[hugo award for best novella: 2/6] this was charming; a very classic faerie story with some nice flair. extremely recognisable at times, very very familiar, a classic fantasy, but not necessarily drawing from any single source or influence. bit brothers grimm, bit faerie folklore, bit reynard the fox, bit perrault, bit changelings, bit hansel and gretel, etc etc. I've never really read novik before, but I got the competence and style I was expecting from such a big fantasy veteran. I felt it was stronger when it was focusing on celia and roric towards the start, and towards the end it thinned as it (necessarily, but still) succumbed to more fairy-tale-y tropes in order to get through the summerling bit, and a few of the characters sort of fell to the wayside slightly, like their father. as ever with novellas there are bits which feel as if they could have stood developing in a longer work, but there wasn't as many of them as I necessarily thought, or that there always are; everyone has their own little arc and they're all handled pretty well, on the whole. I enjoyed it, it was a solid little read.

an absolute triumph of imagination, I have to say; completely weird and massively unique. pechaček pulls from literally everywhere to create a truly bizarre and very compelling fantasy world, spilling over with fabulous little blink and you'll miss 'em details. slightly too over-populated cast of characters, and slightly too fragmented as a narrative, maybe, but truly fanciful without really being quaint (at any rate it would be hard to achieve quaint with how fucking grisly a lot of this was?? omg the body count just climbed and climbed). (also... yet again I am not surprised to see engle-laird's handprints on this.) and weird without feeling as if it's trying too hard to be off-putting or escoteric; it could've verged on the Tumblr Eldritch Being nonsense, especially with the ladies (...I know what I mean but I don't think that descriptor actually makes any sense) but because pechaček commits SO hard to the bit, so to speak, and has such an imagination on him, he sells it. it's pretty droll and at times outright really very funny, has moments of total beauty; (the frogs' song, for instance, really got to me), and for a debut it's a crazy accomplishment. messy in places and a tad rough around the edges, but sharp as anything when it comes to cycles of violence, war, tradition, and the gatekeeping and passing down of information and education. (the oral tradition!! songs instead of books!! I always love to see it)

I didn't love it quite as much as I'd hoped, but I still really rate it and am looking forward pechaček's next novel! would love for it to get a uk deal this time, so there would be some way of reading it beyond 'I paid 35 quid for the hugos voting packet and it was in that', which is how I just read this! I think I could be compelled to vote for pechaček for the astounding award; just let me sample everyone else first...

from what I know of tesh (which is admittedly, not a lot) it does feel like there's probably a lot of her in this book, or at least her experiences. like tesh herself, dr walden is a teacher of a niche subject with limited but arguably important applications at a [posh private] school in the south of the uk, which fosters a very limited a level set every year and sends the most promising off to oxbridge with some fanfare. now, some of that is conjecture, but based on the fact tesh teaches latin and greek at a school in hertfordshire, I would guess that perhaps she does not teach at a state school. lol. even besides her obvious familiarity with the boarding school motions, classics and accompanying languages are almost entirely taught in the private sector because it has relatively little funding and uptake in state schools and they are a distinct class marker.

so, I think tesh uses the magic as a substitute/analogue for that very well, actually; it feels like she works through a lot of feelings about the duties, responsibilities, and pressures of teaching in the uk in the incandescent, and some of it was familiar to me with a teacher for a mum (although my mother would probably rather walk on coals than teach private lmao). I also think she does consider class and the potential obsolescence of things like academia, boarding schools, the oxbridge myth, etc with some vigour, and it's nice to see an academic book set in the uk understand the minutiae of class and race and Old Boys and so on a bit stronger level. I didn't feel overly passionately about the execution of this, I admit. I thought both of the romances were kinda neither here nor there (I would say walden and the a-level students proved more fleshed out than either laura or mark), the prose was pleasant but not fantastic; I was going to give it 3.75 until that ending changed my mind, which I thought was pretty well done. it lets go, which I think is valuable; it's a book which lets everyone be wrong and make massive mistakes and change their minds, even teachers and doctors and supposed 'experts'.

there is also something wynne-jones-ian about this (which I'm sure would please tesh, one of the hosts of eight days of diana wynne jones); my memory of wynne jones is feeble but the droll reporting of institutional british pomp feels familiar, and I was reminded of reading witch week and charmed life as a kid. they're not that similar, but I felt it.

a technically pleasant and competent read with a lot worthy to suggest about the british education system as it stands today. and also there's demons.