Ultimate satisfaction...that got you reading!

With The Book of Life, Deborah Harkness’ All Souls trilogy comes to a close, and what a close it is. The All Souls trilogy has always been a many layered story. At its heart the forbidden relationship between our supernatural Romeo and Juliet, Matthew and Diana, and the battles they fight to remain united and protect their family; the greater tale of relationships which span history, the globe and supernatural species; and the war between tradition and progress - two disparate entities which, with every page turned, come closer and closer to each other and the truth.

The Book of Life brings all aspects of the trilogy to a climatic and incredibly satisfying resolution, but leads us through woods thick with ghosts, body-littered caverns, genocidal torture chambers and top-of-the-line scientific laboratories en route. Without giving away any spoilers, our favourite characters will all be changed by the experience in this volume - their world will never be the same again. And not just their world, the world.

By reading this series you won’t be the same either, because the essence of this book will weave its way into your blood like rosemary and rowan incense, sharing a real-world truth that we all know in our hearts - whether witch, daemon, vampire or human, we are all the same. We all live, hope, dream and die.

I know every book has this message in one way or another - the criminal loves his mother, the saint still feels jealousy, the serial killer still laughs at looping gifs of kittens tumbling - but the Book of Life is beautifully written and the supernatural element takes away the sense of soapbox. It holds the mirror up to modern society with a subtlety and a flair for the dramatic which is inspiring. 

The depiction of power is also a thing of wonder. In the All Souls trilogy, both sexes are warriors, scholars, scientists, soldiers, strategists, geniuses, feral and caring. And isn’t that how it is and how it's meant to be? And I can't help but adore the fact that the most powerful character in the book magically becomes a natural redhead! It feels like a fictional finger gesture for the women throughout history who have been unfairly ostracised, tortured and killed purely because of the colour of their hair...

Deborah Harkness will enthral you with her web of words, open a velvet surrounded window into another world and show you the truth of living. It doesn’t matter if you’re a witch, a vampire, a daemon or a human - everyone will love the All Souls trilogy. What are you waiting for? A Discovery of Witches and Shadow of Night are already available, The Book of Life is out on the 15th of July.

I guarantee you will not be disappointed.

Above the shit and the piss...

I'm currently working on something which is set in a small city, has time-traveling witches, ghosts, vampires and mediums... You would think I wouldn't have time to miss some of the characters from the first novel and a half I wrote. But I do and so I indulged in writing a scene which I probably won't come back to for at least a year...

Lucielle and Raven almost have a thing. They are both magic users and are part of a dysfunctional magical society in a city which is pretty much London. Lucielle's only living relative, Henri, is a powerful witch, impatient and frustrated aunt and has a terminal diagnosis. Go scene...

* * * * *

Raven took the hospital stairs three at a time and wasn't even breathing hard when he reached the roof. The emergency fire exit had been propped open with a lump of concrete and he kicked it out of the way as he stepped onto the flat cigarette-butt strewn asphalt, hearing the door slam shut behind him.

She was standing on the low wall surrounding the roof, her feet bare, her dark hair drifting in the wind and half-hiding her face from the city. Beyond her the sky was bruised with storm clouds, making the street lights glow like fireflies far below them. Raven stopped, clenching and unclenching his fists, mentally calculating the distance between he and Lucielle, between the edge of the roof and the pavement. The maths were not good. He took a deep breath and took a step towards her.

“Lucielle... Get back onto the fucking roof.”

She tilted her face towards his voice, her eyes shut behind her hair.

“Fuck, Raven. I thought you'd be faster, I could have stepped off this edge a hundred times already.”

He clenched his teeth, taking a step towards her.

“So why haven't you?”

Lucielle laughed but the sound felt brittle. “I'm fairly certain that's not the kind of question you're meant to ask.”

She raised a half-empty bottle to her lips, the label frayed and torn where she'd been picking at it. Raven frowned. The alcohol complicated things, it always did with Lucielle.

“Get back onto the roof and we can talk about this.”

Lucielle turned towards him, her body stiffening, her face tight as she grimaced.

“Who said I wanted to talk? And even if I did, why the fuck would I talk to you? Christ, Raven. You could have at least sent Sophie...”

“Sophie’s in the ward. With Henri.”

The words landed like blows and for one moment Raven thought she would fall, just topple backwards like a windswept leaf and drift out of sight. Lucielle sagged and stepped forward onto the roof, her legs crumpling beneath her as she sat on the wall. The wind lifted her hair from her face and Raven could see the smudges of make up streaked down her cheeks, see the grey pain around her eyes.

“Lucielle, she needs you...”

Lucielle shook her head, distracted and then determined, the bottle returning to her lips.

“What good am I right now? How exactly can I help? It’s not like I can cure her, or even help... All I ever do is fuck up and make things harder. If I’m around she’ll just worry about me rather than actually looking after herself. This is MY FUCKING FAULT!”

She threw the bottle at Raven as she shouted. It flew wide and smashed on the tarmac near the door. Her arms dropped limply to her sides, her fingers brushing against the loose chips of gravel and bird crap. Raven took a step towards her and sank to his knees, his eyes searching for hers.

“Luce... It’s not your fault. How could this be your fault?”

The tears were running openly down her face, dripping onto her bare arms and feet. She lifted her hands to cover her face.

“If I hadn’t been fucking up, if she’d not been freaking out about Chase and Sophie... She’d have realised that there was something wrong. She’d have been...operable...”

Raven could feel his throat tightening and he tried to swallow, tried to find his voice. A growl of thunder dragged itself across the city and he waited for it to pass but Lucielle spoke before he could.

“Did you see her face, Raven? When she asked what the treatment was and the doctor, he just looked right at her and said there was no course of treatment. She looked so scared, it was like her face had slid aside to reveal her soul... I saw her, I really saw her and she was lost. I saw her hope wither, her strength crushed... She was like a child, like a lost child...”

“Luce...”

“I did that, Raven. I stopped her from realising she was ill... and now, now the Conclave are already hounding her, demanding I leave the city... What good have I been? With everything that has happened... My parents, Sophie, the fucking knife, Chase... What good am I? I just make people die. Where’s the grand fucking scheme in that?”

She stood quickly and turned back to the wall, lifting one pale foot to rest on the smooth grey concrete. The first drops of rain began to darken the stone around her foot in big coin-sized circles.

“Lucielle?” Raven asked, his voice flat and hard like the pavement way, way below.

She stepped up onto the wall and turned away from him, raising her voice so he could hear her.

“So what I really want to know is, if I’m meant to be so fucking special, from such an esteemed bloodline; if destiny and fate are bending over backwards for me to fuck them up the arse, then surely I can’t just step off this fucking wall and stop being such a total fucking fuck-up...”

Raven took a step towards her already knowing in his gut that he was too far away from her, that he wasn’t going to be fast enough. He called her name but his voice came out strangled by fear, buried beneath another rumble of thunder.

She didn’t look back, she just took a step forward into the rain and dropped out of sight like a stone.

Raven screamed her name as lightning scorched the air and for a moment he thought he’d been struck. His breath was knocked from him as he rolled across the roof, feeling the stone chips embedding themselves into his jaw and one cheek. He pushed himself to his hands and knees, feeling his heart pounding against his ribs like a punch, his whole body shaking and all the time unable to tear his eyes away from the last spot he had seen her in. That rain drenched roof edge, with the city lights beyond.

As he shuddered, his brain numb and his eyes stinging from the rain, he became aware of a sound, a buffeting of wind, like the slowed down whomp of helicopter rotors. Raven glanced around, seeing only the rain and buildings jutting up into the tomb dark sky and then movement caught his eye.

It was a flicker of black, peaking over the edge of the roof. It appeared again after a second, the sound of pushing air accompanying it and then Lucielle’s face appeared above the concrete.

She rose majestically, lifted by a pair of ebony wings which seemed larger than her small frame. Raven scrambled to his feet and approached the edge of the roof as her feet reached for the wall. She landed awkwardly, the wind tugging at her wings before she could fold them and Raven reached out to grab her hand, holding on tightly, anchoring her to the rooftop with an iron grip.

“What. The. Fuck...”

Lucielle glanced over her shoulder at the folded feathers and then met Raven’s gaze and there was steel there. Strength and conviction and what-ever else came to mind when you looked at someone who had just discovered they had the power to change the world. Lucielle squeezed Raven’s hand.

“I didn’t know I could do that...”

Raven stared at her wings. “I don’t think many people can... Probably not that fast either...”

“You know what this means?”

Raven’s eyes dropped to their clasped hands for a moment. “Destiny, fate... It seems you are fucking special after all... Maybe you have a chance of helping Henri?”

Lucielle smiled softly. Behind her the rain was easing off and shards of pink and golden light were spearing through the grey and licking at the city.

“First things first; it means we have a way off this rooftop after you kicked the door closed.”

Raven looked over the side of the building, his eyes widening.

“You can’t mean...”

Lucielle unfolded her wings with a shiver, wrapping both hands around Raven’s. Her wings dipped, the lift pulling her up onto her tiptoes. She grinned at Raven and pulled him towards her, his arm just wrapping her waist as her wings thrust down again.

“Oh hell yeah...”

Step right up, the show's about to begin...

“We read five words on the first page of a really good novel and we begin to forget that we are reading printed words on a page; we begin to see images... We slip into a dream, forgetting the room we are sitting in... We recreate, with minor and for the most part unimportant changes, the vital and continuous dream the writer worked out in his mind (revising and revising until he got it right)and captured in language so that other human beings, whenever they feel like it, may open his book and dream that dream again.”

John Gardner - On Becoming A Novelist

Very rarely have I read a book that made me feel like I was dreaming and that made me cry upon awakening at the end of the tale, in despair at the end and joy that I knew part of me would forever remain in that world.

The Night Circus is one of those books and it is the plot, the style, the magic, the everything of that book that makes it so wonderful.

On the surface it is the tale of two men of magic, both with different techniques and beliefs. Unable to prove the other wrong, they train a student each, with the intention of competing one against the other: a rivalry which seems fated from the start every time the competition starts anew. Celia and Marcus are bound to the competition and each other, their lives and magic centred around the forum of their gentile and enchanted battle – the Night Circus.

It is a simple enough plot but it's the Night Circus itself that glows at the centre of of the tale, a character all of its own. Full of wonder, weirdness, enchantments, magic and beauty, the circus is lavishly described, from the white and black powdered grass, each amazing and unbelievable tent and to the tips of the fluttering black and white flags. This whole world is spellbinding, so well has Morgenstern described it. And perhaps it helps that the whole of The Night Circus is black and white – not only does the experience for the characters and readers become dream-like, but it works intuitively with us as readers, after all everything we see on the page as we read is as black and white as the circus itself.

The book even structures itself like a dream, hopping from character, location, time period and perspective with abrupt ease and somehow managing to make it work beautifully, because in the back of our minds we trust and let the dream lead us where it will. And like dreams there are things we don't know, can only intuit, especially towards the end...

But despite the things left unsaid the ending is exactly what it should be... With every book or film I hope for the same things, the rising crescendo of music or emotion at the completion of the tale, the resolution as the characters stand in the real or metaphorical sunrise/sunset – that pay off that is at once a little saccharin and cheesey but ultimately fulfilling none-the-less... And The Night Circus has this in buckets, managing somehow to supply us with a rewarding, heart swelling end without resorting to stereotype or any form of cheese or artificial sweetener.

The final chapter with its implications for us as an individual reader... Morgenstern makes us part of the story, a continuum of the tale, forever immortalised and enchanted. And to do that and make you feel it, make you believe it – that is one of the greatest gifts an author can bestow,

In The Night Circus Morgenstern has even created her very own cult/appreciation society; the followers of the fictional Night Circus who travel with the circus, following it as it flits across the western world, wearing monochrome like the circus itself, the black only being broken by splashes of red, a scarf here, a glove or rose there, marking them as Reveurs, the dreamers who have made themselves part of the dream.

As you watch this author, as you follow her tale and watch her rise above the other words and worlds, appearing at signings and award ceremonies – look out for her Reveurs, for they'll be there showing their appreciation with smiles and scarlet.

If you liked Johnathan Strange and Mr Norrell read this book. If you like Neil Gaiman's or Angela Carter's work, read this book. If you love or have lingering affection for childhood fairy tales, the brothers Grimm or Anderson, read this book. Simply – just read this book.

It is a hauntingly beautiful lullaby of a story, full of love, theatre, beauty and enchantment. Read it and you won't want to wake up. Read it and you won't know whether your real life or the Night Circus is the dream.

If I close my eyes I can hear the flags catching the breeze in the starlight, I can hear snowflakes rustling against canvas and the caramel popcorn smells so sweet...

I originally wrote this blog way back in September 2011 and have been lax in posting it. Since then I've attended a signing with Erin Morgenstern as a Reveur, have seen The Night Circus hit the best-sellers chart during the festive season and yearned to read it again.

Erin Morgenstern's next book is going to be a film noir re-telling of Alice in Wonderland, complete with seamed stockings and smoking guns... I can't wait.

Ticking clocks and pumpkins...

I know. It’s been a while...

I’m sitting at home and pondering the strangeness of spare time. I actually have holiday and I am so unaccustomed to it, I’m not sure what to do with myself... The soundtrack of the house around me is one of a ticking clock and distant washing machine: a clock from my grandmother’s house, now hung on my wall and if I close my eyes I can imagine her living room, the cool silence of a family reading, my gran sitting with a poodle on her lap, her eyes distant, her hand worrying at the hem of her skirt... The sky outside looks like a vast slab of pale marble, the glitter of the rock made up of fine rain.

You’re probably wondering why anyone would take time off in October? When the sun is an irregular visitor, when the house is cool enough to warrant putting the heating on maybe once or twice a day. When even the ducks and swans on the river are questioning the good sense of being half immersed in cold, green water.

I have two words for you... Autumn and Halloween.

I love this time of the year. There’s just something about the early morning mists, the dew laden cobwebs, candle-lit pumpkins, crunchy drifting leaves, being able to wear gloves and jumpers and drink hot chocolate all the time... The Pagan year is coming to a close, the veil between worlds is thin and I feel the magic in the air and inspiration seems to come with every breath...

So why am I being baffled by having time on my hands? I think it’s partially from being inside. I need to get outside and soak up the season and let it work it’s magic on me, even with the rain and the grumpy ducks. I need to be writing again - I feel like I’ve lost a limb and the phantom sensation of writing is eating at me, the shape of the pen almost in my hand and the scratch of paper just out of hearing.

So why am I sitting here still? I feel like the day has stalled...

I need to go and buy pumpkins...