Jacket art: Sasha Vinogradova
‘“That’s not a machine, that’s magic,” said Jaime
“Same thing,” Tess said.’ (p 476))
A new York
I have been an admirer of Laura Ruby’s writing for some time and was very excited by the first book in her York trilogy, The Shadow Cipher, when it came out back in 2017. Now, following on from last year’s The Clockwork Ghost, her full story of three very special kids in a fantastically reimagined New York has been completed with Part 3, The Map of Stars. It has turned out to be just as devastatingly wondrous as I anticipated, just as entertaining, but far more meaningful too. It is not only funny, intriguing and compelling, but intelligent, complex and challenging.
In a context where I have to admit that I put down many new children’s books with a sigh of ‘same-old-same-old’, I value originality of invention very highly indeed. But of course it is not in itself enough to result in a great book. It needs to be matched by excellent writing and skilful storytelling. The York trilogy in its entirety displays all of these qualities in spades, as indeed does this last volume in its own right.
The Map of Stars has, in fact, many different strengths, almost any of which could have made for a fine book on its own, but which together add up to something very special indeed.
Mechanical magic
The phrase that comes most readily to mind in respect of Laura Ruby’s version of New York, and her tale of the shadow cipher, is ‘weird and wonderful’. Theo, in the story, quotes the well known phrase from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: ‘sometimes I believe as many as six impossible things before breakfast’. The sentiment is very apt.
Laura Ruby’s is not New York quite as we, or anyone, knows it. One of the delights of this trilogy is the amount of creative invention that has gone into building its world, or more specifically its city. Whilst this New York has reference points to the real location, it is embellished with many imaginative creations that are part steampunk, part Sci-fi, part fantasy. These are the supposed legacy from Theresa and Theodore Morningstarr, genius inventor twins and developers of the city from the 19th Century. These same twins are the supposed instigators of the ‘Old York Cypher’. Their amazing contribution to the city include the 'Underway', a weird part-subterranean railway, that ,when it emerges overground, loops and spirals spectacularly around the city's skyscrapers. Some of the buildings themselves have elevators that move horizontally and well as vertically and take irregular, erratic routes between floors. And then the streets are kept clean by 'rollers', mechanical creatures that emerge from traps in the roadway, gather the trash and roll it away, much in the manner of scarab beetles. The city is full of the magic of machines; it is imagination made (almost) concrete.
This fantastic world continues as a major presence in the last volume, although its future is increasingly and devastatingly under threat.
Smart kids
Together with a friend, Jaime, the twins Tess and Theo, who are the story’s young protagonists, are themselves amongst the unbounded delights of this trilogy. Beautifully realised as characters they leap off the page. Their banter is a frequent joy and sometimes laugh-aloud hilarious. They are also very distinct and 'real' as personalities. Theo is a boy who, in our world, could very well end up diagnosed as 'on the autistic spectrum'.
‘For the gazillionth time, Theo wondered what had happened to that blonde woman, where she had disappeared to . . . And then he wondered why he was thinking in nonsense words like gazillionth. Which was totally not a number.’ (p 38)
His twin, Tess, becomes so obsessed with totally speculative risks that she could almost be called 'paranoid'.
‘(She was) a whirlwind, a worrier, a jitterer, a heaver, a kicker. Her knees danced, her thoughts spun and knitted themselves into nightmares even when she was awake.’ (p 17)
Their friend, Jamie, living with his Grandmother, has to cope without parents, his mother dead and his father long-term absent.
Yet it is made easy for us as readers to identify with them, to care about what happens to them.
Other more minor characters are an equal joy. One of my absolute favourites is the eccentrically dressed young Cricket. In this third book, she is devastated by the loss of her pet raccoon, Karl. And not all of the best, or most significant characters are human. Jaime’s tiny robot, Ono, may only ever say two things, ‘Oh no!’ and ‘To the Land of the Kings’, but neither the story nor its outcome would be the same without him. And on top of all this, Tess and Theo have an odd, giant lynx-cat pet, who also plays a prominent role throughout.
At the start of this third volume, all the young characters are at a low ebb. ‘Nobody and nothing is fine any more.’ But then that is apt for the final part of a trilogy. There is a long way to go before things can be completely all right again, if they ever are, and an awfully big adventure awaits. It is also a completely gripping one. Although this is a third thick brick of a book in a row, like its predecessors it feels far too short a read.
Beyond puzzling
Within this very special setting, the first book started out as what felt like an example of a classic genre in American children’s literature, a puzzle solving adventure. Tess, Theo and Jaime seek to save the city they know by following the clues of the hitherto unsolved Old York Cypher. However, as the books unfold, an apparently simple trail of challenges segues into something quite other, something far more complex. Mystery is layered upon mystery, enigma on enigma and it is through the puzzle itself that the real conundrums of the book come to light. By this third instalment, more and more disturbs the children, and the reader, as the twins start to see connections between themselves and the Morningstarrs, as present and past become confusingly interlinked in ever darker and more complex ways. The children become increasingly uncertain about their role in events, even as the threat from shifting villainy becomes stronger and more deadly.
Clues and solutions seem to fall into place too neatly, almost of their own accord. Are the children in control or simply being controlled, and by who? What is happening to them becomes more the mystery than the mystery itself. It is all deliciously, thrillingly intriguing.
Perspectives
Contributing strongly to all this, Laura Ruby’s writing is a masterclass in complex storytelling. She shares the chapters of her narrative between the slightly different perspectives of her three protagonists. Sometimes she even shifts viewpoints further to those of other characters, good and bad. Occasionally she slips us backwards or forwards in time too. Some chapters contribute to sudden revisions of our understanding, or re-evaluation of characters and motives. Others only mystify us further. She even, at one point, allows us to share directly the experience of Cricket’s missing Racoon, Karl. But through it all she builds intricately towards a climax that shakes our foundations as readers as dramatically as it does those of the city.
Whose world is it anyway?
And yet there is still more to admire in this book. Laura Ruby, clearly enjoys working contemporary relevance into her reimagined reality, sometimes with wicked humour, sometimes with a kindly smile, and at other times with passionate commitment. More power to her pen for that. Some of her references are ‘in jokes’, some cultural allusions, and some political comment or important moral standpoints. Rampant capitalism certainly receives its deserved comeuppance, as does self-serving political ambition. Perhaps even more importantly, there are interwoven polemics on global warming, on abuse of the planet, on animal experimentation, on distorted history and on the insidious legacy of slavery. Some of its themes could not be more relevant to a world where black lives really must matter. Equally, the obviously heartfelt promotion of feminism is threaded through the fabric of the story, as are strongly positive models of multiculturalism, inclusion and tolerance. I did, wonder, ar one stage, whether the author is trying to cover too many of global society’s issues in one go. But then our children are growing up in a society that needs to adress all of these problems, so why should this not be reflected in a book? In any case, all of these issues are cleverly, often subtly, interwoven into the narrative and never disrupt the helter-skelter of the ever evolving and continually involving story. Hopefully its many messages will register and resonate with young readers and help them grow a better world that the one they inherit. Tess thinks she and they should try, as do we all.
On the lighter side, but important too, I trust they will recognise, and perhaps explore for themselves, some of the truly fine novels Cricket finds on her mom’s bookshelves. And the many fans of Anne Ursu (as I am, big time) will, I am sure, quickly recognise the title and plot borrowed for the movie that the twins watch with their father in Chapter 13. The original book is another well worth exploring, if readers have not already done so.
Weird and wonderful
But even all of this is not the whole shattering glory of York. As this third volume develops, the fantasy that has been lurking, on the edges of the story, starts seeping through its seams. Finally much of the seemingly impossible floods into the narrative, increasingly the only possible explanation,
One retort from the irrepressible young Cricket in deeply indicative:
‘“I don’t think the word ‘wackadoo’ is in the dictionary, dear,” said (her) mother.
“I’m not bound to the dictionary any longer, Mother. I’m not bound to anything. I am BOUNDLESS.”’ (p 118)
In a similar way, Laura Ruby is not bound by reality. She is UNREAL. Yet her characters, especially her young protagonists, are very grounded in human truth and her bizarre version of New York contains much that is more horrifically real than we might imagine. The wonderful Ursula K Le Guin wrote of science fiction/fantasy, ‘It is a strange realism, but it is a strange reality.’* Laura Ruby’s trilogy illustrates this with shattering potency. It is as brilliant as it is terrifying.
And if, in the end, this enigmatic story asks more questions that it answers, then what else could it do without being trite or sentimental? We all need to learn that all time is eternally present. But it is not easy. I am sure young readers will understand better than we do.
‘Maybe they were all the Cipher, were all the treasure. . . . Maybe they were all the treasure they ever needed. Maybe the world wasn’t perfect, and it wouldn’t be, no matter how many times they tried.
But that didn’t mean they shouldn’t try.’ (p 494)
Although a very different work, grounded in a very different culture, this trilogy is the closest I have come across to Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials, in terms of its scale and scope, its quality of imagination and writing, the depth of its multi-layered challenge and the commitment of its socio-moral-ethical intent.
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It is quintessentially about New York. But it is only about New York in so far as we are all New Yorkers.
Notes:
*In her essay The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction (now published TerraIgnota, 2019)
In York: The Map of Stars, Laura Ruby cleverly adapts the famous ‘Turk’, a hoax chess playing automaton, originally from the 18th Century, into an element of her shadow cipher. Out of interest, there is a fascinating and most entertaining children’s novel based more centrally on ‘The Turk’: Curiosity by Gary Blackwood.