Tom Ryan's Shoes Legend of The Banshee Castle by T.A. Keenan, Sketch by Ros Hill, and Whispers of Blue Ridge by Nina Purtee

 

Tom Ryan's Shoes: Legend of The Banshee's Castle by T.A. Keenan

This review is also on Reedsy Discovery.

T.A. Keenan’s Tom Ryan's Shoes: Legend of The Banshee Castle is a gentle slice of life, a dramatic account of life at the beginning of the Irish Potato Famine, and an engaging folktale involving witches, curses, and finding true love. Most importantly, it is a masterful example of storytelling by Keenan writing the book the way someone would verbally relate their family history.

In 1933, brother and sister, Tommy and Molly find a steamer trunk full of papers that belonged to their mother, Lizzie. Most of them consist of Lizzie's handwritten accounts of their family history, stories that she told her children out loud. Molly’s thoughts wander to a specific story that Lizzie told in 1897.

Lizzie's story focuses on her father, Tommy and Molly's grandfather, Tom Ryan in 1846 during the Potato Famine. After being rejected by his girlfriend’s parents, Tom goes to work on his family farm, mostly walking the family pig to market. Along the way, he is accompanied by his cousin, Frank. During this day, the cousins encounter various people and situations. 

The most fascinating person that the Ryan Cousins meet is the Bean Feasa or the Hag, a woman of knowledge, witch, healer, and midwife who crosses their path many times. As they are going about their business, she is going about hers blessing or cursing various people and requesting that they leave specific offerings as a reward, bribe, or a peace offering.

The story of the Ryan Cousins and the Bean Feasa conveys various situations that run the gamut from commonplace, humorous, romantic, tragic, disturbing, eerie, bizarre, uncanny, and magical. Keenan weaves the ordinary and mundane with the ethereal and otherworldly rather well. He depicts the voice of Ireland in a specific point and time by interacting the natural physical world with the unseen and invisible world.

Keenan captures the Irish milieu well by making each character unique. We see the peaceful farmlands, rolling hills, the recognizable accents and colloquialisms. Above all, there are the quirky characters.

 There is a crotchety taciturn neighbor who makes his opinions about everything known. A couple carry on an extramarital affair under the clueless husband's nose.There is a snobbish nun who can't believe that she is stuck in this backwater area. She is from France for crying out loud! Trouble making twins plan bullying shenanigans for the lulz.There is a lot of humor and charm in these looks at everyday life.

However this is not a book about fluffy nostalgia with only a postcard look at rural Ireland. All of the charm and humor is used as a front for the darker edges that appear because of the trying times of English oppression, crippling famine, and religious dominance. Sometimes the humorous moments are intertwined with the tragic. 

Tom and Frank see the various struggles that their friends, neighbors, and others are going through. Many characters are facing unemployment, starvation, and are considering leaving Ireland forever. While alcoholism is prevalent throughout, the historical context suggests that it is used for people to sedate their troubles away when they can't move up, out, or forward.

 There is an ongoing English presence of upper class land owners who look down on the locals with disdain and ownership that they can do whatever they want to these people and face no repercussions (at least until 1916 but that's another story entirely).

The cousins see lads and lasses kept from each other by income, religion, or their own personalities perhaps in desperate attempts to either move up a social status that doesn't include hunger and poverty or to hold onto a family legacy and culture before it's forced into extinction.

 A Magdalene Laundry is an important scene as we encounter young unwed isolated expectant mothers. A pharmacist sells abortifacients and other medicines on the side for those who don't want to bring children into such an uncertain world. A single mother is resorted to begging for food with her children. 

By far one of the most heartbreaking moments occurs when Tom and Frank see the bodies of an elderly couple floating down the river. It is implied that they committed suicide. Besides this image, the most disturbing aspect is the indifference displayed from Tom, Frank, and everyone else.

 Aside from the usual duties that come with fishing the corpses and planning for the burial, there's no grief, no mourning, no investigation. Just talk about whether the burial will be a church burial. It's a weariness that accepts that things are bad and are only going to get worse. 

Thankfully the darkness is only a part of the story and is tempered by the quirky charm mentioned earlier and the fantastic aspects. There is talk about ghosts and spirits in the atmosphere. A little man appears in various pages and dispenses uncanny advice and might be a leprechaun. A beautiful woman is compared to a leannain sidhe, a beautiful fairy that takes a human lover. There are references to a castle that might be haunted by the banshee, the wailing female spirits that predict the death.

By far the most enchanting character of the story is the Bean Feasa. She is able to see what people are really worth, recognizing their virtues and vices by sight and a few words of dialogue. She knows secrets that many hypocritical authority figures hide and calls them out on their promiscuity, crimes, corruption, and abuse of power. 

She acts as the words of vengeance, perhaps the voice of a people who have had enough. She curses them then offers to remove them in exchange for food and other items. She uses her own fierce reputation as leverage.

However, the Bean Feasa is not unkind. She also rewards good behavior and foreseeable fortune such as when she tells Tom that he will find true love. As before, she does this in exchange for food and other goods. While they probably are for her (even witches have to eat after all), we learn that there are more heartwarming reasons. They reveal that this stern, baffling, eccentric crone is probably the most moral ethical character in the entire cast and the real heart of the book.

This book uses the power of Lizzie’s storytelling to ensure that these people, their real world, their legends, their world will never be gone. Not as long as there is another generation to hear and read it.

Sketch by Ros Hill

This is a summary. The whole review is on LitPick.

Sketch is on the surface a witty meta fictional satire about superheroes and the comic industry but underneath it is a deep nuanced clever work about creativity, free will, and finding one's own purpose and agency.

In 1967, Charles, an illustrator, while on a trip to Egypt received a bottle of magic ink. Heba, the mysterious seller, suggests that with all of the problems in the world, he should draw a superhero. He does and creates Sketch who comes to life and is given powers through Charles' drawings. However, where there are superheroes, there are always supervillains and Sketch is no exception. His archenemy is the Finger Gunman who knows about the ink and wants to use it for his own destructive means. This rivalry ends in grief and tragedy.

40 years later Sketch finds Sid, a young man with a connection to all of the goings on from the past and needs him to confront his former enemy once more for their final battle.

There is some brilliant commentary about superheroes and comic book culture such as Sketch and The Finger Gunman playing their expected roles to the hilt particularly the end when The Finger Gunman has Sketch and Sid captive in his lair and monologues because of course.

Despite the humorous references, there are some interesting questions raised about the creative process, maturity, and choosing one's path.

In their first few minutes of creation, Sketch and The Finger Gunman only possess the knowledge their creators gave them. They know names and goals but don't have the ability to understand why or how to act towards them. In both cases, they have to make the choice to be a hero or a villain.

This shows that a creator, or a parent, gives the tools but they have to decide what to do for them. Charles may have drawn and wrote Sketch's powers, but he had to choose to use them and take the path of a hero. The Finger Gunman was created for the same purpose, but he chose the alternative. 

Whispers of Blue Ridge by Nina Purtee 

This is a summary. The whole review is on Reader's Views 

Nina Purtee’s novel Whispers of Blue Ridge has a beautiful rural Southern small town setting. It has a charming romance between a couple that goes from meet cute and flirtation, to making love, to making long term plans, to potential soulmates. It's a nice trajectory but underneath all of the light surface sweetness, there is a dark undercurrent of actions that are results of secrets, affairs, the failures of maintaining perfection, and death.

Vintner Savannah Gray runs Graystone Winery in Blue Ridge, Georgia after the deaths of her parents and grandmother. The upcoming wine tasting festival is an important event and coincides with the arrival of rodeo champion Jake Rollins who is looking for sponsorship from Graystone. Jake’s arrival opens family rivalries and long buried secrets that resulted in a serious car accident that took lives and left many physically and emotionally destroyed. The memories force Jake, Savannah, and other characters to come to terms with the revelations that could change their lives forever.

Jake and Savannah are a fairly decent couple. Savannah struggles to hold onto her family business and care for her aging grandfather. She also has her own personal goals that put her in conflict with her family responsibilities. She is torn between her loyalty to her family and pursuing her own happiness. 

Jake fits the rugged outdoorsy cowboy and love interest without much depth beyond that type of character. He doesn't come into his own until he reveals that he was involved in the accident that left him scarred, traumatized, and amnesiac.

The accident forces the characters to come to terms with the difference between the reality and the image that they tried to convey. The setting of Blue Ridge is one of those idyllic small towns that live off of maintaining an image of beauty and perfection. . It is a small town where status quo must be maintained at all costs and serious issues are brushed aside unless forced to face them.

When the true events that led to the accident and the subsequent aftermath are revealed, the characters have to weigh the consequences of earlier lies and secrets. Jake, Savannah, and the others have to confront the truth of what happened and how the subsequent years of artifice, pretense, and maintaining a perfect idyllic facade contributed to this catastrophe. 

Runebound (The Last Rune of Rungardvik Book 1) by Alessa M. Norwen; Evocative Historical Fantasy About a Kingdom in the Crossroads of Great Spiritual Change

 

Runebound (The Last Rune of Rungardvik Book 1) by Alessa M. Norwen; Evocative Historical Fantasy About a Kingdom in the Crossroads of Great Spiritual Change

By Julie Sara Porter 

Bookworm Reviews 

This review is also on Reedsy Discovery.

Spoilers: Alessa M. Norwen’s evocative Historical Fantasy Runebound, the first book in her The Last Rune of Rungardvik series is about a kingdom caught in the crossroads of great change. Change in religion, change in alliances, change in expected gender and social roles, and a change in conflict and diplomatic relationships between separate kingdoms.

Milena, Princess of Mecklenburg, is arranged to marry Heinrich of Lundberg of the Saxon House of Welf to secure Mecklenburg's standing within the Holy Roman Empire. She is not happy about being sold and given away like a bargaining chip. 

Milena fights her own way. Despite the kingdom being Christian, Milena secretly studies the old Pagan religion and practices intuitive and clairvoyant abilities. She uses her secret practice to fight against this arrangement and to carve her own path.

Milena is a character who strives to find her own agency and independence despite this Christian upbringing which tells her that she should be submissive to male authority like her father, future husband, and the Church. It's a man's world and Milena is told that she has no choice but to accept it.

As previously mentioned Runebound features a kingdom that is on the crossroads of change. Mecklenburg in Pomerania was largely pagan and had several small enclaves with chieftains. Milena's mother, Woizlava was the descendant of pagan chieftains and still practices the old ways though she outwardly identifies as a Christian. 

Her husband, Milena's father Pribislav is a Christian and expects his family to follow suit. However though he holds the Church in high esteem, his conversion has less to do with spiritual reasons and more to do with pragmatism. The Holy Roman Empire is a formidable force that is expanding. Pribislav is simply backing the right horse and siding with the winner.

Milena also recognizes this division through two people in charge of her education: Bishop Anselm, head of the church and Pribislav’s spiritual advisor and Dobrawa, Woizlava’s midwife who trained her in the pagan arts in secret and is now doing the same to Milena. These two represent the clashing faiths that surround the story because unlike Melania’s parents who had to compromise who they were, Anselm and Dobrawa will not.

Bishop Anselm is a conniving manipulator who uses the fear of God as a weapon to maintain his authority. He is the type of person that would thrive in modern day as the living embodiment of the Christian hypocrisy that would ordering murder, rape, genocide on anyone and throw Biblical buzz words and Apocalyptic terms around to make it justifiable. Anselm uses threats, violence, intimidation, abuse, spies, and at one point arson to force his authority.

Anselm is a prominent advisor that keeps Milena at a distance. He knows that she is a threat to him with her intelligence, intuition, and strong will. He stresses the Biblical passages which state women should be subservient to men and that they are the bearers of original sin so Milena’s observation could be considered questionable even potentially Satanic. As long as she is packed away and married off, he is free to dominate Pribislav and rule Mecklenburg from behind the throne.

While Anselm uses Christian doctrine to diminish Milena’s presence, Dobrawa encourages her. Instead of dogmatism directed on behalf of a male God, she tells the princess stories about ancient gods, goddesses, heroes, and heroines from Slavic Mythology (Those who are interested in mythologies from around the world will like this beginner's introduction to figures like Perun, Veles, Rod, Mokosh, Morana, Chernabog, The Firebird, and Baba Yagga). 

Dobrawa guides Milena through visualizations where she displays precognitive abilities. Milena is gifted runes that serve as touchstones to communicate with the deities and spirits around her. Instead of telling her to be submissive, Dobrawa inspires her to maintain her own strength and leadership skills.

Milena is able to retain a willful presence despite attempts to censor or stifle her. She challenges an arranged marriage without her consent. Then when the situation becomes dire and marriage veers towards inevitable, she decides that even if she has to get married, she is going to give her future husband a hell of a time. He won't have even the slightest notion that he can control her.

Addie's Eyes by Tim Landry; A Historical Fantasy About Disabilities, Dreams, and Misfits

 

Addie's Eyes by Tim Landry; A Historical Fantasy About Disabilities, Dreams, and Misfits 

By Julie Sara Porter 

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: Addie's Eyes by Tim Landry is a wholesome enchanting Historical Fantasy which combines early 20th century entertainment, including sideshow attractions and dream worlds. It's also a compelling story about two misfits who are united against a real world that doesn't understand them and a fantasy world of their own imagination. It is old fashioned in settings, theme, and style but that is what makes the book timeless the way many youthful fantasies like Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of OZ are.

In 1884 Liverpool, Addie Alexander is a blind girl who works and lives at her father, Ezra’s, Ruby Palace Theater.  The latest entertainer is Fedor Jeftichew, AKA Jo Jo The Dog Face Boy, a sideshow performer with hypertrichosis, an abnormal amount of hair growth on his body. Rachel, Addie's teacher, is leaving for another job, so she feels lonely. She befriends Fedor who tells the blind girl that he is just an assistant who looks after the Dog Faced Boy. The two develop a close friendship that threatens the act when her father and his manager catch them. Fedor leaves for another performance, Addie follows after him, and  is knocked into a coma. While she is in her coma, she dreams of a fantasy kingdom where she can see and travel to different worlds based on hers and Fedor’s imagination.

The book has two distinct parts, the first is a more straightforward Historical Fiction. The second detailing Addie's dream is a Fantasy. These two distinct parts tell a unique story that covers both tones admirably.

The first half is genuinely touching but also has a savage bite. The bite is caused by the focus on people with disabilities and physical abnormalities, some of which are displayed for others amusement. This was an actual source of entertainment which is now seen as exploitative and dehumanizing. 

I highly recommend the book, Very Special People: The Struggles, Loves, and Triumphs of Human Oddities by Frederick Drimmer for more information on sideshows and their entertainers. In fact, Fedor/JoJo is a fictionalized version of a real life performer of the same name. This amalgam of putting a real-life sideshow entertainer in this fictional setting shows the faint line between fantasy and reality that is so prevalent throughout the book. 

The most heartfelt chapters focus on the relationship between Addie and Fedor. Fedor is raised to expose his differences to a thirsty, drawing, and often fickle crowd. He can’t hide who he is so he has to play a part. He is used to being stared at, so he turns it into an opportunity. He is highly intelligent, creative, and adaptable. He suggests different things to add to the act, like acrobatics or recitations to draw bigger crowds and provide more money for himself and his manager/guardian, Charlie.

Addie’s blindness also makes her an oddity as well. Unlike Fedor, she is trained to hide. She occasionally greets visitors but mostly she works behind the scenes at the theater, gathering props, moving the curtain, and running errands for her father and the performers. She usually has to stay in the theater with minimal contact except for Ezra, Rachel, and Patrick, a stagehand.

 It’s no wonder that she’s so distraught when Rachel announces her impending departure. She didn’t just lose a teacher, she lost a mentor, mother figure, and one of her few contacts with the outside world. It’s also understandable why Addie bonds with Fedor. He is one of the entertainers, but he actually takes the time to talk to her and treat her like a real person and not part of the faceless help.

Like Fedor, Addie too shows an imaginative and creative spirit. In her private areas backstage, she treats the abandoned props like toys and makes up stories about them. This helps facilitate Fedor’s creativity. Fedor and Addie build a true friendship through their dual imaginations. To the rest of society they are misfits and outsiders, so their bond is that of two kindred spirits united because of a world that fears or shelters them.

Fedor weaves tales about being a prince of a land called Zymia. Addie tells her own imaginary tales. As lonely children often do, they are connected through their fantastic stories. As long as they are in their imagination, they can be brave, attractive, heroic, the people that they feel they are not. They create a world where Fedor doesn’t have to pretend to be a separate person from Jojo and Addie can go outside and see the environment that she pictures in her head. The fantasy that they create becomes real for Addie after their separation and her coma. 

The fantasy aspects are similar to many of the similar stories from the 19th century. Addie comes to the world with weird characters who see her as some kind of hero and she is sent on a quest for a specific goal. In this case to find Fedor, who is their missing prince just like in his stories. It gives one the overall impression that this experience is intentionally based on those stories because they were ones that Addie told herself, that Rachel read or encouraged her to read, or that she and Fedor shared. 

Many of the lands and characters that Addie sees are products of a child’s imagination and create a charming world that one would definitely want to escape into if given the chance. She befriends a terrapin (not a turtle as he reminds us), named Brother. There is also a tall lean figure made up of various blocks called Toybox. They accompany Addie on her journey. She also sees mysterious shadowy figures that could either help or harm her. 

The different lands are made of themes like candy, toys, musical instruments, and others that please the senses. In a way, they are like those AI clips which show variations of the same idea like a bedroom in various weird styles decorated with wildlife, oceans, or Outer Space.

For  Addie who has been living in a world of darkness and had to guess through her senses and imaginations how things looked, it is a transformative experience. That’s probably part of why this dreamscape is described so bizarre and outlandish. The Readers are visualizing it through the perspective of someone who can see for the first time and is aware how beautiful, strange, and off putting the world around her can be. Also why the thought of darkness moving across the land would be so traumatic to her. It’s a dream world that relies on the reality of the dreamer. 

In fact, unlike most versions of this trope, the Reader is made aware that this is definitely a dream. While Addie is in this coma going on her imaginative journey, we are provided chapters from the points of view of Ezra and Rachel as they watch over her and Fedor as he leaves Charlie to returns to the Ruby Palace. It's an interesting and original touch to this type of story, though it somewhat drags in parts. 

Sometimes, Readers like the fantasy of escapism and want to believe that at least temporarily the protagonist is there and that this is a real experience.  We don’t always want to be reminded that it isn’t. We get the idea when we read about things that are actually composites of real world objects and characters. Or that a meaningless conversation in reality takes precedence in the dream. Or hey the dream provides a solution to a problem or a lesson to be learned.

Though, as with many of these stories there are a couple of later revelations that blur the dream world and the real world. That makes these real world views even more arbitrary and questionable. But that is a minor issue in a book that combines History and Fantasy to tell a story that any outsider or misfit can relate to or understand.

Weekly Reader: WOAD by James Isaac; Return of The King is Not As Great As It Seems

 

Weekly Reader: WOAD by James Isaac; Return of The King is Not As Great As It Seems

By Julie Sara Porter

Spoilers: Many variations of the Arthurian legends say that King Arthur never really died. Instead, he was taken to Avalon to be healed and sleep until such a time when his country and his people needed him. This myth is written in various books, films, TV, and has been endorsed by various members of British royalty. The Plantagenet family used this legend as proof of their divine right to rule. King Henry VII was so enamored with Arthurian myth that he named his eldest son, Arthur so an eventual King Arthur could once again sit on England's throne. (That however was not to be since Prince Arthur died at a very young age and Henry VII was succeeded by his younger son, Henry VIII.).Of course there is the comparison of President Kennedy's administration to Camelot. Whether or not Arthur existed historically, his legend has proven greater than the reality.

Many believe that Camelot and Arthur represent a golden age and that if Arthur really could return, those cherished days of chivalry and heroism would also return. However, some adaptations suggest that maybe Arthur's return is not something to be celebrated. Instead, it might be something to be feared. That is the premise behind WOAD by James Isaac, a historical fantasy that takes a very critical look at how the alleged Once and Future King would act in a world that changed around him but he did not.

Isaac's version of King Arthur, called Artos, is more based on historical interpretation that he was a Celtic warlord in the 1st Century battling the Romans, rather than the Medieval king of the enchanted Camelot. Because he's based on the historical Arthur, we read nothing about the other usual Camelot cast of characters. So there are no mentions of Merlin, Guinevere, Lancelot, Morgan LeFay, Morgause, the Lady of the Lake, Mordred and the rest.

Instead, Arthur fights alongside real life warriors such as Boudicca to fight off Roman legions. However, Arthur still has connections to fairy origins from the mythical land of Avalon.

During what should be a victory, Arthur fought against the fairies and creatures of Avalon. He also argued with the Celtic goddesses like Cerridwen and Andraste to the point of denouncing them. He then takes on the mantle of God himself, living an immortal life and plotting for centuries to gather an army that will obey, revere, and worship him and will fight his fairian enemies. 

Artos's ruthlessness and tyranny increases until by the Victorian Era, he practically runs a part of East End London that is next to a gateway into Avalon. His far reaching ambitions are threatened by Victor, a human who guards the entrance between the human and fairy world, and Sol and Shammy, a pair of street urchin con artists who have stronger ties to the fairy world than they originally thought.

Isaac's book is a brilliant deconstruction of the Arthurian myth, portraying the character as a harsh, arrogant, destructive tyrant. Artos is someone who is unyielding in his views that have been honed through centuries of interacting with humans and fairies. He is always in battle, looking for an enemy to fight and someone to defeat. Whether he is in the Middle Ages, the English Civil War, or the creation of the British Empire, Artos has seen plenty of battles and forces his leadership towards those around him. 

This outlook combined with the bitterness obtained over the centuries are enough to drive Artos insane and give him a self righteous tone that sees everyone who is not with him as being against him. 

He is not above using devious means to gain followers. He takes in orphans and unwanted children not out of the goodness of his heart, but to raise them to be his willing army that are practically brainwashed to follow his fanaticism.

 Artos has ceased to just become a warlord or king. He declares himself a god and demands total obedience and worship.

Suddenly, the return of an over 1,0000 year old king to fight for his people doesn't seem like a good idea when he plans to destroy the kingdom and everyone in it so he can rebuild it in his own image.

There are many who see through the image that Artos is trying to convey. The most prominent character to challenge him is Sol. Sol originally started out as a street kid who was involved in a gambling con game with Shammy, his partner and would-be girlfriend. Like many others in the East End, he sees Artos as a leader until he encounters Cerridwen who tells Sol the truth about Artos's motives and goals and Sol's own birth (none of which will be revealed in this review). 

Sol's conversations with Cerridwen seem to echo a brainwashed cult follower becoming deprogrammed to reject the life that he once followed without question. He sees the truth of his upbringing and questions his allegiance to Artos. However, he becomes more determined to fight against him when his friend Shammy's developing figure and maturity don't miss Artos's attention. 

WOAD tells us that sometimes what often makes myths is nostalgia. While many long for a return to a simpler life with larger than life heroes, we fail to account for changing times and attitudes. What may appear acceptable in one era can be cruel in another, and a hero in one time could turn into a villain in another. Perhaps instead of looking for a physical return to the past, perhaps we could embody those values of courage, honor, kindness, and devotion in our own lives. Sometimes the real hero is inside us.