#ReviewMonday with KM Lockwood: The Singing War (Novel II in the Assalay Trilogy) by Tracey Mathias

Note to self-publishers - we made an exception for this trilogy as it had already been published with success in translation in Germany. 

Summary from the author’s own website

    ‘What if they’ve lied to us about everything?’

    In the land of Assalay, the new year brings endless rain, hunger and the ravages of starving dragons. But the powerful families of the Fellowship enjoy a privileged life: secure inside their grand and luxurious houses and confident of their divine right to rule.

    Even for Fellowship children, though, growing up has its problems. Now that he is of age, Leo Philemot must leave home for the year-long apprenticeship that all heirs to the Fellowship have to undertake, while his twin sister Rachel must stay at home and endure the stifling life of ladies’ drawing rooms and tea-parties. For both twins, the year brings a series of unexpected encounters and revelations that makes them question what they have been told about family and Fellowship - and opens their eyes to the realities of other people’s lives.

    As flood, fire and famine worsen, Assalay is ready for rebellion, and opposition to the Fellowship is growing. In this gathering crisis, Leo and Rachel must make life or death choices between old and new loyalties and friendships: between what they have been taught and what they have learned.

254 pages in softback, also available on Kindle

Published by Canfield Dragon Press December 2015

Cover art by Tim Mathias

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Tracey Matthias has pulled off quite a feat with this, the second part of her Assalay trilogy: a middle story which is actually better than the first. So many trilogies suffer a saggy middle that doesn’t live up to the expectations of the beginning - but this is different.

You don’t need to read the first novel ‘A Fragment of Moonswood’ to enjoy ‘The Singing War’ - but I would highly recommend it. Then the whole tale will have much more richness and depth. Those of you who have ventured into Assalay before will appreciate the mix of old and new characters within that well-drawn and immersive world.

It’s an absorbing mixture of action and beauty - lies and deceptions are revealed, narrow escapes are made, but the fabulous settings are not neglected. Perfect if you love such details as the sumptuous robes of the different Fellowship Houses (which do actually play a part in the plot). It is suggested for ages 10 -14, though many older readers may get a thrill from the strong political edge. That might sound dull - but the perils faced by the children in the story certainly are not.

I should warn you that a degree of cruelty and menace is involved - but without giving spoilers, the courage and resourcefulness of the central characters shine through. There’s a pleasingly light touch with the magical elements - and it does have a proper resolution. Still, you will have to know what happens next - happily ‘Weatherlord’ is coming!

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K. M. Lockwood lives by the sea in Sussex - see the pics on Instagram. She fills jars with sea-glass, writes on a very old desk and reads way past her bedtime. Her tiny bed and breakfast is stuffed full of books - and even the breakfasts are named after writers. You'd be welcome to chat stories with @lockwoodwriter on Twitter

A Fragment Of Moonswood (Assalay Trilogy I) by Tracey Mathias

A fateful birthday gift… 

It was a piece of soft white stone. Veins glittered through it like caught moonlight. One face was as smooth as new fallen snow; the other was engraved with a pattern of flowing lines. Gaia traced her fingers along the carvings. After a long time, she looked up at Mai. 

‘What is it?’ 

Published by Canfield Dragon Press 2015 

254 pages in softback - available for Kindle too 

Cover Art by Tim Mathias 

Summary from author’s own website 

All anyone knows about the old amulet is that it’s a good luck charm that hasn’t worked. And luck is about to turn worse, plunging Gaia and her brother Tal into undreamed-of dangers and strange discoveries that might change their world for ever… 

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Reviewed by K. M. Lockwood

I have to be honest - I had my doubts about doing this review. It’s hard to report on a friend’s work - and Serendipity Reviews doesn’t usually handle self-published work. You can imagine why on both accounts. 

BUT I’d said I’d give it a go. After all, the whole trilogy was translated and traditionally published in Germany. 

Quite rightly too. 

This a richly imagined fantasy with layers of meaning. It is ideal for experienced readers from around 11 upwards - family is at the heart of the book but the story inhabits a world touched by Gormenghast-like complexity and threat. The central brother-sister relationship is handled with great heart and a good deal of humour. 

There’s plenty of peril and action to keep you going through the intriguing landscapes - and the city of Freehaven is a marvellous stage set for all sorts of scrapes and near-misses. There’s some lovely lyrical writing at points - but nothing to slow the pace too much. Just moments to savour - and to catch your breath before there’s yet more jeopardy for Gaia & Tal.

Did I mention dragons? And trials and Prohibited Objects? All sorts of mysteries and secrets emerge about The Fellowship who run the country - and some hard choices have to be made by the children. The reader who has stuck with Gaia and Tal through their dramatic adventures will be itching to know how these decisions work out in the sequel: The Singing War. 

Recommended for those who like their fantasy to be both thoughtful and warm-hearted, enjoy a deep sense of history in their fictional worlds and are unafraid of the occasional polysyllabic word!

The Art of Rejection Meets The Book Cycle - how one writer turned her rejections into a positive.

This is rather a special post for me today, as it is one from one of my Book Bound gang, Tracey Mathias, who took her rejection and turned it on its head!

So let me pass you to Tracey for her Art of Rejection MEETS The Book Cycle post!

I had always wanted to write, but I had lacked - what? I told myself, time and space; I think it was actually courage and conviction. By the early 2000s, I had more or less given up the ambition. But then, in the summer of 2005, three things fell into place with a clunk. I ended up writing some children’s songs for a local music school, and rediscovering the pure joy and fun of putting words together. I found an idea for the central episode in a story - a moment of failed courage - that wouldn’t let me go. And my youngest daughter was about to start school full time… I had motive, means, and opportunity. 

So I wrote - with a kind of naivety that seems both appalling and wonderful when I look back on it. I took no courses. I read no books about writing. I didn’t join a writing group. I didn’t join SCBWI (I hadn’t even heard of SCBWI). I took the kids to school, came home, sat at the computer, and wrote. Most of my plotting was done in my head walking to and from school. My ambition - to start with - was limited to getting to the end of the story.

I had no conscious method. Looking back on it, analysing it with hindsight, I realise that I was doing something that is fairly common for a lot of writers. I had a series of landmarks: key episodes in the story that I knew I had to navigate between, and to start with, only a vague sense of what the stages in between would be like. In that sense - I guess this is familiar to a lot of writers - writing the story often felt like reading it: a moment of discovery.

I had honestly not expected to get to the end (in other aspects of life, I’m not very good at finishing things), but in the end I wrote it faster than anything since: within the school year I had completed what was to become the first volume of The Assalay Trilogy. I was lucky enough to have a friend who’s an agent, and she introduced me gently to the notion that what I had written was a first draft and guided me through two rewrites - and the beginnings of consciously learning how to construct a book.

Arcs entered my life. I spent weeks kneeling on the kitchen floor with giant sheets of paper sketching out the emotional development of my main characters. I mapped out the plot. I learned about world building. I developed the fantasy country that I had invented and in doing so discovered how one detail of an invented world can make others fall into place and cohere. (For Assalay, it was the importance of moonlight). 

With a third draft completed, it seemed for a few months as if fairy tale had migrated off the paper and into my life, as representation was followed by submissions and by offers from Germany and France. 

Only then… things started to judder to a halt. The French offer was withdrawn (the editor didn’t like volume two). Sales in Germany were ok but far from stellar and The Hunger Games came out at the same time with the same publisher. And, critically, UK publishers kept on turning the books down. Finally, the relationship with my agent ended (amicably enough) when she left to set up independently.

I guess I had been cruising on beginner’s luck for quite some time, and it was probably due to run out! After all this, I felt very much as if I was starting from square one again, and this time I did some of the beginner things I didn’t know to do the first time round: went to some courses, made contacts with other writers, joined SCBWI, joined a writers’ group. I wrote a new novel which took painful ages to complete. Submitted it to agents. Waited. Am still waiting. 

In the meantime, I had been hoping that Assalay would eventually see the light of day in English on the back of selling something else, but increasingly that came to feel like a remote prospect, both in terms of time and possibility (given the unspectacular German sales) But I didn’t want to give up on it: I still love the world and the characters. And the technology for independently making a real book is now there: fiddly, but basically easy to use. So I took a deep breath; consciously limited my ambitions to selling a few dozen copies to friends (I dream of more than that of course, but I’m not expecting it), and went ahead… 

It has been a strange and very bumpy journey.

A Fragment of Moonswood is available to buy here on Amazon for £6.99.