Ship Kings 02 Voyage of the Unquiet Ice

Review

I love this series. The Ship Kings is fast becoming one of my favourite modern children's series, along with Michelle Lovric's The Undrowned Child, and Helen Dunmore's Ingo (sensing a sea theme, anyone?) The second installment in the Ship Kings, Voyage of the Unquiet Ice, had me enthralled from the get go. If you seriously want adventure - good, old-fashioned adventure, but at the same time modern and fresh - then Ship Kings are the books for you.

Andrew McGahan is a great writer - he knows how to enthrall, how to invoke emotion, how to write beautiful passages that portray a character's feelings, without being pretentious and flowery. Voyage of the Unquiet Ice also benefited greatly from upping the pace a bit: one of the things I thought the first book had working against it. This book, however, is pretty much a non-stop adventure - it is thrilling and dangerous and pushes the characters to their very limits, and it perfectly captures the wonder Dow feels setting out on his first real adventure at sea.

Once again the descriptions of the ocean, and the connection people have to it, are wonderful. The descriptions in general are wonderful - once we get to the 'unquiet ice', McGahan throws us into the cold, the wet, the eerieness, the stillness, the danger, the terrible beauty of the icebergs. The atmosphere leaks onto the pages. The way Dow's life on the ship is described is very informative, but never dry.

I really enjoyed the characters in Voyage of the Unquiet Ice. They are a terrible, brutal, and fascinating bunch, and Dow is a great character to navigate the waters around them. I also found the political side to the story (something which generally loses me in fantasy) easy to comprehend and extremely interesting. Having ship kings politics play out in the background while Dow embarks on his adventures gives the story urgency and weight.

Read these books. Do it. You may struggle to get into them at first because they are quite dense - but persist, because they are fabulous. I haven't enjoyed such a well-written book since I read Seraphina last year. Can't wait until the third one.

CBCA Book of the Year Shortlist 2012

I was going to do a post about it, but they seem to be popping up everywhere.

Kids Book Review has a great summary of all the shortlisted nominees in each category for the 2012 CBCA Book of the Year. Link here: CBCA 2012

I do sometimes feel that the nominees are a little 'safe'. But I am happy to see Andrew McGahan, Bill Condon, Susan Green and John Flanagan nominated in the Older and Younger Readers categories.

Anyway, fantastic news for all nominees. Getting recognised by the CBCA is quite the honour, and actually does have an impact on sales. After the shortlist is announced, at my bookstore we get so many orders from our school clients for the CBCA books, and a lot of customers ask for 'CBCA' books.

The Coming of the Whirlpool (Ship Kings 01) by Andrew McGahan

First published by Allen & Unwin, 2011

How to describe this book? It is quite unlike any book I’ve read in a while – not quite fantasy, not quite YA, not quite children’s, not quite a high seas adventure tale. It is a mixture of all these and more.

It is quite literary. You have to be quite dedicated to reading it. At least I did. I have picked it up and put it down since the start of the year. But the last quarter I read in a couple of days. The last quarter is where it all pays off – for me, where the story all comes together. I wasn’t sure about the book or the style or the story until the last quarter, when The Coming of the Whirlpool did indeed sweep me up in the awe and the adventure of the sea and sailing and Dow’s world. Somehow I forgave the slow pacing and ponderous nature of the first half to two thirds, the relatively little action, because the end of the story feels so rewarding, and I get the feeling McGahan knew exactly what he was doing all along.

In an interview with Fancy Goods, McGahan says The Coming of the Whirlpool belonged to the type of fantasy that concerns itself with the wonder and adventure and mood of its own strange world, and less about the complexity of its politics or relationships. The world he has created here feels wonderfully unique, and is focused upon the power and intrigue of the sea. This sense of wonder is palpable. Not only because of Dow, because he is so strongly attracted to the sea himself, but also just because of the way McGahan writes about the ocean. I have my own fascination with the ocean/sea, and McGahan just captures so well the frightening power of it, its terrible beauty, its secrets and mystery. This is the kind of writing where you really can hear the sounds and see what is being described – it is all so vivid and immediate.

I love that there is a map included at the front. I love maps. I love checking places off against a map, of tracing the character’s journey and movements. It is also a beautifully designed book.

Not everyone will enjoy this – the pacing is slow, the mood is reflective, the language can at times be quite archaic. But as you read along the writing and the atmosphere creeps under your skin, and then kind of bursts out at the end. To me, this book went from a two star to a four star book by the end, and I am actually (very rare for me) intrigued enough to read the next in the series – The Voyage of the Unquiet Ice.