Chicks Dig Scarlings (original) (raw)

The Prince of Ill Luck, by Susan Dexter – I forget who mentioned this book to me some years ago, but it’s been on my to-read list for a while. Leith, Prince of the Isles, is thought to be under a curse of bad fortune, which spreads to others as well. He’s sent off by himself to a foreign land, where he meets a magical stallion created by a wizard, and rides the horse up a glass hill to win a ring, in the manner of the Polish fairy tale. He then finds out that the actual prize is the hand of Kessalia, a Duke’s daughter, in marriage, and neither of them want that. The two of them travel together, and she’s a jerk to him, and even poisons him at one point. It’s meant to be one of those cases where someone is mean to a person because they secretly have feelings for them, but it’s a bit extreme in this case. She’s looking for her parents, and her mother is a witch whom Leith hopes can lift his curse. Apparently Dexter had written about the horse Valadan in an earlier work, and this is a backstory for him.

In the Night Garden, by Catherynne M. Valente – The first of two books in the Orphan’s Tales series, this is written in the vein of the Arabian Nights, with stories within stories. As such, it’s difficult to keep track of everything that’s going on, but the tales remain interesting. Characters include a bear turned into a human who becomes a bartender, a Leucrota, a firebird, a net weaver who becomes a saint, a fox woman who captains a pirate ship, an Arimaspian, three Cynocephalus monks, a monopod, and a Selkie. As this suggests, it references a lot of different material from fairy tales and mythology.

Illuminations, by T. Kingfisher – Rosa Mandolini is from a family of artists whose paintings have magical properties, but only if drawn in specific ways. It’s the same sort of practical magic associated with a particular craft that featured in another one of Kingfisher’s young adult books, A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking. And, as in that book, the young protagonist uses it creatively to solve a problem. She finds out that an ancestor of hers was able to bring pictures to life, and she frees both the crow Payne and his charge, a rogue illumination, made from a mandrake root, known as a Scarling, which vandalizes other art and causes destruction throughout the area. With the help of her family and her friend from a different illumination studio, Rosa has to capture the Scarling again. There are some interesting character quirks, like Rosa’s fondness for drawing radishes and Payne’s obsession with shiny things. Although I don’t think it’s ever specified, the setting is very reminiscent of Venice, and the afterword notes that the weird calendar the society uses comes from the French Revolution.

Girl Giant and the Monkey King, by Van Hoang – After reading this author’s The Monstrous Misses Mai, I found out that her first book was a young adult story of a modern young person interacting with traditional mythology, and I’ve read a fair amount of those in recent years. Thom Ngho just wants to fit in at her new middle school, and she sees her mother’s insistence on Vietnamese tradition to be somewhat embarrassing. She’s also supernaturally strong, and is trying her best to hide it. That is, until she meets two new individuals, the Monkey King Sun Wukong (Ton Ngo Khong in Vietnamese), who teaches her how to better control her strength; and a neighbor kid named Kha. She becomes friendly with both of them, but both keep telling her not to trust the other. Over the course of the story, she ends up sneaking into Heaven to steal back the Monkey King’s cudgel, thereby running afoul of the Jade Emperor, and learning of her connection to the Boy Giant Thanh Giong. He’s one of the Four Immortals from Vietnamese mythology, a child who defeated an invading Chinese army when he was only three years old, and then rode off into the heavens. Thom also learns to stand up against her bullies.