What’s on my Shelf: January-February

This is going to be brief. It’s been a pretty crazy two months, which makes me wonder what the rest of the year will be like… Thus, this unfortunately means I haven’t done nearly as much reading as I’ve wanted. And remember, as always, SPOILERS!

Everless by Sara Holland

This book enchanted me for a simultaneously brief but lengthened twenty-four hours.

The premise of the entire novel is fascinating. In an alternate historical fantasy world, currency is time which through alchemy has been bound to a person’s blood.

It’s quite the symbolic sociological commentary on society today, and I love that. The way Holland compares the classes; those who are rich have time to waste, elongating their lives, chasing after a fleeting immortality while the lower, working classes drain their very blood to survive in a corrupt economy.

In the midst of this world, a young woman named Jules is fighting for not only her own survival but her father’s. Her father – though probably a man of forty who was once a strong blacksmith – has grown dangerously weak, verging on death. In a moment of crisis, Jules enters a temporary position in the most dangerous place: the estate known as Everless.

Ten years before, she and her father lived in Everless. He worked as the household blacksmith, and she grew up amongst the Lord’s sons as their playmate and friend. Then, tragedy struck, and they were forced to flee for their lives.

Returning puts Jules very life in danger, but she feels she has no other choice. Her father is dying.

Whilst there, secrets are revealed to Jules which cause her to question her own existence. In the end, the folklore of her world – the story of the Alchemist who betrayed the Sorceress stealing her immortality creating the blood-irons which inevitably become their currency – becomes her waking nightmare as the fairy tale vanishes into reality.

Why? Because she is the Alchemist reincarnated. Her existence becomes even more precarious as she flees from the clutches of her once trusted friend, who murdered her childhood sweetheart before her very eyes in attempts of regaining her immortality. And as she leaves, she realises the one she truly loves, the one she thought was her sworn enemy, has been secretly aiding her all this time because he loves her.

It’s a mystery, a romance, a fantasy, a period drama. It’s breathtaking.

Everless, I will warn, is the beginning of a plausible series. I have confirmed for myself from Holland’s twitter a second novel will becoming, because OH MY GOSH THAT CLIFFHANGER. Not okay.

If you like Downton Abbey, but want to read its fantasy world counterpart, then you’ll enjoy Everless.

Out of the Silent Planet by C. S. Lewis

I have a confession about this book, one which on a personal level I feel like betrays myself a little. (I’m weird like that.)

I haven’t finished this yet because…*braces self for truth* I don’t like it. *heavily sighs*

I know, I know. I’m overreacting. It’s just, C. S. Lewis is probably the writer who has influenced me the most in my life, and I have read a lot of his material and loved it all. His Till We Have Faces is one of my ultimate favourite novels of all time. (I have a top five.) And I just…I can’t seem to like this novel.

Lewis’s Space Trilogy has been on my list of things to read for years, and I finally decided it was time to buckle down and read it. Except, now I’m wondering if I’ll finish it; err how long I’ll take to finish it because of course I will.

Now let me say it’s not because it’s bad. Far from it. It’s just I’m realising how much I do not like science fiction literature reading this. I read some of the classics in my youth, and I vaguely recall some of them. I think The Time Machine was one, but even then, I can’t even remember which sci-fi novels I read. I just remember reading them, some of them…I think.

That said, it’s brilliant and again makes me fall in love with Lewis’s writing more because of how spectacularly skilled his world creating is. You almost miss it in his Chronicles of Narnia because it’s so effortless. In this, it’s apparent, specifically in how he describes a spaceship as he was writing this before space travel was at all possible (circa. 1938).

What I’ve always loved most about C. S. Lewis is his staunch realism in the midst of the fantastical; finding another world through a wardrobe, arguing with the gods, and now a professor flying through space. It’s entirely and completely believable.

Eventually I’ll write a proper review of this novel, and hopefully the entire series. I’m only mentioning it now because part of the problem I’m having with not reading as much as usual isn’t from enduring a bizarrely stressful, painful two months, but also because I hate, loathe entirely starting a new book when I’m in the middle of another, especially if I’m reading a series.

Now I’ll read a series simultaneously with another, but I break it up by swapping sequential books between the two series after finishing the corresponding book first. Meaning if I’m reading book #1 in series A, then I won’t start book #1 in series B until I finish book #1A, but I think I’m just confusing myself now trying to explain this.

Regardless, I’ll properly reflect on Lewis’s Space Trilogy after completion…eventually. Whether or not I’ll get over my own discrepancies and read something else between now and then remains to be seen.