A sinful and addictive dark chocolate!

You may have noticed that I have been absent for full five days. In case you are wondering about the cause of my absence from this blog, I had disappeared behind a magical portal opened by a book series that was as sinfully addictive as rich, dark chocolate - Juliet Dark's "Fairwick Chronicles":

For the uninitiated, Juliet Dark is the alter ego of the acclaimed writer of gothic mysteries, Carol Goodman. The same series is also available with alternate titles and with the author's real name on the cover.

"This is where all stories start, on the edge of a dark wood.."

- proclaims the summary of "Incubus" or "The Demon Lover", the first book of the Fairwick Chronicles, and it was enough to send a delicious shiver of anticipation down my spine! After four days of reading the three books in a mad rush, I have finally managed to extricate myself from the haze induced by this series Now that I'm back to my normal state, the time has come to review it :).

Book review: Fairwick Chronicles trilogy by Carol Goodman

This series is a curious, genre-bending, riveting mixture of gothic, paranormal, romance and fantasy - a departure in many ways from Goodman's standard genre, yet retaining her trademark writing style. The first book is the most creative of the series, and shows the author's love for old gothic romances such as Charlotte Bronte's "Jane Eyre", Emily Bronte's "Wuthering Heights", Ann Radcliffe's "The Mysteries of Udolpho" and Daphne du Maurier's "Rebecca". Goodman pays a fitting tribute to the various facets of the gothic genre, both through her heroine Callie's college lectures and through her story.

Cailleach McFay, better known as Callie, has a doctorate in folklore and gothic fiction (I want to study this too!) and has written a popular book on demon lovers in gothic literature. She has been fascinated by fairy tales and folklore since childhood, not surprising considering that her late parents were archaeologists exploring Celtic myths. As a teenager, she had imagined that she had a shadowy companion who came to meet her at night in her dreams. To exorcise the dreams, she had taken up gothic literature as her research area, and ended up specializing in it.

Gothic romance; Source: coolchaser.com

As the book begins, Callie is offered a teaching post at the remote Fairwick college, a lesser known village near New York, in the shadows of the Catskill mountains and bordered by a thousand acres of virgin forest. The description of the village and the college are atmospheric, and I could alomost visualize the vine-covered gothic library and the ivy-shrouded Victorian cottages.

As Callie wanders around Fairwick for the first time, the forest affects her in a strange way:

I paused for a moment at the edge of a narrow trail, peering into the shadows. Even though the day was bright, the woods were dark. Vines lopped from tree to tree, filling every crevice and twisting into curious shapes....

A wind came up and blew out of the woods toward me, carrying with it the chill scent of pine needles, damp earth and something sweet. Honeysuckle?...

I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply. The breeze curled around me, tickling the damp at the back of my neck and lifting the ends of my long hair like a hand caressing me.

Callie sees an old house covered in honeysuckle, right at the edge of the forest, somehow merging with the woods:

It was hidden from the road by a dense, overgrown hedge. Even without the hedge, the house would have been hard to see because it blended in so well with its surroundings....The honeysuckle from the forest had encroached over the porch railings..

I stepped a few feet closer and a breeze stirred a loose vine over the door. It waved to me as though it were beckoning me to come closer..

Above the doorway in the pediment, was a wood carving of a man's face, a pagan god of the forest, I thought, from the pinecone wreath resting on his abundant flowing hair. I'd seen a face like it somewhere before...perhaps in a book on forest deities...

I turned to leave. The wind picked up, lifting the green pollen from the porch floor and blowing it into little funnels around my feet as I hurried down the steps...

The vines that were twisted around the porch columns creaked and strained. A loose trailer snapped against my arm as I reached the ground...

When I reached the hedge, I turned around to look back at the house. It gave one more sigh as the wind stopped, its clapboard walls moaning as if sorry to see me go, and then it settled on its foundation and sat back, staring at me.

I couldn't resist myself from quoting that entire passage because after that eerie description, I was so enthralled that my gothic-loving heart was doing a joyful little jig!:)

Source: www.wvexplorer.com

Callie, of course, can't  resist the pull of the house and realizing that it's up for sale, she impulsively buys it. Her acquaintances, the inn-keeper Diana Hart, and the college dean, Dean Book, warn her that the house is haunted. Apparently it has remained uninhabited for the last twenty years, ever since the previous owner died. Before that, it had originally belonged to Dahlia LaMotte, a popular gothic novelist who had written some bodice-ripper romances at the turn of the twentieth century before they went out of fashion.

Callie begins to have vivid dreams of a man made of moonlight and shadows, and her room is filled with the fragrance of honeysuckle every night.

Each piece of him took shape and weight as the moonlight touched it. It was as if he were made of shadow and the moonlight was the knife sculpting him into being, each stroke of the knife giving him form...and weight....

He felt like a wave crashing over me, a moonlit wave that sucked me down below the surf and pulled me out into the sea, onto a crest...

I must confess that I had been hesitant to pick up "The Incubus" thinking that it might verge on erotica but I need not have worried. In Goodman's deft hands, the descriptions of the physical aspect of love are poetic and passionate, but never explicit. In fact, true to the style of old gothic romances, the more intimate descriptions are largely left to the imagination. Yet the midnight encounters between Callie and her shadow lover manage to convey a deep and boundless passion, almost bordering on obsession:

I was standing in the dark, on the threshold between shadow and moonlight, where he always waited. And someone was knocking....
The moonlight rushed in with the wind - a wind that smelled like honeysuckle and salt - and circled around me like an angry riptide. 
I'd heard somewhere that if you are drowning, you should relax and let the current take you. I did that now and the current turned warm and carried me down into the darkness,...where he lived.

Callie discovers some old manuscripts of Dahlia LaMotte's work in the attic and finds that Dahlia's writing strangely mirrors her own nightly experiences. She begins to suspect that the house  is truly is haunted by a spectre or the gothic setting is influencing her fertile imagination to an alarming degree. As if that wasn't enough, the residents of Fairwick start acting strangely too, and Callie discovers that no one is as they seem on the surface.

Who is the shadow haunting Callie's dreams? Is he a ghost or a figment of Callie's imagination? Is he the same shadow that Callie used to see when she was young? What connection does he have with Callie? Did Dahlia LaMotte dream of the same man? What secrets are the Fairwick residents hiding? Who is Callie really?

All these questions build up slowly in the mind of the reader, as Goodman unfolds her brilliantly imaginative plot. A cast of intriguing characters is introduced, both young and old, who inhabit Fairwick and are an integral part of its chronicles. There are fairy tales skillfully woven into the story such as the tale of Tam Lin, as well as historical details such as the Scottish plague and witch hunts. There are quite a number of surprising twists in the tale, some which left me shocked and wondering how the author would resolve the resultant mess. Sometimes the sweeping tale does become a bit repetitive like in the second book, or mired in complications like in the third book, but the author expertly manages to pull all the tangled threads together by the end.

Source: www.pininterest.com

What I really liked was that the trilogy evolves into a fascinating saga of star-crossed love - an intensely romantic story spanning magic and reality, encompassing past and present, and spread across continents. To my romance-loving soul, submerging in the story was like indulging in a deep, dark and tempting chocolate, which is sometimes seductive, sometimes sweet and sometimes bitter but which one absolutely can't do without. While the first book is undoubtedly the best in terms of the gothic element, the other two books continue the magical journey of the lovers unknowingly meeting and losing each other, time after time.

What came once here will never come again,
no matter monument nor memory;
all sun-warmed green succumbs to winter's wind...

yet sun will brighten wind so,

one knows that soon green stirs, and wild bees hum.

And summer once more will make winter liar,

but I won't warm. You're all I'll ever desire.

Where does their story start and where does it end? Are they destined to remain separated for an eternity? To know that, you have to read the series :)

Home is not always where you left it..

A Desperate Fortune by Susanna Kearsley

For the past few months, I had been on a steady diet of fast-paced adventure and fantasy novels, full of swashbuckling action, thrilling chases or magical mayhem. Then, last week, I realized that Susanna Kearsley's "A Desperate Fortune" has been languishing on my bookshelf since last year, and decided to pick it up. I had read Susanna's "Mariana" as well as Slain's series before, and knew that she was an author who I definitely liked. Hence I picked up her latest book too.

However, I had reckoned without the fact that my reader's mind had, by this time, got accustomed to surprising twists and turns happening after every few pages of a book. Anyone who has read a Susanna Kearsley novel before, will know that her writing style is more exploratory and gently-paced, reminiscent of yesteryear's authors such as Mary Stewart. Her novels need to be savoured and not raced through in one sitting! So in the initial few chapters of "A Desperate Fortune", when nothing much happened, I kept getting distracted by other books on my TBR list. It's only because of my great respect for Susanna Kearsley's writing that this book didn't land up in my DNF pile. I'm now glad that it didn't, because my impatience would have caused me to miss a book whose characters I ended up liking.

This is a past-present book, like most of Susanna's latest novels, and alternates between the present- day France and France and Italy in 1732. It is a well-researched book, and Susanna devotes the first few chapters to setting the context carefully, before the actual story begins. I found the story and relationships in the past much more evolved than those in the present. For me, the book started getting really interesting after a certain Scottish character with dubious motives gets introduced in the past, but more on that later.

Sara Thomas has always known that she is different from the others, but it was her caring cousin Jacqui who helped her identify that she had Asperger's syndrome and trained her to cope with her condition. Over the years, Sara has learnt to tune her senses to be calm in social situations and to pretend to be normal. She has also discovered that she is good with numbers and complex codes, and enjoys working as a programmer and an amateur code breaker.

At a family wedding, Jacqui offers Sara an intriguing opportunity to work for a famous historian, Alistair Scott. Alistair is writing a new book on the Jacobite exiles, based in the period in British history when there were a series of unsuccessful rebellions in Scotland to restore the Stuart kings to the English and Scottish thrones. It seems that one of Alistair's friends has stumbled upon a diary written in 18th century which can provide him with valuable source material for his book. The only problem is that the diary is encrypted with some sort of a cipher which no one has been able to decode yet. Sara takes up the offer and travels to Chatou, a suburb on the outskirts of Paris, where the present owner of the diary, Claudine Pelletier, stays.

Chatou, France; Source: Wikipedia

On reaching the pretty Maison de Marronniers  or the "House of Chestnut Trees", Sara meets the polite but somewhat aloof photographer, Claudine, and her friendly, young housekeeper, Denise. She is not very happy to know that their next door neighbours are Luc Sabran, Denise's handsome ex-husband, and their nine-year-old son, Noah. Sara knows that she is incapable of socialising on a regular basis and wishes that she had absolute solitude while working on the diary. She also feels an unwelcome attraction to Luc and does her best to ignore it because she believes that she is bad at sustaining relationships, given her condition.

As she starts working on the diary, Sara realises that it belonged to Mary Dundas, a well-educated, young woman of Scottish origin, who was staying in the same region as the present-day Chatou, back in 1732. It is revealed from Mary's entries that her father was a supporter of the Jacobite Revolution and had left her to be raised by her well-off uncle and aunt in France. One day, her brother Nicolas, whom she barely remembers, comes and takes her from her uncle's house and sends her to Paris on a mission to provide cover for a fugitive who is working for the deposed Stuart king, King James. Nicolas assures her that there is no danger involved in her few weeks' stay in Paris, and that she will also be accompanied by a suitable, elderly chaperone and by her faithful dog, Frisque. Mary has always hungered for adventure and is excited to finally be able to leave her known surroundings. On the advice of another Jacobite supporter, she starts to encrypt her diary using a simple cipher, so that any information on the Jacobites that is contained there will stay hidden from prying eyes.

In the present, Sara struggles initially to break the so-called simple code. As she tries to solve the puzzle, she discovers, to her surprise, that she doesn't really mind being around Noah and the house cat, Diablo. She even takes Noah's help to understand the code. She also starts spending more time with Luke, exploring the sites and sounds of Chatou, and discovering that she actually enjoys his company. I liked Susanna's descriptions of the French town and of the nearby Chateau de Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Along with Sara, I savoured the quaint French customs such as celebrating Epiphany or the end of Christmas season with "king-cakes".

Chateau de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France; Source: Wikipedia

In the past, Mary meets her kindly chaperone, Madame Roy, and Jacques, the supposed fugitive who is to pose as her brother in Paris. Jacques looks harmless enough, but Mary soon realises that all is not well. There is a sudden murder of a guest by an intruder and they have to flee across France, pursued by an unknown number of strangers bent of capturing Jacques. Susanna does a great job of peeling off the layers of the story gradually, and the reader is as mystified as Mary as to what is truly happening and  where they are actually bound for. Who is Jacques and why is he a fugitive pursued by the English? Who is the Scottish man, Mr. Macpherson - a murderer or a saviour? Who is Madame Roy? Who, out of these, can Mary really trust?

As the journey progresses and the story unravels, we see Mary growing up as a person - from a young, eager-to-please girl to a poised, confident young woman who is steadfast in her loyalties, convictions and affections. She has the unique ability to weave fairy tales inspired by the tales written by Madame d'Aulnoy, and invents enthralling, magical stories about a Chevalier to keep other passengers travelling with them distracted from her group's true purpose. Before reading this book, I had no idea of the existence of such beautiful fairy tales written primarily by French women writers in the late 1600s and early 1700s.

In the present, Sara too starts realising that she can be herself with Luc and Noah and lets go of her inhibitions. There are not one but two romances in the present, but somehow they did not grab me as much as the poignant relationship between Mary and the one she eventually ends up loving. The development of their relationship is a gradual, slow-burn kind of love, where words are hardly exchanged but every look, every touch is filled with profound meaning. In Mary's own words:

"He watched me from afar when he believed I could not see him. He followed me when he believed that I was not aware of it."

There are several memorable passages in this book, especially towards the end. Here's one I found very touching:

"How do you go from...fixing things, making things work, to --"

He finished the thought for her. "Killing them?"...She had expected his words to be bitter as well, but instead she had heard resignation in his level voice as he'd answered her, low, "Step by step."

"But surely, if you marked the steps as you made them, you could then turn around and retrace them and find your way back to the place you began," she had reasoned. "Like taking the road that you left by, and letting it lead you back home."

He had looked at her quietly. "Home is not always where ye left it."

This phrase stuck me as so true; not always in life can we retrace our steps back to where we were at the beginning of our journey - because circumstances have changed, surroundings have changed, and most importantly, we have changed by then. This is what Mary too realises at the end of her journey - that she cannot get back the relationships that she has lost. But along with that understanding, she also displays remarkable resilience and strength in her willingness to rebuild her life:

She felt a strange kinship with that ancient bridge that was forever being carried off in tiny pieces by the underlying current, and yet did not have the sense to yield, to let go of the shore and simply fall....

"Yet the bridge still stands, and surely every broken thing can be rebuilt."

While the present story is wrapped up quickly, the threads in the past take a bit longer to tie up and it is fitting that the book ends with Mary's thoughts:

Let currents flow and kingdoms fall and time move onward, Mary thought - this moment was for them....It mattered not that no one else would bear that moment witness nor remember it, for if the future could not know them, neither could the past confine them, and the choice was always theirs to make, the tale their own to finish...

Isn't that true for us all?

The land of lost love..

The Search

As anyone who has been perusing my blog knows, I have a strong belief in the concept soulmates. My fascination with the idea of reincarnation started since adolescence, when I saw the famous director, Satyajit Ray's movie called "Sonar Kella" (The Golden Fortress) and heard an evocative recitation of Rabindranath Tagore's poem "Unending Love" (described in detail in Wildaboutthewrittenword's blog post). By the time I had reached my teens, I had read a number of stories on reincarnated lovers by the prolific Bengali writer of historical and mystery novels, Saradindu Bandyopadhay (who readers outside Bengal may recognize as the creator of the famous sleuth, Byomkesh Bakshi). Some of these stories were set in the desert, with one of the pair of star-crossed lovers still roaming the mortal realm as an unfulfilled spirit, trying to lure the living lover. Around this time, I also read Tagore's "The Hungry Stones", the story of a ruined, abandoned palace exerting a strange, otherworldly pull on an unwary traveller. All these served to add fuel to my love of history, romance, folklore, paranormal and reincarnation.

However, the incident in my teens that caused my fascination with the concept of soulmates to really take hold, was  a visit to Rajasthan in western India - the desert land of kings and valour, myths and legends. The abandoned forts sprawling across rocky hills, the peacocks sitting on broken ramparts, the ever-changing sand dunes slowly submerging the ruins, the decorated camels leisurely crossing the desert and the bejeweled Rajasthani dancers swaying sinuously to soulful folk tunes - all combined to fire my imagination. I felt a strange kinship with this land where the past was ever-present, and experienced an inexplicable feeling of having been there before. As I walked around desolate forts, the feeling of deja-vu intensified - I could almost hear the clash of warriors' swords, the hoof-beats of galloping horses, and the tinkling of maidens' anklets resonating across the old stone courtyards.

After coming back from the trip, I had the urge to put down my feelings in words and from that, my first ever poem was born. In later years, as my hold on language and expressions improved, I modified it a bit, keeping the spirit of it unchanged. I've reproduced that poem, "In Rajasthan", here today, urged to do so by a close friend who wanted me to share more of my poems on this blog.

In Rajasthan

A peacock turns to look at me

from the top of a broken pillar,

a solitary eagle circles the sky,

high above the fort ramparts.

The whole of nature  

seems to hold its breath - 

as if these abandoned stones 

are about to breathe secrets.

From far away in the desert,

the strains of an old ballad
drift to me, carried by

the warm westerly wind -

some unknown folk singer 

strumming the sarangi -

its soulful tone merging

with the beat of my heart.

I close my eyes and inhale deeply.

The babul-scented breeze 

tinged with dry sand, 

settles like a shroud over my skin,

bringing with it the smell of the past,
whispering words in a dead language -

as dusk begins to descend 

slowly down the fort walls.

Source: www.distancebetweencities,co.in

I feel as if the wind is telling me 

that it had blown thus, centuries ago - 

when all the lamps of this fort 

had shone brightly, 

and I had meandered with you

along these cobbled paths,

intoxicated by your words -
as the moon had risen over the desert.

Perhaps I had worn a garland 

of fresh blossoms round my neck,

perhaps my silver anklets 

had jingled to the rhythm
of your flute's music,

perhaps the darkness of my hair 

had merged with your tunic -
to weave patterns into the night.

Source: www.notimetotravel.com

But as I open my eyes,
crumbling walls are all I see

standing on this desert land.

Now, through the broken towers,

the howling wind rages,

and the sand creeps slowly 

upon the same golden stones

your hands had once touched.

I turn to leave, confused and sad.

Suddenly I hear a flute playing -

a tune I somehow know as mine.

The velvet-darkness comes alive with promise,

fireflies appear along the narrow lanes,

and my feet head back into the ruins -
to roam all night, searching for you...

I have been here for a thousand years...

The timeless soul

If one believes in reincarnation and soulmates (explored in one of my previous posts), one must necessarily believe in the agelessness of the soul. What if death is not the end but just a change of body? What if we have the choice to come back again and again to this earth? What form would our soul want to take take? Which places would it want to revisit? Which face would it want to gaze upon once more? 

Artist: Rabindranath Tagore; Source: artsnewsviews.com

I have read quite a few poems which talk about the indestructibility of the soul - how it rises from the ashes of death, century after century, in some form or the other. I thought of sharing two  unforgettable poems on this theme, which transcend the barriers of language and time, and are bound to touch any sensitive reader's soul with the images they evoke. 

The Bengali poet, Jibanananda Das (1899-1954), is sadly, largely unknown to readers outside Bengal, mainly because his works were overshadowed by those of the more traditional, venerable and elder poet, Rabindranath Tagore. Yet his poems are so unique and different from the rest that they deserve to be translated more widely. Reading Jibanananda Das is like stumbling through a labyrinth of eternal yearning created by a poet whose world is neither modern nor ancient, neither light nor dark, neither rational nor irrational, but somewhere in between. Life and death are interchangeable concepts to Jibanananda (whose name literally means "the happiness of life"), and death is never final. Most of his poems touch upon the concept of reincarnation - about travelling along the same paths for a thousand years, searching for the same hope, and even imagining his life in bygone civilizations such as Egypt and Babylon. Below is one of my favourite poems written by him, which talks about how the poet would like to return to his beloved land after death - not as a human but as a bird.

Source: etsy.com

Sonnet #1 (untitled) from "Bengal, the beautiful" by Jibabananda Das (translated from Bengali)

I shall return to this land -

to the banks of the Dhansiri river, to this Bengal.

Perhaps not as a man -

but as a black and yellow shalik bird, or a white hawk.
Or, perhaps, as a crow of dawn 

flying over autumn's new harvest,
I will float upon the breast of fog one day 

in the shade of a jackfruit tree.
Or I will be the pet duck of some teenage girl,

with ankle bells jingling on her reddened feet.
I will spend the whole day floating on duckweed-scented waters... 

Perhaps you will gaze at buzzards soaring, 

borne upon sunset breezes,
Perhaps you will hear a spotted owl 

screeching from a shimul tree branch...

Upon the Rupsa river's murky waters,

a youth will perhaps steer his boat with its torn white sail -

as reddish clouds float by; 

and through the darkness, swimming to their nest,

you may spot a few white herons.

There, amidst them, 

you will find me again.

(Adapted from a translation by Clinton Seely)

Source: pd4pictures.com

In another country, thousands of miles away, another poet was exploring the same themes of deathlessness and the desire to be one with nature after death. Mary Elizabeth Frye's now-famous words have been recited at countless funerals and given hope to millions of bereaved souls lamenting for their lost ones. This poem is so simple yet so profound; it brings a lump to my throat every time I read it. 

"Do not stand at my grave and weep" by Mary Elizabeth Frye

Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there; I do not sleep.

I am a thousand winds that blow,
I am the diamond glints on snow,
I am the sun on ripened grain,
I am the gentle autumn rain.

When you awaken in the morning's hush,
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.

Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there; I did not die.

Artist: Rabindranath Tagore; Source: calcuttaweb.com

If one believes in such an eternal concept of the soul, then maybe the ones we have loved and lost to death are still there somewhere around us, in some form or the other, as no one ever truly dies...

The runaway bride

Book review: Night of a Thousand Stars by Deanna Raybourn

I was in the mood for a light, historical novel set in post WW I England, and picked up 'Night of a Thousand Stars' by Deanna Raybourn on a whim. I am an ardent fan of her Lady Julia Grey series and really like her writing style, plots and lead characters. Sure enough, she was in great form in this book as well. 

Straight away, the book begins with a bang - with Penelope Hammond (better known as 'Poppy') running away from the church where her wedding is about to take place to Viscount Madderly, a prosaic aristocrat chosen by her dominating mother and extremely wealthy stepfather. However, Poppy has never felt herself fit into the mould of a high society British lady of the twenties, and hates leading a life constricted by social customs and norms. 

Poppy longs to be free, to see the world and to have experiences that will help her understand who she is and what she wants in life. She knows that adventure runs in her blood, as her real father is Eglamour March, who readers of the Lady Julia series will fondly remember as 'Plum', Lady Julia's brother. The Marches are all said to be "mad as the March hare" and are infamous as non-conformists. So small wonder that Poppy decides to run away at the last moment to escape a staid and predictable married life!

Source: pininterest.com

Just as she is about to jump from the church window, Poppy encounters a young curate, Sebastian Cantrip, who curiously, instead of stopping her, actively aids in her escape plan:

"I say, if you're running away from your wedding, you're going about it quite wrong." 

Poppy persuades Sebastian to drive her to her father's house in Devon and along the way, they have a hilarious conversation where Poppy discusses her reasons for running away from the marriage. We get glimpses of Sebastian through Poppy's eyes and have the feeling that there may be more to him than meets the eye:

There was something improbable about him, as if in looking at him one could add two and two and never make four.

Poppy's mother, stepfather and irate fiancee pursue her to her father's house but she is adamant that she will not go through with the wedding, thereby causing the scandal of the decade. Poppy's efficient maid and faithful confidant, Masterman, comes to stay with her in Devon as she lies low for a while to escape the scandal. Poppy soon gets bored with the quiet life and decides to visit London to thank Sebastian for his timely assistance. Little does she know that she is about to embark on a roller coaster ride, culminating in the kind of adventure of a lifetime that she has always longed for! 

To her utter surprise, Poppy discovers that no one in the church has ever heard of a curate named Sebastian Cantrip. So who is Sebastian actually and where has he disappeared to? With the help of Masterman, Poppy tries to trace Sebastian's whereabouts as she has the nagging feeling that he is in trouble somewhere. She soon finds out his real name and discovers that he has left on a ship bound for Damascus. On an impulse, she decides to pursue him and takes up the role of secretary to Colonel Archainbaud, a retired colonel who is also travelling to Damascus. 

Damascus; Source: edugeography.com

This is when the true fun starts. An entire cast of intriguing characters is introduced, starting from the jovial old colonel and his improbably handsome valet, Hugh Talbot, to the beautiful Comtesse de Courtempierre and her flirtatious son, Armand. There is also a shadowy character following Poppy around and sending her dire warnings to leave Damascus. The ancient treasures discovered at the archaeological site of Ashkelon by Lady Hester Stanhope, the famous 19th century British adventurer, play an important role as well.

Ashkelon; Source: www.danhotels.com

Poppy does meet Sebastian again under completely different circumstances and realizes that he is nothing like the man she had met before. The mystery and danger rapidly escalate as each character's hidden motivations are revealed. The plot thickens, Poppy is embroiled in a murder, and gets plunged deep into an unknown world of espionage and political intrigue. There are surprising betrayals, murderous adversaries, cross-country chases, thrilling disguises and deadly knife fights, along with a few twists in the tale that I never saw coming. 

The author deftly counter-balances all this non-stop action with witty banter and great chemistry between the lead pair. 

"For God's sake," I muttered irritably. "What's the matter with you? Anyone would think you were the Gothic heroine." 

I began to wonder if he was afflicted with a bit of a genteel distaste for violence. It wasn't fair either, I decided. After casting off the shabby garb of an impoverished English curate, he looked like a hero out of a myth. The least he could do was behave like one.

Poppy never comes across as stupid or spoilt. She bravely faces situations she has never before encountered in her sheltered life, and yet manages to retain her sense of humour and passion for adventure. 

Something within my chest tightened then, some feeling of pride that I had risen to a challenge and given him reason to think me worthy, and - more importantly - given myself a reason to feel worthy.

The book ends on a satisfactory note, with Poppy finally realizing who she is and no longer denying what's in her blood.

'Night of a Thousand Stars' is the kind of book that I prefer to read in a single sitting. It drew me in from the very first page, kept me involved in Poppy's adventures, and invited me to jump on to the merry bandwagon. If you are looking for an entertaining, fun read with an intrepid heroine, humourous dialogues, non-stop action and a dash of romance, look no further than 'Night of a Thousand Stars'.

The strangely familiar stranger

To a Stranger by Walt Whitman

Passing stranger! You do not know how longingly I look upon you,
You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking, (it comes to me, as of a dream,)
I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you,
All is recall’d as we flit by each other, fluid, affectionate, chaste, matured,
You grew up with me, were a boy with me, or a girl with me, I ate with you, and slept with you - Your body has become not yours only, nor left my body mine only...
I am not to speak of you -  I am to think of you when I sit alone, or wake at night alone,
I am to wait -  I do not doubt I am to meet you again, I am to see to it that I do not lose you.

Source: imagekind.com

I do not doubt I am to meet you again,
I am to see to it that I do not lose you. 

- Those words stayed with me last night long after I had finished a book in which this poem was quoted. What if the closest relationships that we forge in our lives are not with actual strangers but with people who were our soul companions in past lives? Have you ever experienced a feeling of instant rapport with a complete stranger and wondered how is it that you get along so well, when you barely know each other? 

Stranger still, when I was just 11 years old, I listened to a recording of a Bengali poem written by Rabindranath Tagore, which left an indelible impression on me; I was never the same afterwards. It spoke to me in a mystical language of its own, its words luring me like a snake-charmer's tune. By a curious coincidence, this poem been just been posted by Wild About the Written Word. It is a poem which, even to this day, I can recite by heart, in its original Bengali version.  I wondered, even at that young age, whose face would emerge from the mists of memory if I gazed into the fathomless past, as the poet says? Would it be some stranger's face looking at me with strangely familiar eyes? Have I lost someone in some lifetime who I'm eternally searching for? And I wonder still...

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Years afterwards, I read a haunting book called Finding Laura by Kay Hooper. The main character, Laura Sutherland, is an artist with a curious hobby - she collects antique mirrors. It is slowly revealed that she stares into every mirror that she buys, hoping to see someone's reflection behind her shoulder. She knows that once she finds the mirror she is looking for, she will know whose reflection it is that she is desperately searching for. Laura eventually buys her last mirror from the Kilbourne family and looks behind her shoulder in the mirror to see her soulmate, David, and suddenly all her previous lifetimes with David flash by in the mirror. Sounds strange, doesn't it? Is it possible to unconsciously seek a person, sight unknown, who we believe exists somewhere? Is it merely a figment of imagination of writers and poets or do reincarnated soulmates truly exist? Some interesting thoughts on the possibility of soulmates can be read here. 

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One may choose to believe or not to believe in soulmates; but no one can doubt that the concept is truly intriguing. Do our souls somehow leave imprints on some other souls, by which we recognize them as our own, in birth after birth? Are soul vibrations continuously being generated beyond our five senses, which even at this moment are sending signals to someone we have yet to meet? Does every experience that we undergo in this life take us one step closer to the one we are ultimately meant to be with forever? Is it, as Dante Gabriel Rossetti says, like a "Sudden Light" that makes everything clear in an instant, revealing the soulmate unexpectedly:

I have been here before,

But when or how I cannot tell:

I know the grass beyond the door,

The sweet keen smell,

The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.

You have been mine before,—

How long ago I may not know:

But just when at that swallow's soar

Your neck turn'd so,

Some veil did fall,—I knew it all of yore.

Waiting for that veil to fall someday...

Where the living are not really alive and the dead not truly dead

Book review: Lost Among the Living by Simone St. James

Simone St. James is an author whose books I pick up by default, and I've noticed that her plots have progressively got better with every new book that she has written. Hence I had marked April 5 on my calendar as the day her latest book, Lost Among the Living, would be released.  I had expected it to be an engrossing gothic mystery with a paranormal twist, and it didn't disappoint. It also deftly explores the loss, hopelessness and uncertainty felt by wives of missing-in-action soldiers in World War I. While thousands of unnamed soldiers fought for England in foreign lands, their wives and fiancées, unknown to history, waged their own war against grief and abandonment and against a male-dominated society which refused to acknowledge their existence or contribution.  

This book revolves around Jo Manders, whose husband, Alex, is reported missing-in-action in the war. It has been three years since the war ended, but Jo is barely drifting through life, still unable to cope with the despair of losing her husband. In the aftermath of Alex's disappearance, Jo is left to fend for herself and support her mentally unstable mother's upkeep in an asylum.

In flashbacks, it is revealed that Alex had appeared in Jo's dull and dreary life like a blinding flash of light. She was swept off her feet by his concern for her and his ability to deal with any situation. After a whirlwind romance and hasty marriage, when Alex decides to join the RAF, she is left with only a few months of happy memories to cling to. Her grief and inability to move forward in life come across strongly, even as she takes on the demanding role of a companion to Alex's wealthy aunt, Dottie Forsyth, to support her mother.

After a tour of the continent, Dottie and Jo come back to England to Wych Elm House in Sussex, the home of the Forsyth family. It is a large, rambling house at the edge of a dense forest. Jo meets Dottie's estranged husband, Robert, and her ailing son, Martin, who also stay at Wych Elm House.

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Jo soon senses an otherworldly presence in the house - in the corridors, the terrace and in her room. She hears footsteps following her, feels a chill in the house, sees objects mysteriously appear in and disappear from her room and hears the sound of a dog's growling at night. A damp, cold mist seems to follow her, outside and inside the house, leaving dry leaves on the floor of her room, which cannot be seen by anyone but her. 

The mist had stopped moving, I realized. It hovered in the woods, blurred among the trunks of the trees, still and cold. It almost seemed to be watching me. I stared out of the window and watched back.

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Jo sees startling visions of Frances, Dottie's young daughter who had jumped to her death from the upper terrace of the house. She also has recurring nightmares, often dreaming of the dark forest and sometimes hearing Alex calling out to her. She soon realizes that an undead spirit is trying to convey a message to her. She starts to investigate the events and people surrounding Frances' suicide and stumbles upon the fact that Alex had kept a lot of secrets from her. There are a lot of unanswered questions. Did Frances truly commit suicide? Did she have a real dog named Princer? Did Alex meet his cousin Frances on the day she died? Why are the villagers scared of the woods? What is Martin hiding from Dottie? Is Jo slowly becoming insane like her mother?

Shocking secrets are revealed, there is a major twist and Jo's life changes dramatically yet again. Divulging anything more will take this review into spoiler territory. So all I'm willing to say is that in the end, all mysteries are solved, both Frances' and Jo's ghosts are laid to rest, the house is sold off by the family and everyone moves on in life. After the feeling of despondency that hung over the entire first half of the book, I was very happy that it ended on a positive note, with everything resolved satisfactorily.

This book has managed to finally do what no other book could since February - break me out of my fantasy fascination at last! I am now moving on to more gothic mysteries and historical novels with a vengeance!

Still I rise

Hail woman power!

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Years ago, I had read Maya Angelou's famous poem "Still I rise"and felt in my blood the martial spirit blatant in her words - a non-white woman's daring challenge to the social traditions prevalent at the time:

You may write me down in history

with your bitter, twisted lies,

You may tread me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I'll rise...

Did you want to see me broken?

Bowed head and lowered eyes?

Shoulders falling down like teardrops,

Weakened by my soulful cries...

Does my haughtiness offend you?

Don't you take it awful hard

'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines

Diggin' in my own backyard.

I was reminded strongly of the words of this poem recently while reading "Sorcerer to the Crown" by Zen Cho. Let me elaborate on the reasons for this in my review below.

Book review: Sorcerer to the Crown

Literary mash-ups are all the rage right now, though no one knows whether they are just a passing fad or the birth of a new genre in itself. For the uninitiated, the art of literary mashing up involves putting together two completely disparate genres, but somehow retaining the spirit of the original literary work (though after the publication of "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies", I'm sure poor Jane Austen must be turning in her grave!). Zen Cho's debut novel can, I think, be loosely termed as a literary mash-up. Imagine a Regency London setting with the backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars, complete with period costumes, mannerisms, balls, cultural mores and class barriers of Jane Austen's world, and add to that the wit, idiosyncratic prose and drama of a Georgette Heyer novel. Now for the completely incongruous element, mix in fantasy, magical beings and witchcraft reminiscent of Tolkein, and the heady concoction that will emerge from the cauldron is the inimitable "Sorcerer to the Crown".

But that is by no means the only thing that makes this book so unique. In a time when there in an increasing clamor for gender and racial diversity in fiction, Zen Cho does a remarkable job of building her magical fantasy around an Anglo-Indian, orphaned female character who, with the help of a freed slave of African descent, takes on the might of the orthodox British empire of the early 19th Century. But the part that really hooked me was that Cho tackles the issues of gender inequality, racism, colonialism and social injustice with such a large dose of humor that the reader never feels burdened by them. Every page is filled with sparkling wit and hilarious conversations that had me repeatedly laughing out loudly while reading! 

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Cho imagines an alternate-history Britain where side by side with the political system, there exists a society of aristocratic sorcerers called the Royal Society of Unnatural Philosophers. This society of elite sorcerers or thaumaturges are responsible for maintaining the balance of magical power in imperial England. Zacharias was freed and brought up by Sir Stephen and Lady Wythe as their own child. When he rises to the prestigious position of the first non-white Sorcerer Royal, he faces serious opposition from the other aristocratic white-skinned magicians. His manners may be impeccable and his magic may be flawless but that still doesn't make him socially acceptable. To add to his woes, British magic is on the decline, with the fairy kingdom putting a stop to import of familiars to Britain. So the esteemed thaumaturges are left with no magical beings to command and their powers are rapidly waning. Into this situation of scarcity of magic, comes Prunella with latent powers far surpassing any of the men, and the magical romp begins.

Though society forbids women to use magic, the women in this book are overflowing with magical powers - be it Prunella who discovers that she has not one but seven familiars, or the foreign witch, Mak Genggang, who leaves an impact in every scene she makes an appearance in. 

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Prunella, who has the apt surname of 'Gentleman' (a play on how she is more powerful and effective than the so-called Regency gentlemen), is the undisputed hero of this book. She is an unapologetic social climber, an irrepressible whirlwind, a ruthless and supremely powerful witch and a true force of nature! Her straightforwardness and larger-than-life persona reminded me a lot of Sophy in Georgette Heyer's ''The Grand Sophy":

“Prunella took to the ballrooms of London in the spirit of ruthless calculation of a general entering a battlefield.”   

A hilarious example of an interaction between her and Zacharias:

"Your amoral ingenuity in the pursuit of your interest is perfectly shocking,” said Zacharias severely. “Yes, isn’t it?” said Prunella, pleased. 

Cho's ability to write tongue-in-cheek humor had me re-reading portions of the book over and over again; every time I discovered some witticism I had missed previously, such as:

“A female may be poor or delicate or a spinster, but it does seem ill-advised of Miss Liddiard to combine all three.”   

The scene between Aunt Georgiana Without Ruth (ruthless, get it?) and Lorelei is one more example of the author's trademark humor (you really have to read it to appreciate it). The conversations between Zacharias and Lord Damerell and Rollo had me in splits. Even the thunder-monster summoned by Prunella and her familiars are funny.

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The final chapter had me in raptures - complete with talking caterpillars (go figure!) and a proposal to warm the cockles of my romantic heart. The underdogs triumph against all odds, Prunella thumbs her nose at society yet again (I'll do exactly what I please, thank you very much!) and glory to the Grand Sorceress, the Keeper of Seven Spirits, and mistress of the four points of the realm!

As with all new authors, I didn't know what to expect when I started this book, but it ended up totally surprising me with its wonderfully intelligent humor, imaginative fantasy elements, and above all, its irreverent and incorrigible female character. I cannot remember when I have last had this much fun reading a book and I am delighted to know that the author has plans to write two more sequels featuring Prunella and Zacharias. There are four more familiars to be hatched and more magic and mayhem awaits. Bring it on, I say!