H. G. Parry

Holy crap that was excellent!
Technically a coming of age story, with--for once--a healthy parent/child relationship with communication.
Half fairy tale, and half urban fantasy (1970s?), in a world where the magic is slowly dwindling, and priorly used to have an effect on coincidence. I love how they tie it into older, Victorian, novels and fairy tales where good coincidences do happen...but you don't see that as much in current writings because it just doesn't happen.

Highly recommended.

Charley Sutherland was a strange and incredibly precocious little kid. He could read astonishingly well at a very young age... and sometimes, with or without intending to, he would bring the characters he read about to real and physical life. At age 26, he still can and does, and his brother Rob, who has some pretty complicated feelings about Charley, is used to getting calls at all hours asking for his help in rounding up some errant and perhaps potentially dangerous fictional character so show more Charley can put them back where they came from. But this time the accidental manifestation of David Copperfield's villain Uriah Heep has some strange and ominous things to say. And he's not wrong, because it turns out that Charley isn't the only one with this power, and something definitely is coming, something that might change the very nature of reality.

I liked this one a whole lot. The idea of people who can bring fictional characters into reality or enter into fictional worlds isn't at all new to me, but the approach to it here is one that I haven't really seen before. It focuses on the fact that fictional characters aren't either simple words on paper or independent entities with independent lives, but rather a creation of both the author and the reader, so that who the characters are and what they mean depends very much on who is reading them and how. This feels very, very right to me, and Parry does some really fun and clever things with it.

There are a lot of other neat ideas and clever insights here about literary analysis, too, and about the books the various characters are drawn from. There's also a lot of great stuff about complex sibling relationships, since the relationship between Rob and Charley is very much at the heart of the story.

But it's also got a wonderfully entertaining plot, full of suspense and mysteries to ponder over and interesting twists and turns. I was able to figure out the answers to a lot of the plot questions before they were revealed, but in a way that made me feel smart and satisfied when I finally got to see how it all fit together, rather than bored and disappointed because everything was too predictable, and I love it when a novel can pull that off. And there was at least one moment where I kind of gasped in surprise, anyway.

There are a few weak points I could pick at, mostly to do with the way that Rob's girlfriend Lydia is disappointingly underserved and underdeveloped. But those are far overwhelmed by the things I loved about it, something that just gets more impressive when I stop to consider the fact that this was the author's first novel.

I've also read her The Magician's Daughter, and I very much liked that one, too, but this one was even better. And now clearly I'm going to have to read all the rest of her books. show less

We often talk about writers bringing characters to life on the page. But what if there were times when someone is so absorbed in a book that the characters come to life not just metaphorically, but literally? That is the premise of this fantasy novel in which the narrator’s brother Charley, a Dickens expert, is particularly prone to bringing people out of books, often without meaning to. These characters are not directly as they appear in the books but are shaped by the reader's perception show more of them.

“You made Uriah Heep a shape-shifter?” “I just meant that he shaped himself to conform to society’s expectations, but did so in a way that was a parody of those expectations and a means of rising above them.”

As if that is not bad enough, just before being sent back into his book, one character makes some doomy comments about a new world being round the corner, and soon Charley and Rob are caught up in something much bigger and more dangerous than they ever expected.

I found this book completely delightful! The ideas around the basic concept were really well-developed and it managed to be a book with some real emotional poignancy and smart things to say, as well as being a fun and thrilling fantasy read. show less

A TALE OF TWO CITIES is my favorite Charles Dickens novel. For some reason, it hit all the right notes the first time I read it in high school. No matter how often I reread it, the story still has the same effect on me. You don’t see many retellings of this classic. So, when I found out H. G. Parry had a retelling that included fairies and changelings, I knew I had to read it.

A FAR BETTER THING is the perfect retelling of one of my favorite stories. The use of changelings for the Sydney show more Carton/Charles Darnay doppelgänger effect is both brilliant and effective. Carton has always been the hero, but as a changeling with no hope of happiness, he becomes even more sympathetic. I liked him so much that I was hoping Ms. Parry would amend the original ending. Happily, her ending creates just as profound a reading experience as Dickens'.

Ms. Parry made me feel everything I felt experience Dickens’ novel so many (many) years ago. I particularly love how she kept the cast of characters the same but adapted them as needed to fit her version of the story. All of the elements that made Dickens' novel so great still exist in A FAR BETTER THING. Yet the existence of the fairy realm ups the ante in ways I didn’t expect.

There is more at stake for all of the characters, whether they know it or not. And these are not the good types of fairies here. These are the ones that have no qualms about using humans to do their bidding and steal children for the sake of having a cadre of mortal servants. Their influence impacts every person you meet, and the intricate connections - one of the things I love about Dickens novels - are spectacular in Ms. Parry’s hands.

You don't have to have previously read A TALE OF TWO CITIES to enjoy A FAR BETTER THING. You still get to enjoy a spectacular story without knowing what happens next. Trust me when I say that is a good thing; you are in for a wild ride. If you are like me and know what happens, Ms. Parry has a few things up her sleeve to keep you on the edge of your seat. show less