11 | December | 2020

Jo Walton is one of the most gifted, inspired authors writing SFF today. See my reviews of Tooth and Claw, Among Others, Farthing, Ha’penny, Half a Crown, My Real Children, The Just City, The Philosopher Kings, Necessity, The King’s Peace, The King’s Name, and Lent.

BLURB: At its heart, Lifelode is the story of a comfortable manor house family. The four adults of the household are happily polygamous, each fulfilling their ‘lifelode’ or life’s purpose: Ferrand is the lord of the manor, his sweetmate Taveth runs the household, his wife Chayra makes ceramics, and Taveth’s husband Ranal works the farm. Their children are a joyful bunch, running around in the sunshine days of the harvest and wondering what their own lifelodes will be. Their lives change with the arrival of two visitors to Applekirk: Jankin the scholar and Hanethe, Ferrand’s great grandmother and the former lord of the manor, who has been living for many generations in the East, a place where the gods walk and yeya (magic) is so powerful that those who wield it are not quite human.

REVIEW: I was wondering what one of my favourite authors was up to – so got a bit of a shock when I saw this offering had appeared when I wasn’t looking… Researching this one a bit more, it appears that this book won the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature (2010) when it was published by a small press. And earlier this year, Walton self-published it so her fans could have the ebook available – yay! It’s an interesting premise. This is a flat-world where the further East you travel, the more magic there is, while the further West you go, the less there is. Applekirk appears to be situated about midway between the two extremes, so some of the family members who live in the manor are reasonably well endowed with yeya. Others, not so much. And reading this one, if I had the choice, I wouldn’t want to be one of those who were overly talented.

The manor is generally reasonably peaceful, where an agrarian lifestyle revolves around the harvests. Initially the main protagonist is Taveth, who is married to Ranal, but mistress to Ferrand, the current lord of the manor. Taveth sees people at various stages of their lives whenever she looks at them and is in charge of running the house, while the official Mistress of the Manor is a potter. Their contentment is abruptly shattered when two visitors appear – one is a travelling scholar, Jankin, a beautiful young man with an eye for the ladies and the other one is a long-lost relative – Ferrand’s great-grandmother who reappears from the East very suddenly and rather mysteriously…

Walton’s storytelling, as ever, packs a punch. Events take a much darker turn, as it turns out that spiky, sneering Hanethe hasn’t returned to Applekirk simply to make everyone’s life a misery – she’s on the run from a very, very powerful enemy. This one gripped me and held me far too late into the night, as Walton’s writing always does. And as usual with Walton’s writing, now it’s finished, I can’t get it out of my head. The nature of belief… how people can do a lot of damage by simply being careless… and being thoroughly obnoxious to those around you doesn’t necessarily make you a bad person… And that nothing hurts quite so much as lost love…

Once more – a tour de force. Walton is a towering talent, whose books make me glad I can read and provide me with lots of mental fodder, before I get the pleasure of reading her next offering. I don’t know what it will be – but I can guarantee that it will be nothing like this particular book. Needless to say – very highly recommended.
10/10

This meme was started by Books by Proxy, whose fabulous idea was to compare UK and US book covers and decide which is we prefer. This meme is being nurtured by Lynn’s Book Blog and this week we are featuring covers with LAKES. I’ve selected The Ghost Fields – Book 7 of the Ruth Galloway series by Elly Griffiths.

This cover was produced by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in May 2015 and is my favourite – and it’s the cover that came to mind when I saw this week’s theme. I love the quirky font and the scene that accurately depicts a keynote event in this book. The overall design and font used works well with the branding for the rest of the series. I particularly approve of the clean, uncluttered look of the cover with no blurbs cluttering up the design – doesn’t it make a difference?

Published in March 2015, by Quercus, this is another contender, as far as I’m concerned. There is a strong sense of intrigue as the young woman walks away from us, though barn doors, or could it be old hangar doors? However, I don’t think the title or author fonts are as well handled, and I don’t like the block of blurb disfiguring the design.

This Swedish edition, published in July 2015 by Bokförlaget Forum is another visually striking effort. I think what initially appears to be a very simple design is cleverly constructed – our eyes are drawn along that rickety fence to look into the hazy distance, where the flat ground gives way to an expanse of water. The subdued lighting caused by the setting sun adds to the sense of atmosphere and I really like how the orange in the author font picks up and matches the distant skyline.

Published by Quercus in June 2016, this edition is another fence leading off into the distance, more or less in the same way as the above example. Perhaps it was inspired by the Swedish design, as it does look every similar. However, the only part of this cover that is completely in focus are the tussocks of grass, the nearest fence post and a couple of strings of barbed wire. And the rather cloudy sky. Because the image so quickly loses clarity, so the distant buildings are mere blurs, I don’t find this cover conveys all that much that makes me want to pick up this book.

This German edition, published in August 2019, has probably gone too far the other way. Again, it starts with a fence in the foreground and the rundown building in the background – this time around, far more clearly depicted, which works far better. But I do think that black sky above is just a step too far. As is the vivid green lettering – it gives the book a horror vibe which it shouldn’t have, given that Ruth is an archaeologist struggling to bring up her daughter on her own and from time to time gets drawn into a number of murder mysteries. Do this one doesn’t do it for me – but what about you, which one is your favourite?