The Resurrectionist of Caligo by Wendy Trimboli and Alicia Zaloga

The Resurrectionist of Caligo by Wendy Trimboli and Alicia Zaloga is, I believe, the debut novel of both coauthors. It's a fantasy-Victorian-era/gas-lamp fantasy novel about a princess and a "resurrectionist" who (illegally) digs up bodies to sell to doctors and medical students. Also, it has a gorgeous cover, which I urge you to zoom in on if you haven't already.

With a murderer on the loose, it's up to an enlightened bodysnatcher and a rebellious princess to save the city, in this wonderfully inventive Victorian-tinged fantasy noir.

"Man of Science" Roger Weathersby scrapes out a risky living digging up corpses for medical schools. When he's framed for the murder of one of his cadavers, he's forced to trust in the superstitions he's always rejected: his former friend, princess Sibylla, offers to commute Roger's execution in a blood magic ritual which will bind him to her forever. With little choice, he finds himself indentured to Sibylla and propelled into an investigation. There's a murderer loose in the city of Caligo, and the duo must navigate science and sorcery, palace intrigue and dank boneyards to catch the butcher before the killings tear their whole country apart.

This book is set in a world where the nobility (and especially royalty) has magic, technology is roughly early-Victorian, and class and poverty divides are stark. Our low-class protagonist, Roger, wants to be a surgeon, but can't afford the tuition fees. He also becomes interested in a string of murders after stumbling over an unusual dead body and wants to solve them, getting himself framed in the process. The princess Sibylla, meanwhile, was a childhood friend-then-lover of his, but is mostly consumed by her own typical problems, like a forced betrothal to her annoying cousin. Their stories don't directly intersect until quite late in the book, which I found a little disappointing. I kept waiting for a dramatic reconnection, but it was pushed back surprisingly far.

I found the start of the book a little slow. This was exacerbated by the fact that the blurb summarises a large swath of the story and I was more than half-way through the book by the time I felt like I'd caught up with the expectations the blurb had set. Also, while Roger was trying to solve the murder mystery, it wasn't so much his cleverness that helped him with the day as luck, always a disappointing plot twist.

Overall, this book was OK. It took me a while to get into it and the resolution was interesting but not executed the way I expected. There's also a spoilery thing near the end which made me raise an eyebrow for the lack of exploration given to it and was an unpleasant note to leave on. That said, the story is self-contained but the end set up a potential sequel which could be an interesting read. I would certainly consider picking it up if it comes to exist. I recommend this book to fans of gas-lamp fantasy and Victorian-ish settings. Also, corpses.

3.5 / 5 stars

First published: September 2019, Angry Robot
Series: Not yet but maybe?
Format read: eARC
Source: Publisher via NetGalley

Under the Pendulum Sun by Jeannette Ng

Under the Pendulum Sun by Jeannette Ng is the author's debut novel and a somewhat strange read on a few fronts. It's a gothic Victorian novel about missionaries sent to fairyland. Content warning for the book: non-coercive incest (but it's not mentioned again in this review because spoilers).

Catherine Helstone's brother, Laon, has disappeared in Arcadia, legendary land of the magical fae. Desperate for news of him, she makes the perilous journey, but once there, she finds herself alone and isolated in the sinister house of Gethsemane. At last there comes news: her beloved brother is riding to be reunited with her soon - but the Queen of the Fae and her insane court are hard on his heels.

I have to admit when this book first came to my attention I wasn't sure that I would enjoy it. I'm not a huge fan of non-humorous Victorian books and I've recently been drawn more to science fiction, so I did not immediately jump on the book. Instead I picked it up when it was on sale. As it turned out, I mostly enjoyed Under the Pendulum Sun, but "weird" is certainly a primary descriptor for it.

The story follows Catherine, who convinces the mission organisation that sent her brother as a missionary to Arcadia, the land of the fae, to send her after him when he hasn't been heard from for a while. We follow Catherine as she makes the journey to Arcadia (which requires getting lost along the way — and, to my amusement, is a land discovered by Captain James Cook, who also died there — and the weirdness she finds there. I particularly liked the titular pendulum sun: the sun in Arcadia is not the ordinary Earthly sun but rather a lantern on a pendulum that swings back and forth across the land. Distance isn't measured in the time taken to complete a journey, but rather the number of revelations or childhood memories one experiences along the way. And of course, the fae are not terribly nice people, but this last assertion is hardly unique.

Seeing a dark fairyland through the lens of devout christianity, and especially from the angle of trying to convert people, was really interesting. I'm not particularly into religion, but this was an aspect that really worked for me. Overall, I mostly enjoyed this book, but I found the various quotes at the starts of chapters slowed down the pacing of the story a little bit too much for me. The quotes themselves were often interesting in how they twisted real-world ideas or developed the world, but a lot of the time I also felt like the bogged down the main story too much. I was tempted to skip them, but they did add to the book overall (and there were a few particularly important ones near the end). I found myself enjoying the main prose sections a lot more although I did wonder at times where the story was going. The answer to that became a bit less mysterious once I realised that this was actually a character-driven book rather than a plot-driven one as I had originally assumed. The story is not in the sequence of events, per se, but in the characters internal journeys over a period of time (and the external journeys are very much a manifestation of the internal).

I would highly recommend Under the Pendulum Sun to fans of fantasy who enjoy having religious ideas entwined in their fiction. As the book itself proclaims a lot (notably in the dedication), it deals with apocrypha and as well as the fraught task of trying to convert fae to Christianity. I also recommend it to fans of gothic fantasy. I still have complicated feelings about this book but I am at least interested to see what else the author comes up with. (I'm not sure how eagerly I'd jump at a sequel, though.)

4 / 5 stars

First published: 2017, Angry Robot
Series: No
Format read: ePub
Source: Purchased from Kobo

Fairytales for Wilde Girls by Allyse Near

Fairytales for Wilde Girls is Allyse Near's début novel. It's about sixteen-year-old Isola Wilde, who lives in contemporary England and whose life is intricately interwoven with fairytales. Blurb:

There's a dead girl in a birdcage in the woods. That's not unusual. Isola Wilde sees a lot of things other people don't. But when the girl appears at Isola's window, her every word a threat, Isola needs help.

Her real-life friends – Grape, James and new boy Edgar – make her forget for a while. And her brother-princes – the mermaids, faeries and magical creatures seemingly lifted from the pages of the French fairytales Isola idolises – will protect her with all the fierce love they possess.

It may not be enough.

Isola needs to uncover the truth behind the dead girl's demise and appease her enraged spirit, before the ghost steals Isola's last breath.

Isola can see ghosts and fairies and other magical beings and often roams the woods by her house. At first she reminded me a little bit of Luna Lovegood sans Hogwarts, but as we learn more about her we see that there is more to her character than meets the eye. Magical creatures aside, in the real world Isola has to deal with a severely depressed mother and an increasingly distant father. She goes to a nun-run school and has a few ordinary human friends but her struggles to cope with her aggressive haunting make her withdraw further into herself and away from her human friends.

Fairytales for Wilde Girls is not a book to read quickly. Although it's not that long, I found it took me longer to read than another book of comparable length might have because there is so much in it I had to pay careful attention to try to catch all the nuances. Isola has a particular attachment to a book of fairytales her mother used to read from when she was younger — darker fairytales than the usual Grimm and Andersen — and throughout the text we're treated to several of the stories from that book. I've found those sorts of interludes jarring in other books, but in Fairytales for Wilde Girls they flowed and tied in with the overall story nicely. The transitions between contemporary teenage life (parties, mobile phones) and the magical world provided a change of pace that kept things fresh. This is a book I want to re-read at some point because I'm sure I'll pick up on things I missed the first time through.

Near weaves some interesting social commentary through her story. Isola's magical friends are brother-princes, including the female ones, because princes in stories are the ones who protect the princess. Quote:

Isola had never learnt to call them sisters — a sister was a wicked nun who smacked Mother's hands, and a sister in a fairytale was almost always evil. And so, Ruslana, Christobelle and Rosekin had remained brother-princes to Isola.

The fairytales Isola cherishes most tend not to be the kind where the princess needs rescuing, instead they are the kind of stories about girls who kill, and girls who are killed. They are more empowering to Isola than Disney-fied fairytales. Her Rapunzel isn't rescued, but hangs herself with her hair. Those kinds of stories. Perhaps not a book for someone looking for a happy fluffy read.

Honestly my only complaint is that I would have liked to have seen a bit more resolution between Isola and her friend Grape. Things are sorted out between them, but the denouement focussed more on Edgar rather than Grape. Not that I had a problem with Edgar, but I sort of wanted to be reassured about Grape as well. Definitely not something which marred my overall enjoyment.

Allyse Near is an author to watch. I will not be surprised if Fairytales for Wilde Girls makes next year's Aurealis shortlist. I look forward to seeing what Near writes in the future. I highly recommend Fairytales for Wilde Girls to all fans of dark fairytales and gothic fantasy. It's not a terrifying read, but it is dark and there are definitely elements of horror throughout. Readers of YA and adult fantasy alike will find much to enjoy in this book.

5 / 5 stars

First published: June 2013, Random House Australia
Series: No.
Format read: eARC
Source: Courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley
Challenges: Australian Women Writers Challenge, Aussie Horror Reading Challenge