It's not that historical fiction is bad, or that I have anything against history. I don't. I swear. It's more of the mucking around with history that sometimes grates on my nerves, just as some people enjoy mucking around with mythology, or spoofing Shakespeare. It can go really really well, or it can go terribly wrong, and it all depends on how dear to your heart you hold the source material. When we discussed the Romanov Family a few weeks ago, someone brought up a (fictional) book that written from the point of view of one of the (real) young men who had been in service to the family at the time when they were killed.
I like reading that kind of thing, as long as it doesn't take too many liberties, you know? Or tries so hard to force imaginary things into the canon of reality.
So when I opened In The Shadow Of Blackbirds and found that the heroine was called Mary Shelley Black, of course I went straight to Google to see if she was supposed to be related to the real Mary Shelley. The first result was straight from the horse's mouth -- Cat Winters says on her blog that she is not, and it is only one of her many references to Frankenstein. Happily, there are also authors notes in the book to help parse out what is real and what isn't.
A quick note about Cat Winters's blog: at the top are three book covers for her novels: In The Shadow of Blackbirds, The Cure for Dreaming, and The Uninvited. I haven't read the latter two, but I was definitely put off by the cover of Blackbirds (and I'm CRAZY for the cover of Dreaming. It's super creepy looking). The font, and the heroine wearing steam-punk goggles around her neck (even though it's not about steam-punk, but her love of aviation) was very off-putting. But then again I am not in the target age range for this book, and I did enjoy the book so perhaps I should shut up.
This novel would be terrific for anyone who remembers that Edward Cullen was dying of Spanish influenza when he was made into a vampire in the Twilight series. Not that this is like the Twilight series, but it is a very stylized supernatural book about a real time in history. Never mind that there is rampant spiritualism mixed with emerging science, and never mind the ghost character (are ghosts real history? That's a creepy question you can answer all on your own), and never mind the gauze masks and the real war and death that is happening around Mary -- it was the spiritualism photographs that really grabbed me and creeped me out, but also gave a lot of color (in black and white) to the story and the time period.
The mood was the strongest point for me in this novel, it was a bit spooky without being outright horrific. I was impressed with the format of the novel, with its highly stylized typeface, page decorations, and chapter headings.
The mood was the strongest point for me in this novel, it was a bit spooky without being outright horrific. I was impressed with the format of the novel, with its highly stylized typeface, page decorations, and chapter headings.
Blackbirds, and Chasing Shadows (which I have yet to review, sorry!) both grabbed me by incorporating mixed media in with the novel. Photographs reminded me also of the Family Romanov novel -- in those types of historical nonfiction novels, I'll always flip to the photo section in the middle first, to help get a visual grasp of what I'm reading.
Are you like that?
It's not just children who need pictures you know!!
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