After a long fallow period in my reading of recent children's fantasy, finds that I considered high quality were starting to feel like hen's teeth. It was therefore a delight to discover the publication of the latest novel in Sheila Rance's quite brilliant 'magical reality' sequence, captivatingly started in Sun Catcher and beautifully followed up with Storm Chaser. Also set in her imagined version of the Bronze Age, this third volume, Story Singer, is no disappointment. In fact quite the contrary, it is an entrancing read and full confirmation that this sequence (which, at least as yet,appears to have been given no portmanteau title) is one of the truly great works of children's fantasy fiction. It scores amazingly highly for the quality of both its imagination and its writing and must surely become a classic alongside the likes of Diana Wynne Jones's Dalemark quartet, a work to which it seems cousin, albeit a distant one. Perhaps it is the hand-loom weaving of a magical story coat, in actuality and as image, that prompts this comparison. Certainly such a garment features prominently in The Spellcoats and quite magically pervades the whole of Sheila Rance's silk-crafted story. However broad comparison is not intended to the detrement of either work, exactly the reverse.
There are elements of Story Singer and it's precursors which seem to put them into the category of high fantasy - and the strap line on the cover referencing Game of Thrones reinforces this. There is certainly a kingdom with an unstable political situation. Despite young protagonist,Maia, having established a claim to the throne by proving herself 'Sun Catcher' she is still without a crucial 'Story Singer'. Her warrior-weaver father too is without the wherewithal to weave the mystical silk which is the fabric of the kingdom's power in every sense. Maia's scheming and malevolent sister is set to re-establish her own power through her thought-stealing daughter, Caspia. With her fierce husband she has enlisted the support of the half-beast Wolf Kin and their vicious Wulfen. Against them are arraying the forces of the noble Eagle Hunters and the Amazon-like Archers. All is set for monumental conflict. This is indeed the stuff of high fantasy.
However this basic 'goodies v baddies' scenario is filled with much that is far more subtle and ambiguous. I hope that the Game of Thrones reference helps to find readers for this wonderful creation but it is really far too crude and superficial a comparator. Whilst large scale conflicts and their consequences do background and drive the story, and come to the fore in its climax, they are in many important ways not what this story is about. It is the story of four young people. It is the story of Maia, who has only very newly found her talent and destiny as the Sun Catcher, of Kodo the boy who used to be a sea lizard rider, of Var the theif-assassin, and of the thought-stealing Caspia, Maia's rival for the queenly role. It is in many ways their personal, almost intimate story. It is a story of personalities and ambivalent relationships; of friendships and rivalries; of their shifting patterns of trust and mistrust in each other. Like other great works of children's fiction, it is about each discovering who they are, what they can and could do; of making choices about who they want and need to be.
It is a beautiful, intimate, often moving story, told in a kaleidoscopically fractured narrative, with constantly shifting viewpoints which illuminate each character with ever new insights. At the same time it is a mesmerisingly beautiful piece of writing which almost miraculously melds everything into an undulating, lyrical flow. This masterly author's language and thoughts continually create provoking images, often poetic in their intensity. She captures a world and vision that shimmers and shifts with the same elusive magical voice as the whispering silk which is one of her stories pervasive motifs.
Through all of these books Sheila Rance has wonderfully evoked her period and setting, drawing on much detailed research, but feeding it organically into her storytelling. Landscape, and her young characters' sensitivity to it, plays a very significant part in all these books. In the earlier ones it was often the sea, the shore and the cliffs. Here it is more the sands and scrubland of desert that are central and to which Maia and others, through the author herself, so sensitively respond. It is really quite magical writing.
By the end of this volume the story has reach a satisfying conclusion, although it is not so much the choices of its most apparent key characters, Maia and Kodo, which in the end precipitate this resolution, but those of the assassin-cum-theif, Var. Fortunately too, though, there are enough loose ends to promise more to come. Amongst others, Caspia's assisted escape and Maia's fascination with the desert rock drawings which tell of either her past or her future leave doors open to potential further tales of this world and its young 'magicians'. I sincerely hope they will be written soon.
Once again this book is greatly enhanced by quite thrilling art work from the highly talented Geoff Taylor. Some chapter headers are clearly new, whilst others character drawings establish continuity from the previous stories in the sequence. Too often I find that illustrations, particularly those of key characters, spoil works of this kind by failing to meet my imagined expectations. Not so here. Geoff Taylor's drawings, evocative but not over delineated, really do add greatly to both the atmosphere and aesthetic of the book, without impinging at all on my own mental picturing.
As a avid collector as well as a voracious reader of children's books, I have only one gripe. It is a tragedy that the usually excellent publisher, Orion,has not produced a hardback of this book, even though they did for the previous two. Please can we have a completion of the set. As a contemporary classic of the genre this sequence really needs preserving in durable first edition.
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