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A review by red_dog
The Alchemist of Souls by Anne Lyle
3.0
So there I was in the library, looking for a fantasy book that I could lose myself in. Sadly, every book I picked up was in the "Land of X is being threatened by the dreaded Y, and only the unassuming Z can fulfil the prophecy and free the world of evil" vein, until I got to The Alchemist of Souls. "Ah ha", I thought: "If invented worlds don't cut it, why not delve into counter factuals? You know where you are with the world (at least to start with), and can quickly get busy with any subversion of expectations that the author chooses to throw at you." And from the point of view of evoking Elizabethan England, Anne Lyle's book does a very good job - both the setting and the characters within it feel real, in particular when capturing the sheer paranoia of living in a solidly anti-Catholic police state subtly enforced by the seemingly all-seeing Francis Walsingham.
But my main sticking point with the book is the fact that it feels somewhat under-written when it comes to its main "fantasy" creatures, the skraylings. Aside from the blurb on the back cover - "When Tudor explorers returned from the New World, they brought back a name out of half-forgotten Viking legend: skraylings. Red-sailed ships followed in the explorers' wake, bringing Native American goods - and a skrayling ambassador - to London" - we don't really get any explanation of why the skraylings are there at all, or indeed what impact they have had on this world. Not that I'd necessarily want Basil Exposition to turn up, but the treatment of the skraylings by the Londoners of the book did not feel any different to what one might have expected of any other examples of "the Other" in London (either in Elizabethan times, or since), be they Hugenots, Jews, or Lascars, and as such the reason for me, the reader, to be interested in them, either for myself, or on behalf of the characters (in particular Mal Catlyn), was somewhat lost. By the time the more "magical" elements of the skrayling became more visible, not enough seeds had been sown in terms of highlighting quite why they might be seen as such a threat either socially or politically, with the net result that despite the wonder of their metaphysical approach to existence, the flow of the revelation just didn't feel right to me.
So to sum up, I enjoyed the mise en scène, I enjoyed the characters, but the overall handling of the "counter" to the "factuals" didn't quite add up for me.
But my main sticking point with the book is the fact that it feels somewhat under-written when it comes to its main "fantasy" creatures, the skraylings. Aside from the blurb on the back cover - "When Tudor explorers returned from the New World, they brought back a name out of half-forgotten Viking legend: skraylings. Red-sailed ships followed in the explorers' wake, bringing Native American goods - and a skrayling ambassador - to London" - we don't really get any explanation of why the skraylings are there at all, or indeed what impact they have had on this world. Not that I'd necessarily want Basil Exposition to turn up, but the treatment of the skraylings by the Londoners of the book did not feel any different to what one might have expected of any other examples of "the Other" in London (either in Elizabethan times, or since), be they Hugenots, Jews, or Lascars, and as such the reason for me, the reader, to be interested in them, either for myself, or on behalf of the characters (in particular Mal Catlyn), was somewhat lost. By the time the more "magical" elements of the skrayling became more visible, not enough seeds had been sown in terms of highlighting quite why they might be seen as such a threat either socially or politically, with the net result that despite the wonder of their metaphysical approach to existence, the flow of the revelation just didn't feel right to me.
So to sum up, I enjoyed the mise en scène, I enjoyed the characters, but the overall handling of the "counter" to the "factuals" didn't quite add up for me.