The Hush by Skye Melki-Wegner

The Hush by Skye Melki-Wegner is a standalone (gasp!) YA fantasy by the author of the Chasing the Valley trilogy. It's set in a completely different world but fans of Melki-Wegner's style will find similarly appealing elements in The Hush. (Also, how pretty is the cover? I love it!)

Chester is on the road, searching every town for clues about his father and why he disappeared.

But when he's caught accidentally – and illegally – connecting with the Song as he plays his beloved fiddle, Chester is sentenced to death. Only a licensed Songshaper can bend music to their will. The axe is about to fall...

But there is someone else watching Chester. Someone who needs his special talents. Who can use him for their own ends. And who knows the secrets of The Hush, where there is no music, only deadly Echoes who will steal your soul.

Susannah is that someone. The young captain of the infamous Nightfall Gang, Susannah has plans for Chester. Finally, she will have her revenge.

The Hush was a pretty great read. The world is one where music is inexorably linked to magic. Anyone can sing or (learn to) play an instrument, but anyone who isn't Conservatorium-trained isn't allowed to stray into capital-M Music. Chester, our main character, of course, does so by accident and the story opens with him in mortal danger because of it.

What saves Chester from dying at the very start of the novel (which would have made for a duller read), is the Nightfall Gang, a gang of thieves who steal from the rich and give to the poor (in a world where the was never a Robin Hood). They've never been caught because they know a secret very few other people are aware of. There is a parallel world called the Hush, where darkness and danger reign, and through which they can pass practically unseen.

The members of the gang provide a nice cross section of the key worldbuilding elements. Often when there's an ensemble cast, it can be hard to get a feel for the more secondary characters, but Melki-Wegner does a good job of making them all distinct and unique. They may have overlapping backstories (if they didn't they probably wouldn't all be in the same gang), but I found their wildly different personalities refreshing.

I have a pretty good knowledge of music and there wasn't anything major in The Hush that made me think, "wait, what?" There were a few very little things that made me go "hmm" but nothing that threw me out of the story. The music magic also fed in nicely to the worldbuilding, allowing the society to have music/magic driven technology, such as guns and medicine. On a story level, I found the ending — resolution and reveal — satisfying, especially when all the hints dropped earlier in the story came together.

I really enjoyed The Hush. It's a pleasingly complex read set in a fleshed out world. I highly recommend it to fans of standalones in particular, since they are relatively uncommon. I personally would have been happy with more book set in this world — both the world and the characters were pretty great — but everything was tied off enough that it would be a challenge for the author to come back to it. I also recommend The Hush to fans of Melki-Wegner's other books and to fans of... I'm not sure how to describe this flavour of fantasy (musicpunk?). If you're at all unsure, just give it a go.

4.5 / 5 stars

First published: March 2014, Random House Australia
Series: Nope
Format read: eARC
Source: Publisher via NetGalley
Challenges: Australian Women Writers Challenge

Chasing the Valley: Skyfire by Skye Melki-Wegner

Chasing the Valley: Skyfire by Skye Melki-Wegner is the concluding volume of the Chasing the Valley trilogy. I have previously reviewed the first book, Chasing the Valley, and the second book, Borderlands. It has been a journey I have enjoyed a lot; I don't think I've read anything quite like it before. This review will contain spoilers for the earlier books.

What if you achieve everything you’ve dreamed of – and it turns into a nightmare?

Danika and her crew of refugees finally reach the Magnetic Valley. Will it be the safe refuge and land of freedom they had imagined? When a runaway girl is shot down before their eyes, Danika and her friends realise that this new land is no paradise. They must try to fit in at all costs – even if revealing their secrets will mean a death sentence.

The conclusion to the Chasing the Valley trilogy will reveal explosive surprises and terrifying new dangers.

Skyfire picks up only moments after Borderlands left off. I don't think it's a spoiler to say that it opens with the sky (in the distance) literally on fire. The crew has reached the promised land of the magnetic valley but it is not the verdant utopia they were lead to believe. (I suppose there wouldn't've been much story if it were.)

The country they find themselves in is an improvement on what they left behind but not as much as they had hoped. There are strange laws about what people with certain proclivities (magic) can and can't do in society and the ruler is a three hundred year old man with a singular proclivity. The crew quickly learn that no one likes to question the ruler or speak against him at all (always suspicious). Have they stumbled out of the frying pan and into the fire? If you mean a literal fire (in the sky), then yes. But enough about the plot.

I'm a bit conflicted with how this series finished off. On the one hand, all three books have very different settings and new problems to go with them. The new setting isn't actually the part I feel conflicted about. It's the way in which the story escalated book to book. The personal stakes were already pretty high (death if they didn't flee in book one), but by the third book new revelations up the ante to the point of them needing to save the world.

But the thing is, it was all actually foreshadowed from the start. So although some elements seemed to me to come from left field, they didn't, not really. I have no doubt that the author had planned out the entire series before book one was done.

It also ended in a place where I wanted to know what happened next. Sure, the world was safe (that's so not a spoiler) and everything was probably going to be  OK... but that doesn't mean that the next step was obvious. I would like there to be more books about Dannika and the others, but I suspect there might not be.

Oh, and the thing I complained about in my review of Borderlands — someone not picking up an important object — was actually resolved. Not quite the way I would' have liked it to be, but in a way that made sufficient sense given the plot. So yay.

Anyway, Chasing the Valley is an excellent series. All three books have been very close to being five stars for me, but just not quite. Skyfire is the same. Obviously, that still makes it a really good series. I highly recommend it to everyone.

4.5 / 5 stars


First published: July 2014, Random House AU
Series: Chasing the Valley, book 3 of 3
Format read: eARC
Source: Publisher via NetGalley
Challenges: Australian Women Writers Challenge

Chasing the Valley: Borderlands by Skye Melki-Wegner

Chasing the Valley: Borderlands by Skye Melki-Wegner is the second book in the Chasing the Valley trilogy. I have previously reviewed the first book, Chasing the Valley. If you haven't read the first book, it's probably best to skip this review if you're spoiler averse. I'm pretty sure just the blurb contains a bit of spoiler.

Danika and her crew of escaped refugees are seeking the safety of the Magnetic Valley – and trying to evade Sharr Morrigan, the king's most lethal hunter. But the borderlands they must cross to reach the Valley are smugglers' territory: lawless, wild and steeped in ancient magic. When one of the crew is badly wounded, Danika turns to the smugglers for help – and accepts a bargain that might prove deadly.

It is Lukas, however, who hides the most dangerous secret. What has he seen through the eagle's eyes? The answer can be found in an alchemy charm and a smuggler's tale, and will lead Danika and her friends to an electrifying, unputdownable showdown.

"Unputdownable" is a silly word, but it is a good descriptor in this case. As soon as I started reading Borderlands, I was wondering why I hadn't picked it up sooner (it's been out for 6 months). Oh well, at least I don't have to wait to read the third book, which has just come out.

Borderlands has everything I loved about Chasing the Valley, including things I had forgotten I loved. Five(ish) teenagers continue their difficult and high-stakes journey from their home city to the mythical Valley where they hope to seek asylum. They're still being chased by the King's ruthless hunters (and one in particular who has it out for them) and, even without that, the going is tough.

Danika and the crew meet new people, loose people, gain other people... actually one of the things that has really amused me across both the first two books is that, after learning before they left that a crew of five is the optimal number to survive the journey to the valley, they crew has almost continuously contained five people. Not always the same five people, but five people. So I guess the advice at the start was right (and it probably shouldn't amuse me as much as it has).

There was only one small thing that bothered me in this book and it really was small. Without venturing into spoilers, there was one point where some valuable (and useful) stuff was available to be easily grabbed, and we're not told whether anyone did grab it. Only, through omission, that Danika did not. I'm hoping it comes up again in the third book and we learn that Teddy the thief grabbed it when Danika wasn't looking. Sorry about the vagueness, there.

Honestly, I don't have much else to say about Borderlands. I really enjoyed it, for all the same reasons I enjoyed the first book. The worldbuilding, including the magic system, is pretty original, particularly in execution. The behaviour of the royal family continues to be baffling — possibly too baffling, in terms of plausible sustainability — but works with the story. Looking back at my review of book 1, I see that I objected to the fact that everyone seemed to obey the taboo of not exposing their necks before they turned eighteen and could safely reveal their proclivity (type of magic). That was actually addressed in book 2, when they meet people who live outside the law in a different way to the main characters. So yay.

Basically, Chasing the Valley continues to be an excellent series. I highly recommend it to any fans of fantasy, especially anyone interested in fairly original, alchemical fantasy. It is a series to be enjoyed by all readers, young and old. Although I won't argue that it is indeed YA (the main characters are around seventeen), it doesn't necessarily "feel" like YA secondary world fantasy. Possibly because my experience with other YA secondary world fantasies has been less good, but if you're in the same boat, don't pass up Chasing the Valley.

4.5 / 5 stars

First published: January 2014, Random House (AU)
Series: Chasing the Valley book 2 of 3
Format read: ePub (iBooks)
Source: Purchased from iBooks
Challenges: Australian Women Writers Challenge

Chasing the Valley by Skye Melki-Wegner

Chasing the Valley by Skye Melki-Wegner surprised me. The cover and the blurb led me to assume it would be a fairly stock-standard and and unoriginal read and I put off starting it a little bit.

But I was wrong, and it was evident from the first few pages. Danika became a street kid after losing her parents at the age of eleven. For reasons that we only begin to understand in this first book, the King enjoys bombing some of his subjects to keep them in their place. They're not ordinary bombs, however, they're alchemy bombs which can cause all sorts of weird and unpleasant things to happen on impact (y'know, as well as killing people). After hearing about a group of teenagers planning to escape the city for the fabled and safe Magnetic Valley, Danika falls in with them and the bulk of the story is about their dangerous journey south to the Valley.

The level of technology (albeit mostly alchemy-powered) brought to mind a cross between steampunk and fantasy. There are trains and biplanes (see cover) but also a lot of riding beasts of burden to get around. The beasts, called foxaries and basically giant foxes, were possibly one of my favourite bits of world-building — I want one! But they win by a small margin since Melki-Wegne's world is detailed and consistent. The explanation of the magic system is well woven into the text without info dumps as are many of the customs of the people. The only thing that struck me as odd and a smidge implausible is the taboo against teenagers revealing their magical proclivities before they turn eighteen. Their magic declares itself with tattoos on their necks and the custom is to keep their necks covered up until their eighteenth birthdays. Danika describes revealing her neck prematurely as akin to walking around naked. Which is well and good, but I can't help but feel that a lot of nefarious people wouldn't care much about the taboo and I didn't think that aspect was explored sufficiently.

Chasing the Valley is an excellent tale of growing friendship and camaraderie. In some ways it's a traditional journey type story but Melki-Wegner brings enough originality to the table (in worldbuilding and so forth) to make it stand out. Her writing is polished and, as I said, I could tell as soon as I started that I was in for a good read. I'm glad I read this and I am very much looking forward to the rest of the series. This book is a cut above a lot of the YA renditions of high/epic fantasy I've come across.

I highly recommend Chasing the Valley to fantasy fans of both the adult and YA parts of the genre. If you're in any doubt about reading this, I suggest having a look at a sample to help make up your mind. As this début is so strong, I expect we'll see many more good things from the author in the future.

4.5 / 5 stars

First published: July 2013, Random House AU
Series: Yes. Book one of three
Format read: eARC
Source: publisher via NetGalley
Challenges: Australian Women Writers Challenge