Though initially delighted to get my hands on an advanced copy of Riverland, I soon felt burdened by the task of getting through what I had expected to be a fun and fast read. It strikes me as one of those books that simply should have been better. The author seems to be smart and a good writer. She presents an interesting concept with lots of unique elements to make it stick out, but somewhere in the writing process it must have just fallen apart.

The way the story unravels is the real heart of the matter. During the sisters's first journey to the magical other-world, the stakes are set pretty high; the boundaries between reality and the world of dreams are collapsing, and it is our heroines's responsibility to fix it. I strapped myself in for a tense fantasy with lots of harrowing near-misses and a constant clock ticking down to doomsday. But then the girls go back to their world and just... Go about their normal lives for a couple days? Most of the subsequent returns to the dream-world, a place they can only visit at night lest they get trapped there, are spent just lazily touring around, and these visits always end with a mad dash back to their world. The emotions that any one chapter were meant to evoke in the reader felt totally incongruous.

For a while, I thought Fran Wilde was employing a clever gimmick by having the tone of and movement through the dream-world reflect how time often unwinds at weird rates in dreams. In the same way, I assumed Wilde's poetic writing style and her descriptions that managed to be both very specific and fuzzy-'round-the-edges were a part of a dream motif. Since neither of these were ever proven to be on purpose, I assume they were just flukes.

For what it's worth, Wilde does capture the inner world of an abused child well. Both sisters are hyper-aware of their mistakes, because they've grown up in a context where any error has dire consequences. They use imagination as a coping mechanism. They also condemn all anger, even the normal and healthy kind, because of their associations with their raging father. As a librarian, I welcome books that will expose kids to real-life struggles. Riverland could have been a good resource for children in messy family situations, but I fear the odd style and pacing will make it inaccessible to the kids who need it most. ( )

Magical realist story about two sisters. It's not quite a fairy tale, it's not quite a way to process abuse. It's about the power of stories. ( )

https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3426012.html

Very dark portal fantasy about emotional abuse. Densely written, and I didn't really get into it. ( )

Riverland by Fran Wilde is a portal fantasy book for children (aka middle grade). I first encountered it during a reading by the author at Dublin WorldCon last year. This year, I finally got around to picking up Riverland after it was shortlisted for the not-a-Hugo Lodestar Award and hence was included in the Hugo voter's packet.

Riverland is not exactly an easy and relaxing read. It follows twelve-year-old Eleanor and her younger sister Mike, as they deal with an abusive family situation and periodically fall into a fantastical fantasy world made of the river and dreams. The abusive father is the hard part to read, of course, but there is not very much physical violence on the page. Wilde captures the fear, confusion and instability of an emotionally abusive household excellently. I absolutely felt Eleanor's stress as she strived to keep everything just right to avoid bad things happening, and I felt the way she was always kept off-balance by the house rules changing without warning.

The fantastical river world under her bed was where dreams come from and was also caught in a battle to maintain the delicate balance between dreams and nightmares. As well as Eleanor's responsibilities at home — to always do the right thing, to look after her sister and keep her parents happy — she finds herself tasked with fixing the leaks in Riverland; yet another burden. We watch Eleanor try to juggle more balls than a twelve-year-old should ever be expected to, and Wilde transfers some of her fear and tension to the reader.

So as I said, it wasn't a fun, light read, but it was interesting. I liked the fantasy world and I liked the fact that it was somewhere the girls kept revisiting rather than a place they went to and stayed in to have adventures, à la Narnia. And for all that I've emphasised the difficult parts of the book, there were also plenty of hopeful moments, though I don't want to spoil them. The ending was also a good one (though, again, not spoiling).

I highly recommend Riverland to anyone looking for a crunchy children's fantasy book I would probably hand it to slightly older children, because it does deal with some heavy issues. But I expect younger children in similar situation may benefit seeing themselves in the narrative.

4.5 / 5 stars

You can read more of my reviews on my blog. ( )

I went into Riverland blind, not even remembering Fran Wilde had written a couple short stories I had read. So I went in not expecting much, especially since none of the other 2019 Lodestar Award finalists really rose above the level of "pretty good." It took me a bit of time to orient myself in Riverland, and I wasn't sure what I thought because I wasn't exactly sure what was actually happening. (It's a tricky thing, fantasy books where something is magic and something else is only pretend magic.) But once I figured it out, I was hooked. Riverland is about two preteen sisters who use storytelling as a refuge from an awful home life; the older sister, Eleanor, is our viewpoint character as she works her hardest to protect her younger sister, and to keep herself out of the line of fire, too, by taking on responsibilities no child should have to. I found the book's depiction of her home life actually made me anxious, I was so worried about her. The way the fantasy elements are woven in is really effective, and though I struggled a tiny bit with the exposition, the fantasy world is evocative and the stakes high.