TITLE: Thorn Jack (#1 Night and Nothing)
AUTHOR: Katherine Harbour
GENRE: Urban Fantasy
PUBLISHED: 24/06/2014
RATING: ★★★★★
PURCHASE LINKS: Amazon
MOBILISM LINK: Mobilism
Review: Thorn Jack blew me away.
That’s probably pretty self-evident from the five star rating I’ve given it, but I really can’t emphasise it enough; Thorn Jack has what The Bitterbynde Trilogy has, that lyrical writing style combined with a from-the-heart understanding of what fantasy actually is; a story about the Other Side and wonder and magic and breathlessness. Katherine Harbour has gone straight to the top of my authors-to-watch list and she’s unlikely to leave it.
On the surface, Thorn Jack isn’t anything very special; after the suicide of her older sister, Finn and her father move to a strange town few people have ever heard of and weird things happen. Specifically, Finn maybe-or-maybe-not falling in love with a Mysterious Boy who is (of course) involved in Mysterious Things.
That summary is basically why I ignored this book at first, uninterested in what sounded like just another YA paranormal romance, another Twilight copy-cat. Thanks, but definitely no thanks. Except that somewhere I managed to read an extract of the prologue, and approximately one second after that it was downloading to my Kindle.
In the beginning was nothing. From nothing emerged night. Then came the children of nothing and night.
Thorn Jack is rich with myth. Harbour has a deep understanding of Celtic/European mythology, and has re-imagined much of it while staying beautifully true to the originals. Things that myth-geeks like myself will recognise include the fateful Tiend, changelings, and death’s white dogs, but each have been subtly changed so that, while being tributes, they are unique. Much of Thorn Jack’s mythos is entirely new; I especially adored the rethinking of the Jack and Jill nursery rhyme and the ‘truth’ behind it (which has direct ties to the novel’s title), and the fact that the main character Finn is herself knowledgeable about the world of myth and legend, her father being a professor of folklore. I cannot tell you how maddening it is to constantly read stories where I know exactly what’s going on, but the characters don't understand the first thing about the supernatural creatures they come across. I realise that it would make for less interesting stories if characters weren't faced with the unfamiliar… but still, it gets frustrating. Thorn Jack is the perfect solution; Finn knows the same myths I do, but that doesn't mean that the creatures she comes into contact with perfectly follow them. Myths might have a seed of truth, after all, but they're never wholly true. (If they were, they'd be fact.)
Thorn Jack has clear ties to the story of Tam Lin, particularly in the climactic scenes, but it isn't really a retelling of one story. That would make it too simple, and too derivative. Like Tam Lin, Thorn Jack features creatures that are, more or less, faeries – not the Tinkerbell kind but the extremely deadly tricksters of post-Celtic Europe. Called the Fatas, they're beautiful, ancient, and cruel beyond measure, but I couldn’t help falling in love with them anyway. That, possibly, is Harbour’s true skill; the ability to make even the terrible magical, to make the monsters beautiful. Which she does, exquisitely, thereby perfectly capturing what has always been the lure of the fey; even when you know they're monsters, you want to touch them anyway.
Through a screen of Emory, he saw them, their skin glimmering with pollen beneath the gossamer and velvet tatters of their clothing, their eyes silver in the glow of the fire around which they were gathered. Fireflies and moths swirled in the darkness beyond them, straying toward jewel-knotted hair and fingers scabbed with rings older than the ones he wore.
Unlike the eponymous Tam Lin, Finn is driven by a great deal more than saving her one true love. For a start, it’s not at all clear that Finn is in love rather than infatuated – and she herself is well aware of this, in a startling but brilliant example of self-awareness rare to this kind of story. In fact, in one utterly perfect scene, when faced with what the fey will do to her family and friends if she keeps defying them, she says ‘no’. And gives up.
That’s far from the ending, which is why I don't mind spoiling you. But I don't think the importance of such a scene can be underestimated anyway. Far too often for my taste we're given heroines – and heroes, to a lesser extent – who go above and beyond the reasonable for the object of their affections. Often for people they don't even (can’t even) really know. This is something we're meant to applaud. I disagree. I think that risking your life for someone you barely know is ridiculous; still worse to risk the lives of other people, which without their permission you can never have any right to do. And Finn doesn't do that. She walks away, which is something that, frankly, a hell of lot of main characters should really do.
With this, it becomes a story that is not really about love at all. Or at least, not romantic love. This isn’t Romeo and Juliet. It’s about doing the right thing, even when it hurts. Jack is originally ordered to ‘trick’ Finn to distract her from potentially messing up the Fatas’ other plans, and it’s those plans that, when she learns of them, Finn sets out to ruin. The driving force behind her actions isn’t starry-eyed infatuation but a determination to bring down those who use their power for evil.
A girl fell in love with a statue that stood in the garden of a house known to be one of Theirs. She passed the statue - a marble boy with an angel's face - every morning on her way to school. One day, she put a ring on its finger. She kissed its lips. It came to her that night and crushed her while seeking another kiss.
Not least among her motivations are the issues surrounding the suicide of Finn’s older sister, which, over the course of the novel, becomes less obviously a suicide and possibly a murder. Each chapter begins with a quote from the sister’s journal, stories of the Fatas and their history. These are beautifully poetic little snatches that help expand the reader’s understanding of what the Fatas are; not faeries, exactly, but something old and dark and different. Beautiful but deadly, and Other. Impossibly so. I can't emphasise enough that Harbour really has nailed the feeling of the Fatas. Many authors fall down by making their creatures too human, but the Fatas are most definitely not, and have no desire to be. Harbour gets all of this across perfectly, often with just one or two well-written lines...
He tried to pull back from her, but she wound her slim white arms around his neck and whispered into his ear, "'And I shall purge thy mortal grossness so, that thou shalt like an airy spirit go.' Jack, give me your heart."
He'd been a fool to think he could hide it from her, or resist her.
He opened his shirt to do as she asked.
The writing is just so powerful. The passage above knocked me breathless when I first read it, the utter shock of the final line (which closes a chapter). Harbour pulls no punches even as she gloves them in velvet, and her imagery is astounding. Throughout the book, Harbour paints the most incredible pictures, very stereotypically ‘fantasy’ – lots of jewels and stars and tarot cards. And it works. Even if I'd hated the characters and the plot, instead of loving both, I would have stuck around just for the magic Harbour weaves with her words...
As Jack looked up, starlight stroked one sloping cheekbone.
Jewels and eyes glittered like tooth and claw.
it was an alien love, webbed with blood and shadows and the dust of stars.
There are a number of strong themes running throughout Thorn Jack. Death is one of them; hearts, both physical and metaphorical, are another. So is the dividing line between beauty/good and evil, and the crossroads where they meet. The difference between attraction and love, tricks and real emotion. The difference between humanity and the inhuman, and the transition from one to the other and back again.
Does it have its flaws? Of course. But I'm too eager to send more readers walking down the path Harbour has crafted to mention them. Go and open up this treasure chest of dark jewels, my lovelies. I think you'll not regret it.
