Reviews: The Magician of Tiger Castle by Louis Sachar, and Moonflow by Bitter Karella, at Locus

I waited most of September for my review of The End of the World As We Know It to appear on Locus's website, and now my two other reviews from the August issue have both turned up in quick succession. First up, The Magician of Tiger Castle by Louis Sachar, a Ruritanian fantasy in which a court magician must save a pair of star-crossed young lovers.

There's always been a certain "you know it when you see it" quality to YA fiction, and all the more so in the decades since it has become popular for adult readers to consume it alongside its intended audience. Louis Sachar, author of the beloved YA classic Holes (1998) as well as a raft of novels for younger readers, describes The Magician of Tiger Castle as his first novel for adults. Which of course encourages the critic to read the novel with an eye towards identifying those aspects of it that distinguish one reading category from another. Is it simply that Anatole, our narrator, is a man nearing middle age, a self-described coward who spends as much time navigating political currents at court – bowing to the king and queen's sadistic wishes while trading snide barbs with the other courtiers – as he does plumbing alchemical mysteries? Is it the mild cynicism with which he regards Tullia and Pito's protestations of undying love for one another, or his weary acceptance of the nobility's casual cruelty?
Next, Moonflow, the debut novel of Bitter Karella, best known for the Midnight Pals twitter/BlueSky comedy accounts, a deranged horror-comedy about mushrooms, gender, and extreme transformation in which a depressed transgender mycologist, a clueless parks service employee, and a lesbian separatist cult end up lost in the same forest, and at the mercy of mysterious, non-human beings.
Despite these gonzo touches, for much of its middle segment Moonflow is primarily a novel of character. Sarah is neurotic and unhappy, worn down by everyday cares, but mostly by the feel­ing that she is unloved. Her last relationship broke down over her realization that she would always come second to her glamorous, popular girlfriend's needs. Her best friend is actually her best client, the same woman who dispatched her to the Pamogo – a request Sarah did not feel able to refuse. Andy wears a cloak of normalcy that conceals a deep and rather sad nerdiness. He is obsessed with the ill-fated attempt by a 19th century robber baron to log the Pamogo, an endeavor that collapsed when both the loggers and their employer disappeared into the forest. In the throes of that obsession, he misses obvious danger signs when he and Sarah stumble onto the cult's compound, which is also the old logging camp. The cult itself, though rife with outrageous and distracting behavior – free love practiced in public and on every available surface; children grown feral with neglect; a lactating woman who feeds the forest’s native raccoons – is, when it comes down to it, a collection of damaged, broken women with sad and horrifying stories. Having convinced themselves – not unreasonably – that all the violence and suffering they've experienced is the fault of men, they fail to notice that they have replicated those same violent, coercive tendencies in their own society.
And that does it for my Locus reviews this month! I'll have a few more publications there next month, and then a bit of a break before my last issue of the year. It's been a bit of a learning curve this year as I've started writing regularly for the magazine. Next year I'm hoping to get into more of an even swing with them, while leaving more time for other venues and, of course, for this blog.

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