Queen Victoria's Book of Spells
us.macmillan.comA sneak peek at the title story of a new anthology of “gaslamp fantasy” from the award-winning editorial team of Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling — “Queen Victoria’s Book of Spells,” by Delia Sherman — in which a lonely grad student in an alternate England begins a dangerous project:
I open the book.
The text of Victoria’s first diary entry hides nothing but the creamy linen paper it covers. It has been quoted often. But it’s different seeing it in the forteen-year-old princess’s own hand:
JUNE 7, 1833
Today is my first lesson in magic. My tutor is Sir Thomas Basingstoke, of the Royal College of Wizards. He is a Professor of Practical Magic. Mamma says a lesser wizard would be sufficient to teach a neophyte her first spells, buthe says it is an honour to teach the future Queen of England. He has given me this book for the spells I learn and the theory behind them, as well as any exercises he may give me to strengthen my self-discipline. The lesson was very odd. He began by asking me to knock a spillikin from a table without touching it, which I did. And he asked me about my dreams and whether I was prone to sleepwalking. Mamma answered that I was not.
Next week we will begin to study magic in earnest, with a spell to light a candle.
I remember lighting my first candle. It was in seventh grade. The spell was in the book of basic spells I’d stolen from my mother’s study. It worked the first time I tried it, although I almost set the house on fire. My parents sent me to the Westaway Magic Academy in Amherst. I did well enough to earn a free ride to Harvard, where I majored in thaumaturgy… .
Read the entire story here.
More about the anthology here.
“Enchanting as you Campions are, you're also damnably distracting.”
—The artist Ysaud, in THE FALL OF THE KINGS by Ellen Kushner & Delia ShermanReview #15: The Essential Bordertown edited by Terri Windling and Delia Sherman
The Essential Bordertown, as with all the Bordertown anthologies, is an incredible new kind of teen urban fantasy. It deals with all the well-known “teenage problems” – particularly cultural identity – in a magical, energetic way by turning them into wonderfully plotted metaphors that are both entertaining and insightful. That said, Bordertown is more than a series of self-help essays in fantasy short-story format. Bordertown, in its own way, represents a bit of a movement in teen fantasy, which offers a dark, interesting, and altogether original world.
Snow White to the Prince
by Delia Sherman
I am beautiful you say, sublime,
Black and crystal as a winter’s night,
With lips like rubies, cabochon,
My eyes deep blue as sapphires.
You took me for my beauty, after all;
A jewel in a casket, still as death,
A lovely effigy, a prince’s prize,
The fairest in the land.
But you woke me, or your horses did,
Stumbling as they bore me down the path,
Shaking the poisoned apple from my throat.
And now you say you love me, and would wed me
For my beauty’s sake. My cursed beauty.
Will you hear now why I curse it?
It should have been my mother’s — it had been,
Until I took it from her.
I was fourteen, a flower newly blown,
My mother’s faithful shadow and her joy.
I remember combing her hair one day,
Playing for love her tire-woman’s part,
Folding her thick hair strand over strand
Into an ebon braid, thick as my wrist,
And pinned it round and round her head
Into a living crown.
I looked up from my handiwork and saw
Our faces, hers and mine, caught in the mirror’s eye.
Twin white ovals like repeated moons
Bright amid our midnight hair. Our eyes
Like heaven’s bowl; our lips like autumn berries.
She frowned a little, lifted hand to throat.
Turned her head this way and then the other.
Our eyes met in the glass.
I saw what she had seen: her hair white-threaded,
Her face and throat fine-lined, her eyes softened
Like a mirror that clouds and cracks with age;
While I was newly silvered, sharp and clear.
I hid my eyes, but could not hide my knowledge.
Forty may be fair; fourteen is fairer still.
She smiled at my reflection, cold as glass,
And then dismissed me thankless.
Not long after the huntsman came, bearing
A knife, a gun, a little box, to tell me
My mother no longer loved me. He spared me, though,
Unasked, because I was too beautiful to kill.
And the seven little men whose house
I kept that winter and the following year,
They loved me for my beauty’s sake, my beauty
That cost me my mother’s love.
Do you think I did not know her,
Ragged and gnarled and stooped like a wind-bent tree,
Her basket full of combs and pins and laces?
Of course I took her poisoned gifts. I wanted
To feel her hands combing out my hair,
To let her lace me up, to take an apple
From her hand, a smile from her lips,
As when I was a child.
Do you think I did not know her,
Ragged and gnarled and stooped like a wind-bent tree,
Her basket full of combs and pins and laces?
Of course I took her poisoned gifts. I wanted
To feel her hands combing out my hair,
To let her lace me up, to take an apple
From her hand, a smile from her lips,
As when I was a child.
Snow White to the Prince, by Delia Sherman
The Freedom Maze & The Wolves of Willoughby Chase
randomactsofreading.wordpress.comWhat a thrill to get to see two of my favorite books in one audiobook review! I love the interview with Delia Sherman (*cough cough* biased? just a little) - and the sample of Joan Aiken’s daughter Lizza reading her mother’s work.
We’ll all be at the Bank Street Books event in NYC next Friday the 26th at 7:00. I’ll even get to tell my own personal Wolves story!
Capsule Reviews
Here are some thoughts on books I’ve read recently.
The Alphabet of Thorn by Patricia A. McKillip (2004)
This book was not only lovely, but unexpectedly original and well-plotted. I had frequently seen McKillips books in stores but never bothered to read any because they just seemed so faerie-tale florid, but I shouldn’t have avoided them. Fresh characters who either seem strikingly unique or fantastic riffs on well-traveled tropes. After a few chapters, the plot began to come together in a way that I hadn’t predicted and even when I knew things that the characters didn’t know I still enjoyed them realizing the greater truths at play.
Other stuff… Bechdel test: PASS. Also, well-rounded female characters in general. No queer characters. Touched upon colonialism and had some awareness, but otherwise a very White medieval setting.
Through a Brazen Mirror by Delia Sherman (1988)
I read this immediately after The Alphabet of Thorn, and they definitely had some similarities. Both handled women characters especially deftly and took place is a similar alternate medieval Anglo-Saxon sort of setting. Sherman’s setting was clearly more invested in staying true to the (seemingly deep) historical research she’d drawn from. The antagonist in this was really fantastic and made me wonder if she partially inspired Lillas from Jacqueline Carey’s Banewreaker (2004), another brilliantly flawed sorceress. The ending didn’t really hit the spot for me as far as stirring crescendos, but it fit the tale.
PASS on the Bechdel test. Some queer-esque material with clever handling. Only white Anglo characters as far as I could tell.
Sister Alice by Robert Reed (2003)
I tried to read this but couldn’t slog through it. Some interesting ideas about humanity’s role in the stars, and I enjoyed the titular character, but I never warmed to the protagonist.
Anyone else ever read this and fare better?
The Darker Mask: Heroes from the Shadows edited by Gary Phillips and Christopher Chambers (2008)
This anthology was a good idea that I think was pretty well executed. The premise is that the stories are about the heroes who don’t make the headlines, particularly heroes of color. The idea of what a hero really is gets played with and teased out in a number of really interesting ways. The stories themselves were a bit uneven, but most had a kernel that compelled me to finish them even if they didn’t quite hit the sweet spot. Some standouts… Tat Master by Naomi Hirahara, The Picket by Walter Mosley, Switchback by Ann Nocenti, In Vino Veritas by Peter Spiegelman, Housework by Doselle Young.
