Another wonderful find and the start of what promises to be a truly great children's fantasy trilogy.
This book will I think, have great appeal for many imaginative older children as well as those in their early teens. It deserves popular success as well as appreciation for the significant literary achievement it is. However it is currently being marketed with a strap line, 'Game of Thrones for a younger audience'. As often with such claims I don't find this particularly helpful in understanding its nature or appreciating it qualities. It certainly is a young persons' version of the 'high fantasy' genre, very common on adult fiction shelves, but Games of Thrones, known best for its complex political plotting and graphic descriptions of physical violence and sex, is certainly not the comparator I would have chosen. Sun Catcher is very special for what it is and surely does not need making out to be something it is not.
It has precedents in children's literature which are perhaps more helpful for giving it a context, even if not for marketing. Although clearly fantasy and not history, the book is reminiscent of the great works of Rosemary Sutcliff in its powerful recreation of past time and place. In its vivid imagining of a fantasy world with strong young protagonists and rather enigmatic magic it recalled for me Diana Wynn Jonse's wonderful Dalemark novels, particularly The Spellcoats. To come much more up to date, it felt to have a number of features in common with Michelle Paver's Chronicles of Ancient Darkness (see previous post), even though it seems aimed at a slightly older audience than her stunningly innovative sequence. All of which is not to imply that Sun Catcher is unduly derivative; it is very much its own book whilst drawing valuably of aspects of children's writing tradition.
Sited as it is within a high fantasy genre, Sun Catcher is not particularly original in concept. Its basic plot, an 'exiled' young protagonist, Maia, discovering that she has supernatural powers and a key role to play in displacing evil rule in her home country, is not particularly innovative. Where the book scores, and scores very highly indeed, is in the vivid imagining of its world and people and the most skilful telling of its story. In short it is a rattling good read.
A great deal of the book's strength comes from its world being imagined within a very richly interesting historical period, the Bronze Age. The author has clearly researched this epoch in some depth and recreated it as a vibrant and vivid milieu for her tale. Drawing further inspiration from this period in different geographical locations she has created rich and diverse fictional communities, including cave-housed cliff dwellers, 'untouchable' inhabitants of a costal stilt village, marsh-living horse breeders, and a band of bow-armed warrior women. To this world she has very skilfully and subtly added a relatively small number of intriguingly enigmatic 'magical' elements, including the large fighting sea lizards of the stilt dwellers, the singing silk woven by Maia's father and the prescient powers of 'The Watcher'. Cleverly, Sheila Rance introduces these without great explanation, presenting them, as they would have been, as part of the accepted everyday experience of her characters.
Another very salient and attractive element of the story comes in the intimate, sometimes almost magical, bond of understanding between a number of the human characters and particular animals. But it is the human characters themselves, particularly, but not exclusively, the younger ones who make the book so special. For they are emphatically not storybook hero-types but very real-feeling human beings. They are uncertain and confused, they get angry, they feel jealous, they make mistakes and wrong choices, they sometimes behave badly. This makes them so much easier to identify with and ultimately so much more likeable and engrossing.
Wisely too, whilst immediately engaging, the author still takes plenty of time in the early part of the book to establish her settings and relationships. She allows us to get to know her principal characters in their 'home' setting. This means that when, almost halfway through, Maia starts to discover her own special powers and leads the cast of characters into a far larger world of terrifying and sometimes violent action, we really care what happens to them.
From that point on the pace of the narrative is breathtaking, intensified by being recounted from diverse character viewpoints. Its ultimate conclusion is all the more potent and poetic for being succinctly encapsulated rather than described in detail. Of course many threads in this magical weave are left dangling; this is the first of a trilogy after all. A most intriguing and promising one it is too.
The recent paperback of this title has been issued with what, to my eyes, is a rather ugly cover, but then others probably know more about marketing such books than I do. Hovever the front is in startling contrast to the outstanding internal illustrations, by the wonderful Geoff Taylor, which capture the character of the story brilliantly. (http://www.geofftaylor-artist.com/galleries/illustrations/author/title/Sun%20Catcher )
I sincerely hope that this cover does not prevent the book from attracting the wide and appreciative young readership it deserves. It is much more of a magic historical adventure, Wolf Brother for slightly older children', than it is a 'teen romance'. Although its chief protagonist is a girl in her very early teens, it has at least two young boys in principal roles too, lots of action, deep friendships and cold emnities, but virtually no girl-boy love interest as such. In fact Maia several times makes it clear that she feels unready for such relationships. There is no reason at all why this will not appeal to boys as well as girls; certainly to those of an imaginative disposition, of which there are many.
Sun Catcher inhabits a very familiar genre but totally refreshes it with rich, original imagination and skillful writing. Its character drawing is exceptional and its narrative completely engrossing. It is high fantasy for young readers and great reading for any age. Just as Maia catches the light of the sun so this book catches the power and potency of story. If other parts of the trilogy turn out to be as strong as the first, then this work will be another that deserves a place amongst the greats of children's fantasy.
It is often most difficult to sustain interest in the middle period of an undertaking, be it in life or literature. At one end is the excitement, the enthusiasm of meeting, of starting, of discovering and at the other the satisfaction of resolution, fulfilment (or disappointment) and the poignancy of farewell. If energy is going to flag is perhaps most likely to be in the middle. In trilogy novels too it is often the middle volume that is most likely to meander and to have little apparent purpose beyond filling a gap between the first book and the last, in the story and on the shelf.
Sun Catcher is such an engaging, exciting opening read that it was always going to be difficult to follow. So it is a considerable achievement, and a testament to the rapidly emerging writing talent of Sheila Rance, that Storm Chaser does not disappoint in any way. This particular wonderful beginning now also had a hugely enjoyable middle.
Many of the qualities of Sun Catcher are continued and developed here. The author's prose writing remains lucid and is perhaps even taughter than before. Her many short, strong sentences are relieved with occasional more flowing ones and the effect is both vivid in evocation and compelling in narrative drive. It is often quite beautiful too; writerly craft at its best, deployed in clear but unobtrusive service of its intent.
The Bronze Age based setting continues to be convincingly exploited with its addition of magical elements, like the singing silk, and fantastical ones, like the sea lizards, still intriguingly interwoven. But again it is the many characters, especially the young protagonists, who are the most engagingly developed. The story line sometimes lurches from one dramatic incident to another but this just reinforces the psychological journeys of Maia, Kodo and Razek (the Storm Chaser of the title) who are thrashing about trying to find their true roles in life. Notably, this search extends even after, as in the case of Maia and now Razek, they have discovered their titular identities. They continue to act in convincingly fallible ways, and are all the more endearing for it. In fact, in this book, both Maia and Kodo make misguided choices, causing serious harm to innocent others, an eagle and the young Zena respectively. Their considerable regret and guilt in itself becomes a further catalyst for development.
Other intriguing characters are added too, not least Zena herself, Caspia, the thought stealer, and the 'rat boy', Var. The beautifully drawn Watcher, a character something in the wizard mould, although of course here female, comes more to the fore in this book and looks set to play an even more prominent role in the next. And if the 'evil' characters such as the former queen, Elin, and the Marsh Lord, Helmek, are rather more one-dimensional, this is because they are driven by unalloyed self-interest. Their contribution to the tensions and conflicts of the story is all the more enhanced.
Again it is the gripping narrative that ultimately doninates Storm Chaser. The way Sheila Rance encourages emotional attachment to the several different protagonists and their fates most effectively fuels this. I have not been so totally engrossed in pure story and its telling for some time. In that sense my experience has been reminiscent of a first time reading of The Lord of the Rings.
This book is a triumph in itself and the trilogy an even greater triumph in the making. Inevitably even more is left unresolved at the end of Storm Chaser than was in the first book. Like many readers, I am sure, the child in me is now desperate for the third volume. I have not yet seen any announcement of a title or publication date for the final part, although my best guess is that Kodo will this time be the title character (Silk Finder ?). But I could well be wrong.
(Strangely, in my copy of Storm Chaser, there is a misalignment between illustration and chapter in those just before and after #30. Here each picture seems to relate to the chapter following the one where it is printed. As before the actual illustrations by Geoff Taylor are superb and beautifully capture the mood of the story. However, these mismatches are rather disconcerting. Hopefully they will be corrected in future editions.)
