Ballarat Writers

Book review – The Four, by Ellie Keel

October 26, 2024 / / 0 Comments

Title: The Four

Author: Ellie Keel

Publisher: HQ/Harper Collins, 2024; RRP: $32.99

Ellie Keel lives in London and The Four is her debut novel. Ellie has a background in producing and playwriting and is the founder director of the Women’s Prize for Playwriting which promotes gender equality for writers in the UK and Ireland.

This book is an intensely forthright and compelling read, a story about four teenagers who attend an elite boarding school in England for pre university admission. They are scholarship students, academically bright but subjected to the extreme ramifications of class bias and cruelty. Rose, the narrator, and Marta, her co-scholarship room, both suffered the loss of their mothers, Rose just twelve months earlier. Loyd and Sami also have backgrounds of  disadvantage and are determined to make the opportunity work for them.

The four young people have to quickly adjust to the routines and unspoken rules of an institution that is steeped in tradition, bullying and privilege. They learn who to trust and who to avoid but not until they have been subjected to cruel behaviour.

Listen to an audio preview of The Four

youtube

Prior to their arrival at High Realms, a young woman died on the school premises in circumstances surrounded in silence. The dead girl’s sister, Genevieve, is a prominent and particularly aggressive senior student leader who holds incredible power within the studentship. Then, Genevieve suffers a serious  accident and is hospitalised after an altercation with Marta and what follows becomes a suspenseful and excruciating story of how the four manage to support Marta’s extreme situation. Marta is missing. They are all at risk in many ways and yet they remain secretively loyal to their friend Marta whose mental health is seriously deteriorating.

The author has a writing style that complements the telling of psychological dilemmas and trauma. She cantilevers her work, allowing the reader to understand the inner thoughts of the characters, especially the narrator Rose.

…as my father and I approached High Realms in his cab, along the broad drive lined with stately plane trees, I’d felt as though my imagination was being coloured in, to a vividness and a grandeur that exceeded all my expectations … but as soon as we entered the bustling atrium with its dozens of portraits and towering staircase, my excitement had fallen away … I’d looked up and around; I’d seen the hundreds of students who exuded their confidence and beauty even more than their affluence, and I’d felt tiny …

Ellie Keel has created a powerful novel. She goes to the murkiest of situations and doesn’t try to shield the reader’s sensitivities. There are twists and turns when least expected and the suspense is all engaging. The Four is a dark book leaving the reader pondering on the events and almost dismissing them as too bizarre to be true, except the story doesn’t go away; it has relevance and truth in ways that cause a shiver to the spine.

Reviewed by: Heather Whitford Roche

Ballarat Writers Book Review Group, September 2024

Review book provided by the publisher

Book review – Colonial Adventure, by Ken Gelder and Rachael Weaver

October 12, 2024 / / 0 Comments

Title: Colonial Adventure

Authors: Ken Gelder and Rachael Weaver

Publisher: Melbourne University Press, October 2024; RRP: $29.99

The term picaresque pops up a bit in Colonial Adventure, and similarly to the travelling adventurer of that particular style of yarn, our narrators here are passing through a series of locations as they lead a guided tour through the body of works exploring the colonial experience in pre-Federation Australia. Our guides here are Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Melbourne Ken Gelder and ARC Future Fellow at the University of Tasmania Rachael Weaver.

This is not Gelder and Weaver’s first expedition into this terrain, the pair having collaborated on three other titles in a similar vein, and their experience as academic researchers and collaborators provides a smooth, logically composed journey here. They keep the text accessible and kindly throw forwards and backwards to repeated references to help keep the reader up to speed without the flicking of pages.

There is a large body of work to cover – the end notes, bibliography and index run to about 60 of the 240 pages – and the authors do well to keep the tour moving across the most interesting or illustrative of examples, pausing in places to elaborate on the significant postcard moments such as the well-known William Buckley and Eliza Fraser. This pair feature in a chapter titled ‘Castaways and Cohabitants’, which delves into the presentation of their experience as dwellers with Aboriginal peoples as well as the aftermath of their experiences.

Not surprisingly given the book’s title, the ‘adventures’ here – whether journals, reportage/memoir, or fiction – are backgrounded in the way they reflect colonial thought and often the relationship between invader/occupier and First Nations people. The authors have gone to lengths to attempt to identify the names of Country on which events take place, thus acknowledging the diversity of First Nations cultures and the impact upon them. But the authors also note that ‘(c)olonial adventure was not always overtly in the service of empire’ and ‘could also transmit information about people and places never before seen; some of that information might even disturb the ideologies that colonisation relied on’.

The nationwide tour begins with explorers, with James Cook and William Dampier to the fore, and what is a foundational but fairly dry opening discussion on where such sanctioned escapades fall within the genre, before opening up to more exotic narratives of early encounters with New Holland. This is followed by four more chapters that trace the changing attitude to the land and its exploitation/occupation: ‘Transportation and Convict Adventures’, the previously mentioned ‘Castaway’, Bushrangers etc’, and ‘The Speculation of Colonisation’, which focuses on the planned settlement and opening up of the land as an economic endeavour. The latter takes in Lemurian fictions (based on lost or undiscovered civilisations), where First Nations peoples are again undermined by the ideal of a European or otherwise technologically advanced society occupying the inland of the country, with or without the fabled inland sea.

The idea of adventure is an element of discussion, wherein the picaresque style of story comes into play as a step in the evolution of the colonial experience: from explorers mapping the coastline to fictional and non-fictional roguish visitors enjoying outlandish adventures to brag about on their return home, to those here for the long haul, exploiting the natural resources in the hunt for wealth. The adventures extend to women and Aboriginal resistance fighters, too, and one of the interesting elements of these stories is how some bushrangers (both Black and white) occupied ‘liminal’ spaces in which they both opposed and supported the ruling power.

As mentioned, it’s a guide book, a starting place for researchers and the casually interested, a window seat offering an overview of the relationships between the new arrivals and the land and its people, revealing the mindset that justified terra nullius, murder and dispossession, and leaving the lingering sensation that these attitudes are not yet merely moments of history but still active currents at economic and socio-political levels.

Reviewed by: Jason Nahrung

Ballarat Writers Inc. Book Review Group

Review copy provided by the publisher

Book review — The Librarians of Rue de Picardie, by Janet Skeslien Charles

September 28, 2024 / / 0 Comments

Title: The Librarians of Rue de Picardie

Author: Janet Skeslien Charles

Publisher: Headline Publishing Group/Hachette, 2024; RRP $32.99

It is 1918 and Jessie Carson, a young American children’s librarian, is seconded from the New York Public Library (NYPL) to set up a library service 20 miles from the Front in war-torn France.

She is part of a highly select group of women chosen by Anne Morgan, daughter of  multimillionaire Pierpont Morgan, and her friend physician Anne Murray Dike, founding members of the American Committee for Devastated France (also known as CARD), established in 1918. Its mission was to assist French citizens – men, women and children – left behind when the German army retreated, struggling to survive amid the human and physical wreckage of post-war regional France.

Jessie’s particular role was to establish a library service for children, delivering the escape and joy that books and stories can give to children in even the ugliest of circumstances. She had to adjust: turning ambulances into bookmobiles, conducting storytime sessions on blankets on bare ground, bringing book materials for parents as well. In doing so she also often, predictably, faced opposition from others who considered this to be unimportant, her labour needed for more practical tasks.

CARD also provided seeds and agricultural equipment to re-establish food crops,  and medical  assistance for the streams of wounded coming from the Front, and Jessie and her helpers also shared in these and many other tasks.

Anne Morgan’s silent film promoting CARD’s work in France

the findlay galleries

In another time and place, 1987 in the NYPL, library worker and aspiring writer Wendy Peterson is working in the Remembrances Department in the basement, photographing delicate old records to preserve them for the future. One of her tasks is to make photocopies of a box of newsletters written by CARD and it is there she finds Jessie.

The book moves between both times seamlessly: Jessie experiencing the horrific reality of war, from unceasing bombings to the individual stories of the people they work to help, including a sudden, terrifying order to evacuate when the Germans suddenly advance towards them, and then immediately into the ravages of the Spanish flu, and the growth of  Wendy as researcher and writer as she becomes increasingly obsessed with uncovering Jessie’s story.

Through Wendy’s work decades later in Remembrances, we see the quiet world of recording, bearing witness from records and resources that would not have existed had not libraries collected, preserved and housed them. This is shown particularly clearly when Jessie suddenly disappears from the newsletters and Wendy is forced to search further afield.

Janet Skeslien Charles on The Paris Library

an interview @ the book report network

Wendy Peterson is also attending a writing class conducted by a caustic professor where students are required to read pieces of what they are working on. This is where Wendy shares her first efforts of writing Jessie’s story. His caustic feedback includes raising the dangers inherent in Wendy’s growing identification with her subject, and in the process giving some insight into the challenges of the unavoidably subjective responses to influencing the believability of how accurately she is representing the history of another person and an organisation that did really exist.

Aiming always for the truth, she is also aware of  her desire to honour an organisation that did undeniable good and whose existence she was shocked to discover seemed to have disappeared from the many stories of courage in wartime.

At one stage Wendy says, referring to the French women Jessie worked for and beside:

Little seems to be said about Frenchwomen during the war. It’s like they were never there. From the books I checked out, you might think that the entire French population was entirely made up of men. Yet while they were off fighting, wives, widows, mothers and daughters held the country together. Genteel women who hadn’t been allowed to work or study at university were now supposed to be nurses and doctors, teachers and farmers. Livestock and machinery had been commandeered for the war effort, so the women tilled the fields like oxen. They worked to provide for their families. Is anyone writing about them? (p 147)*

Who would this book please? Those who like to read either historical fiction or autofiction (fictionalised biography) –  the genre to which it belongs – and those interested in true stories based on solid research in war settings, but not just as a dry collection of facts. There are moments of lightness to please, two romances perhaps on the risky end of that genre, but not out of place as love happens on battlefields too. The details about WWI in the French countryside match what we see on TV today, showing what it is like for those returning when the war retreats, and the enormity of the task of rebuilding homes and lives – reminding us yet again that suffering is not limited to the uglier manifestations of mustard gas, torn bodies and blood-soaked soil.

This is the third in a trilogy of books by Skeslien Charles about actual librarians during WWI, including mega bestseller The Paris Library and Miss Morgan’s Book Brigade. She has written for the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune, and is an international best-selling author whose work has been translated into 37 languages.

* This brings to mind Forgotten Warriors: Women on the Frontline, reviewed previously

Reviewed by: Rhonda Cotsell

Ballart Writers Inc. Book Review Group

Review copy provided by the publisher

Book review – The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wasteland, by Sarah Brooks

September 14, 2024 / / 0 Comments

Title: The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands

Author: Sarah Brooks

Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson/Hachette, 2024; RRP: $34.99

The Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize is an annual award for manuscripts by unagented women writers from the UK and Ireland who have not previously had a novel published. Leeds-based academic Sarah Brooks won the prize in 2019 with a draft of The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands, a major turning point in her writing career that has delivered the goods.

Brooks has a background in speculative fiction, both in her studies and her writing, with a PhD examining Chinese ghost stories and short stories published in a range of spec fic magazines.

Her debut novel spans genres, much in the same way the railway central to the story spans a wasteland between Beijing and Moscow. Set in 1899, the story mixes a steampunk aesthetic with the fabulous landscape that would not be lost in a Jeff VanderMeer novel. One might read a touch of ecofiction in there too, as a theme is the way in which a fantastical wasteland appears to have been exacerbated if not spawned by technology, a wild environment that the Great Trans-Siberian Express seeks to defy with its mighty train.

Aboard we have passengers, crew and scientists, the story focusing on three: solo traveller Marya, with her mysterious past and First Class ticket; Weiwei, born and raised on the train; and naturalist Henry Grey, who has an ambition to present a breakthrough discovery from the journey at the Great Exhibition in Moscow, a celebration of the latest and greatest in knowledge.

This journey is clouded by a rumoured scandal on the previous, adding to the tension and thrill for those aboard, where fear of contamination by the chaos of the wasteland is ever-present. Just to look out the windows is to risk anxiety, breakdown or worse, for something has gone amiss and nature has become scary, dangerous and unpredictable.

Sarah Brooks interviewed about The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wasteland

@ the publishing post

Why ride the train? If you’re in First Class, it’s a talking point for those who have exhausted many of the other adventures money can buy; if you’re in Third, likely it’s the best of bad options. It’s also expedient for business and a fascination for the curious, such as Dr Grey, who sees an opportunity to redeem himself following a previous professional embarrassment.

Marya has her own reasons for being on board, ones that carry a high degree of risk, for amongst those on board are two representatives of the Trans-Siberia Company, akin to political officers of Communist Russia, tasked with ensuring the good reputation of the Company is not sullied by unfortunate events. For there have been events in the past, and a repeat is unthinkable. Commerce, profit and market confidence ride the rails, and these two ‘Crows’ will do what must be done to protect them.

For Weiwei, the train is home, its rhythms familiar and comforting, but this journey brings an event – and an enigmatic stranger – that will have her challenging her assumptions about this sealed world of steel and steam and those who run it.

Taking place over a little over three weeks, the story follows the three and a well-drawn supporting cast as the train makes its way towards Moscow.

The title is taken from a fictional guide that sets the tone for the story, a travelogue from which excerpts provide slices of background and set the mood: this is one of the great train trips of the world and one of the most dangerous. But not even the author, Rostov, could predict how this mighty rattler could threaten the stability of the world order.

As it turns out, Brooks’ balance of character and setting makes her a fine guide as the story picks up steam, arriving dead on time for its fateful conclusion. All aboard!

Reviewed by: Jason Nahrung

Ballarat Writers Book Review Group

Review copy supplied by the publisher

Polish to Publish Poetry Workshop

September 1, 2024 / / 0 Comments
australian bush with a creek

Sunday September 22nd, 11 am to 3 pm.

Award-winning poet Melissa Watts will show how to take your first draft from raw passion to rewarding readability.

Roll up your sleeves – this interactive workshop is designed to make your poem gleam.

Bring along some drafts and work through a range of guided activities that will have you appreciating your work in new and expansive ways. Be prepared to be challenged, you may need to kill your darlings, but the result will have you glistening in the slush pile.

Note: This class is designed to work with your existing drafts so please remember to bring them along.

Melissa will not see any of your work, nor will any be read aloud, so it is absolutely fine to bring the poems you are working on to submit to the Martha Richardson Memorial Poetry contest that Melissa will be judging.

(Read all about that here: https://ballaratwriters.com/the-martha-richardson-memorial-poetry-prize-2024/)

We will be stopping for a lunchbreak durng the session, so you are welcome to bring food to eat or go out and buy something in one of the many places nearby.

Tickets are:
Members $10
Non-members $20

Book here: https://www.trybooking.com/CUZVM

Hope to see you on the day!

Book review — The Underhistory, by Kaaron Warren

August 31, 2024 / / 0 Comments

Title: The Underhistory

Author: Kaaron Warren

Publisher: Viper/Profile Books, 2024; RRP: $32.99

For the twenty or so years I’ve been kicking around in the Australian speculative fiction scene, Kaaron Warren has been been at the forefront with her long and short fiction, earning accolades here and abroad for her skilful exploration of the dark side of human experience – supernatural or otherwise. She also has a knack for taking everyday objects and surroundings and finding a cracking story. For example, two years ago she won the AsylumFest ghost short story competition with a story inspired by an inscription in a  book salvaged at a thrift store.

The Underhistory was, according to the author’s notes in the book, spawned in a collection of post cards similarly rescued and provided by a friend.

The result is an utterly compelling crime story taking place in a notionally haunted house.

Our protagonist is Pera, who has rebuilt her family home following its tragic destruction when she was nine. Killed in the incident were her immediate family, the visiting prime minister and others besides. Pera was the sole survivor, the tragedy following her through her life since. The isolated rural mansion has many rooms, and this is one of the highlights of the novel: Pera conducts ghost tours, the prefect way to reveal not only the eclectic rooms of the home and its grounds to the reader, but a guided tour to key moments in Pera’s life.

An interview with Kaaron Warren

@ the horror writers association

On the occasion of the story, the 60-odd-year-old host is showing a small group through the house when  a carload of interlopers arrives. Tension ramps up as Pera quickly divines their background, their reason for being there, and the threat they pose to her guests, herself and her home. As the lone  survivor, she does not take such threats lying down, and her psychological battle with the intruders is a masterpiece of characterisation.

The propensity for violence of the interlopers is writ large for the reader in italic sections that I am still of two minds about, as they perhaps undermine the claustrophobic tension of the story – Pera’s reaction to them, and the deft characterisation, convey the sense of compounding threat. And yet, it is the mention of these men early that sets the scene for the reader and provides an undercurrent of tension ahead of the inevitable meeting and resultant game of cat and mouse,. What is more effective: the known violence, or the inferred? A question for book clubs everywhere, perhaps. One thing is certain: Pera, long acquainted with death, is no mouse.

The mansion, with its multiple floors, secret compartments, and basement of mysteries (the Underhistory of the title), is slightly reminiscent of the Winchester Mystery House in the US, while the interlopers bring to mind the emotionally stunted specimens of the Australian movie The Boys, one of the most harrowing dramas I’ve come across.

This is a cleverly composed story, a hostage drama in a can with the house itself part of the narrative structure in both present and past. Combined with Warren’s knack for description and characterisation, it’s a fabulous read. Given The Underhistory has been published by houses with heft, it can only be hoped that the novel may introduce Warren to a deservedly broader audience.

Reviewed by: Jason Nahrung

Ballarat Writers Inc. Book Review Group

Book review — You Like It Darker, by Stephen King

August 17, 2024 / / 0 Comments

Title: You Like It Darker

Author: Stephen King

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton/Hachette, 2024; RRP: $34.99

In the afterword to this, his latest collection, Stephen King writes that the reader of horror stories needs to be empathetic. Research has revealed that reading fiction more generally assists the development of empathy, and certainly King appears to be on the mark: how else do you appreciate a horror story if you don’t feel for the predicament of the characters who are facing the worst moments of their lives?

The collection contains 12 stories, varying in length and subject matter, but most, yes, veering to the dark side, with themes of death (whether murder, illness and age, misadventure) and loss prevalent.

The opener, ‘Two Talented Bastids’, is a surprise: not so much a horror story but quickly revealed to be more in the camp of science fiction. It also ruminates on the nature of creativity, something King touches on again in his Afterword. Interestingly, he writes a little of the process, how he often doesn’t know the ending of his stories, which may explain some of the novels – and indeed, some of the stories here – that end less than convincingly.

On the shorter side are stories such as ‘The Fifth Step’ and ‘Willie the Weirdo’, which punch quickly and take their leave. As noted elsewhere, ‘Willie’ is notable for exploring familiar ground, and if there is a criticism of this collection, it may be the absence of wow factor of significant overturning of reader expectation.

‘Laurie’ is another deviation from the darker theme, reminiscent of the gorgeous ‘The Last Rung on the Ladder’, from Night Shift, about kids and hay and death, which along with the faintly absurd ‘The Mangler’ have stuck with me since that first reading. Here, too, death, but this is a story of loss and grief, not things going bump in the night. It’s another reminder that while King is perhaps best known for his horror stories, his mastery is by no means confined to genre.

Stephen King reads from ‘You Like It Darker’

@ Simon and Schuster

In ‘Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream’, one of the longer pieces, the supernatural element is restricted (kind of) to a prophetic dream, one that lands Danny in hot water. King acknowledges the nod to Les Miserable as a cop obsesses over Danny’s brush with a murder, with the damage done by unsubstantiated accusations a key part of the story.

Arguably the centrepiece of the collection is ‘Rattlesnakes’, a ‘where are they now’ story following on from the novel Cujo and also giving a nod to Duma Key. There’s a spooky little pram in this that will likely linger long after the cover has been closed, every bit as effective as some of the spookier aspects of The Shining.

What the collection reminds us, regardless of whether the story is but a simple idea of a few pages or a full novella, is King’s capacity to succinctly and effectively evoke character – that empathy, kicking in. Characters face pivotal moments in their lives, and King deftly invites us into their world and encourages us to walk in their shoes.

Another characteristic of King’s stories, especially here, is that characters are not special in terms of being equipped to face the challenges presented to them. As such, they are eminently approachable. A case in point is ‘The Answer Man’, the closing story and the least effective for me, being essentially a precis of the life of Phil Parker, who gets the chance to get a peek into the future. Will we be happy, he asks the Answer Man, who replies, sure, but there will be ups and downs. Which is life, really, and also this collection: as with any such assortment, different stories will strike chords with different readers, but there is diversity enough here for everyone to find a favourite.

Reviewed by: Jason Nahrung

Ballarat Writers Inc. Book Review Group

Review copy provided by the publisher

The winner of the 2024 Pamela Miller Flash Fiction prize is…

August 3, 2024 / / 0 Comments

Richenda Rudman with her entry, The Seventh Son. Congratulations, Richenda!

The award was announced at the Members’ Night on 31st July.

Sixteen entries were received for the members-only contest on the theme this year of FIRE. The judges were members of the Ballarat Writers committee: Darren Rout, Phil Green, Cassandra Arnold and Bev Foster.

Now, for your delight, here is her winning story:

The Seventh Son

by Richenda Rudman

Children burned when he had a day off.

Chief Blayney realised this an hour into correlating rosters with fires and casualties; it was like condensation being wiped off a window. When Roy Allstock was working, children were saved from fires.

Allstock, always last man out, jogged from buildings sheathed in flames, carrying children, seconds before the buildings collapsed and embers shot like crazed stars into the smoke-dark sky.

‘How the hell did he get them out?’ Blayney asked his deputy as they walked across blackened ground, where an iron bed frame was twisted into a chaotic ringlet. The deputy shrugged. ‘They should be dead.’

* * *

Roy Allstock was an experienced firefighter when he joined Blayney’s platoon in Cranston; he worked hard, said little, was neither tall or short, plain or handsome.

One afternoon in the dayroom, between a card game and newspapers, the conversation turned to families. Allstock said he was the second youngest of eight kids, the last boy before the only girl in the family.

‘Your mother must have been pleased.’ Blayney said.

‘Yeh, she was. Strange, my father was the seventh son, too.

‘Funny how these things run in families.’

Before a seed from memory germinated in Blayney’s head, the discussion ended when they were called out to a fire.

According to the plump wheezing woman living next door, a woman and two little boys lived in the house. ‘The mother’s a drinker. Neglects the kids. I reckon she’s nodded off and dropped her ciggy!’

Another firefighter and Allstock entered the blazing building, while the rest of the crew attacked the fire from outside.  

The woman, coughing, emerged in the clutch of Allstock’s partner, but the height of the flames was fast becoming uncontrollable and Blayney’s gut sank as he looked at the fiery wall. Then he saw it: Allstock appeared, carrying a child on each hip as easily as if they were small clouds. Blayney looked as closely as the smoke and heat would allow, at how the fire was set apart from Allstock and the children, as if a thick and cooling membrane surrounded them. And despite the chaos, Allstock appeared to be calmly talking.

Blayney had to pull the wheezy neighbour off the dazed mother and didn’t recall Allstock’s actions until a final piece in the mosaic of Allstock’s abilities was provided by a child’s drawing.

The newly sober woman and two little boys visited the fire station, where the older child had drawn a picture of a firefighter carrying them out of the fire.

‘Looks like Allstock,’ one of the men said.

Allstock ruffled the boy’s hair. ‘That’s a great drawing!’

‘Yes,’ said the boy. ‘It’s you telling the fire to stay away from us.’

Everyone laughed, except Allstock, who gave a small smile.

And then the seed in Blayney’s head sprouted. The old tale was true: the seventh son of a seventh son talks to fire. And the fire listens.

* * *

It’s that time of year again!

July 24, 2024 / / 0 Comments

The Martha Richardson Memorial Poetry Prize 2024

Our biennial poetry competion will be open for entries from August 1 to October 13.

You can find all the details by clicking the link below.

The judge, Melissa Watts, is also offering a poetry workshop, POLISH TO PUBLISH on Sunday 22 September. Details to follow!

Here’s what she says about the day:

Roll up your sleeves – this interactive workshop is designed to make your poem gleam.

Bring along some drafts and work through a range of guided activities that will have you appreciating your work in new and expansive ways. Be prepared to be challenged, you may need to kill your darlings, but the result will have you glistening in the slush pile.

Note: This class is designed to work with your existing drafts so please remember to bring them along.

So get thinking about the 2024 theme, The Bush, and we look forward to seeing all the entries come flooding in! First prize is $1000…

The Martha Richardson Memorial Poetry Prize 2024

Book review – Conquist, by Dirk Strasser

July 19, 2024 / / 0 Comments

Title: Conquist

Author: Dirk Strasser

Publisher: Collective Ink/Roundfire Books, RRP: US$20.95

Dirk Strasser is well known in Australian speculative fiction circles, being one of the team who founded Aurealis magazine and the marquis awards of the same name (turning 30 next year!). Strasser is also a well-regarded writer, perhaps best known for the Books of Ascension, whose latest book is the historical fantasy Conquist.

The story conjures the colonial mindset of the ‘lost world’ tradition exemplified by H. Rider Haggard’s works, with the fabulist elements of the portal fantasy interrupting the historical setting. Interestingly it was first published in instalments in Aurealis magazine, the compilation going on to be a finalist in the Aurealis awards for best fantasy novel (won by Garth Nix’s Left-handed Booksellers of London – reviewed here) (note: the awards are run independently of the magazine). This review refers to the title being published this year.

Conquist is anchored in the Spanish invasion of South America, with the protagonist, Cristobal, leading a small force into Peru in search of gold and glory, the achievements of other Spanish conquerors goading him onwards. He is accompanied by Rodrigo, a childhood friend likewise in thrall to the allure of wealth to put paid to their life of poverty, and the freed slave Hector.

Cristobal faces more challenges than the overthrow of the Incans and sacking of the fabled city of Vilcabamba: he has a rival for command in the shape of Roberto, and a driven priest, Padre Nunez, looking to spread Christianity to complete the colonial triumvirate of god, gold and glory. Then there is the dubious assistance of Incan rulers Huarcay and Sarpay, the brother and sister looking to use the invaders to further their own ambitions.

As Cristobal’s force is lured through a one-way portal into a brutal landscape peopled by two warring races who have their own politics and beliefs to be encountered and navigated – bloodily, naturally. I don’t want to lift the lid on these factions, as the unveiling of their cultures and joint history is one of the delights of the book, but suffice to say their stereotypical appearances belie a deeper conflict and less than biblical accounting of good and evil.

The story is told in the third person, mostly with Cristobal as the viewpoint character but others also filling in backstory and plotting, and interposed with first-person jottings from Cristobal’s journal, which lives on in a museum.

In the main, Cristobal’s journal articles are introspective, not plot devices, mirroring his actions and exposing inner doubts and ambitions; he admits from the outset that colonialism – or at least the greed that drove it – is a disease by which he is as much infected as his men. The conceit of the found documents falls a little short due to the use of other points of view in the narrative that, at best, could only have been reported by witnesses to Cristobal, but this is not apparent from the writings. We are left to wonder how much of the narrative we have read could have been known to Cristobal and was recorded in the found document.

Cristobal is a flawed character, doubts about his colonial greed rarely surfacing, his sense of loyalty to the soldiers he commands admirable if perhaps propped up as much by ego as duty. How he came to command, the childhood that forged his desire, are allusions, their absence undercutting empathy for him. While the hero is able to come to terms with his own shortcomings, the realisation comes at cost to those around him. There is a peace brokered at story’s end, but it comes with a terrible price, with inhabitants forced to yield part of their culture in a forced co-existence.

Strasser is no slouch, and Conquist is bound to find an appreciative audience.

  • Conquist is to be released on 30 August 2024.

Reviewed by: Jason Nahrung

Ballarat Writers Inc Book Review Group

Review copy supplied by the author.

  • Jason Nahrung is a Ballarat-based writer and freelance editor. His most recent book is the vampire novella Cruel Nights. www.jasonnahrung.com
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