meganbmoore | Entries tagged with a: philip reeve

This is the third (last?) of the Larklight books and it…I think it was technically as good as the others, but I didn’t find it quite as much fun? I think because the greatest strength of the first two (for me) was the fact that Myrtle is at her best when she’s ripped out of her safe, prudish world and forced to cope with the world outside of her box. Here, that doesn’t really happen so much as that worldview gets reinforced, though the results of that are hilarious.

For those unfamiliar with the series, it’s basically Victoriana in deep space, where mansions and pirate ships are spacecraft, people turn into trees, and top hats are mind control devices. Our main character are Arthur and Myrtle Mumby, almost stereotypes of the precocious boy and priggish young lady, and Jack Havock, a space pirate, and Myrtle’s beau. Arthur is our main narrator, but it switches to Myrtle for her adventures when they’re separated. ~~Oh, and their mother is basically the god of our solar system, but that’s actually a fairly minor factor, for the most part.~~

The plot here involves a swarm of giant space moths invading our solar system with lizard-like amazons riding them. Oh, and a missionary to Georgium Sidus (Uranus, but that word is not used in polite society) who has gone missing.

The book is a blast, and while I liked all the reveals and resolutions, it just didn’t spark for me quite as much as the first two.

You know, if more boys’ adventure stories were about Victorians in space with bossy, propriety-obsessed sisters in love with space pirates turned spies, I might read more of them. But scifi-for-kids supposedly doesn’t sell. Just like Asian fantasy and adventures starring teenaged girls, because only boys read adventure stories, and boys won’t read about girls.

Written in what I can only call a hilarious satire of the writing of the time, and including footnotes that are often long and possibly irreverent, this is the second of Reeve’s books about the spacefaring Victorian, Art Mumby, his stuffy sister, Myrtle, and Myrtle’s sometime-Suitor, Jack Havock, former space pirate. Invited to Starcross, hailed as the best sea-side resort on the asteroid belt, the Mumbys arrive only to find themselves caught up in spies, planned revolutions, time travel, and mindaltering hats.

There’s an extreme colonial mindset to many of the characters, but I honestly can’t glean Reeve’s own thoughts on colonialism from the books, thanks to the absurdities of the delivery. Reeve isn’t really concerned as much with careful explanations of how Victorians ended up with houses that fly through space and space travel altering history as he is with the fact that Victorians have houses that fly through space. When Reeve does explain things, it’s so out there that you have to wonder if Art just made it up off the top of his head.

There are plenty of “ZOMG! Plot developments!” and I rather wonder if some will stick. Art’s voice is surprisingly engaging given that he’s essentially written as an annoying kid brother, and Myrtle continues to thrive when taken out of her properly ordered comfort zone. Jack, I admit, still rather baffles me, and I keep thinking he needs to get his act together soon. And French spies and millennia-old Victorian mothers are awesome.

And now I will stop spamming (even for me) for today. (Trying to post on all my reading for the year by the actual end of the year.)

This book is essentially Simon R. Green for ten-year-olds. Eleven-year-old Art Mundy and his fifteen-year-old sister, Myrtle, live with their father on Larklight, a Victorian mansion that orbits the moon. Why a Victorian mansion? Because that just happens to be the era they live in. For reasons eventually explained in the book, mankind achieved space travel in the time of Isaac Newton.

When their house is attacked by giant alien spiders, Art and Myrtle escape to the moon, where they’re eventually rescued by Jack Havock, an infamous, half-black fifteen-year-old pirate. Jack is the soul survivor of a colony whose people turned into trees, resulting in his being raised in a lab as they tried to discover why he wasn’t a tree, until he and other aliens being held there escaped and became pirates. Jack agrees to get the siblings safely to a British base, but both hormones and more aliens chasing Art and Myrtle interfere.

Reeve seems to have simply sat down, written down everything he thought was cool when he was a kid, and then paused for a few moments to consider what his sister probably wanted to read about, resulting in things like Martian secret agent knife-wielding spy girls. It is very, very much written for its target audience (10-12-year-old boys) and adopts that attitude about things, especially sisters, but is very fun. The “Oh so Victorian! See how Victorian I am?” prose can be grating at times, but works overall.

I do, though, have quibble.
( spoilers )

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Of Swords and Parasols

I'm a damsel. I'm in distress. I can handle it.

Entries tagged with a: philip reeve

Mothstorm by Philip Reeve

Starcross by Philip Reeve

Larklight by Philip Reeve

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