Kat Howard (1)

Anybody who thinks that fantasy has run out of things to say about magic and magicians needs to read Kat Howard. An Unkindness of Magicians is a wonderful look at a magical New York City that lies side by side with the non-magical one, but is filled with all the same power games, secrets and mysteries.

The Unseen World is ruled by magical houses, such as House Merlin and House Prospero. When there is a “turning” magical battles determine the hierarchy among houses, whether upstarts can show more found a house of their own, and who ultimately rules over all the houses. Sydney, a product of the House of Shadows, is an unknown and very powerful magician who is hired to represent Laurent Beauchamps who is seeking to found his own house. They share a desire to shake up the political structure, which makes the powers that be increasingly nervous.

The battles start out as competitions to demonstrate prowess but eventually reach the point where outcomes become deadly. Along the way, it seems that magic is beginning to fail. The reason, and the solution, is something that few people outside of Sydney are prepared to confront.

An Unkindness of Magicians is filled with family squabbles, petty revenges, and murderous intentions. The competitions have a ritualistic format to them that underscores the long tradition of the event and the aristocracy it has given rise to. The characters are sketched out nicely, if not all fully developed. The depth of the depravity of some members of the unseen world is revealed slowly, layer by layer. Sydney’s personal and tragic history make her sympathetic and help to highlight the importance of her personal quest.

Kat Howard has created a fascinating world with characters that leave you dying to know more about them. The stakes of who wins and who loses, who lives and who dies, are painted in stark and clear contrast. The quiet moments are particularly poignant in Howard’s skillful hands. This book is a lot of fun and Kat Howard is an author to watch. I’m looking forward to her next book. Highly recommended.

I was fortunate to receive an advance copy of this book from the publisher. show less

Malcolm Mays is very close to the end of his rope. After the collapse of his terrible marriage, after a horrific tragedy, he has spent close to his last dollars on a house in rural Ione, Oregon. His first sight of the house confirms that there’s plenty of work to be done, but also that there’s something good to work with. When he opens the front door to his new home for the first time, he finds a huge pile of mail written to the dead owner of the house from an inmate at the federal show more prison two hundred miles away in Salem. As he explores the house, he receives a letter from the prison himself, delivered, apparently, without the need for a postal worker or any other human agent. The letter is from Dusha Chuchonnyhoof, who tells him that there will be a plate set out for him in the icebox, and flowers beside the bed. It is too long, Dusha says, since he was in that house; he’s been in prison for one hundred and seventeen years for a crime he didn’t commit. His sentence was two lifetimes and a day, and it’s about to come to an end. And then he’ll come home, to the house Malcolm thinks is his own. In the meantime, Dusha says, the house will welcome him.

For the house is magical. When Malcolm goes to the refrigerator, supper is ready for him, complete with wine — cold despite the fact that the electricity hasn’t been hooked up yet. Invisible hands prepare Malcolm’s bed, set out his clothes, draw his bath, wash his dishes, prepare all his meals. And the letters continue to come, instructing Malcolm to prepare things for Dusha’s return. Dusha wants Malcolm to makes things ready for him, to perform a task so horrible that Malcolm quails — except that Dusha promises what he wants most in return.

Maria Dahvana Headley and Kat Howard have taken the darker aspects of fairy tales and come up with a new tale set in contemporary America, complete with contemporary American problems of automobiles and broken marriages. These horrors that happen every day are combined with the horrors of a supernatural creature that seems to soothe in order to terrify, to provide for all his victim’s needs so long as that victim might be useful. As the story progresses, and as Malcolm toys with the notion of doing as his correspondent asks, the reader’s apprehension mounts.

The authors’ style is simple but beautiful. For example, there’s this passage describing Malcolm’s thought after he burns a patch of mint:

"The smell of crushed mint and smoke, and I remembered for an agonizing moment my old life, a glass of ice, bourbon, mint, sugar, my wife smiling at me, her face lit up with love. A sunset. Trees dark and tall. Fireflies starting to blink on and off around the edge of the yard, her hand in mine."

In addition, the epistolary nature of the story allows the authors to reveal much at the same time they conceal from Malcolm — and the reader — precisely what’s going to happen. As we grow to like and sympathize with Malcolm, our dread increases. Will he lose his house? What does Dusha mean when he says he’s coming home? It’s a tricky way to build suspense, but Headley and Howard pull it off.

This is a beautiful novella, a modern fairy tale that any reader of the French tale “Beauty and the Beast” will recognize, but so different from that story that it is something entirely new. Subterranean Press continues to do us all a tremendous service by publishing novellas by some of the best talent writing today, as this example shows.

Originally published at http://www.fantasyliterature.com/reviews/horrible-monday-the-end-of-the-sentence.... show less

This is a fantastic (and fantastical) urban fantasy! Not only does Howard not use the tried and true mystery formula (or any formula), but she’s done an amazing job realizing present-day magical New York. Of course the top magician families are a bunch of rich WASPy snobs. Of course they’d enchant their buildings and offices and landmarks. There are even magical lawyers! And there’s a beautiful sense of wonder to the magic too—cars doing aerial ballet, gardens growing in ballrooms, show more houses that know how you like your tea.

But as with any society, any fantasy, any magic system, it’s not all fun and games or perfection. Everyone in the story is flawed, some way more than others, and the Turning brings out all the nastiness that you’d expect from a bunch of wealthy white people into politics. Plus there are dark secrets, classism and racism, greed, and the thing I mentioned with the magic. It makes for compelling reading, definitely, and Howard’s prose is on the edge between lyrical and thrilling, which helps.

It’s also one of those novels where every piece, every character, and every scrap of plot is necessary. There’s no padding, but also little or no foreshadowing about how anything or anyone will get used, unless it’s to keep you turning pages to find out when it will. There’s a side plot focused on Sydney’s backstory, and another with a young lawyer, and you think you know how they’ll end but …

Anyway, yeah. If you like urban fantasy, go read this one. You won’t be let down.

Warnings: Slavery and torture. Sexual predation and violence (not condoned).

7.8/10 show less

‘’My own curse had been silence. It’s common enough, particularly for girls. We’re so often encouraged not to speak, and that practiced quiet makes it easy for a curse to steal our voices.’’

16 stories of women on the brink of change. 16 myths inspired by fairytales and legends, retold for contemporary readers who KNOW that every civilisation is based on the enticing, enchanting blend of facts and fiction. From Arthurian legends to anecdotes from the Lives of Saints, Kat Howard show more creates a powerful literary potion that transports us to the centre of mythical worlds that co-exist within our mundane reality. Aspiring writers who wish to retell the myths that shaped our world, THIS is how it’s done. Pay attention…

A Life in Fictions: A writer’s muse narrates the different roles attributed to her. A poignant, symbolic piece on the danger of losing our personality.

The Saint of the Sidewalks: The musings of an urban, unwilling ‘’saint’’. Extremely unique.

Maiden, Hunter, Beast: A moving retelling of the myth of the Maiden and the Unicorn.

‘’The scent of apples is everywhere. Cloying and too sweet. The thick white of their blossoms, the sharp crispness of the fruit. the heady cider of the overripe bodies fallen to the ground. The rot where they lie. It should be impossible for each version of the fruit to exist at once, all together, but really, everything about this should be impossible.’’

Once, Future: An astonishing retelling of the Arthurian legend, set in a charismatic university community. A professor assigns roles to her students. Arthur, Mordred, Lancelot, Nimue, but above all, Morgan. She is the heart of the story and she is about to steal your heart. This collection is an A+ from this story alone.

Translatio Corporis: A city lost in translation…

‘’What kind of story do you tell about a garden of dead girls?’’

‘’They spoke of a storm, and wind and rain washed over me, soaking my skin. They spoke of betrayal, the death of love, and my mouth ran red with blood, thick and salt.
They whispered of vengeance, and my legs ached from the chase, and the howls of the hunted echoed in my ears. They told me of falling beneath the ground and dreaming the graves that covered them. Beloved sisters.’’

Dreaming Like a Ghost: A woman keeps on finding traces of the people who inhabited her new apartment, and befriends a ghost residing in a mysterious graveyard. Perfection.

‘’Sleep is dying, and has been for a long time, now through uncounted ticks of clocks and the flickers of thousands of too-brief candles. Sleep is dying, a slow exsanguination of dreams, a storm-tossed suffocation of nightmares. Sleep is dying, and she is not alone in her throes.’’

Murdered Sleep: A world made of dreams, masked dancers, dying flames, pagan deities and the choice between staying and leaving.

The Speaking Bone: An island made of bones which speak at dawn, and sing to the pilgrims…

‘’There are rituals. Traditions. A curse, once broken, breaks easier a second time. Death becomes one hundred years of sleep, becomes one thousand and one nights telling stories. We know what our curses are when we see them, and we know their undoing.’’

Those Are Pearls: A story created by the finest parts of our beloved fairytales. Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, The Snow Queen, Eliza and the Swans, all dancers in a haunting dance.

All of Our Past Places: A young woman tries to find her best friend through ancient maps. A moving story about friendship and the enchanting science of cartography.

‘’It was growing late, the approaching winter bringing on the darkness sooner and sooner each day. They sky was a cauldron of clouds, slate splotches pushed about by the wind. There were streaks on the sand, patterns left by the wind. the air felt thick and heavy, like a storm coming in.’’

Saints’ Tide: A haunting tale with a distinctive Celtic atmosphere of a community where the saints can be seen, where each resident can become a saint at the time of their birth. A baby is born, and the two women who are its guardians must contemplate the sacrifice required by their faith. A story about motherhood, tradition and sacrifice.

‘’Even in his bird form, Sweeney recognised New York as a city of the mad. Not that one needed to be crazy to be there, or that extended residency was a contributing factor to lunacy of some sort, but living there - thriving there - took a particular form of madness.
Or caused it. Sweeney had not yet decided which.’’

Painted Birds and Shivered Bones: Sweeney has been cursed to turn into a bird. Hiding in the parks of New York, he finds his fate changed when an artist unwittingly decides to make him her model. A moving retelling of the Irish myth of Mad Sweeney.

Returned: The musings of Sleeping Beauty in a sensual, dark lullaby.

The Calendar of Saints: Obscure saints, fictional saints. Saints that lived and suffered the human fate.

The Green Knight’s Wife: The wife who resides in a castle that has become Death’s playground.

‘’Half Sick of Shadows
A boat rests beneath a willow tree.
Scattered near the boat are pieces of discarded armour.
Among them, the white shield, three bends gules, of Sir
Lancelot.
A white dress drapes the armour.
The lady is in the water, not drowned, but smiling.
The light on the water is brilliant, bright glints like
scattered diamonds. Like the pieces of a shattered mirror.’’

Breaking the Frame: A hypnotic tribute to the women who shaped our tales. Persephone, Delilah, Dafne, Ophelia, Beauty, Euridice, Ariadne, Elaine.

‘’Because silence was one of the traditional curses, there was already a plethora of known ways to break it: I could weave or sew a certain number of shirts out of some material rough enough to cut my hands and stain the fabric with my blood, all without weeping. I could endure a loveless relationship for a year and a day. I could perform some tremendously useless task: find one mis-sorted seed in a barrel of its near-identical cousins and nurse the plant to flowering, my voice to return with it blooming.’’

My reviews can also be found on https://theopinionatedreaderblog.wordpress.com/ show less