Jo Walton's Half a Crown

[mrissa]

So, full disclosure here: I received this book in review copy from Tor (which is why I can review it on the first day it's out), and Jo is a friend of mine.

But sometimes one's friends write good books, and that's what's happened here. Half a Crown is very much the culmination of a series. I don't recommend that you read it without Farthing and Ha'penny, or that you read them out of order -- this is definitely a series where order matters. But since I strongly recommend that you read Farthing and Ha'penny, this is not actually a problem.

Half a Crown is farther down the alternate history road, set in a 1960 where Britain has been allied with Germany and Japan for more than a decade. Elvira Royston, the child of one of the previous characters, has grown to be a debutante, and she takes her fascist surroundings for granted in a very real, sickening way. Carmichael is still the other point of view character. While I liked the female perspective in each book, Carmichael is the anchor of the series, and he is all too much aware of the ways in which he doesn't -- couldn't -- hold completely solid. And we have a bit more of Jack here, and the ways in which Jack anchors the series, too, interest me, but I don't want to post spoilers of them on the first day the book is available.

So what can I say without spoilers? Half a Crown has a very clear-eyed look at how people get by, how people manage, in their circumstances whatever those circumstances are -- and how difficult it sometimes is to break out of that and make things better. How difficult, but also how necessary. People's relationships really shine in Half a Crown, particularly in contrast with a few other things I've read lately, where the characters seem to start the book as little figurines without any connections to anyone else. Elvira is mostly an orphan, which too many SF and fantasy writers use as shorthand for "I don't want to deal with preexisting relationships for this character," but for Elvira it's the opposite: not only are Carmichael and Betsy important in her life, and Betsy's parents and Nanny, but also the Evanses and the people who ran her school and so on. Elvira's orphanhood does not give her a blank slate of a past, but a rich and complicated one already at the age of 18.

The...let's see, avoiding spoilers: the scene where the characters are celebrating a holiday made me cry, not where you'd think but before that.

Also if British publishers don't want to buy it with the ending it has now, they are not just crazy (which they have been all along, not buying this series, uff da) but also stupid.

This is the kind of science fiction I want when I talk about wanting hopeful science fiction: I don't want the books that pretend that there's no such thing as authoritarianism or prejudice, that decent people never do things they're ashamed of, that standards of decency can't slip so easily. I want books that acknowledge those things and work through them. Half a Crown pays dearly for its happy ending, but it does get there, and rightly so.

Comments

[pixelfish.livejournal.com]

Man, I'm excited to see Half a Crown come out. Can't wait.

[apis-mellifera.livejournal.com]

There's one bit at the end that completely destroyed me when I read it.

Really, really, really good stuff. Hard books to read--and I don't know if I'll ever be able to reread them--but also necessary books to read.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I had the opposite reaction on the reread front: it's only that I'm in the middle of two other things and have a stack of library books that's stopped me from going right back to reread Farthing.

[apis-mellifera.livejournal.com]

I think that if I had more free time to reread things, it would be in the reread pile. But since that time is so limited, I tend to fall into comfort reading instead.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I truly hope they're never anybody's comfort reading.

[apis-mellifera.livejournal.com]

It takes all kinds, I expect.

I do find passages of Half a Crown heartening, but that's different than comfort. At least for me it is.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the reminder that it's out. I must get a copy immediately, if not sooner. Luckily, we have a book store here at the U.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I always think it's odd how characters can have no connections at all. People are always in a matrix of people. And one of the things I was wanting to do was show how for most people most of their life is the way it is, they worry about passing exams and what they're reading and whether people love them much more than they worry about the state of the world, however bad the state of the world is.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yes. You did that.

I think it was unfortunately clear because I was reading jaylake's Mainspring when Half a Crown arrived (and am now reading the rest of it, since I've finished Half a Crown), and for all the things Jay is doing well in that, he's doing the Orphan Boy With No Encumbrances thing. And I found I bounced off of that part of it really hard. It's not that it's the worst example ever, it's that it was the proverbial straw for me, and I had to work at not going, "Right, that's it, I don't care," and walking off and missing all the flying savage mechanical world goodness.

[carbonel]

In your second paragraph, where you say "someone's," I think you mean "sometimes."

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Fixed. I'm sure that's a relief to everyone.

[keilexandra]

I don't recommend that you read it without Farthing and Ha'penny, or that you read them out of order

Eek, that's a problem. I'm due to receive HALF A CROWN for reviewing, and with school I haven't the time to read either of the previous books.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I would say, "MAKE the time," but I know that's not useful in your actual life that really exists outside the internets. Meep. Do get to Farthing as soon as you can, though. Very worth it.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I did test it on readers who hadn't read either of the others and it made sense to them even if they didn't get the whole impact, so you ought to be OK.