RogerBW's Blog

Between Two Thorns, Emma Newman 12 January 2024

2013 fantasy, first of a series. There are magical worlds beyond our own… and most of the people who live there are horrible.

So fantasies of travel to magical realms are fairly standard by now, and were even in 2013; it takes a certain amount to get me interested. In this case, having read all of Newman's Planetfall series (and come to love all but the first), I looked at what she'd written earlier, and it's this series.

Well, it is a series: there's barely a pause in the action at the end of this book. But it's also rather more thoughtful than most other-worlds books, because there are two major groups of outworlders: the Fae, who are capricious and scary and cruel, and the humans who live as their clients in return for various benefits. Those humans, from whom most of the characters we meet come, are in something like a Victorian level of societal development; paterfamilias knows best and can dispose of you as he sees fit, especially if you're a daughter.

So while Cathy, who ran away to "Mundanus" and is now being dragged back, may sometimes come over as a bit 1950s… well, that seems like a fair place for a Victorian woman who's been living in the modern world for a few years to have got to. Oh, and she's going to be married off as part of the political interplay of the great families. Meanwhile Max is an Arbiter, the closest thing this setting has to magical policemen, who's having to work a bit more on his own than he'd expected; and Sam was just looking for a place to take a leak after a good night at the pub, and found himself mind-whammied.

But these people have lives beyond what's immediately relevant to the story. Sam is married, and his wife is a bit more of a high-flyer than he is – but is she actually just being a bit horrid and putting everything into her career, or is she having an affair, or (as the reader can theorise but Sam can't) is the baleful influence of the other worlds coming in here too? Is the wizard who's supposed to be in charge of mirror-Bath actually as mad as he looks?

There's a fair bit of setup and even some infodumping here, but there's also enough worldbuilding that I felt I could get my teeth into it. On the showing so far, this is a series about these worlds and the people they produce, rather than having standard multiple worlds as a setup for standard bildungsroman adventure.

[Buy this at Amazon] and help support the blog. ["As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases."]

Series: The Split Worlds | Next in series: Any Other Name

Comments on this post are now closed. If you have particular grounds for adding a late comment, comment on a more recent post quoting the URL of this one.

Search
Archive
Tags 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s 3d printing action advent of code aeronautics aikakirja anecdote animation anime army astronomy audio audio tech base commerce battletech beer boardgaming book of the week bookmonth chain of command children chris chronicle church of no redeeming virtues cold war comedy computing contemporary cornish smuggler cosmic encounter coup covid-19 crime crystal cthulhu eternal cycling dead of winter doctor who documentary drama driving drone ecchi economics en garde espionage essen 2015 essen 2016 essen 2017 essen 2018 essen 2019 essen 2022 essen 2023 essen 2024 existential risk falklands war fandom fanfic fantasy feminism film firefly first world war flash point flight simulation food garmin drive gazebo genesys geocaching geodata gin gkp gurps gurps 101 gus harpoon historical history horror hugo 2014 hugo 2015 hugo 2016 hugo 2017 hugo 2018 hugo 2019 hugo 2020 hugo 2021 hugo 2022 hugo 2023 hugo 2024 hugo-nebula reread in brief avoid instrumented life javascript julian simpson julie enfield kickstarter kotlin learn to play leaving earth linux liquor lovecraftiana lua mecha men with beards mpd museum music mystery naval noir non-fiction one for the brow opera parody paul temple perl perl weekly challenge photography podcast politics postscript powers prediction privacy project woolsack pyracantha python quantum rail raku ranting raspberry pi reading reading boardgames social real life restaurant reviews romance rpg a day rpgs ruby rust scala science fiction scythe second world war security shipwreck simutrans smartphone south atlantic war squaddies stationery steampunk stuarts suburbia superheroes suspense television the resistance the weekly challenge thirsty meeples thriller tin soldier torg toys trailers travel type 26 type 31 type 45 vietnam war war wargaming weather wives and sweethearts writing about writing x-wing young adult
Special All book reviews, All film reviews
Produced by aikakirja v0.1