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.

A quick glance at the author biography tells me all I need to know about Kate Constable, i.e. that she’s a woman after my own heart for sure. Growing up, Constable loved Greek myths and knew nothing about football. I think we even went to the same school and university. Like me, she did an Arts/Law degree but unlike me she lived in Papua New Guinea, worked at a record company and married her boss.

I’m no stranger to Constable’s work (nor to the funny feeling I get when referring to someone as ‘Constable’) or the young adult female heroine fantasy genre (YAFHFG?). The Taste of Lightning is a premium example of both. Tansy, Perrin and Skir are three young people brought together by political intrigue and magic. By all rights, they shouldn’t be in the same place, let alone become travelling mates–their respective homelands are at war, and they come from wildly differing backgrounds. But between each other they find enough respect, skill and attraction to make a fist of helping Skir, a red-headed Priest-King, return to the Cragonlands.

Lightning is a wonderful book, with a spectacular hammer-home ending that reveals secrets of all kinds. The book smells of build-up, and I can’t find anything about it on her website but I would assume there will be a series of two or three.

Terrier is about a girl, Beka Cooper, (whom old fans like me will know to be the ancestress of the Lioness books’ lovable Rogue George Cooper) who is in training to be a Dog, the Tortallan equivalent of police. She has a couple of magic tricks up her sleeve, like being able to listen to the spirits of the dead. But, as her mother was the victim of opportunistic and cruel crime, nothing serves her more than her hunger for justice. Okay, so, pretty standard fare so far. But holy crap, I have never got so much flak from my friends as when I was reading this book. Even my fantasy-reading friends were giving me crap for reading this. Most of their derision was aimed at the cover for being creepy and over-golden, which I have to agree it kind of is. They were also a bit scathing about the subject matter, which sounded cliched to them.

I’m a bit blind to the flaws of authors who have somehow managed to win my loyalty. I’m the same with some musicians. Even so, I have to say that while Terrier was engrossing reading, it had some minor problems. It was written in journal form. That’s a writerly conceit with merit, but the trick is balancing the getting-to-know-you value with the right amount of drama. Mostly the book reads fine, despite an extremely ambitious plot. But there are some saggy bits. And the character points can be overwrought, as in, ‘I get it! She’s shy! He’s a charismatic lady-killer! Okay, enough already!’

I’ll be damned a million times, though, if I can’t defend Tamora Pierce from lounge-room critics, because she was my first library-love. I received plenty of fines for her Song of the Lioness quartet books about Alanna, a magically gifted girl who pretended to be a boy for years because she wanted to be a knight. Come on! That is awesome-town stuff. I borrowed her books chronically until I could afford to buy them. And I read all her books that were set in Tortall (there are 15!). And that is because Pierce writes a fantastic female hero, and she just loves her readers as much as her characters, teaching them that it’s okay to be different or strong as long as you’re principled and compassionate. And she’s moral in the best possible way. I learned about the virtues of hard work and honour by reading Pierce’s books, but I also learned about evil, equality and the class system.

So even though Terrier isn’t my favourite example of Pierce’s strong-female issue-conscious fantasy, that’s still a genre I love, and the book features a range of fun, sympathetic characters, a good dose of danger, a purple-eyed cat and nobility everywhere you least expect it.

A by-the-bye — I’ve been reading a lot of YA and fantasy lately. But the last non-YA book I read was for my next book club meeting, and once I write up a book, it floats out of my head a little bit. So I’m hanging on to that one. Plus Terrier has to go back to the library. Wow, I cringe a little bit every time I write Terrier. I get so embarrassed about reading fantasy. Even more than I do about liking Selma Blair.

When Helen Garner was asked at the Melbourne Writers Festival (yes, I’m still milking it) about the books she loved, she said that the last books she had read with a kind of crazed greed were Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. Those are absolutely three of my favourite books in the world. I read that series ensconced in bed, the diary cleared, and tea and biscuits within reach.

It’s not uncommon for writers to have hits and misses – I loved all of Tamora Pierce’s books but I couldn’t get through a single of one of her Circle of Magic books. So, on the same logic, I never sought out Pullman’s Sally Lockhart books (the first of which is The Ruby in the Smoke). Finding it in the City Library last week, then, was a wildly mixed blessing. But I needn’t have worried because the first page is an absolute ripper. I won’t spoil it, but it’s a good one.

The Ruby in the Smoke is set in London some time in the 1800s. Yes, I found this book in the YA section, but there are things in this book that would have the anti-Harry Potter brigade tutting for sure. Sally Lockhart is a very pretty 16-year old who carries a gun and doesn’t take to officious authority, but she also loves accounting and knows obscure things about photography. Plus she speaks Hindustani. If I had kids I’d much rather have them reading about her than the Olsen twins.

The titular smoke refers to opium, and during Sally’s search for her father, she discovers the wretchedness brought upon the Chinese and British people unfortunate enough to come under its spell. In Sally Lockhart, Pullman has given us a wondrously human heroine who is loyal, brave and capable, just like Lyra after her. Though there’s no comparison between this book and the His Dark Materials books in terms of scope (which deals with God and parallel universes, for crying out loud) The Ruby in the Smoke is certainly equal in compassion, excitement and intrigue.