Review: Circle of Cranes

Cover Summary:

A lyrical fantasy blending fairy tale elements with contemporary issues 

Thirteen-year-old Suyin is a poor orphan who has a strange gift with languages and a mysterious connection to the cranes in her small Chinese village. When a shady human trafficker arrives promising luxury and riches beyond belief in America, the villagers elect Suyin - whom they consider lucky - to go as their benefactress. But instead of luxury, Suyin is forced to work in a sweatshop in New York City's Chinatown. Suyin's future seems hopeless, until her beloved cranes arrive and reveal that she is no ordinary girl - instead, she is the daughter of the Crane Queen. Now her mother's life is in danger, and Suyin must prove herself worthy of her position as the Crane Princess, in order to save her mother and the entire clan of cranes. 

For fans of Grace Lin and Laurence Yep, this is a beautiful story of the meaning of family and finding one's true path in life.

An ancient Chinese myth. Labour politics in 21^st-century New York. You wouldn’t expect these things to fit together, but Annette LeBox combines them with enviable grace.

It’s the details that sell it. The writing is as lovely and precise as her heroine’s embroidery. When Suyin transforms into a crane, LeBox names her bones as they transform. When she remembers her beloved mother, it’s with the exact clothes and jewelry that represent the traditions of her culture.

Besides that, LeBox never hesitates to challenge her heroine. Being the princess of a flock of magical bird-women in no way excuses Suyin from having to learn things the hard way. As an undocumented immigrant, eating rats to survive the boat ride and working in a sweatshop to pay off her travel fees, her challenges are the sort most white North American readers like me can barely imagine. She doesn’t always respond heroically, either; she snaps under pressure, stays quiet when her co-workers are bullied, and generally acts like a 13-year-old human being.

This only makes it all the more satisfying when she does evolve into someone who can control her impulses and protect her friends. Every success, financial and emotional, feels earned.

This may be a fantasy novel, but the most beautiful things in it are true, and so are the most frightening.

Chinese women really did develop a secret form of writing centuries ago after being forbidden to learn men’s writing. 

The villagers near Cao Hai Lake really do protect endangered birds.

Factory owners really do exploit immigrants in North America to this day. 

Shape-shifting and parallel universes are just the icing on the cake.

Review: A Desperate Fortune

Cover Summary:

For nearly 300 years, the mysterious journal of Jacobite exile Mary Dundas has lain unread — its secrets safe from prying eyes. Now, amateur codebreaker Sara Thomas has been hired by a once-famous historian to crack the journal's cipher. But when she arrives in Paris, Sara finds herself besieged by complications from all sides: the journal's reclusive owner, her charming Parisian neighbor, and Mary, whose journal doesn't hold the secrets Sara expects. 

It turns out that Mary Dundas wasn’t keeping a record of everyday life, but a first-hand account of her part in a dangerous intrigue. In the first wintry months of 1732, with a scandal gaining steam in London, driving many into bankruptcy and ruin, the man accused of being at its center is concealed among the Jacobites in Paris, with Mary posing as his sister to aid his disguise. 

When their location is betrayed, they’re forced to put a desperate plan in action, heading south along the road to Rome, protected by the enigmatic Highlander Hugh MacPherson.
As Mary's tale grows more and more dire, Sara, too, must carefully choose which turning to take... to find the road that will lead her safely home.

A Desperate Fortune by Susanna Kearsley satisfies in three genres at once.

As a historical novel, it is meticulously detailed without losing any of its suspense. Take this description of a rifle: “These do place a whirling action upon the bullet so it spins upon its axis in its flight … I have heard tell of these, but never seen one” (ch. 23, p. 45). If Samuel Pepys was ever involved in a political intrigue, isn’t this exactly what he’d sound like?

As a romance, the story might surprise readers who are not too familiar with the genre, and maybe even some who are. Sara Thomas’ romance in the modern sections is easy to predict (although no less charming), but the identity of Mary’s love interest is up in the air at least until halfway through the book. For a story about code breaking, it’s only fitting that the characters learn to look beneath each other’s surface for qualities that inspire love.

Finally, this is a story about autism. Sara, the code breaker who deciphers Mary’s diary, has been diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome. 

Although there are a few heavy-handed moments – “I’d always been puzzled by books about people with Asperger’s that claimed we didn’t have empathy (…) My problem wasn’t that I didn’t understand their feelings, but that I didn’t have a clue of how to respond to them” (ch. 18, p. 12) – mostly, Sara’s condition is portrayed with both accuracy and compassion. 

She has her limits (crowds, strangers, jazz music, and even one minute’s lateness make her panic) but also her strengths (cracking her employer’s test cipher in 17 minutes; asking the blunt and necessary questions no one else dares to ask). 

She believes that she is “not capable” of a long-term relationship, but her love interest talks her out of that quite logically:

“I can’t change.”

“You don’t have to. Simple maths. You only have to change the value of one variable to affect the outcome of the whole equation.

“Are you saying you’re that one variable?”

“Well, of all the men who left you, were any of them me? (…) You never need to change.” (ch. 28 p. 32-33)

Not only autistic people need to hear that.

In short, for anyone who is looking for three great books to read, A Desperate Fortune is highly recommended.

Review: Love, Lies and Spies

Love, Lies And Spies by Cindy Anstey is about all three, but perhaps not quite in the way a reader would expect.

Firstly, “Love” – Juliana and Spencer, the main characters, are very sweet together. The banter between them is intelligent and charming, from the opening scene in which he rescues her from the “embarrassing” as well as dangerous position of clinging to a cliff’s side, to the final marriage proposal. As a research assistant to her  scientist father, Juliana has sharp observational skills that complement Spencer’s talent as a spy. Also, the fact that they both keep their careers secret helps them relate to each other in ways their more conventional peers cannot. 

However, although they share the narration, I never really got to know Spencer as a character. Juliana is a fully fleshed-out teenage girl, complete with quirky habits (lecturing socialites about ladybugs), insecurities (worries about her clothes, envy of prettier girls) and flaws (forgetting the world around her, which leads to accidents such as the cliffside fall). By contrast, all I found out about Spencer is that he has beautiful blue eyes, works for the War Office, and rescues Juliana whenever she is in trouble.

Secondly, “Lies” – this romance between a sheltered girl and a spy involved in a dangerous operation goes much more smoothly than I expected. The scene in which Spencer finds Juliana’s lost fleur-de-lys pendant and suspects her of spying for the French seems to promise much more intrigue, misunderstanding and conflict than actually develops between them. On the one hand, this speaks well for Juliana’s common sense; where other heroines would sulk and feel insulted by their hero keeping secrets from them, Juliana quietly puts two and two together and accepts Spencer’s secrets as part of his job. On the other hand, it also removes a lot of the suspense from the equation.

Thirdly, “Spies” – Spencer’s work tracking smugglers and feeding misinformation to Napoleon’s spies is only a small part of the novel, and one of the least exciting. The author devotes much more time and energy to shopping trips, house parties, balls and other aspects of a Regency-era London Season with warmth, humor and (as far as the modern reader can tell) accuracy. Like her role model, Jane Austen, Anstey is strongly aware of the significance of body language; Spencer’s silent standoffs with the boorish Mr. Pyebald are minutely and cleverly described.

However, unlike Austen’s, Anstey’s language is sometimes awkward. The Regency-era slang terms such as “gullgropers”, “havey-cavey” or “Friday-faced” (included in a glossary at the back of the book), as funny, brilliant, and painstakingly researched as they are, distract from the flow of the story. Also, some of the sentences are more complicated than they need to be: “Your situation is proceeding into the realms of peril,” Spencer tells Juliana while she is dangling from the cliff.

The author’s love for, and fascination with, early 19^th-century England is obvious on every page. She loves the language, the culture and the fashions of that world, and even its hierarchies and restrictions, if only to gleefully break them. (I won’t tell you whom Juliana punches in the face, only that I found it very satisfying.) If this love occasionally carries her away, it’s a mistake I find all too easy to understand - having made it myself every time I open a good book, no matter what time it’s set in.