Jeanette Winterson is one of my all-time favorite authors, and I was pretty excited about parts of this book: alchemy, medieval London, the way it feels like a bedtime story, where fantastical things happen, and even the narrator doesn't know what to expect. But eventually that trope stopped working for me, and then the book lead back to characters from the dread Tanglewreck book, and I just... got tired of reading it. If you liked Tanglewreck (and someone must have), then I think you will like this too. ( )

The second volume of Winterson’s children’s book. Not quite such a mish mash as the first one. This is partly because we have a stronger and more interesting central character (curiously a boy this time) who is active and interesting. The part set in the strange alchemist’s house at the beginning is excellent. It is set in the past but many of the characters of Tanglewreck appear again. This time the condescension is much less evident. There is a clear plot which makes sense too.

It is London in 1601, but things are not quite as history would have us believe. The life of the young protagonist, Jack, is about to take a turn away from the future planned out for him, and he goes from being a pawn in a game played by others to one where his resourcefulness and bravery lead to his his transformation into a person of some power.

The Battle of the Sun comes over as dreamlike, with figures from alchemical treatises, supernatural happenings and irrational actions all assuming an aura of reality and plausibility as often happens in dreams. Jeanette Winterson's declared mode of writing here is to let the action emerge from the situations she conjures up, and much of the first part of the book introduces characters and places and scenarios that seemingly lack resolution until a character from another of her children's novels intrudes herself, at which point the plot gathers momentum and a sense of direction before reaching a satisfying conclusion.

Winterson is a poet, and much of the writing is poetic, from the doggerel and rhyming couplets of the Creature to the evocative descriptions of the sights and smells of 17th century London, from the turns of phrase employed in the narrative to the alchemical imagery which lingers in the mind. The poetry is what helps to save this novel from being merely a prosaic description of fantastical happenings manipulating the dramatis personae and it is poetry which gives the story its own personality. That said, I was just a little disengaged by some of the characters who often appeared to be mere ciphers in the action rather than real fleshed-out individuals.

This novel apparently didn't set out to be a sequel-cum-prequel to Tanglewreck but that is what it became. And the end of The Battle of the Sun hints that, even if the girl Silver feels it is almost just a dream, there are loose threads to tie up and that the dream (if that is what it is) has not ended. I look forward to hearing more of Silver and Jack. ( )