Knife, a young faerie confined within her kingdom inside a large oak tree, is determined to escape to the outside world. As a girl, she came face to face with a human, and survived. Since that day, her curiosity about the house and the strange creatures who live inside it only grows. When Knife finds an opportunity to get a closer look, she takes it. But with every new discovery she makes about the outside world, the strict rules and strange customs of her people only feel stranger and well, wrong. Maybe Knife can save them. If she can find out why her people lost their magic to begin with, perhaps she can reverse the spell. But doing so will risk her place among her people, and it may force her to accept truths about herself, her queen, and her human friend that she’s not ready to face.
I’ll admit that when I picked up this book I was a little iffy. I’ve read a few other novels about faeries recently that really didn’t draw me in. This one, though, really surprised me.
I liked that the faerie realm was not another dimension or whatever, but was this hidden world within an oak tree in the back yard of a house in a rural neighborhood. I loved the way the friendship between Knife and Paul happens. The faeries have cut themselves off from all other creatures and their culture, while perfectly preserved from any outside influences, is dying just as surely as the faeries are. As Knife explores more and more of the outside world, her view of her people changes, and she begins to see how important community is—not just the homogenous community of her own people, but the interaction with others outside the community. This is a great theme, and so true to life. We absolutely need others in our lives above and beyond those who are exactly like us. So I thought the faerie landscape was a really clever way to pull that message into the story without at all sounding preachy. As Knife spent time with others, her creative instincts were stirred and she begins to create new things, something no faerie has done in her lifetime. I loved that.
I liked how Anderson brought the faerie culture to life with just a few really crisp details. The fact that all faeries are female. The idea that one has to bargain or trade one thing for another constantly. No favors among faeries, because owing a debt to someone is a big deal. Things like that made the culture seem really alive to me.
I definitely want to continue reading this series. The second book, Rebel features different central characters, but I enjoyed the faerie world so much I’m definitely interested in reading more. If you liked The Last Faerie Queen or the Goldstone Wood books, you might want to give this series a try.
Profanity/Crude Language Content
None.
Romance/Sexual Content A couple of kisses.
Spiritual Content References to the Great Gardener, with whom the faeries seem to credit creation, etc. At one time all faeries had magic. Now only their queen has it.
Violent Content Vague references to an accident which leaves a man paralyzed from the waist down. A crow attacks and tries to kill faeries until one fights back, injuring it and hoping to kill it. There are a couple of short descriptions of battles between crow and faeries.
If you’ve been following The Story Sanctuary for a while, you’ve probably heard me gush about a couple of books I read recently and really enjoyed. Here, as part of an Irish Banana Blog Tour, is the author of those books, graciously answering my pesky fangirl questions….
About Emil Ostrovski
I’m twenty-five.
Rather than give you a witty, self-deprecating account of the trials and tribulations of my twenty-five year old, suburban, upper-middle class, went-to-a-girl’s-liberal-arts-college life, I’ll admit that I haven’t really done anything much worth reading about.
So in lieu of providing you with my biography, I will recommend that you read Desmond Tutu’s. Here.
Why Desmond Tutu?
Well, I’ve always liked his name.
Interview with Emil Ostrovski
I’m super excited to have this opportunity to ask some of the deep burning questions that reading your novels has raised. Both were such deep, emotional stories. I’ll try not to get too sappy with the questions, though…
Thanks for having me! I appreciate the kind words.
If you had to do all your writing from inside a box under a bridge, what type of box would you choose to write in, which bridge would you place it under, and why?
If I had to do all my writing from inside a box under a bridge, I’d probably take up floristry instead. I hear it’s booming.
Ha! I suppose that makes sense. 🙂 In Away We Go, the story centers around characters diagnosed with a deadly virus bearing the name of a famous character in a children’s story (Peter Pan.) Who is your favorite little-known character from children’s literature?
There is a classic Brazilian children’s novel titled My Sweet Orange Tree, which features Zeze, a precocious five-year-old boy living and working as a shoe shiner in Rio de Janeiro. The book jacket describes him as the most mischievous boy in the Western Hemisphere, and that is not far off. Throughout the narrative, Zeze looks after his little brother, constantly gets into trouble with his parents, deals with poverty, escapes to a realm of imagination populated by a talking tree, and even experiences his first brush with death and mortality.
Sounds like an incredible story. I was really moved by your description of The Paradox of Vertical Flight as a sort of good-bye to some expectations you’d had about life and parenting. Is there a personal message hidden in Away We Go as well? (If so, will you share it?)
I suppose the most personal thing I can tell you about Away We Go is that it was a way of trying to deal with unrequited love. It took me a long time to figure out I was gay, I think, because in high school and middle school I never really met a guy who exhibited all three of these very elusive characteristics: cuteness, niceness, and intelligence. When I got to college, I met someone who exhibited all three almost immediately. He was the original Zach, and the original draft of Away We Go was, perhaps, an attempt at grappling with my feelings for him, which I was confused about at the time, since I had not yet fully come to terms with my sexuality. Years later, when I revised the novel for my editor at Greenwillow, Zach changed somewhat, became more like my first ex-boyfriend, by which I mean a little more confusing and inconsistent. At the time I was revising the novel, we had just broken up, and I was pretty hurt. Injecting some of him into Zach wasn’t cathartic, and did not make me feel better. But it felt natural, and I figured I might as well get some mileage out of my pain.
You know, it’s funny – I had a hard time finding all three of those qualities in middle and high school boys, too. 🙂 Though in fairness, girls weren’t much better, I think. Rough time of life. But I digress. In reading the story, I found it so easy to root for Noah in part because of a past destructive relationship in my own life. Something would happen and Noah would respond and I’d be like, “Right?!” So… yes. I think you definitely captured the confusion and pain that some relationships can cause. I hope that seeing the story resonate with readers brings a kind of healing.
Also in your blog post about the release of The Paradox of Vertical Flight, you talk about the idea of a novel emerging as a flash or a half-second dream. What was the flash that started Away We Go?
Away We Go‘s flash was a website that catalogues the “departure” of terminally ill children.
I felt like that was such a unique part of the story. One of my favorite elements about The Paradox of Vertical Flight and Away We Go was the dialogue. I loved the genuine feel and the way that even some of the serious conversations were also filled with banter. Do you have a favorite moment of conversation between the characters in Away We Go and can you share it?
My favorite conversation is probably the last conversation Noah and Zach have in the book. Without giving too much away, I think that it’s an incredibly painful and awkward and honest moment for both of them. They’ve spent so much of the book skirting around their feelings. This is their last chance to speak to each other, and it’s one of a handful of moments that the entire novel is building toward, I think.
That was a great conversation. I won’t give anything away, either. 🙂
Are there other authors whose work inspired the story of Away We Go or whose work inspires you as a writer?
Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go was sort of my spirit-guide while writing Away We Go. I found his approach to science fiction fascinating—the idea that science fiction could serve primarily as an opportunity for a specific type of character study. I wanted to emulate what he had done.
I haven’t (yet) read Never Let Me Go, so I can’t speak to the comparison, but I felt like Away We Go was very much a character-driven story inside the shell of a dystopian story-world. So it definitely seems to me that you succeeded.
I love the references to philosophy and classic literature in your novels and the way those ideas are incorporated into the story. Is that something that happens naturally as you write? Do you hope that the references will inspire readers to seek out those stories as well?
In both books, the references happened naturally to some degree in the original drafts, because they were an aspect of the characters’ voices. Jack loves the Ancient Greeks, and Noah likes to reference everyone from twentieth-century existentialists to Shakespeare. During revision, these references were fine-tuned, and made more consistent. More conscious thought was devoted to their deployment.
I think it would be lovely for readers to look up, for example, Dostoevsky’s Notes from The Underground, because Noah talks about it, or to read some Whitman because they are moved by the excerpts Noah includes in his story. But that is not my primary concern. My primary concern is always preserving the authenticity of the character’s voice.
Very cool. In Away We Go, Skittles play a surprising role. Did you eat any Skittles during the writing?
I’m actually more of an M&M’S guy. 😛
Honestly, I can’t blame you. I’ll take chocolate over skittles any day. But I can see how Skittles made a superior metaphor. 🙂
I’m a huge believer in stories that challenge our perceptions of our lives and those around us. Can you name a literary moment which changed or challenged you?
I read TheGrapes of Wrath toward the end of high school. It features a family called the Joads, who flee Oklahoma during the Great Depression and head for California hoping to find work. Perhaps because I loved and cared about the Joads, or perhaps also because Steinbeck was writing about a real moment in our history, the following quote resonated particularly with me:
“For man, unlike any other thing organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments. This you may say of man—when theories change and crash, when schools, philosophies, when narrow dark alleys of thought, national, religious, economic, grow and disintegrate, man reaches, stumbles forward, painfully, mistakenly sometimes. Having stepped forward, he may slip back, but only half a step, never the full step back. This you may say and know it and know it. This you may know when the bombs plummet out of the black planes on the market place, when prisoners are stuck like pigs, when the crushed bodies drain filthily in the dust. You may know it in this way. If the step were not being taken, if the stumbling-forward ache were not alive, the bombs would not fall, the throats would not be cut. Fear the time when the bombs stop falling while the bombers live—for every bomb is proof that the spirit has not died. And fear the time when the strikes stop while the great owners live—for every little beaten strike is proof that the step is being taken. And this you can know—fear the time when Manself will not suffer and die for a concept, for this one quality is the foundation of Manself, and this one quality is man, distinctive in the universe.”
To me, at the time, this quote captured the relationship between human beings and their history and their future. It defined history not simply as a sequence but as a moral progression, a progression whose impetus emerged from within ourselves, and it explained the existence of suffering as part of the process by which the human species develops morally.
When I read this excerpt as a seventeen year old kid, I felt something approximating a religious feeling—of hope in humanity, in history, of awe at being a part of something so vast and so beautiful, and ultimately of grace, at all the people who take small steps to move the human species and the human spirit forward.
YES. Such an important message, too. We certainly need the reminder that sometimes suffering is part of a larger, worthy process. Deep stuff. I so appreciate you taking time to share these things.
In 1943 Amsterdam, Hanneke is the girl who can help you find things like coffee, meat, kerosene. But when a lonely widow asks Hanneke to find a missing Jewish girl, Hanneke at first refuses to get involved. Locating a Jewish girl and trying to rescue her is far too dangerous.
On the other hand, maybe danger is exactly what Hanneke needs to distract her from the aching grief of her boyfriend’s recent death. Reluctantly, Hanneke agrees to investigate the girl’s disappearance. Her search throws her in the path of a well-organized group of resistance workers who beg Hanneke to help them. Soon Hanneke is up to her neck in activities that could get her shot at any time. As the days pass and the chance of finding the missing girl alive dwindle, Hanneke becomes desperate. She must find this girl before the Nazis do. She must repay her debt, saving this girl to atone for the life Hanneke’s responsible for ending.
I don’t read much historical fiction, but every time I do, I enjoy it and vow to include more in my reading lists. I grew up reading and listening to Corrie ten Boom’s memoir, The Hiding Place, so the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands holds a special interest for me. It always calls to mind the courage and perseverance of those involved in resistance and rescue efforts.
I loved that Hesse included sides of the resistance movement that I wasn’t at all familiar with, including the Underground Camera movement and the rescue of infants and small children from the major deportment site in Amsterdam.
The story has a lot of layers. On the surface, it’s about finding a girl with the help of various resistance efforts. But the story goes much deeper into how the Nazi occupation affected relationships between friends and lovers. The kinds of small betrayals that, due to the severe restrictions placed on the people by the German occupation, ultimately led to death. All those layers weave together to form an intricate story that kept me turning pages all the way to the end. I read this entire book in one sitting, and I’d probably read it again tomorrow.
The Girl in the Blue Coat will appeal to fans of Code Name Verity, though on the whole, it’s much cleaner in terms of language and violence. This is a great representation of an important moment in history, and because Hesse highlighted some of the lesser known efforts happening behind enemy lines, the tale felt fresh and new. I definitely recommend this one.
Profanity/Crude Language Content
Mild swearing.
Romance/Sexual Content A couple of brief kisses. One boy confesses to being in love with another boy.
Spiritual Content There’s a brief discussion about the fact that at first non-practicing Jews thought they might be safer from Nazis than practicing Jews.
Violent Content A teenage girl is shot in the head.
Drug Content
None.
Note: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.
Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. This week’s theme is a fantastic one: the best blogs to follow. I tend to follow several different kinds of blogs. I like finding other blogs that review clean books or which list content information. I think in part it makes me feel validated, and it’s always interesting to see the ways other sites break down the content information. I also like to follow what I’ll call a specialty blog, one that steers readers toward specific types of books– books about characters with disabilities, books by minority authors, etc. Then there are the good old trusty review sites where I find myself reading the reviews of books I’ve read and saying, “I know, right?!” and reading reviews of books I haven’t read and immediately adding the titles to my reading list. I should add lots of others to this list, but these are the ones far and above all others that I find myself returning to for inspiration, recommendations and ideas:
I’ve probably been following this blog the longest out of all the others on this list. I’m not sure how I found Reading Teen, but I really love this site. I guest-posted a review of Panic by Lauren Oliver which you can find here. One of my FAVORITE posts by Andye is this one about sex in teen fiction.
Compass Book Ratings
When I first discovered this site, it was called Clean Teen Reads. I don’t visit as often as I’d like, but I’ve recommended it several times to readers who are looking for more specific content than I tend to give. For instance, regarding profanity, this site will tell you which words and how many times they’re used whereas I tend to give a more general overview.
Brown Books and Green Tea
This is a recent favorite of mine. I love the focus on multicultural books, but also the way the blogger breaks down her reviews and thoughts on books. She makes me think, promotes really interesting books for deep reasons, and when she recommends something, it’s top notch.
If I’m going to be honest, I have a real love/hate relationship with this blog. I LOVE the idea: books featuring characters with disabilities reviewed by someone diagnosed with the disability. This gives a really insightful look at what a story looks like from a very specific angle. And a lot of the time, I find myself thinking, oh, wow. I never considered that. However, sometimes I get frustrated because it feels like so many of the reviews are very negative and really expect authors to capture these disabled characters with absolute perfection, and the hammer falls hard on those who fail. I think it’s truly important that we have stories that feature disabled characters, but as an aspiring writer, sometimes I wonder if blogs like this might scare writers out of trying to include them in their stories? I don’t know. Honestly, I love having the perspective the bloggers bring to the table. I think it’s a really important perspective, and I think authors should strive to accurately represent their characters, disabled or not.
I often find myself encouraged and inspired by these posts. Like her writing, Laura’s posts are very authentic, but they still manage to pull us toward beauty and wonder. I love that. I need that in my life. She’s awesome. Go read her books, too!
Sorry. Between Spring Break (which was lots more SPRING than BREAK, to tell the truth) and Easter and illness in our house, I’ve let blogging fall to the wayside for the last couple of weeks. I’m hoping that this weekend I’ll be able to get caught up on the things I’ve missed and get into reading some of these awesome books– because FOUR of them come out in less than a week!
Not listed here, but on my agenda to review is Life Animated by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ron Suskind (which I HIGHLY recommend.) As a reminder, I do not accept requests to review non-fiction, but occasionally, I do read and review some non-fiction here.
Now, to business! Here are some of the books you can expect to find here at The Story Sanctuary in April 2016:
A city divided into Light and Dark. A girl from the Light side, whose boyfriend has a Dark secret. Can’t wait to read this one. I’m new to Sarah Rees Brennan’s work, so I’m eager to check out this book and hopefully add her others to my ever-growing To-Read list.
Suspense. Mystery. World War II Europe. I’m so in. A girl who runs black market items to paying customers receives a request to locate something beyond coffee or meat: a missing Jewish girl.
Monica Lee Kennedy approached me about reviewing her novel The Land’s Whisper a couple of months ago. In this story, the land is alive, though only a few can communicate with it, a power which proves consuming and dangerous. Such a fascinating premise.
This book seems to be getting a lot of buzz lately. Ashley Royer gained a lot of notice on Wattpad for this story. I’m always interested in books that deal with grief and emotional trauma (which sounds really dark… I promise I’m a pretty happy person) so I’m eager to get into this one.
I’ve read the first two books in this series, and at last at last, I’m ready to sit down with the third. CAN’T WAIT to see if Nym is able to wield control over her abilities, defeat her enemies and be with the one she loves. Eee!
As a long-time Jill Williamson fan, I’m super excited about this book. If you read the Blood of Kings books, you’ll recognize this story as taking place in the same story world, but much, much earlier. So it’s like getting to hear all the backstory of a series I really enjoyed already.
Irish Banana Tours Presents: The Door by the Staircase Tour
Today I’m participating in a book tour arranged by the beautiful Hannah at Irish Banana Blog Tours. Please check out the other stops on the tour (see below!) and enter the giveaway for a copy of The Door By the Staircase by Katherine Marsh. Also, check out Katherine Marsh’s top ten facts about Baba Yaga, a character from Russian folklore who inspired Madame Z in the book!
About The Door By the Staircase by Katherine Marsh
Twelve-year-old Mary Hayes can’t stand her orphanage for another night. But when an attempted escape through the stove pipe doesn’t go quite as well as she’d hoped, Mary fears she’ll be stuck in the Buffalo Asylum for Young Ladies forever.
The very next day, a mysterious woman named Madame Z appears at the orphanage requesting to adopt Mary, and the matron’s all too happy to get the girl off her hands. Soon, Mary is fed a hearty meal, dressed in a clean, new nightgown and shown to a soft bed with blankets piled high. She can hardly believe she isn’t dreaming!
But when Mary begins to explore the strange nearby town with the help of her new friend, Jacob, she learns a terrifying secret about Madame Z’s true identity. If Mary’s not careful, her new home might just turn into a nightmare.
Top Ten Facts about Baba Yaga of Russian Folklore from Author Katherine Marshall
Baba Yaga, a witch from Russian folklore inspired some elements of Madame Z in The Door by the Staircase. Today, Katherine Marshall joins me here to describe some of the lore surrounding this mythical character and gives us some hints about what we might see from the folk tales in her novel.
1. She eats children…but she sometimes also helps them.
If you’ve heard of Baba Yaga at all, you’ve probably heard that she’s a fearsome Russian witch who eats men, women, children or anyone else who wanders into her kingdom. But this is not completely true. Every once in a while, Baba Yaga helps someone. Often that someone is a child who lacks a mother and who is brave, kind of heart, and deserving of some magical intervention. This capacity for good makes Baba Yaga unique among fairy tale witches and is one of the qualities that attracted me to her.
2. She may be the oldest European folktale witch.
Baba Yaga has her roots in the pagan beliefs of the original tribes that populated Russia. Some even believe she originated as a Paleolithic nature goddess. In some tales, Baba Yaga has the power to control the weather; in others she is a protector of the forest and the animals who populate it; in yet others, she is a weaver with the power to spin the thread of life, somewhat like the Greek Fates. (In my book, she does versions of all three).
3. She doesn’t actually live in Russia.
This one is really a surprise to most people because she is known as a Russian witch! But technically, Baba Yaga lives in a magical kingdom next to Russia. In my book, this kingdom is mobile and can be parked next to other countries—such as America—as well. This way Baba Yaga can sample some international cuisine…
4. She has a frighteningly strong sense of smell.
In the folktales, Baba Yaga can tell when a hapless soul has crossed into her forest kingdom using only her very long nose. “Fie, fie, I smell the Russian scent,” she typically says. In my book, Baba Yaga can even smell a child’s fear, which makes running away from her pretty tricky.
5. She lives in a house on chicken legs.
Imagine living in a house with a personality of its own. Baba Yaga lives in a house on chicken legs that spins around and reveals its door on her command. In some tales, the house can even move around. In my version, it does some other things that a part-chicken, part-house might naturally do.
6. She has three pairs of magic flying hands that help her in the kitchen.
Long before the Adamms Family and their disembodied hand “Thing,” Baba Yaga was assisted in her daily tasks by three pairs of bodiless hands who she sometimes called my “soul friends.” Of course, I had to work these creepy magical servants into my book as well.
7. She bakes her meals in a giant oven.
For centuries, Russians did their cooking in an enormous multipurpose oven called a pech. The pech was at the center of the house and was used to prepare food, provide warmth and even as sleeping space (peasants would sleep on top of it, especially in winter). Baba Yaga’s pech is naturally just the right size to cook up anyone she might find appetizing.
8. She would never be caught riding a broomstick.
Unlike Western witches, Baba Yaga makes her nightly journeys not on a broomstick but in a mortar, which she steers through the sky with a pestle. She is not completely adverse to brooms though—she uses a birch broom to sweep the clouds and hide traces of her passage from human eyes. Driving a mortar, as you’ll find out in my book, is an acquired skill.
9. Her servants are not always faithful to her.
In addition to her magical friends, Baba Yaga has other servants—including a talking cat, a magic horse and, for a time, the wizard Koshchey the Deathless (all of whom play a role in my book). Sometimes they disobey her and assist her victims for purposes of their own.
10. She is a mother.
Well, actually, there’s some debate over this. Some tales claim Baba Yaga has a daughter named Marynka or Marina. But even if she is not a biological mother, she is a figure that represents the wisdom and power of women, even marginalized ones. In that sense, I always felt she had potential as a mother…if just the right type of child arrived at her door.
