Now | 2024 | Previous | Articles | Road Essays | Road Reviews | Author | Black Authors | Title | Source | Age | Genre | Series | Format | Inclusivity | LGBTA+ | Artwork | WIP |
|
Bluecrowne: 11/08/18
Bluecrowne by Kate Milford was originally kickstarted in 2014, right around the same time as Greenglass House. It was written as an Easter egg for fans willing to let her experiment with her world. The success of Greenglass House and Ghosts of Greenglass House created a need for the publisher of those books to reissue her Kickstarter. Bluecrowne and The Left-Handed Fate tie together the far ends of her universe: The Boneshaker and The Broken Lands to the Nagspeake / Greenglass House books. Milford says in the afterword that Bluecrowne serves to explain why the original family chose not to live in their beautiful house. In this regard, I am reminded of The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (and the recent ten episode adaptation for Netflix). Lansdegown is like Hill House, except that it is happy. Both are impossible to navigate places. Both are haunted. Both are ever vigilant. Both are self aware. I will write more on these two houses at a later date, once I have finished re-reading Jackson's novel. For the road narrative project, I debated with myself over how to best describe the protagonist. For the majority of the book, there are two: Melusine, aka Lucy, and her half brother Liao. While they do the majority of the heavy lifting in this novel, their ultimate success wouldn't be possible without Xiaoming Bluecrown. In this regard, like Bruja Born (2018) by Zoraida Córdova, strength is found in family. With family being key, this novel falls into the 33CCFF category: family, uhoria, cornfield. The Greenglass House books both fall into the home and maze categories but this novel takes place more in Nagespeake and the land and water between the town and the house. Napspeake as it sits on the water and bleeds into the woodlands on shore, counts as a a cornfield (in the Canadian, tkaronto, sense). The uhoria aspect comes from the Kairos Mechanism. Namely, Nagspeake and the people who live there have ties to other places and times that are nonlinear (or if you will, Ozma time instead of Oz time). Five stars Comments (0) |