the


competition, hoping to win enough money to take her to New York. Her two


best friends are also competitors. David asks the question: can Esther succeed? David’s novel is a compelling read, since everyone must recognise how addicted we are to the technology that surrounds us. The book also reveals that when young people deny themselves the communication they make


via


social media, genuine person to person communication may become more influential and more highly valued. David also poses a less obvious but even more telling question. To what extent is our assessment of other people dependent on evidence and impressions garnered from social media? These are questions of significance for young people and


relevant community. RB also to the wider


of scholarship, medicine, religion or politics and power. Seventeen


year old Rakel Lark has


a particularly acute nose; she has already made use of her gift in refining her skills as a healer in her rural village. She needs to turn her talent into cash, for her father, an army commander, has been forced into retirement


having contracted


the progressive Affliction (the ‘Rot’). She works hard to afford the best medicines and even hopes her own researches might lead to a cure. Rakel narrates alternate chapters


throughout the adventure. The other storyteller is Ash, the ‘Shield’ or personal bodyguard to Nisai, heir to the ailing Emperor of Aramtesh. Ash was taken into the royal household as a child after he had saved Nisai in a violent incident in the slums of the capital, Ekasya. There’s a mystery about what happened – neither ever talks about it. Since that time, Ash has been rigorously trained to kill in defence of his Prince. Both storytellers use the dramatic present, sustaining immediacy throughout


the assassination rather tale.


Before long, during an official visit to the province of Aphana, Nisai falls into an unconscious state; circumstances suggest


than


accident – poison may well have been involved, but the Prince’s condition defeats diagnosis. Rakel and Ash become suspects. Drawn together by a common goal, the pair set out, with Rakel’s irascible mare, Lil, on a search for


rare ingredients which might


Shadowscent: The Darkest Bloom


HHHHH


P.M. Freestone, Scholastic, 439pp, 978 1407 19215 4, £7.99 pbk


Each of the five provinces of the Empire of Aramtesh has its own ruler, culture, resources and language. Each provides the Emperor with a wife and together the women form the powerful Council of Five. Religious practices remain an influence in daily life; different deities are worshipped or forgotten. There is a medieval feel to life in the cities; in the countryside, travellers use horses, camels or maybe river boats and barges. By contrast, the military, who maintain law and order, echo Rome in their discipline, mobility and modes of combat; though women serve on equal terms with men. This otherworld of P.M. Freestone’s debut novel has that depth of credibility and consistency necessary for us to believe that this is a land crowded with untold stories. The unique difference between Aramtesh and our world – or any fictional world we have previously visited – lies in the paramount importance of smells; from the allure of a fragrance to the stench of the sewer. A discerning sense of smell is invaluable in everything from intimate relationships to the realms


enable Rakel to devise an antidote to the poison. Their quest demands they wrestle with ancient languages for clues hidden in curious corners of every province in the Empire - a plot strategy which allows Freestone to offer a fascinating and varied series of adventures, thus avoiding the one-similar-challenge-after-another structure of too many quest fantasies. Theirs is a race against time, and against the


pursuing Imperial


Rangers. One of the clues is solved among the manuscripts of the Library of the Lost – hewn from the rock of a remote desert. Here a staff of assiduous Archivists and Chroniclers are


absorbed by their HHHH


Anthony McGowan, Barrington Stoke, 120pp, 978 1 78112 843 5, £7.99 pbk


Kenny and his brother Nicky – our narrator – are ranking the world’s dirtiest words. “‘[Sod is] one of the worst words there is,’ Kenny told me. ‘Even saying it gets you a million years in hell. A sod is a man who digs up dead bodies to have it off with.’” Nicky queries this, but Kenny has the last word: “‘And a daft sod is one who forgets his spade.’” Barrington Stoke are renowned for publishing short fiction appealing to readers whose interests may be in advance of their reading abilities. Maybe the publishers would


cite the brothers’


conversation above to support their claim that Lark has a Reading Age of 9,


while its Interest Level is 13+;


where school librarians might shelve a book involving grave-robbers having it off with corpses is another question. The boys’ discussion of dirty words


is no more than a distraction. They’re lost in the wind and snow on the Yorkshire moors; it’s getting colder and darker, their mobile can’t get a signal, they haven’t got the right kit, and they’re scared. The many readers who have followed the boys’ adventures through Brock, Pike and Carnegie short-listed Rook are used to the brothers getting into this kind of a fix. As Lark begins, things are okay at home, though Nicky and Sarah, the girl he met in Rook, are no longer an item. Nicky continues to look out for the amiable Kenny, who has special needs. Dad’s happily settled with nice Jenny, who sorted out the family’s domestic chaos of the earlier stories. The big moment they are all waiting for is the arrival of Mum from Canada to see her sons for the first time since she walked out in Brock. What happens up on those


scholarly


work, untroubled by any interest at all in potential users of the Library. Even the entrances are deliberately concealed to discourage visitors. Both Rakel and Ash hide secrets


about their own origins and powers, which they themselves only half understand. Their search takes them not only into unfamiliar provinces, but into new territories within themselves; increasingly, they learn from each other. The narrative demands attentive reading; miss half a hint, and you could lose the plot. Quest fantasies risk ending in anticlimax, but here tension builds towards a finale where mortal courage is fused with supernatural violence, managed by Freestone with remarkable graphic intensity. She also seems to leave two or three doors deliberately ajar, suggesting a sequel which is already mentioned by the author on the web. GF


threatening moors is entirely credible. A fall and an injury leave Nicky unable to move; McGowan’s avoidance of melodrama makes things seem all the more dangerous. Kenny has to find strengths in himself he’s never tapped before. As with the earlier books, along with the excitement of the adventure, our interest lies in the relationship between the


brothers and the


emotional frontiers they cross, together and separately. McGowan makes such complexity available


to his teenage


readers in a social context where day- to-day life can be abrasive and emotion is implicit rather than expressed. Chapters are short, adjectives and adverbs are used sparingly. On the other hand, Nicky’s strengths as a storyteller include his own inventive, comic voice: “Kenny was dragging his feet, going slower than a sloth with three legs walking in treacle.” This novella brings the boys’ story to


an end, and it does so in a way that may well surprise and move readers. It is good to learn that the first three books are now available in a single 380 page volume from Barrington Stoke, The Truth of Things. GF


Books for Keeps No.235 March 2019 31


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