The Whatnot

I so enjoyed Stefan Bachmann's The Peculiar last year that I was thrilled to find the sequel, The Whatnot, on the library shelves this month.

The faeries have been expelled from human London.  They and anyone who has anything to do with fairies are hunted down, jailed and executed.

Street urchin, Pikey, knows that he has to keep his faery-plucked eye hidden. Somehow, he can see a different world and in that world he sees a changeling, branch-haired girl, wandering.  Then someone steals his eye patch and his attempts to hide this evidence of faery involvement land him in jail.

Meanwhile, in the faery domain, Hettie and her faery butler savior are struggling endlessly towards a cottage that gets no nearer.

Bartie and his friend from the House of Lords are searching for a door that will allow them to save Hettie.

Yep, time for some adventure, battlefields, weirdness, clever twists and sudden revelations.  Those revelations all have little clues leading up to them but the reader is still surprised.

I found myself skimming a little bit.  The emptiness of the fairy realm depressed me. So I glossed over some of the descriptions.  Don't do that.  I had to go back for the breadcrumbs that Bachmann dropped so I could understand what happened next.

Pikey, Hettie, Bartie and the young Lord, whose name I simply can't remember - poor thing, all come together with a bunch of faeries, some evil, some benign, in an attempt to stop bloodshed and treachery from destroying their world.  Whew!  Bachmann pulls it off.

I give this book four out of five stars.  In a sequel, the element of delight in a new setting wanes.  And the faerie world, caught as it was in its self-appointed King's power struggle, was bleak.   Those were the only complaints.

The Peculiar - Reading again

I have been reading again.  The reasons I stopped are many and varied but mostly boil down to Dad In Hospital, Mom Needed Help.  Dad is out of the hospital but while he was in, siblings from around the globe, including the youngest who lives in Japan, crowded into Dad's hospital room and pestered him until he gave in and got better.  There, Dad!  That's what happens when you have so many kids.
Mom still needs help, though.  So, I need to read.  That helps me to help her.

Review #1
for Middle Grade readers

The Peculiar by Stefan Bachmann.  I dragged my feet about reading this because books by people who have not yet reached 20 are occasionally over-hyped.  No fear, here.  This is a soundly written book, an original and well-drawn world, and a mesmerizing combination of fantasy and steam punk.

The last time I read a book written by a teen-ager and lauded as superb, I spent the first chapter listing all the sources for many of the ideas and phrases in the book.  Hmmph, I said Lord of the Rings, Chronicles of Prydain, Rings again, Sword of.. you get the picture.

The setting of The Peculiar did remind me of the Bartimaeus Trilogy.  But the similarities ended there.  It is impossible to write a fantasy book without some reference to other fantasy.  Bachmann's Victorian London, drenched in acrid smog, is populated by human and fay alike.  Children of mixed parentage, changelings, are hated.  Most of the fay are pressed into servitude to human masters. The Sidhe live in the upper classes giving little thought to lower class fay.

Bartholomew Kettle and his little sister, Hettie, are changelings.  And they know enough to stay hidden.  Hettie, with her tree branch hair, would be executed in a trice.  But when several changeling children are found dead and mutilated, Bartholomew sees something that may be a clue to their murders.

Meanwhile, a young member of Parliament wanders down the wrong hall looking for the lavatory and stumbles on who knows what?  He certainly doesn't.  He's not curious either, just intensely uncomfortable about knowing too much.  And what he knows throws him into great peril.

Their paths cross and the way it happens is clever and well constructed.  The pace moves from impatient waiting to heart pounding.

 The ending might as well have a "Tune in Next..." banner printed across it.  The reader is left standing on a precipice or tumbling off a speeding train or  sitting there with mouth wide open.

Now, we just have to wait for the next exciting episode.