Joshua Palmatier The Skewed Throne (DAW books, New York 2005)

-- The Cracked Throne (DAW books, New York 2006)

-- The Vacant Throne (DAW books, New York 2006)

Varis is a girl from the Dredge, the slum underbelly of the city of Amenkor, where she survives hand to mouth, getting by on her wits and her strange ability to see something of the nature of others. When the guardsman Erick offer her food in return for her help in tracking down a criminal, she finds herself on the first stage of a journey into violence, chaos, political turmoil and war. The city is ruled by the Mistress, the sole person who can use the strange powers of the magical Skewed Throne, but the current the Mistress, is behaving more and more strangely and Varis is at the core of the plot to solve this.

I loved these books, I really did. The plots spread out from book to book like concentric ripples about a single thrown stone, each containing and refracting, each sustaining and birthing the next, everything harmonious and very believable. Told in the first person, they present a very convincing narrative of maturity, too. I frequently have, I will admit, reservations about first-person female narratives written by men. But Varis's voice is assured and credible: she feels female, she acts female, her sexuality and instincts, her fears and reactions never once caught me in my tracks and broke the flow. She reminds me of the young Jane Eyre, or a sorcery-punked Jo March, tough and terrified, strong and flawed, intelligent and compromised. The first book is told partially in flashback, so that we know from page one that Varis' journey will take her into the Palace and the presence of the mistress, and the tension ratchets not solely from the tale of her growth but the more immediate account of her making her way to the room containing the throne. The city of Amenkor is a splendid creation, reminiscent of Leiber's Lankhmar, or Mieville's New Crobuzon, becoming a character in its own right and infusing the writing with its own particular flavour. And the writing is lovely, smooth and clear and working on all five senses.

The first book is the most self-contained and the most concerned with Varis' personal journey. In the second two, the focus moves outwards, and we see how the visions of the Mistress which so baffled the council in book one are the foreshadowing of a greater threat. A new people are invading, driven from their own lands by a volcanic cataclysm, and Amenkor and Varis must find a way to defend and survive. And while the invasion is threatening, factions within Amenkor seek to serve their own ends regardless of the cost. I must admit that when I first encountered the invaders -- the blue-skinned Chorl -- I hesitated. They have a culture a little like that of the Inca and their skin-tone worried me. However, Palmatier is at pains to present them as a rounded people, with valid beliefs and very real needs, whose motivations are far less questionable than those of some of the factions in Amenkor. Chorl society is presented as complex and conflicted and their requirement for a homeland is very real and treated with respect. Varis concludes that they must be respected and that a modus vivendi must be sought. This is not a question of the Evil Invaders: far from it. The real villains are those within Amenkor and its neighbouring city of Venitte who put their own desires ahead of the welfare of the cities and their peoples.

These are terrific, pacey, fascinating books which remind me of Fritz Leiber and David Gemmell. Recommended.

Tomorrow is publication day and Living With Ghosts should be hitting the shelves and shipping from Amazon US. (Amazon UK are already shipping.) Picture me bouncing gently off the ceiling....

I seem to be moving again finally on the work-in-progress, after a hiccup-y phase that lasted for several weeks. Which is good. I worked out about three weeks ago what the problem was with it, but then had other commitments which got in the way of working on it. It's not a sequel to Living With Ghosts -- I started writing it well before the latter sold, and took a deliberate decision to work on something that was not directly connected. In some ways this is good, because it gives me a relatively free hand. In other ways.... This book -- working title The Grass King's Concubine -- is set in the same world but at a later period, and there are some conscious differences in the ways I've presented it. There's a city which may or may not be Merafi -- I think it is, but it's changed a great deal. There are factories and riots. There's a frozen steppe. A lot of the narrative is set in an underworld (not the Underworld, precisely, but a world belonging to a different set of beings and rules to the one that contains Merafi). And there are ferret women. Indeed, they came first, ambushing me one day into writing a scene which turns out to be the first in the book. (The first scene I wrote for <i>Living With Ghosts</i> is in the middle. It's the one where Thiercelin talks to Valdarrien's ghost in his room. The second scene I wrote was the confrontation between Gracielis and Valdarrien over Thiercelin.) So far, Grass King is proceeding in a linear fashion -- I'm usually a linear writer -- but the current stuff is backfill, replacing some material that I've never been happy with. At least it's progressing again. Which is good.

I don’t remember precisely how old I was when I first read Anne of Green Gables but it was very young – 5 or 6. I know this because my mother tells me another mother commented on me reading it in the changing  room at ballet class when I was that age. (I was one of those irritating precocious early readers.) I’ve known the book and the character so long that in many ways I grew up with her. Anne  Shirley ran ahead of me throughout my childhood, always a little older than me,
stepping into college, into university, into work. She was my big sister, my wise friend, my ‘kindred spirit’, to use her words. Now, I’m older than she ever was (apart from in her last appearance, as a supporting character in Rilla of Ingleside). But I still go back to her story, I still retrace her life over the books in which L. M. Montgomery created her. I read a lot as a child. I still do. I still have many of my childhood favourites on my shelves and I reread many of them. Mostly, they survive. But every once in a sad while, one lets me down. The joy, the interest, the connexion fades away leaving only the bones of memory. I can no longer quite deal with some of the sentimentality in What Katy Did. Issues about class and gender step between me and Lone Pine Five. But Anne never lets me down, despite, yes, sentimentality and gender issues and so many other things. Because Anne in woven into the texture of my mind. I too was that child who populated her world with ghosts and haunts and scared herself too much to walk that path. I wrote in corners and day-dreamed my way through many things. I never went on a Sunday School picnic or wanted to speak poetry in public, but I had friendship tragedies and anxieties and an ever growing pile of manuscripts and ideas. And there was another thing, too, another way in which Anne made more sense to me than Jo March or Maria Meriweather. She loved to learn, she wanted to learn, she wanted to go on studying well beyond school. Anne was the first girl I met for whom further and higher education was a concrete, achievable, achieved dream. And there were very few of those in girls’ books back in the 1970s. Anne said it was all right to be academic, all right to write. I never questioned her, the way I did her co-creation, Emily of New Moon. I never really liked Emily, she was too sure of herself and her abilities. But I trusted Anne, and she saw me right. Most of the books that have stayed with me for so very many years are either fantasies or swashbucklers. The Anne books are neither, but they are deeply committed to the idea that creativity and imagination are valuable, to the idea that women can and do succeed in the work-place and at college, that a woman can be what she wants – a writer, a doctor (in the case of Anne’s children) – without becoming unfeminine. They said that a girl could be someone interesting without having to resort to the tomboy gambit. I am so over being told that all proper girls identify with the Famous Five’s George. I preferred her cousin Anne Kirrin. I never could see why I had to behave like a boy to be allowed to run or climb trees. I ran and climbed in skirts as easily as in trousers. I still do. So did Anne Shirley. I owe her.

     

  The proofs of Living with Ghosts have come and gone, so I guess that means this is really happening. It looks great, even with the odd surprise where my spelling has become Americanised. ‘Honor’ still looks a little strange to me, but it’s the meaning that matters, not the letters, and I’ve always rather preferred ‘gray’ to ‘grey’ anyway. Publication date is early March of 2009.  I don’t know whether to be excited, anxious or just confused. A mix of all three, probably.
    And welcome to the website, if you’re reading this. This first entry is somewhat experimental, as I’m not used to writing out into the big out-there. I didn’t manage to mention all the people who have helped me over the years with Living With Ghosts in the acknowledgements in the book itself – there were simply too many names to fit in. So I thought I’d do it here. These are the people (and some cats) who read, commented, supported, endured, helped and were just plain there between 1990 when I started writing the very first – and very different – draft. There’s no particular order to this. It’s just as it comes.
    Phil Nanson, who read every draft, housed, fed and clothed me and continues to do so. Mike Whitaker, the only person apart from me and Phil (my other half) who read the first draft. Geoff Ryman, who told me to go for it as a writer. The Apple writers’ workshop – Caroline Mullan, Christina Lake, Brian Ameringen, Jackie Duckworth, Michael Abbott, Valerie Housden, Steve Bull. John Dallman. Austin Benson. Sue Mason, who read version 2point something in ms and wouldn’t give it back. Nik Ravenscroft and Moira J Shearman, the two best friends ever. Karen Kelly. Colin Greenland, another fine writing teacher. Gwyneth Jones and the Wincon 2 writers’ workshop. Lisanne Norman, splendid friend, splendid writer, and heroine of the world (so there). Caspian, who couldn’t read (being a cat) but who sat on most of the versions, shed on everything and kept me company for 13 years. Michael Scott. Colette Reap. The Friday 13th writers’ group – Michael Abbott (again), Jackie (again – these two are very long-suffering) and Anne F Wilson. The attendees of Milford UK 2007 – Liz Williams, Jacey Bedford, Jaine Fenn, Karen Williams, Heather Lindsey, Alys Sterling, Dave Clements, Dave Gullan, Tina Anghelatos, Sandra Unerman, Jim Anderson, Vaughan Stanger and Terry Edge. Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman. Chaz Brenchley, the Guru of the North. Cecilia Dart-Thornton. Alexandre Dumas pere and his musketeers – especially Aramis! My editor Sheila Gilbert. Joshua Starr. Christian McGrath, who created the beautiful cover. Ian Watson and the ghost of H. G. Wells. Storm Constantine. Donna Scott. Mooncat, for keeping the keyboard warm. Iskander, for sitting on me at all the best and worst times. Horus-paws, for loud reminders about meal-times. (Yes, I’m thanking my cats. It’s traditional.) Justina Robson and Adam Roberts, who shook me hard and made me get myself organised. The old Thursday’s party – Phil, Michael A yet again, Marcus Streets, Christine Linton, Steve Linton, John Dallman, Mike Whitaker.
    And more. This list is sure to grow.