The Saturday Morning Post (No. 108)

 

Well, I reached the last two of the  currently released books of Beth Brower's The Unselected Journals of Emma M Lion series. So it is time to sum the series up.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below. 

The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion Vol 7 & 8  by Beth Brower  A & A

This series is in the top five series of books I've ever read. I don't really know how to rank them in any sort of order; my mind doesn't work that way. But I will say this, the last time I can remember looking forward to the evening to read a book (I had to force myself to read them only in the evening.) was when I was reading  Islandia, 30 years ago. Back then, I'd pop myself a bowl of popcorn and go off to that continent in the South Atlantic, and the isolated nation of Islandia, that Austin Wright made so very real. It was just the same this time, but without the popcorn. Can't eat popcorn late at night, like I did in my youth. 

As I mentioned in my earlier reviews of the first books, each book covers 2 months of Emma's life, beginning in March of 1883 when she is 20 years old. The latest book released takes her story through June 1884. The first book is only 106 pages long, a novella, and the second grows to 144 pages. By the third we're up to 213 pages and by the last one they've grown to run 335 pages. This reflect not only how much more happens to Emma and her friends, but how much deeper we get to know Emma and her friends. One of the features of this ongoing story is that all of the characters have a backstory, all of them mysterious backstories, that we only get tantalizing glimpses of their secrets in each installment which only adds depth to the characters. As well as the depth of the storytelling and plots. Broker has said that she has an overarching plot in mind above all a great variety of smaller plots in this planned 18 to 24 volume series, i.e. one covering 3 to 4 years in the life of Emma. She hopes it will be fun for readers on reaching the end of her story to go back and see all the little hints that she has littered along the way.

There is a romance plot line in the later books, but it is tentative, and  much could change in the remaining 10 plus books, to keep everyone guessing who she might end up with in the end. I have my favorite, but I'll just have to see... or more likely, not. 

She's released 8 books in six years, but with each growing longer, I don't expect to be around to read the last one, and that's fine with me. I don't like happily ever after endings, and I'm quite comfortable with this series never reaching the end for me with everything tied up in a neat bow. That's not how life works.

Despite this series being set in the real world of London of the 1883-86, there is an slight element of fantasy, of magic, in this world. Just a touch of it, but it's there, taken as a matter of course in the London neighborhood of St Crispian's. This is not too surprising as Brower is the author of several other fantasy novels.

These books have had a strong impact on me - both in enjoyment, and in inspiration. I've almost always used an episodic structure to my books, a running journal-like structure, without being journal entries, but almost always with an end in sight. In these Emma books, there is seemingly no grand end in sight. They simply recount the days as they happen. They'll be an inspiration for me going forward.

Edit: Since I penned this piece way back in February, I must confess to having been slowly re-reading this series, a little each evening. In the previous post I mentioned the long shadow these books have cast, and they still do. Everything I read - or rather how I feel about what I read - gets compared to these books and none have quite compared to these books. Sometimes books just go "click" and it's just "it". This is a great, especially when you have the books on hand to reread.

In addition, in rereading these books I had an epiphany in how to write, or rather finding an element of writing that I never realized was as important. I will save that insight for my regular blog, this coming week.

Just as with the Brother Cadfael series, all I can do is sing their praise, and hope that  some of you will give them a try, and you'll enjoy them as much as I have. Just to show how much I loved them, I bought the paperback books so that I can reread them, perhaps before the next volume comes out. I'm looking forward to that. 

Edit: As I mentioned above, it only took about a month to start that reread... And I enjoy them just as much.