Don’t Drink The Dark Water

My review of Dark Waters Of Hagwood by Robin Jarvis is up now at Strange Horizons.

Dark Waters is the sequel of Thorn Ogres Of Hagwood and is a book I never thought I’d read. But, after twelve years of waiting, Dark Water has been published, only for me to find it a huge disappointment. As I said in my review: “What I’ve always loved about Jarvis is how much respect he has for his audience, but it seems absent here.”

I reviewed Thorn Ogres as well so you can compare one of my first review with my most recent. As we’ve discussed before, there is quite a difference. Much of this journey has taken place at Strange Horizons, the best place for speculative fiction criticism on the web. It is also free so, if you’ve enjoyed the work of me and the other reviewers – not to mention authors, poets, columnists and many other contributors – then you might want to consider supporting their annual fund drive. There are prizes!

Dark Waters of Hagwood

From time to time I get hits from people searching for information about Dark Waters of Hagwood by Robin Jarvis. This sequel to Thorn Ogres Of Hagwood was due to be published in 2005 but there has been no sign of it, despite Amazon announcing a new publication date of February 2009 at the beginning of the year. I finally decided to email Puffin about this and they have confirmed that the series has been abandoned.

A great shame as Jarvis is a wonderful writer and I had high hopes for the series. He is still writing though and if you only read one anthromorphic mouse series make it the Deptford Mice trilogy (not the Deptford trilogy).

ETA: Apparently the book is written and Puffin have announced a new publication date of 2015 (see comment below) but since this is so far off I will continue to consider the book dead for the time being.

ETA 2: It lives! The book was published in 2013 and you can read my review at Strange Horizons.

Never Let Me Go

The first thing you find out when yer dog learns to talk is that dogs don’t got nothing much to say.
“Need a poo, Todd.”
“Shut up, Manchee.”
“Poo. Poo, Todd.”
“I said shut up.”

That is the opening paragraph of The Knife Of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness, which won the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize a couple of weeks ago. It richly deserved the prize. As fellow nominee Frank Cottrell Boyce put it in his review:

This book is on the longlist for the 2008 Guardian children’s fiction prize, along with my own. If I had any sense, I would try to improve my chances of winning by slagging it off. The trouble is, you’d only have to read the first sentence to see how fantastic it promises to be.

My review of the book has just gone up at Strange Horizons. You will notice that the letters YA do not appear in the review at any point. This is because there is no such thing and when it gets down to it most people seem to agree so we should just end this consensual hallucination that it exists. Please join my crusade.

Getting onto another bugbear, The Knife Of Never Letting Go is the first book in the Chaos Walking trilogy. As I mention in my review the fact that standalone novels are becoming increasingly rare in genre publishing is a source of some irritation to me. There is currently no information available about the next volume but hopefully it will turn up soon. I reviewed Thorn Ogres Of Hagwood by Robin Jarvis in 2003. I have had an Amazon order for The Dark Waters of Hagwood, the second volume of the trilogy, since 2004 but there is still no sign of it.