I spent last week in Slovenia. There are some photos about Ljubljana central market place on my food blog Cinnamonda, if you want to take a look. I'll post some pictures here, too, as soon as I have time to sort my pictures a bit. I tend to take a lot, I mean A LOT of photos, every time I'm abroad. :).
After returning home I felt that I'd rather spend my last summer holiday week mostly off-line. The weather has been so nice, and I wanted to cramp in this week as much tennis as I could :) in addition to that our dance practise started again after a three-week summer break. So, I have been very busy with my two favorite sports these past few days back home. I have, however, also made good progress with my reading during these past two weeks, and I think now is high time to continue reviewing my reading challenge books. Since my last post I have read both my "Alive or not"- and "Strange" -books for the 9 for 2009 challenge. In addition to that I have read Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell (such a lovely, funny book) and Baking Cakes in Kigali by Gaile Parkin (definitely a great summer read!). I'll post reviews of both later. Let's start now with the book I chose as my "Alive or not" -book for the 9 for 2009 challenge:
Basic facts:
Author: Kim Wilkins
Book: The Autumn Castle
First published: in Australia in 2003, in the UK in 2004
I read: The 2004 Gollanz trade paperback edition
First line: Once upon a time a Miraculous Child was born.
The idea behind the Alive or not -category of the 9 books for 2009 challenge is to read a book already in your possession that has been written by an author, who has won or been nominated for any literary price. Australian author Kim Wilkins has both been nominated and won the Aurealis Award, the Australian scifi, fantasy and horror book award, multiple times. She won both the fantasy and horror categoríes in 1997 with her first novel The Infernal, and the horror category in 2000 with The Resurrectionists and in 2001 with Angel of Ruin. The Autumn Castle was among the finalists for the horror book award in 2003.
Actually, I was ashtonished to find out that the Autumn Castle had won in horror category! For me it is purely a fantasy book. It is a fairytale for adults, but of course, like most traditional fairytales, the Autumn Castle does have some horror elements. It is, however, in no way a horrific or scary book.
The Autumn Castle is a story about Christine Starlight, a rich young woman living with her boyfriend in an artist colony in Berlin, Germany. Christine is the daughter of two seventies pop stars, who died in a car accident that left Christine herself with constant pain in her back. Christine does not want to use the monay her parents left her just yet and works instead in the English Bookshop for living. She has lived in Berlin as a child and was best friends with a gir,l who was abducted and Christine assumes the girl was murdered. When the backpain one day makes Christine faint, she is miraculously transported into another world, a land of faeries. Soon it is revealed that Christine's childhood friend is not dead, but lives in the lands of faery as Queen Mayfridh. Mayfridh becomes fascinated by the world of humans, while Christine longs to return to faeryland again and again as there she does not feel pain. The tale of Christine and Mayfridh is complicated by a love triangle and a murderous billionaire sculptor, who calls himself the Faery Hunter and wants to build himself a wife by using faery bones as raw material.
The Autumn Castle is a really fantastical story. Ms. Wilkins has created an interesting world with many great characters, my favorites were Hexebart the witch in the well (!!) and Queen Mayfridh's shapeshifting (crow, fox, wolf, bear) counsellor Eisengrimm.
I don't often read fantasy. This book caught my attention in the Academic Bookstore here in Helsinki a couple of years ago, because it was a book written in English but set in Berlin (and the lands of faery, of course :)) and the story sounded just so... well, fantastical! And that it was. The Autumn Castle was a fun story to read.
Find more about Kim Wilkins:
- List of Aurealis winners and finalists 1995-2006
- Official Site of Kim Wilkins
- Bio of Kim Wilkins and a Q & A session with her on Voyager Online
- Some words by Wilkins about writing the Autumn Castle
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