Emma Newman's novel, ‘Planetfall’ was one of my Best Reads for 2020. It was a strikingly original and Science Fiction book with a strong and unusual main character. When I went looking for more of her work, as well as adding the sequels to 'Planetfall' to my TBR pile, I discovered ‘Between Two Thorns'. It's the first book in her five-book fantasy series, ‘The Split Worlds’ which is set in mirror cities that connect our world with the world of the Fae.

I live in Bath so the first line of the publisher’s summary for ‘Between Two Thorns’ was enough to grab my attention:

Something is wrong in Aquae Sulis, Bath’s secret mirror city.

'Between Two Thorns' didn't disappoint me. The Split Worlds concept that the plot rests on is an original and deeply thought-through twist on the typical 'portals in the veil between the mortal and Fae worlds' idea. It has an entire civilisation based around it.

The plot of the first book provides a compelling introduction to the Split Worlds and to the conflicts built into it and to the people who manage the mirror cities that stand as vassal cities for the Fae and act as a buffer between the Fae and the mundane world that we all live in.

Telllng the story from multiple points of view kept the story on a human scale and gave me someone to cheer for. Actually, it only really gave me one person to cheer for. The reality of the Split Worlds is not a cosy one and many of the characters, even the mundanes, are hard to like.

The Fae are monstrous, menacing and fundamentally alien. The humans in the mirror cities live in fear of the Fae, still follow the social mores of Regency England and are locked in an endless struggle for social status. The Wizards, who appear to have created this mess and who hold it together, are so distracted that they’re barely human. The Arbiters who police the boundary between the worlds are grim beings who have had their humanity ripped from them.

The only likeable person in the story is Cat who, rather than pursuing status in the Nether, fled to the mundane world so she could go to university.

When Cat fails to respond to a summons home, her choices are taken away from her and she is brought back to Aqua Sulis. One of the things I enjoyed about the book was Cat's reactions to her still-living-in-Regency-England society. She could be in a Regency Romance. She's from a prominent family and is being betrothed to a handsome and personable son of another prominent family. The things she can't swallow is that she has no more rights than any woman in Regency England had. She's her father's property and will become her husband's property and attending fancy balls at Prior Park or Assembly Rooms and wearing stunning gowns won't change that. She'd happily give up immortality as a chattel for a mortal life as an independent woman.

The Split Worlds aren't static. There are some big changes underway, not all of which are fully explored in the first book. There's no cliff-hanger ending but there are enough loose ends to hook my imagination and make me want to come back for more.

Emma Newman does a great job of narrating 'Between Two Thorns'. She's also put the short stories/word sketches that she used to add depth to the Split Worlds on SoundCloud. Click on the link below to sample them.


https://soundcloud.com/ejnewman/sets

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This is the most inventive fantasy I’ve read in a good while, very genre-blending with social commentary that’s bound to get stronger as the trilogy progresses, but in the end, I was left ambivalent. The characters and world didn’t quite grab me, ditto the problems that needed solving or were left unsolved, and this is very definitely not written as a stand-alone, which didn’t help. Newman hints at a lot more going on than the characters notice or tackle, which is probably great if you’re in the mood for a trilogy or enjoy her particular way of foreshadowing, but it didn’t work for me. (It’s also worth noting that the blurb on the back makes this sound like a different sort of novel than it is.)

Newman’s a good writer. She knows her way around plot and character and is able to weave a story that’s engaging without feeling super plotty or predictably paced, and she’s able to do that with touches of humour too. It’s not everyone who could balance a Regency pastiche staring a 21st-century feminist, a noirish urban fantasy with steampunk wizardry and a mobile gargoyle, and a Faerieland shading to the darker end of whimsy, or come up with the idea to mix those elements in the first place, and Newman does it well. Not brilliantly, but well. The story felt oddly leisurely, taking its time building up the elements but not so much the tension, and well, it is a first novel.

Which is absolutely not to say I didn’t enjoy this, didn’t relate to the characters, didn’t get sucked into the world a little, because I did. Cathy, the feminist, especially, was delightful in her determination, anger, and unwillingness to play by the rules, but I liked all the POV characters, and disliked a bunch of the secondary characters as I was meant to. I certainly pictured people and places, which doesn’t often happen quite so vividly, and hoped that everything would turn out okay (but without ever quite feeling like it wouldn’t). Beyond that, it’s hard to say what else I liked because of spoilers, but there’s some neat stuff in how Newman drops clues and combines threads.

Like I said, though, I was left ambivalent. I liked a lot about this book but between the structure and the vague predictability and “not even trying to not start a trilogy”, I closed the book knowing I wasn’t going to continue on. I’m glad Cathy and everyone have won their battles. I hope they win their next ones. I’m just not curious enough about anything particular to keep reading—but I will be picking up more of Newman’s work someday, just to see how she’s progressed. I think I’ll like it, even if this book didn’t quite work for me and my expectations and needs going in were slightly off.

Warnings: Parental abuse, including one very physical scene and a lot of “do what we tell you so we don’t look bad”. General sexism of the historical variety, called out for what it is. Allusions to mind-control. Removal of bodily autonomy, witnessed, not experienced. Broken marriage and alcoholism. Gore, at a clinical remove.

6/10 ( )

Quite all right, although the deliberate pacing is not for some. ( )

I'm really quite torn on this book. There's so much about the characters and world that I love, but I simply cannot say I am satisfied by this as a novel. As the first and foundation of a series, maybe that's different. But it is, in and of itself, a novel, and it doesn't hit that spot for me. On the other hand, I'm curious as to how much of that dissatisfaction is the fault of the oddly-angled blurb.

Let me start with the good. The world is just magnificent. The layers of fae and human world (and the space between) are full of depth, nuance, commplexity and interwovenness that really speaks to the detailed awareness of the author. (I was not surprised to learn she had twenty short stories in the same world.) But it's delivered with a deft restraint that keeps the world at the appropriate level of background-highlights-scenery-envelope such that it never intrudes upon or eclipses the story. And I just loved loved loved the Austentatious / Vanity Fair-esque society shenanigans.

And the characters are excellent. All of them are interesting, complex bundles of good and bad and realistic. They have tricky relationships the direction of which is not clear, and they manifest faults (which they don't immediately get over) without reducing in any way their layered sympathetic qualities. I'm tremendously fond of all of them.

But I am significantly and genuinely irritated with how the book finished up, and specifically how much stuff into which I had invested narrative-consuming time and care was left unresolved upon the conclusion on the book. My chief complaint is: why did the book spend time on that stuff, if it wasn't going to answer the questions?

Part of my (frustrated) expectations might be due to the blurb (which cause me confusion for a goodly portion of the book). The blurb (on my copy) frames this as the story of Max the Arbiter. He is the only character named in it, with Cathy referred to only in passing (and not by name) as an aid to his investigation. Neither William nor Sam are mentioned at all, and both play a significant part in the story of this book, which is - I would argue - Cathy's story. (Max's story is unresolved, and will obviously feed into the Big Story of the Whole Series.) Though it's sort of hard to tell. My usual method of main-character-spotting - who wins at the end? - is confounded by the fact that no one wins. Our array of viewpoint protagonists don't lose. That's nice, but maybe that lack of diamond focus contributes to my dissatisfaction as well.

Whatever it is, I just wish there was more to this book. Oh, don't get me wrong, I'll be happily picking up more in this series, for the characters and the world and all the things I thoroughly enjoyed, but I still wanted more story, more development and just more in this book. ( )

Introduces the Split Worlds, with Fae and magically-touched humans living in the Nether, unknown to the mundanes. There are four central characters: Cathy fled her physically and mentally abusive family, but a Fae lord catches her and forces her to return; Max is a soulless Arbiter trying to enforce the rules against an apparently massive conspiracy; Will is Cathy’s intended (women have no formal rights in her world) and determined to do a good job for his family while preserving his own freedoms; and Sam is a mundane accidentally sucked into all the Nether’s maneuvering. I liked this much better than Brother’s Ruin, but I didn’t like the misogynist society of the Nether, which everyone in the story but Cathy (and the long-disappeared tutor who instilled a spirit of rebellion in her) apparently thinks is just fine. Newman is very clear that oppression often produces just suffering, not nobility; Cathy is small and scared and can’t stop most of what happens to her, and Will was completely convinced that he was a good man doing good things by ignoring Cathy’s opinions even though he also disapproved of the physical abuse, which was realistic within the scenario given but hard to read and not what I’m going to fantasy for right now. Newman’s sf features many of the same dynamics, centering on a person who can only decide how much they’re going to give in to a horrible system, but in her future sexism doesn’t play a big role and that matters to me as a reader. ( )