Minor arcana Book

This is a collection of mainly short fiction with one novella. The introduction by DWJ tells about the genesis of the stories and some at least were written to explore how a character in a traditional tale might feel; hence 'The Girl who Loved the Sun' is written to explore why characters in mythology are turned into trees or animals - which she felt must be because at some level they wanted to be.

I had read two of the stories before and wasn't that taken with them especially with 'The Master' which just reads like the account of a dream and has no real conclusion. 'The Sage of Theare' is a minor puzzle set in the Chrestomanci worlds featuring him as a minor character and with a somewhat inconclusive ending.

'Dragon Reserve, Home Eight' could again be set in the multiverse of Chrestomanci as a group of worlds are defended by punitive rulers who execute anyone who has psychic abilities - but it then turns out that those abilities - which include being able to communicate with dragons - are the only thing that can defend them against aliens who run amok and capture the population as slaves.

'What the Cat told me' is an odd story told from a cat's POV, said cat having been used as a tool by a black magician - so this is the tale of how it helped a boy in its own self satisfied cat way and the outcome. 'nad and Dan adn Quafly' is a daft story about a writer whose word processor becomes a conduit to a male rebellion against a female space faring dictatorship. I actually disliked that one whereas the others were so-so.

The best item in the collection, though I still won't be keeping it, is the novella which concludes it - 'The True State of Affairs'. This, DWJ's introduction reveals, was a story for adults inspired by reading the account by James I of Scotland of how he wiled away his time while imprisoned by watching a young woman who he always saw in the distance and never spoke to and afterwards never considered again. DWJ wrote this as an exploration of how the recipient might have felt. So the ending is sort of given away in the intro. But the interest in the story is its character development as the female prisoner writes down her feelings and experience on paper that is granted her by her jailors.

We soon learn that she should not be locked in a turret room in a fortress with only a small yard outside for exercise because she was arrested in the mistaken belief that she was someone else called Hilda. When it became clear that she wasn't, she remained in prison because it was felt that she must be a supporter of Hilda's although they seem to think she is from 'the north'. Gradually it becomes clear that the country in which she finds herself is a fantasy one split into different regions and that there is rebellion by oppressed areas against a couple of tyrants.

The prisoner, Emily, who is from Kent in our world, soon realises that there is a male prisoner across the way on the far side of a deep drop - a man she can only see by standing in a certain area of her exercise yard and he also has to appear within a narrow area to be seen. His bearing and appearance make a deep impression on her and she ends up having a secret correspondence with him on scraps of paper carried by an oblidging serf, against a background of the continuing conflict outside their jail and the other man's role in it. For it becomes clear that he is an important leader of the resistence.

The characterisation is interesting: despite Emily's loathing of the chief of her jailors, Wolfram, who is related to one of the tyrants, she eventually comes to see that he is a deeply unhappy man and even to have sympathy for him although this is almost her undoing. The small cast of characters are well delineated and all the various vissitudes of confinement. The only thing that I found a bit of a let down is that the ending, although 'obvious', lacks a real sense of closure: we are left not knowing not only how Emily has got to this world but also how she can get home. And because it is slipped in very late in the tale that this is Dalemark (but I think probably quite different to the Dalemark series written much later - for a start, these people worship Norse gods) it also raises the question of whether Dalemark also forms part of the multiverse that features so much in a lot of DWJ's other fiction. Anyway, I enjoyed that story much more than anything else in the book and it was an interesting insight into the kind of thing that DWJ could have written more of if there had been receptive publishers/agents - in the intro, she tells how an agent she sent it to told her some years later that she hadn't bothered to read it as no one wanted to read this fantasy stuff and DWJ should really give up writing!

Overall this rates at 3 stars.