A bolt from the blue
An amnesiac teen’s frustrations play out in a debut novel.
Is it healthy to lie to yourself? This and other questions hang about Lydia Ruffles’ debut novel, The
Taste of Blue Light (Hachette,
$19.99). Teenager Lux Langley has a week of missing memories, her skin is bleeding and her dreams are red.
She also keeps blacking out. And something about art galleries makes her ill, which is awkward, since her high school is for arts-only students.
Navigating this story about post-traumatic stress disorder is difficult, as it must be for those who have it. It explores how to care for people who are mentally ill and can’t care back. Lux’s friends prove that people can be heroes when you are breaking down.
The prose is too purple, and Lux’s selfishness and disassociation via drug use and sex is tiresome. Yet the book captures the frustration of mental illness and the courage required to seek help.
It is a suitable read for young adults wanting to reflect on how the brain protects itself and how we should protect each other.
How to Train Your Dragon author Cressida Cowell has a new fantasy series entitled Once There Was Magic. In the first instalment, The Wizards of Once
(Hachette, $24.99), wizards and warriors have been taught to hate each other. A boy wizard meets a girl warrior in the Badwoods, where witches were made extinct. No one misses them, as their magic was horrible. Everyone hopes they are gone for good. Everyone but Xar.
Wizard Xar is the opposite of Harry Potter – he’s spoilt and he can’t do magic. Wish is a warrior who isn’t fearsome. She breaks rules to protect her magical pet spoon, and isn’t keen on killing people “just because”. Xar is looking for power, Wish is keen to find friends.
This fairy tale improves on classic tropes and falls into the best of children’s literature, measuring up to such stories as Cornelia Funke’s Inkworld and Roald Dahl’s BFG. It’s an adventure the family wizard or warrior must read. Zana Fraillon’s The Ones That
Disappeared (Hachette, $19.99) follows three child slaves. Esra, the oldest, is 11. Her friend Miran is around the same age, and the youngest, Isa, is seven. All three are tattooed to mark them as property, and kept in a basement tending plants.
For years they have worked to pay off the debts they owe Orlando, who “helped” them to escape a war zone.
The story is what a good children’s book should be: a great escape, a rescue and a coming-of-age adventure. The children thrive on each other’s strengths; they need each other for courage to hope, to fight and to trust.
The heavy subject of the
21st century being the worst era for human trafficking is handled in such a way that a young person can learn to help those in need without being lectured.
There are also foxes and street rats and humour in the appearance of a charming kid named Skeet, who is writing a book on toad ownership. He joins his new friends on their mission to find missing Miran.
This is a beautiful book with better heroes than Marvel could ever make.