Jacey Bedford's Journal

China Mieville – Un Lun Dun

I really wanted to read this book. After struggling with Perdido Street Station (a brilliant book, I thought, but not for me) I hoped that I would find something in Mieville’s children’s book to enjoy. I’d heard good things about the rich and quirky imagination and the fast-paced story. Sadly even though the good things were not inaccurate in many ways, I still found I didn’t engage with the characters.

I spent much of my reading time wondering why I didn't really think it the best thing since sliced bread, and feeling guilty for not grokking what is obviously - in many ways - an admirable and accomplished book. Deeba Resham is a brave heroine, Hemi, the half ghost boy is an engaging enough character, but somehow all the myriad parts didn’t mesh into a whole for me.

The basic premise is that all the major cities in the world have an un-city existing on a slightly different plane. They are inhabited by humand and not-quite-humans and stuffed full of all the leavings of the real city, with, for instance, moil houses made of discarded fridges and microwaves. There's an army of unbrellas (broken umbrellas) controlled by the not-quite-what-he-seems Brokkenbroll. When Zanna and Deeba find themselves in Un-London they spend the first almost hundred pages just wandering round meeting quirky folks being stalked by feral rubbish (Deeba adopts a milk carton, Curdle, as a pet), menaced by a semi-ghost, getting rescued by a flying bus manned by Rosa and Jones the conductor (who conducts electricity as well as passengers) and being protected by ninja dustbins (binjas). It seems that Zanna is the ‘shwazzy’ the chosen one, destined to save Un-London from its deadly enemy, the smog using a weapon called the kilinneract (Clean Air Act, geddit?) which saved the real London from the smog in the 1950s and 60s. Finding the Propheseers on the ever moving bridge – the Pons Abscondicus – seems to be the solution to Zanna and Deeba’s problems, but it’s not, of course. Zanna is attacked by the smog and almost killed and it looks like all the prophesies in ‘The Book’ are a load of bunk. Deeba gets Zanna back home to the real London and that’s where the story really starts.

When Deeba realises that all is not what it seems in Un-London and that someone who is supposed to be a saviour is actually the Smog in disguise, she realises she needs to return to the abcity and warn her friends.

So Zanna’s role as the shwazzy was a hundred pages plus of red herring. It’s Deeba, the un-shwazzy, who’s going to make the difference. This is a long book – 520 pages – and I can’t help feeling that it’s too long for the weight of the story. Oh sure, there’s plenty of movement and new weirdnesses on every page, but it all seems to rely on a string of quirky ideas which – neat as they are – don’t make up for the shallow characterisation. We don’t know much more about Deeba after the story finishes than we did beforehand. She’s essentially the same courageous, sensible little person as she was at the beginning. We don’t find out anything much about any of the supporting characters such as Jones the Conductor or Obaday Fing the tailor who sews suits out of waste paper and has pins and needles for hair.

It’s all very self-consciously funny in a way that doesn’t make me laugh. Yes, it’s surreal, inventive and imaginative, bizarre and slightly grotesque, but in a way it seems to be trying too hard with its smombies (smog-zombies) and Black Window (spiders) who bizarrely make off with Jones’ long-time partner, Rosa without upsetting him for more than half a sentence.

I did find that it picked up the pace in the final confrontation between Deeba and the smog, but by that time it was almost too late to redeem the book for me. I so wanted to like this book and I’m afraid I didn’t, though I can fully understand others liking it. I’d like to know what children make of it; whether the daisy-chain of impossible adventures is enough for them to think it a great book or whether, like me, they feel that in 520 pages there should have been room for something more.

Lauren Brook – Always There – Heartland #20

Having decided to write a horses and magic book aimed at 9 – 12 year olds I was looking for a modern version of the once ubiquitous horse book for my own research purposes. This was the closest I could find. Only after I’d bought it did I realise that it was one in a long-running series, issued at the rate of about two per year. It’s set at Heartland, a horse farm in Virginia where the owners specialise in curing injured and traumatised horses. 

Amy is the central character, the daughter of Heartland’s late founder, Marion, who was killed in a trailer accident for which Amy still feels partly responsible, having persuaded her mother out into a storm to rescue a horse.

Amy has a boyfriend, Ty, who works at Heartland and she is, of course, a gifted rider and horse rehabilitator (using horse-whisperer techniques), but Amy is reaching a turning point in her life. She’s graduating with good grades and has a place at college to study to be a vet but she’s not sure she should go. She is, in fact, scared that either she will be missed too much – or conversely not at all. She sees Ty and Joni, the groom, already stepping in to make decisions which are rightfully hers and she’s jealous. She can’t let go. Leaving Heartland, her responsibilities to her beloved horses, her family and Ty are weighting heavily on her mind.

So when they get a new horse to help and it seems as though she’s being kept in the dark about something, she starts to get annoyed and not a little petulant. It turns out that her older sister has been trying to protect her from the knowledge that this horse was injured in an accident very like the one that killed Amy’s mother a couple of years earlier.

Angst ensues, but in the end the selfless Ty gets Amy to see that she should not pass up on the opportunity to go to college and that she’ll never lose her place at Heartland.

This is a slight book (152 pages), not badly written, but simply written to provide little in the way of challenging material. Amy seems a lot younger than eighteen, especially in the very non-physical relationship she has with Ty – who is at least a couple of years older. There’s no sex in this book even though, realistically, few eighteen year olds in a settled relationship with an older boy would remain celibate without even considering the possibilities of getting physical. Amy seems to be completely lacking in hormones. If Ty has hormones he keeps them to himself. That’s not a criticism – maybe the books are read by girls at the very young end of YA and therefore the ‘no sex’ rule may be a publisher’s decision. I just find it weird when – in this day and age – teen books are generally bristling with sexual questions. On looking up some of the reader reviews on a Lauren Brooke site I’d guess that most of the review writers are not much more than about twelve, and possibly younger, so I guess LB knows her market.

Not my usual reading material, and I won’t be searching out any other Heartland books, but interesting for what it is.

Happy Birthday del_c  - and many more of them.