Well, here we are again … I hope this one didn’t take quite as long as the last one but to be honest I’ve lost count on how many weeks this took.
Outline of the Basic Plot
I have split the main basis of the plot into three parts even though in actuality there were a lot more moving parts and cogs to the machine than that. But as I don’t want to over bloat this post with a too detailed description I’ve decided to break it down into three main parts. Lucy’s Plot: which outlines the exploits of Lucy Lacemaker through the book. Celia’s plot: Which follows the Yolsh investigation. And the Court Plot: Which will cover the intrigues in the ruling class and their foolishness.
Lucy’s Plot
Lucy’s plot begins with her as a ‘fowler’ living on the streets. This might sound particularly sad but in this world all children live on the streets. It’s only once they’ve grown older and have ‘proven’ themselves that they get to come inside and sleep in a proper bed. Lucy’s doing alright though, she’s managing to avoid the chop shops that want to eat her and has made friends with a bookseller that’s taught her to read. But everything changes when she bumps into an old friend who’s involved with some dodgy dealings. One exploded ‘dollhouse’ later and she has to flee for her life to an entirely different city. There, through some cunning trickery, she becomes an ‘inker (that’s newspaper reporter to us humans). Unfortunately she soon discovers that her new boss is more entangled with the dodgy dealings she fled from than she could ever have thought possible.
Celia’s Plot
The Yolsh – that’s police to us muggles – are called in to investigate when a dollhouse explodes. Determined to find the truth the lead investigating officer brings in a private investigator to help. Celia, haunted by voices in her head and the demons of her past, is reluctant to take up the offer but agrees to take the job anyway. They follow the leads from the small town where the explosion took place to fighting pits, and toy shops, and all across this terrible country of theirs until they finally find …Lucy. And then well, my readers, that’s when things start to get interesting.
The Court Plot
And here is where the hanging threads of both our other plots get tied together and sewn back into the great tapestry that is the mystery of this book. I’m going to try and keep this as vague as possible, even perhaps, to the the point of causing confusion in the reader. Because I don’t want to rob you of the joy of piecing all the different pieces together. Of working it out, or failing to, before the author pulls back the curtain and reveals all both to the reader and the characters alike. I didn’t do this with the last review because let’s be honest at this point in the timeline who doesn’t know that Ned Stark dies?
So, I will proceed with caution.
Okay, where to start? Well, in times past the Kivouachians were ruled by a giant beast known as Freyda. But she was a monster, who made her people into monsters, and so she was overthrown by her children. Or at least the three children that mattered: Sombra: the Grand Architect ; Winifred: the Grand Whisper; and most important of all … Locket: the Grand Voice. Ever since the day these three overthrew their mother they’ve ruled their people with a firm, logic based, system of laws. Kivouachians may be animals but they do not have to be uncivilised ones.
They believe, at least most of the time, that their rule, their laws, are the only thing keeping their savage subjects from falling into complete decline. So why would anyone fight against them? But things are going wrong. There’s a conspiracy in the shadows. Things are being leaked to the public that should have been kept silent. There’s more at stake here the one dollhouse exploding. History long best forgotten is about to repeating; and waiting in the wings, for the fallout of all this chaos, is Methusa. Her manifesto clutched in her claws. A manifesto that speaks of enforced kindness and societal pity. It’s a dream shes had for many years ever since the death of the only child she ever loved. She’s going to make the world right and no one, not even Locket, is going to stop her this time.
There, I think that’s just about vague, and informative enough, to get people interested in reading this book … which really is the whole point of a book review if you think about it.
Themes of the Plot
The Ability to choose
The people in this story are not good people not a single one of them – and yet the book poises the question if we take away even just the choice to do bad don’t we make good completely irrelevant. It’s our ability to choose, how we live our lives, the people we help, that truly makes a society.
Take away choice and all you have left is a dictatorship … and those never last.
Surprise Twists in the Plot
Probably too many to count and each one more shocking than the last.
Adaptational Changes to the Plot
Well, it has a completely different plot to the YouTube series so … everything? Yep, everything seems like the right word here.
Cecilia is a former Yolsh (that’s policemen for us humans) dragged back into working with her old colleagues when a Dollhouse (brothel, I told you this wasn’t a kid’s book) mysteriously explodes. She has a dark past, even considering the world she lives in, and is haunted by voices in her head that won’t let her be.
I think Cecilia has the, perhaps, dubious honour of being my favourite character in The August Few because despite the fact that she lives in a world where might makes right literally there’s something in her that feels that it – or at least the way her people go about showing it – is fundamentally wrong.
How do I explain this better?
In Cecilia’s society a person can be anything they want to be, in theory, so long as they’re strong enough. Doesn’t matter what your gender is or your sexual orientation, or on vey rare occasions your disability, if you’re strong enough or smart enough you can accomplish anything.
That sounds nice doesn’t it?
Empowering even.
Except well … what happens to people who loose?
Remember the people of this society are monsters in more than just appearance. Their society does not encourage compassion for those who they deem ‘failures’. Failures are beheaded, their brains destroyed and their bodies put on display in the most humiliating way possible and used to carry the next wave of monsters. And that’s if you’ve been lucky enough to survive to adulthood …. if you’re a kid who fails you just get eaten.
Which now that I say it out loud may be a less awful fate.
All characters believe that this way of doing things has made their society strong; and if you find yourself failing in that society then it clearly has to be your own doing. Your own mistakes. No wider circumstances involved here. And when I say every character I do mean every character even the ones fighting to change things.
The closest we come to a proper rebuttal of this belief is a character like Cecilia who while she doesn’t dispute that this seems the only way her people can exist in any kind of society – they are all animals after all – doesn’t believe it makes their world a great one, but rather a sad one.
And that’s the point … a world with no rebuttal to any one prevailing rhetoric is never going to be a Utopia, regardless of what that rhetoric is. This is a sad world, but it is only those like Cecilia, who are not quite in step with what is considered normal, can truly see it for the tragedy it is.
Least Favourite Character
Lucy Lacemaker
Lucy Lacemaker is the main character of the story. Starting the tale as a fowler ‘that’s child for the muggles in the audience’ the book is essentially her coming of age story, at least from her perspective. It is the story of how she grows from a scrappy fowler just fighting to stay alive to an ingenious inker whose skills of forgery are coveted even by the antagonists of the book.
During this journey she comes to whole heartedly embrace and love ‘Locket’s Law’ (that’s might makes right for the laymen) and expounds on its virtues to anyone who will listen.
Now you would think given the fact that I clearly don’t like ‘Locket’s Law’ that that is the reason that I don’t like her. Well, I’d like to say for the record that no it is not. Alright, not wholly. This is an alien society, full of alien creatures and individuals, so I can accept that they will have some views, and practices, that I find slightly repugnant. And I’m more than an experience enough fiction lover, and fantasy lover, to enjoy them and often like them anyway. And yet, there is just something about Lucy’s views by the end, or rather the way that she expressed them, that really set my teeth on edge.
It was as if only she was smart enough to really see and understand the beauty of their society. That only she was mature enough to understand how it really worked. And by the end every time she heard someone’s sad backstory, or reason for why they might not whole heartedly agree with the way the society was run, she would just keep repeating that it was their own fault. That they were just blaming society for their own mistakes.
Now, don’t mistake me, when I say I don’t like Lucy Lacemaker I’m not calling her a badly written character. No, indeed not, I think she’s probably the most well written and rounded character in the book. And I think this attitude that she develops near the end is quite deliberately put in there by the author. Not because he is arguing for this kind of world, or even that the Kivouachians can only exist in this kind of world, but because that attitude not only gives her the motivation she needs to outwit the antagonists of the book but because I don’t think he intends for her to be correct at all.
Because no ideology, no matter how right one individual may think it is, is ever going to be wholly correct and right for the world. The world, both theirs and ours, is made up of a patchwork of greys and exceptions. So when Lucy calls people too naive to understand she’s really just showing her own naivety. And I’m ninety nine percent sure of this because she’s called out on this crap … by Cecilia. Who warns her near the end of the book to be careful on the words she says when she’s high on logic.
Man Cecilia is such a cool character … why can’t these books be solely about her again?
Oh well, maybe Lucy will improve by the sequel. I mean she can’t possibly get worse right? Right?
Character most changed in the Adaption
It might be a stretch to call Satellite City an adaption. Because truthfully it’s not really. For one thing it came out years before the book was even a thing. And also, it’s made by the same author. However, it is still very relevant to the discussion – and the nearest thing we have to an adaption of any kind for this world – so I’m just going to push ahead with it like it is one.
Satalite City is a Web Series made by Sam Fennah and starring him as well. It resolves around these groups of creatures called the Kivouachians who are from a place that existed before the big bang. In fact, its destruction caused the big bang and everything that existed after that.
The Kivouachians we meet in the series are refugees from that world, that place, that existed before. Though I never did understand how they survived the death of their world. Still, that is who they are and the series is basically a slice of life show, sprinkled with a bit of cosmic horror and political machinations, as we watched these monstrous abominations just try to live their day to day lives.
And the leader of these monsters is a creature known as Ludwig.
Ludwig
In the show Ludwig is, as stated above, the Leader of the Kivouachians, the Grand Voice if you will. It is his goal to lead his people to a grander glory and a return to if not their home world, then an earth he will make very much like it. And he will do this by mixing the blood of his people with earth creatures. All this so that his people can rise again because what Ludwig believes more than anything else is that their home was a great place. A place where anyone could be anything so long as they were strong enough. A place where the weak died and the strong more than survived they thrived. What he believes is Locket’s Law.
In the book Ludwig is a rebel who one hundred percent believes the antagonists anti-locket rhetoric. Oh, he doesn’t start off the book doing so, but much like Lucy this is his coming of age story too, so that’s certainly how he ends it he book. However, before we dismiss this as just a complete rewrite I of the character it’s worth noting that he is a child. Technically speaking. Having not reached his moment of maturity.
Maybe the biggest change is that the book Ludwig hasn’t yet become anything yet. Not who he was in Satellite City, not someone else, he is still … waiting.
Character I was surprised by my reaction to the Most
Locket
Locket is the Grand Voice of the Kivouack – it is her law that rules the land. It is her will that governs it so. She believes whole heartedly in the right of the strong not only to rule over the weak but to destroy them completely.
Now, from everything else I’ve said here you would think that would be someone who I would hate. And believe me, before I actually read the book I really thought I would. But gosh damn it she’s just so fascinating… and it’s hard to hate a character that makes her book such a good read.
She’s not the straight monster that I expected to find when I sat down to this book. She doesn’t growl or slobber or sneer ‘Mr. Burns style’ over her fallen enemy. In fact, despite creating the law that would make it socially proper to do so, she doesn’t seem to be particularly happy about any of her victories at all. She’s polite and open, though not currently convinced, to the possibility that her way might not be the right one. There is only one thing that Locket believes in, more than even the animalistic nature of her subjects, and that is the power of logic.
She doesn’t believe in morality as we, humans, would define it; so you can’t approach her with the argument that her way is wrong because it is evil. You must approach with the argument that her way is wrong because it does not work. And that is where her enemies fail because their entire argument is based on the concept of morality. Of doing something not because it is effective for society but because it is morally right to do.
Now, I am not in anyway trying to say that that is not a decent start to an argument but it’s not the way to convince Grand Voice Locket. And the truth is that her opposers can’t really make that logical argument that this ‘might makes right’ way of life is hurting their society because they don’t actually think it is. They believe that their society has advanced under this law; they just don’t believe that’s enough of an excuse for all the lives lost in favour of it. They argue for stagnation over carnage.
A proper argument against Locket’s law, or at least part of it, might be that every child has the potential to be anything when they are born. To aide and enrich their community in ways that we might not even be able to conceive of yet. So, shouldn’t they have the right to grow and flourish and reach their fullest potential in safety? Who knows what the fowler you throw in your soup pot could have done for society in fifty or sixty years. What inventions, books, art, or designs we may have lost when that life was cut short. You say that this law means that only the strong, only the smart, survive to enrich their community but I say only the lucky survive. And luck gives nothing back to society, it only takes.
Perhaps that might have convinced Locket, at least for a moment, but that would rely on the person making the argument actually believing it. But none of them do and so Locket wins by default. You would think that would make her happy and in a lesser written character it might, but that’s not who Locket is.
Hi, Wee Readers, well I’m back, and no this is not the follow up to my last post, sorry. But don’t worry I am still working on that and eventually you will see just what I thought on Amygdala’s characters. Well, some of them anyway. You will sit back and behold it in all its glory and you will think – this took a month to do?
But now onto our current post and why its subject matter had to take precedence over finishing my ongoing blog series.
You see … I’ve started a Substack account. Yes, that’s right. Specifically one to share my work; short stories, flash fiction, even sometimes the very occasional poem; that connects to the books I’m working on. In that, they’re set in the same universe.
I would like you, old wee readers and new, to please click the link below and subscribe. Do so now and be the first to read my opening story : The Man in the Salt. A short story of a man who vanishes from a doorstep and finds himself in a desert made all of salt. Click the link below, and subscribe while you’re at it, to find out what happens next.
Genre: Science Fiction, Fairy tale (proof if there ever was one that this genre is not always for kids), and Fantasy.
Format: Paperback, hardback, and Audiobook. (I recommend the audiobook if you’re going to read this book it’s very well made. It has its own album music and everything.)
Published: 13th February 2023
Wee Writing Lassie’s Shelf: What the Fuck did I just Read
Reasons for Reading: I enjoyed Sam Fennah’s online show Satellite City and was interested to follow these characters into a more fantastical setting.
A Warning: This is not a children’s book. I repeat despite many of the characters being basically talking animals this is very much not a children’s book.
In fact it covers topics and images that most adults would find disturbing and uncomfortable to the point where I started to reconsider reviewing it for ‘The Wee Writing Lassie and her Marvellous Reads’.
Eventually I decided to go through with it because not only is it very well written, and surprisingly thought provoking in its themes and prose, but it’s one of the most unique books I’ve ever read. Having said that do not pick this book up without preparing yourself first.
The characters are monsters, both literally and figuratively, who live in a society that believes wholeheartedly that might makes right. They eat their own young; have *** with headless bodies; and display their fallen enemies like trophy prizes. And even then I’m still not really covering the true horror that is this world. Having said that … it is still a really well written book so if you can get past that it’s worth a look at. Again … so long as you’re an adult. I cannot even begin the state how much this is not a kid’s book.
What Ho, wee Readers. I’m back again and this time with a more nature focused post. Nothing too complicated just a wee walk in Aden park with the Wee family. And the pictures I took during it.
This one was taken while walking so I’m aware it might be a bit blurry.
Well, we’ve come to the end at last Wee Readers, and for those of you who have been following my blog for any length of time know what that means it’s time for the playlist.
As I said my characters post there wasn’t a single character that I found overly grating or hate worthy. And that was surprising considering some of their show counterparts. Yes, Sansa, I’m looking at you. The thing is I’m an adult now so I like to think I have more patience with characters behaving dumbly – at least when they’re eleven like book Sansa was in this story – than I did when I first watched the show. Also I’m far more forgiving of Sansa’s foibles and sins here, though God knows she has so much more of them, because at least here they make for an interesting story.
As for the others … yeah …. didn’t actually hate a single one even the ones I was meant to hate. They were all so well written and believable it felt like following the lives of real people who just so happened to live in a slightly fantastical world.
Plot
Also excellent. Despite the fact that I knew how the story would end I couldn’t help following Ned’s tale hoping that for once it might have a different outcome. It didn’t of course you can’t change something that’s been down in ink since 1995. The book is a slow trod to the envetable death of this good man because of course Ned Stark was going to die. There was no other outcome once he agreed to ride south, once he agreed to step foot in King’s Landing, once he agreed to pin that royal badge to his chest. For the Game of Thrones is not a game for good, or even marginally decent, men to play. It is the Game of Bastards. Sometimes quite literally. For only an evil man can truly call the act of ruling others a game and mean it enough to win.
Oh and there’s some ice zombie and dragon nonsense going on in the background but it’s Ned’s story that’s the actually plot here. At least as far as the first book is concerned.
Over all Impression
A fascinating look into the death of a man who should have been left alone to raise his family in peace. I’m not crying, you’re crying.
Warning here there be spoilers. I’d considered trying to skirt around them for this post but considering it’s basic premise that seemed rather pointless on further reflection. So, I decided to instead just offer you a bit of warning … spoilers ahead, if you haven’t read the book, or for some reason managed to miss the show entirely, prepare to have the plot ruined.
Outline of the Basic Plot
This whole thing might be a little pointless – given the popularity of the show – but for those few of you who have for some reason never heard of ‘A song of Ice and Fire’ I’m gonna forge ahead. You deserve not to be confused too during the later section of this post.
Ned Stark, Warden of the North, and best person in all of Westeros is happy living his best life with his wife and his six kids (only five of which are actually his wife’s); when suddenly Jon Arryn, the Hand of the King and Warden of the Vale (and Ned Stark’s foster father), is struck down. Not only is this a blow on a personal level but now the king – his former foster brother Robert Baratheon – has showed up on his doorstep intending to make Ned the next Hand of the King. And marry his psychopath of a son to Ned’s eldest daughter. He can’t say no. And from there Ned is dragged out of the safety of the North and into the deadly Game of Thrones. Politics abound as Ned slowly uncovers the terrible truth hidden behind the beauty of court. Spoiler here. The Queen’s children are not the King’s but instead a product of her affair with her own twin brother. Ned decides to tell the king but he is too slow and the man is felled in a hunting accident before he can. To top that off Ned is accused of treason when he tries to reveal the truth and sentenced to death. Which to the shock of all those watching and reading actually happens and Ned Stark, the best character in all of Westeros, looses his head in the very first book.
Meanwhile up at the Wall – a literal giant wall of ice built to separate the lands of ‘civilised’ Westeros and the wild lands to the North – Ned’s stark bastard son has pledged himself to the order of the Night’s Watch. A legion of men in black cloaks that were sworn to guard the realms of men from the dangers lying hopefully behind the Wall. He knows he no longer has a home with his father off to the south and his step mother actively wishing for his death and so he intends to make a new one by swearing to the night’s watch. Oh, if only he picked a better time. For the time of the White Walkers, those legendary monsters of yesteryear that the wall was actually built to defend the realms of men against, are finally, after a millennium lost in the farthest reaches of the north lands, coming back to the lands of Westeros. And no one, not Kings in their Castles, or beggars on the street, will be safe when those ice zombies return for their pound of flesh.
Meanwhile out in Essos the last living daughter of house Targaryen, the royal dynasty that Robert Baratheon overthrew, is being married off to a vicious Horse Lord so that he will provide her brother with the army he needs to invade Westeros and take back his family’s seat of power. Long story short that is not going to happen. In fact to make an even longer story short: girl falls in love with warrior husband (and when I say girl I mean it in the book she’s thirteen, not seventeen like she is in the show, it is deeply uncomfortable to read); warrior husband kills brother for threatening the girl; later warrior husband gets hurt and girl turns to blood magic witch for help. Witch offers cure but in exchange demands the life of husband’s horse and also ends up taking the life of girl’s unborn child as well. Husband is alive after this but only in the technical sense. Girl smothers him with a pillow and builds his funeral pyre. Then she steps onto the pyre with the dragon eggs she was given as a wedding present. Just for good measure she has tied the witch to the funeral pyre to make sure that she really burns and dies. Body of husband burns, blood witch dies, all the clothes and hair of girl are burned away but she emerges otherwise unscathed – physically at any rate – from the ordeal holding three quite alive dragons. Book ends there.
Themes of the Plot
Oddly enough I think a major theme for the book is the same one that runs throughout all of them … that is the complete and utter absurdity of ‘the Game f Thrones’. Jostling for power and plotting to get your inbred son crowned king are stupid enough ideas when all you have to worry about is the church being mad at you and the odd peasant rebellion. But it’s absolutely suicidal when there are an army of ice zombies coming for you.
The scenes at the Wall are almost entirely cut off and separated from the rest of the political moving and nonsense that is happening in the rest of the book and yet by far and away it’s the most important thing happening. The rest of it, up and to including Joffrey taking best person Ned Start’s head, is almost entirely pointless when you put it up alongside the army of ice zombies coming to eat your face.
Martin has said that the white walkers are an allegory for climate change but honestly the connection between the metaphorical meaning and the monsters in the text is limited to a winter theme, so in theory we could apply this to any oncoming disaster. Heck I’m doing a review of a fantasy book that came out when I was two while Nichola Sturgeon (?) is still alive. (I’m Scottish by the way, and I hate that woman, apply your own hated politicians when applicable and get same result).
Surprise Twists in the Plot
I get the feeling that Ned Stark’s execution, at least from the general feeling of the book while reading it, was supposed to be a surprise. I mean come on … surely Ned Stark is going to live through this he’s the main character. And I get that and I feel like it would have been a good twist that maybe a lot of people would have been blown away at the time of writing but…
It’s 2026.
And we all know Ned Stark gets his head chopped off.
Adaptational Changes to the Plot
Again, season 1 of Game of Thrones is pretty accurate to the first book. The biggest changes are Sansa’s betrayal – which in the show is watered down to a letter she’s forced to write her brother telling him to bend his knee to Joffrey which the characters instantly see through and absolve her of – and Stannis. Granted he doesn’t actually appear physically in the first book but he’s mentioned a lot. And not just in the ‘oh, he could be the next king if the children of the Queen aren’t Robert’s’ way he’s limited to on the show. No, in the book he and Jon Arryn investigated the Queen together and it’s heavily implied he’s been helping Jon run the kingdom for a while now. He booked it out of the capital very recently after Jon died and he realised that he might be next.
But Wee Lassie isn’t that cowardly , shouldn’t he have at least told Robert before he left??
Stannis isn’t Ned Stark his relationship with his brother is at best cold. Had he come to Robert with his suspicions he would not have been believed; or at least this is what Stannis thinks as he states in book two. That is why he goes to Jon with his suspicions because Jon will be believed. And also does anyone out there really believe it’s brave to stay and be willingly murdered by their political enemies? Like is there really someone out there saying that and not just a straw man I’ve made up to get my point across?
It’s not a big change but it is an odd one given how important Stannis would become in later seasons. Granted it’s probably just another instance of the writers of the show trying to tear Stannis down to make Renly look better. Because Renly’s assertions in the show (I can’t actually remember him saying it in the book) that Stannis is not a king, he is, look a lot more flimsy when Stannis has basically been running the kingdom on a day-to-day basis for years. I could go on a long tangent about that, about how they twist and mangle Stannis’ character to the point of having him kill his own daughter so his murderer looks more heroic, but this isn’t a post about that.
And so we’ve reached the end of our story … almost literally as far as these reviews are concerned. For next week we have our second to final post …the conclusion.
The Wee Writing Lassie 