The Blue Salt Road - Jan 29

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, and especially because of your family, and while there is something that you can do, other times – not so much. Instead, let us talk about Ms. Joanne M. Harris’ novel ‘THE BLUE SALT ROAD’, and I am warning you, there are spoilers ahead! Now, if the name sounds vaguely familiar, it because it is – we have discussed her other novels, ‘The Gospel of Loki’ and ‘The Testament of Loki’ a while back. What of this one?

It is an abrupt departure from her ‘Loki’ novels…mostly, as there is a reference to ‘nine worlds’ in the ‘Road’, which is a direct reference to the Norse mythology and its’ nine worlds, (look it up). That said, there is no other sign of the Norse in the ‘Road’, as instead it is focused on Celtic, or more precisely – Scottish – folklore, that of the selkies.

What are the selkies? In the Scottish folklore, they are beings that look like seals in the water and like humans on land, they are shapeshifters, and Mercedes Lackey’s ‘Elemental Masters’ series depicted them at length in a couple of earlier novels.

…As a matter of fact, there were several species of underwater humanoids that came into contact with ‘the Folk’, including the merrow, which is a typical mermaid/merfolk type of entity, (while in various RPGs it is the name of an aquatic ogre variety, weird), and the finnfolk, which don’t have anything to do with Finn the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy’s character, but are rather a variety of Fair Folk or elves, albeit they live under the sea. Both of those races are more powerful and more hostile towards humans than the selkies are, and they do not really appear in the ‘Road’, so they are not relevant to our discussion of the novel.

What is relevant here, then? Well, the novel isn’t just about ecology and living in harmony with nature – a large portion of the novel takes place abroad a whaling ship called the Kraken, (the italics belong to Ms. Harris), and how the novel’s protagonist, the male selkie, tries to fit in with the crew and failed, first unintentionally and then intentionally, finally sabotaging the ship and setting it afire – but we are getting carried away. The novel is also about male-female relationships – the twist is that Flora’s family, (she is the female lead of the novel), entrapped selkie men for three generations now – first her grandma, then her ma, and finally Flora herself. This process culminated in a girl named ‘Moire the Star’, but first let us acknowledge the direct mention of ‘the maiden, the mother and the crone’, which is a pagan trinity of a pagan Mother Goddess, (one of them, as there are several, and this one is more of Wicca tradition than anything else is). As the Star implies in her monologue of the novel’s epilogue, she is someone special, and she is destined for greatness. She is right, of course, but here we come to the novel’s flaw – not unlike the SW sequel trilogy, it had been rebooted, somehow.

Throughout most of the novel, Moire’s father interacted with a girl of his clan, the Grey Seals. (Apparently, this group of selkies transforms in grey seals, rather than any other seal species. Okay then). She was the Flounder to his Ariel, until she just vanishes from the pages of the book with nary a reference or an explanation as to what happened to her – and the Captain dies.

Now, for most of the ‘Road’, the Captain is really a non-entity, he is little more than a placeholder; he may be an authority figure, but nothing else; he is hard, callous, cruel, but not intentionally evil, not a villain, as Elsa and Anna’s grandfather was in ‘Frozen 2’, for example. And then Ms. Harris writes his death scene – he was about to shoot the selkie protagonist ‘cause the latter set the Kraken aflame, but his pistol exploded killing him instead – and the scurvy sea dog falls into the flames of his burning ship. Given how little he had mattered in the previous chapters, this sort of a deliberately written-out death scene is surprising and kind of stands out. Anything else?

The ‘Road’ quotes often pieces of ‘Child Ballad 113’ – one that is about the Great Selkie of Sule Skerry, except that one of those reference points has a typo and claims that it is ‘Child Ballad 133’ instead. It isn’t, for that ballad is about Robin Hood and his latest face-off with the Sherriff and you can be certain that neither Robin nor the Sherriff appear in the ‘Road’ – it’s a different story altogether. More importantly, it shows that while ‘Road’ is presented beautifully, complete with a lot of illustrations by Ms. Bonnie Helen Hawkins, there were some mistakes and issues in making it – the typo regarding the ‘Child Ballad’ is one of them, and the re-write is the other.

Now, I do not know what got re-written by Ms. Harris – the last part of the novel where the Captain died so dramatically and the selkie girl disappeared, only to be replaced by ‘the Star’ and her girl power, or the first part, with the selkie girl being an important part of the novel and the Captain is a non-entity, barely more than a placeholder. In either case, ‘THE BLUE SALT ROAD’ is a very impressive-looking book, beautifully illustrated and talking about not just the evils of whaling done in a fairy-tale-like manner, but also about the relationships between men and women and marriage, (as Flora’s grandma says, they don’t call it ‘wedlock’ for nothing, emphasis on the ‘lock’, cough), and about freedom and captivity within a relationship as well as about love, (though again, that element vanishes in the last part of the novel, only to resurface, sort of, in the epilogue-monologue, pun intended). Yes, there is the gender inversion of the stereotype, in the folklore canon, the selkie is usually the wife that is married to a human husband and once she gets her seal-skin back, she leaves for the sea and never comes back. There are gender-flipped versions of it, but again, once the selkie gets the skin, they leave forever. Here, though, it is Flora’s father leaves with the baby Star, and Flora and her husband get a second chance to get it all right between them. Let us wish them luck!

And as for us back in real life? It sucks and sometimes you cannot even control it, because of reasons. Therefore let us at least enjoy ‘THE GREAT SALT ROAD’, as it is a fun book, especially if not taken too seriously, (kind of like the second ‘Frozen’ film, remember?).

…This is it for now, see you all soon!

Testament of Loki - Dec 13

To continue the topic about 2018’s novels, let us…not make a stink like a mink, (cough, I thought this was funny), but talk about… ‘The Testament of Loki’, for a change. Written by Joanne Harris, this…actually has nothing to do with Disney, MCU, or Riordan, at least not too much.

What is this novel? It is a sequel to an earlier ‘The Gospel of Loki’ novel. That one was yet another retelling of the Norse myths, just one done from the point of view of Loki, from the beginning to Ragnarok. That is it, really, as far as fantasy novels go, this is as basic as you can get; whereas the Greco-Roman myths never had a proper conclusion, they have sort of faded away by the time of Christ, the Norse myths actually did: the Ragnarok would come, the old world and practically everyone will die – good, bad and ugly – and there will be some sort of a new age, a new world, and everything and everyone will be new. The end, and has vague echoing similarity with both monotheism – Judaism, Christianity, even Islam – and dualism, such as Zoroastrianism. Jolly good, but then we get ‘The Testament of Loki’, and this is where the novels change.

On one hand, ‘Testament’ is a YA novel, not unlike those of Riordan or J-Ro. In the first half of ‘Testament’, Loki escapes the afterlife via a video game of all things, takes over a body of a teenage girl and eventually helps her come to grips with her identity, fix her life, find her backbone, etc. – a not too different story from the other YA novels, even the LJ trilogy that became briefly popular during the summer of 2018 due to the movie made from the first novel. Now, of course, those books can be found in various stores, offered at a discount, but this is how the glory of the world passes.

And on the other hand, ‘Testament’ in the second half is Loki hopping all over dimensions, doing his best to stay ahead from Odin, Gullveig-Heid, Mimir, and even Thor – and he succeeds as he gets to be reborn as a new person at the novel’s end. Here, the tone of ‘Testament’ shifts from a typical YA to something more along the lines of Neil Geiman, with some Lovecraft thrown in, purposefully or not. In the second half, ‘Testament’ becomes one crazy ride of a novel, (on Sleipnir, no less!), and the only thing spoiling it is Loki’s…no, not so much narcissism, as his complete lack of understanding when he should fall silent and not make it all about him.

…Yeah, good luck with that – whether it’s Marvel or not, Loki always makes it about him; in A: IW movie, he dies, supposedly. Cough. He already ‘died’ in various films, including the ‘Thor: Dark World’ movie, so good luck with that as well. Loki has to keep on moving, even if it is just his mouth, because otherwise? He just might stop existing and explode/die/etc. However, in ‘Testament’, this attitude of the Trickster becomes exhausting, and people may stop rooting for him and just wait for the novel to end, which it does, as Loki had tricked everyone, outmaneuvered everyone, and gets to be reborn as a new person in a new world, where he gets a much expected break from activity, because even he as a baby cannot move around much, (well, not at first). Somehow, despite his, and his author’s, best intentions, the readers are not rooting from him as much as they did in the beginning of ‘Testament’ anymore. Ms. Harris, who had created this version of Loki, might have succeeded a bit too well in making him into an anti-hero, and as such, he is hard to root for in the novel’s end.

Oh, and the YA human characters of ‘Testament’? Yes, they get largely abandoned/dismissed by the second part of the novel, which decreases the novel’s impact on one hand, and on the other makes ‘Testament’ almost into two novels – one that is Loki’s adventure among the modern YA Americans, and the other which is Loki doing Odin’s bidding and rebuilding the old world, building a new one from scratch, etc. Yes, this is not unlike Ms. Cervantes ‘Storm Runner’ novel, which is also really two novels stitched into one, and we have discussed Ms. Cervantes’ ‘Storm Runner’ and their relationship with Mr. Riordan and his PJ-verse the last time. Now let’s just admit that ‘Storm Runner’, (and ‘Aru Shah’) is supposed to expand the PJ-verse and bring new literary life into it; whether they succeeded is another story – ‘Aru Shah’ feels completely unrelated to PJ-verse, while ‘Storm Runner’ feels like a weird imitation of the original, and it is not even so very flattering. ‘Testament’, on the other hand-

…On the other hand, Ms. Harris was never a part of Mr. Riordan’s PJ-verse; ‘Gospel’ was a simple retelling of the Norse myths, while ‘Testament’ is a more experimental piece, (which is mostly successful, too). ‘Gospel’ was an alternative to PJ-verse’s ‘Magnus’ subsection, and while it was never as successful as PJ-verse novels, it still worked. So has ‘Testament’ – because it cruised the coattails of its’ predecessor and because it dips its’ toe enough into the YA waters to swim in the wake of passing of HP novels, and PJ-verse novels, and similar novels; what will happen when Ms. Harris decides to write a sequel to ‘Testament’ is another story.

Of course, this in itself is an open question; Patricia Briggs’ novels – Mercedes Thompson and co. – are even more successful and popular than Ms. Harris’ books are, (about Loki and otherwise), but lately Ms. Briggs seems to have gone onto a downswing: lately there are no new novels by her, which is strange, since the last ones were some of the best. Of course, maybe she just does not want to write books anymore, for whatever reasons – in real life she owns a ranch, (or something along those lines), and doesn’t need income from books; she possibly writes (wrote) MT and co. novels for entertainment, and if she doesn’t want to write, she won’t. The end for MT and her universe. Anything else?

…Yes, there is a rumor that a new MT novel is coming in May 2019, but we will have to wait and see if anything comes out of it. For the moment, MT novels are on a hiatus…but we got plenty of other novels, including ‘The Testament of Loki’, to fill in the gap in the meanwhile.

This is it for this time. See you all soon!