TBR: The Explosionist
When I wrote about Farthing, I wondered why so many alternate histories take World War II as their point of departure from our world. In The Explosionist, Jenny Davidson takes a different tack. This story is set in the 1930s on the possible eve of a second world war, but the two sides are an apparently fascist united Europe (unified by a Napoleon who won at Waterloo) and a "Hanseatic League" of Scotland, Denmark, Sweden, and Russia. Oh, and Sophie, the heroine, is a somewhat skeptical medium who really can talk to the spirits of the dead.
I ordered this book because I read Davidson’s terrific blog, Light Reading, and her broad reading and lively interest in the world shows through. The plot of the book drew me in, and kept me turning the pages, but it’s the subtle jokes and suggestions about the world that I expect will keep with me — touches like the Wittgenstein Uncertainty Principle, and the phone having been invented by Alexsandr Bell. (A main topic of the book is terrorist attacks — which certainly existed well before the 1930s, although I’m not sure when they started being called "terrorist" attacks — the English word itself apparently dates to the French revolution and the reign of terror.)
Until I clicked through from Davidson’s blog to Amazon, I didn’t realize that The Explosionist was being sold as a young adult novel. It almost stopped me from buying the book, but I’m glad it didn’t. Davidson says that she didn’t particularly think of it as YA, but they were the editors most interested in it. She says that Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy was one of her mental models, but it actually reminds me far more of the Sally Lockhart books.
My one complaint is that the girl on the cover has long hair, and the first page of the book says that Sophie has "straight black hair bobbed short with a fringe to keep it tidy."
July 28th, 2008 at 6:20 am
Yes, I quite loved the cover until I read the book! I don’t see The Explosionist getting enough buzz, outside of those of us who read Jenny’s blog. What can we do??