A Review of A Sterkarm Tryst by Penny Dolan

Penny Dolan is a wonderful writer whose books include the gripping and beautiful romp, 'A Boy Called M.O.U.S.E'.  So I'm thrilled to have this generous review from her, as she is no slouch in the writing stakes and knows what she is talking about.

 You can read my review of A Boy Called M.O.U.S.E here.

 

 

A STERKARM TRYST by Susan Price, reviewed by Penny Dolan

Susan Price’s long-awaited YA novel A STERKARM TRYST has now been published. 

So, because I loved the world of the 16^th Century Border Reivers that was brilliantly evoked in the two earlier titles - THE STERKARM HANDSHAKE and A STERKARM KISS - I bought a copy of this third novel, and was not disappointed. 

Earlier events and confrontations are woven lightly into the plot, allowing new readers and re-readers slip easily into this particular storyline. This is science fiction with excellent time-travelling!

The trilogy has an interesting premise: James Windsor, a late 21^st Century entrepreneur, intended to use his company’s Time Tube to colonise and exploit the unspoilt lands of the past. 

Windsor thought his men would easily secure such a backward territory - and then they met the Sterkarms. Of all the feuding families in the Debatable Lands, the Sterkarms are the most treacherous: everyone knows that a Sterkarm handshake might promise friendship with the right hand while the left hand carries a blade to slide between your ribs. 

At first, the Sterkarms treat the 21^st century intruders with wary respect, deciding these strangers must be Elves. After all, they can appear and disappear, dress in unknown materials, and carry magic pills that take away pain. And from these "Elvenkind" springs the relationship that stands at the heart of the novels.

Andrea Mitchell, a 21st Century anthropologist, finds the love of her life in Per Sterkarm, the family heir, and at the start of THE STERKARM TRYST, she has come through time to her lover again, though uncertain of any welcome.

Known as his "Entraya", his Elf-May, she has a hard task. She has to warn Per and the Sterkarm family that a deadly new enemy has entered their lands. Windsor has time-travelled a group of Sterkarms from an almost parallel time dimension into this one. These are warriors who know this wild landscape as they do, and who fight with matching ferocity and who look just as they do. They will know all the Sterkarm tricks, and Windsor is behind them.

How can Andrea even explain this phenomenon? 

How can a Sterkarm attack another to whom - it seems - they owe loyalty? 

And how, I wondered, can a writer manage two almost-identical casts?

Susan Price does. Carefully, scene by scene, she moves the action forward, resolving what the reader wants resolved, and ending with treachery getting what it deserves. The headings keep the story straight and satisfying in its conclusions.

However, I must say that the plot was not the only thing that made A STERKARM TRYST a compelling experience for me. Within the storytelling, I heard rich echoes of the traditions, superstitions and legends of the Border Ballads, as well as the languages and voices of the region and its past. Humour is there too, within the pages, as well as moments when the differences between the present and the past are suddenly very evident.

Moreover, the dramatic landscape of the book is recognisably that of the Borders, an area of wild uplands and uncertain weather, a place where cattle-raids were then part of the culture, and where hunger was a constant threat.

I enjoyed being within that way of life, following the descriptions of an active community and culture, along with glimpses of cooking methods, housekeeping and textiles, herbal lore, fear and superstition. Captured in the writing too, was the importance of respectful behaviour and right words and acting according to your status: the sense of a time and place where any perceived insult might mean death.

A STERKARM TRYST feels a very physical story. It moves through camps and hovels and crowded stone towers, past the stink of unwashed clothes and the gutting of meat and the hard lives and gory deaths of men and women: this is not a benign or moral fairy-tale. Besides, survival depends on a reputation for cunning and treachery, especially when there are two lots of Sterkarms riding out, as well as Windsor’s thugs and their 21st Century weapons.

Yet, reading the book from the comfort of home - and despite all the violence - it is hard not to admire the warmth and energy and the bonds of family loyalty and protection within the Sterkarm clan. Like Andrea/Entraya, I found the Sterkarms beguiling, and welcomed the many characters that Susan Price has created – Toorkild, Lady Isobel, Sweet Milk, Gobby, Mistress Crosar, Joan Grannam, Davy, Cho and more - each one entirely convincing, for all their faults.

Especially that blue-eyed, fair-haired hero, Per May Sterkarm. And Cuddy. I have to mention them. Read the book and you’ll discover why.

Penny Dolan.

All three titles, including THE STERKARM TRYST, are published by OpenPress in a handsomely-matching set of covers or as e-books. 

 

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Review: 1000 Years of Annoying The French by Stephen Clarke

I came across this book in the bathroom of my esteemed colleague

1000 Years of Annoying The French - Clarke

and fellow Author Electric, Karen Bush, while I was staying with her and the whippets.
          I dipped into it and found it so amusing and interesting that I bought my own e-copy.

We have been, we are, and I trust we always will be, detested by the French. - Duke of Wellington.

          It is full of hints and tips on how to annoy the French - and some account of how they have succeeded in annoying us.

The English, by nature, always want to fight their neighbours for no reason... From the Journal d'un Bourgeois de Paris, written during the Hundred Years War.

          The thousand years begins, of course, with 1066, the only memorable date in English history, as any fule kno. Stephen Clarke immediately destroys the French's sad illusion that they were the last foreigner to successfully invade us. They weren't - and anyway, the Normans weren't French, they were Vikings, and we already had plenty of them.
          For a thousand years, Stephen Clarke is always amusing and very often surprising - I had no idea that French Canadians had such a long history of oppression, mostly by the French. Nor that the Cajuns of the American South are descended from those same troubled French Canadians, who it seems were never allowed to rest in any place very long.
          I was also enlightened on the matter of De Gaulle and why he seemed to be so heartily disliked by all my relatives who had lived through the war. I've never taken much interest in the war that immediately preceded my lifetime and had supposed that De Gaulle was disliked simply because he was French and pursued France's interests - as was his business. Clarke's book made me think that there may have been other reasons. For one, the man was an idiot. (That should be annoying.)
          Clarke's also keen to tell us that champagne and the guillotine were both invented by the English, and that all French wine is, in fact, American.
          Clarke is obviously fluent in French and knowledgable about their customs and history, but I did sometimes get the impression - whether he intended it or not - that he genuinely disliked them and was happy to encourage us to annoy them.
          I'm sure I'm wrong on this.
          But I'm happy to recommend this book - it's a good read and you end by knowing a lot more about Anglo-French history than you thought you were going to learn.

1000 Years of Annoying the French by Stephen Clarke