The Red Magician – Lisa Goldstein

This tale is set in a small European town. It is so small it doesn’t concern itself with the affairs of the outside world and the outside world is not concerned with it.   This Jewish settlement is led by its Rabbi, and while he is integral to the tale, the story is about and told through the eyes of a young girl named Kisci.   I call it a tale because the story is interwoven with folklore and myth.  Jewish mysticism is held in juxtaposition to the Nazi threat of World War II.  It is similar to Catherynne Valente’s ‘Deathless’ in this sense, but is centered on a Jewish village rather than Russian folklore in Leningrad.  If you enjoyed ‘Deathless,’ in concept not style, I believe you will enjoy this book as well.

When Kisci is young a stranger visits Kisci’s town.  He tells the people to call him Voros.  With his coming he sets in motion great change for the townspeople.  He is a magician, and in return for the kindness of Kisci’s father giving him shelter, he lifts a curse the Rabbi set on her father.   The Rabbi set a curse on any parent who chose to continue sending their children to the school after they started teaching Hebrew.  This kindness, while wonderful, pits the Rabbi against him to the detriment of everyone. Voros has a vision of a man with no teeth bringing death to the town’s people. When he warns them of the threat the Rabbi dismisses Voros and throws him out-of-town.  Kisci is heartbroken.  He does visit her in the future, however, and each time he tries to warn the village of the danger only to be dismissed and ignored .  Unfortunately, evil does come and how Voros, Kisci and the Rabbi adapt is the heart of this book.

Goldstein’s writing style has the feeling of reading a folktale.  I enjoyed ‘The Red Magician.’  I gained an attachment to Kisci, Voros, and in the end even the Rabbi.  Her characters are what drives her story.  There is very little action in the beginning, however, it significantly picks up towards the end of the book.  I did not want to put it down.  My heart broke for Kisci.  Goldstein is able to evoke emotion outside of just anger and love.  She was able to evoke and maintain a feeling of detachment that is not so easily understood or expressed.  She handled difficult subject matter with care from a believable and respectful manner.

The magical realism is handled well if not in such a lavish style as Valente.  It feels appropriately understated even though she adds magicians and golem.  The magic contrasts with the harsh real violence in the tale.  I encourage anyone who enjoys magical realism, Jewish folklore, or World War II fiction to pick this up.

If you enjoyed this you might enjoy:

The Golem and the Jinni – Helene Wecker

Deathless – Catherynne Valente

 

Blackout (All Clear#1) – Connie Willis

Connie Willis created a beautiful piece of time travel/historical fiction with ‘Blackout.’  Depending on how you want to look at this book it is either the first book in the All Clear series or the third installment of the Oxford Time Travel series.  ‘Blackout’ includes characters from ‘The Doomsday Book’ with Colin Templar and Mr. Dunworthy.  They are not the stars of this double-decker novel but they do play very important roles.  ‘Blackout’ revolves around three historians from the future sent to observe different key events during World War II.  ‘Blackout’ is the story of what happens when their assignments end but they can’t get back home.  They either can’t get to their drops or they are damaged and won’t work.  Oxford should send a retrieval team.  ‘Blackout’ is what happens when they don’t show up.

I’ve read this and ‘All Clear’ three times.  I’ve listened to them and read them and enjoy it both ways.  What Connie Willis does extraordinarily well with these books is make the experience of the everyday person who didn’t enlist in the war accessible.  During World War II people in London were shop girls, children, and old men.  She focuses on the every day heroics of the people who lived at the time and took the famous words of Churchill to heart, ” Keep calm and carry on.”  These words that have been appropriated by a new generation were originally meant to steady a people who were sleeping in bomb shelters and waking to find their homes and places of employment bombed.  People who would never have been thought of heroes are highlighted as old clerics joining the fire brigade to keep St. Paul’s safe, the shop girls who signed up to become Ambulance drivers and WRENS, children under the age of 16 who were collecting scrap metal and lying to become ARP wardens.  Willis paints a realistic picture of rationing and living conditions during one of the coldest, wettest, and bleakest winters in England during 1940.  Our historians experience this from the perspective and benefit of privilege.  They are from the future where the living conditions and medical breakthroughs make life much easier.  They haven’t had to deal with shortage.  They are historians and they researched the conditions but research and experience are two different things.  They have the advantage of knowing that they win the war but the tables are turned when they can’t get home.  There is a fear that they have changed events.  What if they did something to alter the course of the war?  They become the contemporaries they were studying.  Their only hope is to find  other historians studying World War II.  If they can find another drop site they will have found a way home.

Willis explores the invasion of Dunkirk, experiences of the evacuated children, the fall of the service class, the Blitz, and the V1 attacks.  Her research is solid.  She did eight years of research to complete these two books.  Some have found the books to be daunting and long due to the amount of detailed historical information included.  This, however, is what makes this book special for me.    She provides great information sources, but one in particular caught my attention. She utilized the Mass Observation Diaries heavily and credits them as being invaluable.  The diaries came from observers and volunteers in London recruited by Mass Observation.  Harrison founded the organization in 1937 with Madge and Jennings to  create an ‘anthropology of ourselves’. The writers chronicled the lives of ordinary people in Britain. By luck, the study neglected to tell the volunteers writing the journals the study was ending prior to the start of World War II creating an amazing resource of first hand accounts detailing the everyday lives of Brittish citizens during the war.  Follow this link to find out more about the original Mass Observation project.  I can see why some people would have a hard time engaging in the All Clear Series. It is a commitment to read them.  Blackout is 512 pages and All Clear is 643 pages. Willis refers to them as a double-decker novel because Blackout ends abruptly and starts up immediately with All Clear.  Many have argued it should have been one book, but if two is a bit unwieldy one would have been extremely off-putting.  You will want the sequel immediately.  Plan to either download ‘All Clear’, buy the physical book when you get three fourths of the way done,  or download the fabulous narration by Katherine Kellgren immediately after finishing ‘Blackout.’

I  do not recommend this for people with a short attention span, or those who are looking for a light read.  It is hopeful, but it is also drenched in data.  If you want a light time travel piece I would encourage you to pick up Rysa Walker’s ‘Timebound’ or ‘Just One Damned Thing After Another’ by Jodi Taylor.  ‘Blackout’ is a great time travel novel and is a personal favorite.  Rarely have I seen an author be able to weave such great fiction around factual history.  Usually you get one or the other.  If you enjoy historical fiction with the added enjoyment of science fiction time travel this is perfect for you.

If you like this you may like:

–  The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis

–  Crytonomicon by Neal Stephenson

All Clear – Connie Willis

I love historical fiction and science fiction so you could say this series is made for me but I would say Connie Willis did even better on this book than the first. It has more action and ties all the stories together neatly.  This is the sequel to Black Out which is set in World War II in London.  The series follows three time travelers and the entourage they accumulate during the Blitz.  It is a unique take on what an everyday Londoner rather than a War Hero or spy experienced.  This focused more on the shop girls, elderly men and women, and children experience.  All with an enjoyable bit of time travel.

I will say I’m disappointed there is not to be a third in this series. I wanted more. I wanted to hear more about Elaine and Polly. I won’t say more about that for fear of spoilers. Katherine Kellgren did a fabulous job narrating this on Audible. After I finished this I got the Doomsday Book (also by Connie Willis) and if you read it, in my opinion, Connie Willis did a much better job on this series but All Clear in particular. Don’t miss out on this. I made my mother, not a huge science fiction fan but a definite fan of historical WWII fiction and non-fiction, download this on her kindle. I don’t do that for anyone because I try not to force anyone to read anything but I made an exception this time. ….oh, and she loved it!

Bitter Seeds: The Milkweed Triptych Book 1 – Ian Tregellis

As I read this book I kept going back and forth between loving it and finding parts I thought were either not well thought out or not executed well. There are sections with a lot of detail and areas where it asks you to make huge jumps without a lot of information. The style of writing periodically felt like a YA novel but with very adult themes. I do not believe this was intended to be YA fiction and would not recommend it as such.

The book is about the occult utilized in World War II on both the part of the British and the part of Germans. One side utilizes Warlocks and the other side utilize human engineering to create enhanced soldiers that have special abilities – a little like X-men but it’s not a genetic mutation.

An overwhelming theme of the book is the willingness to sacrifice the lives of their own people to kill thee other side either through science or magic. There is a cost in war and an understanding that there will be casualties, however, the book focuses on a growing callousness towards costs.

The book is based on interesting ideas. It is clearly fiction, but utilizes facts to support the fiction and give credence to the ideas within. An example is a military division under Himmler experimenting on humans to create super soldiers.

The narration is ok. The voices for the Germans were a bit aggravating. The accents were not done well and that combined with some overdramatization made it very hard to get past and focus on the German portion of the story. The rest of the accents were fine. The German accents were the only part of it that made me wish I had maybe read it instead of listened to it.

The book is worth the time, but this is not a feel good World War II novel. This is not an, “our spirit will overcome it all” view. It looks at how war tears away our humanity and increases our willingness to do whatever we believe necessary for whatever the cost. It’s intriguing but if you are looking for an upbeat book this isn’t it.