A house grows in Brooklyn

 I had a lovely lavender manicure when I went up to Maine for Father's Day weekend and then I decided to only read books with pretty purple covers. Unfortunately, I am dumb and forgot to take pictures of my hands holding the gorgeous hardcover of Shadowhouse Fall, the sequel to Daniel Jose Older's debut YA fantasy Shadowshaper, which was awesome.

 

I am pleased to report that Shadowhouse Fall is also awesome and features a magic tarot deck, or at least a deck of cards sort of like a tarot deck, except that it's got totally different cards and they change and also it's magic. The four suits in the deck feature four different magical Houses, and not all the Houses are visible at the same time. One of the Houses is the House of Light, who we met in the last book and they're freaking creepy. One of the other houses is the Shadowhouse, which is the shadowshapers--Sierra, as the Lucera, is now the head of that House. She's inducted a bunch of her friends and family into shadowshaping, which means they're all in the House too--and some of them have the specialized roles set out in the deck. Also because Sierra, as the new Lucera, has made so many new shadowshapers, Shadowhouse is in the ascendant--and the House of Light, which had been ascendant for a while, is extremely pissed off about it and very much prepared to do something about it. It's time for a magical dominance war!

 

This magical dominance war takes place in the same modern, political New York as the rest of the series (and of Older's other books). Issues of police brutality, school surveillance, the criminalization of protest, Rikers Island, gentrification, and other forms of institutional violence are seamlessly woven in with the dynastic and magical violence of the Houses of the Deck of Worlds. The characters are sharply realized, the emotions are real and messy, and the dialogue is snappy and hilarious. The plot runs fast and the stakes are high, and it all builds to a satisfyingly powerful conclusion whereby Sierra somehow becomes even more awesome (it's like a video game; she levels up at the end of each book apparently) -- and the very end hits at a sequel about straight up Nazi-fightin', which I can't wait for. Older has forayed into Nazi-fightin' before in the novella The Ghost Girl in the Corner; the way he constructs his world I suspect they're going to be the same or at least related Nazis. But anyway, did I mention that this book was highly relevant to current-day politics? Because it is. 

The Princess of Nebraska

 Book number two of the trio of books with pretty purple covers that I read to match my pretty purple nails, all of which were also fantasy books and the second volume in a series, was Catherynne M. Valente's The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There, the sequel to the crowdsourced phenomenon The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of her Own Making, which I read... oh, several years ago now. Like five years ago or something. How did that happen?

 

In this one, September, now 13 and no longer entirely a child and therefore beginning to grow a heart, makes her way back to Fairyland--but this time must go to Fairyland-Below, where her shadow, cruelly removed at the end of the last book, is now ruler. September's shadow goes by the name Halloween, which is perfect, and Halloween, the Hollow Queen, is stealing the shadows of all the other creatures in the above Fairyland. This is causing some ruckus among the original inhabitants of Fairyland-Below, although not nearly as much ruckus as it is causing in Fairyland-Above. September then finds herself on a Quest to wake up the Sleeping Prince who is the rightful King of Fairyland and see if that helps anything.

 

There are some important themes about World War II and rationing and freedom and what we owe each other and hidden parts of our identities (the shadows basically have the hidden personalities of the people they are shadows of, it's deep)  and especially the perennial question of coming-of-age stories, how to find and know one's place in the world. Some of this is not subtle; at one point, September exclaims, "Folk are just folk, wherever you go, and it's only a nasty sort of person who thinks a body's a devil just because they come from a different country and have different notions." I'm not criticizing; this is an excellent lesson for children, and some people manage to read books that have those messages very clearly but still miss them if they aren't spelled out explicitly enough and grow up to be, like, Star Wars fans who are also Nazis, and weird shit like that. Moralizing in kidlit is good!

 

So yes, where was I, deep themes blah blah blah, but also mostly everything is funny and whimsical and CUTE AS SHIT. There are Night-Dodos and kangaroos that mine memories because they're forgetful without their magic memory jewels and a stern lady minotaur and some scholar-monks that study quests. There is an entire chapter on Goblin Economicks with the best description of Marketplaces I have ever read. There is a Duke of Teatime and a Vicereine of Coffee who have many delightful children who are also coffee and tea types, and there's some other drinks in there somewhere, like the Dauphin of Gin, but they're not talked about much because this is a children's book. September and her companions--mostly the Night-Dodo and the shadows of her companions from the last book--travel through many whimsical different parts of Fairyland-Below and meet lots of whimsical characters, and it could have come off like it's ripping off classic kidlit but it's Cat Valente and instead it's an amazing jewel of a new addition to the whimsical kidlit canon. I love my classics like Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland and the original Wizard of Oz books (of which I read all 16, I think, or at least as many as I could get my hands on), and since I am not actually a heartless child but instead a sappy old lady of 30, there are parts of this book when I cried almost as hard as when Nibs said he wanted to buy his mother a cheque-book even though he doesn't know what a cheque-book is, and if you haven't heard me ramble on about Nibs' mother's cheque-book, it is something I have lots of Feels about. 

 

Anyway. I think there's more books! Hopefully it won't take me another 5 years to read them! Book 3 is going on my carefully curated and preplanned list of Things It's Acceptable To Buy At Readercon.