The Tin Princess is the fourth of Philip Pullman’s Victorian young adult mystery books. I’m the first to acknowledge that my blog has been broken-recordy lately: Philip Pullman … blah blah blah … amazing … Philip Pullman … amazing … blah blah blah. Sorry. But he really is super good at what he does.

So instead of a regular thumbs up review, I thought I’d say something about why I think he is so good. When I am impressed by an adventure story, it’s because I feel like I myself take a kick in the guts every now and then. Pullman is good at serving up that kick, and one of the tricks he uses is pulling a moment wide open right in the middle of an action scene, using detail to forge a connection between the characters. For example, a seemingly benign introduction:

Jim noticed that both of them were immediately aware of the way he made the introduction: they were introduced to her, not she to them, so she must be their social superior. There was a bristle of surprise, and then it was his turn.

or, at the end of a wild chase:

Off balance, they stumbled and gathered themselves to look up at the face of a woman: a beautiful, dark-eyed, bare-shouldered, raven-tressed Spanish-looking actress in a scarlet gown. She was frightened; she could hardly speak for the rapid beating of her heart.

Notice the way he uses the physical reactions of the characters. Yet he doesn’t give the characters or the reader the luxury of contemplation, he moves right along. The result being that you know that something important has happened, but not what the significance of it is yet. Effective, and much more exciting than just a plain old donnybrooking.

Recommended for: you, her, him, them, everyone.

I am a total broken record about Philip Pullman, ‘you should read him’ ad nauseam. Sure, you wish you could turn me off like a radio. But eventually you’ll pick this up for a young cousin or something, and you’ll read the (killer) first couple of pages and you will curse yourself a thousand times for not listening to me, and you’ll read it until you finish it or fall asleep with your nose on the paper.

I wish I’d read this fifteen years ago. It’s the third in the Sally Lockhart series — a Victorian mystery about a heroine who is feminist in word and deed, written so well that you can’t believe Pullman’s heart rate ever cracks a hundred. It’s just that good. It doesn’t dumb down to a younger audience, and would be a top instrument for introducing the complexities of legal process, race hatred, socialism and poverty to a future caring intellectual. I think it’s Michael Robotham who said that he doesn’t plan when he writes his crime books, and that he gets to a point where he feels like he can’t possibly extricate his character from the predicament he’s put them in. Reading this book is exactly the same, so urgent and heartbreaking that the ending is almost irrelevant because you’re so busy admiring Pullman’s guts. Ten out of ten resounding hurrahs.

Unprepossessing, right? Partly because of my non-glamour shot, but also the ‘hey did anyone brief the designer?’ cover. I left this lying around for ages because I couldn’t quite figure out the guy on the front wearing the two-tone fringed garments. Appearances aside, if you haven’t read this or any Saunders (I hadn’t), clear some space in your reading schedule. I mean it, there are two months left in 2008, you can do it.

CivilWarLand in Bad Decline is usually labelled satire, and it never pulls punches on the most ridiculous creations of our times. The titular Land is an embattled theme park harbouring costumed sweet-sellers and gimcrack machines in the guise of a historically accurate entertainment experience. Our hero (and I mean that only slightly ironically) is a chronic yes-man who, along with monitoring the park’s (real) resident ghosts and overseeing the Verisimilitude Irregularities List, agrees to an unusual internal insurance measure — an ex-serviceman with violent tendencies.

Saunders’ stories distinguish between two types of miscreant: the socially-sanctioned, self-preserving tyrant and the woefully under-equipped human excrescence. The former have the edge in numbers and jargon, but the latter possess the power to give these tyrants the shakes and this tension is made pivotal whenever it comes to a head. Unreal touches lend humour but also allow Saunders to more acutely propose the limited capacity of an individual’s agency in a society structured by the laws of the jungle. Less virtuosic than David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas but more immediate, CivilWarLand nevertheless has a similar apocalyptic inexorability to its lessons: learn now, or forever hold your peace.

the checklist for liking this novel:

• do you like fairytales?
• without irony?
• really, come on?
• have you ever been in love with a member of the academic staff at a tertiary education institution?
• are you somewhat enthralled by the recondite?

please, i love me a little reductio ad absurdum.