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CM . . . . Volume XVII Number 20. . . .January 28th, 2010.
excerpt:
Plain Kate starts off really well. Kate may be plain of face, but, in her father's eyes, she is Katrina, 'my star', and she is the light of his life, his wife having died in the bearing of Kate. She is also the inheritor of his skill as a woodcarver and, from a very young age, has been able to see the shape imprisoned in a piece of wood and to free it with her knife. However, the townspeople are uneasy with her talent, believing her to be a witch. Consequently, when Kate's father dies suddenly of a strange fever, they are not happy having her stay with them. Inertia keeps her in the town anyway for a time, eking out a precarious living by selling her carvings as she can, until the arrival of a peculiar travelling man, a gypsy named Linay. From that point, the story gets darker and ever darker. Kate and Linay strike a bargain that gets her the things she needs to leave town, but, in exchange, he takes her shadow. She attempts to make friends with a band of roamers (relatives of Linay's though she doesn't realize it initially), but disaster falls on anyone who attempts to help or befriend her. In the end, she has no choice but to join up with Linay, travelling with him, aiding him in his weird spells, until she finally decides that she must stop his bizarre attempt at revenge on the town that murdered his wife. She manages this with the help of her talking cat -- his ability to talk was the only positive thing to come of her pact with Linay -- but not in any light-hearted manner. Poor Kate. Poor stupid Kate. Why did she stay in the town where she was not welcome? With her talents, she could have gone anywhere and someone would have taken her on as an apprentice, money or no, or hired her to decorate the local mansion, but no. She had to hang about, getting further and further enmeshed with Linay and his scheming until there was no escape. The only glimmer of fun or humour in the book comes from Kate's cat. An unexpected consequence of her pact with Linay is that Taggle suddenly is granted the power of speech, and he uses it to good effect. His priorities being firmly set: food, food, and food, followed by warmth, safety, and Kate, his observations have a practical cast to them that Kate's more philosophical ramblings lack. It is only when she takes Taggle's advice that she seems to move out of the shadows into the chance of a brighter future. It is perhaps inevitable that he is the channel by which Kate finds salvation, and it is he who allows the book to end on a reasonably positive note, but he is not enough to redeem the general atmosphere of gloom. Recommended with reservations. Mary Thomas works in an elementary school library in Winnipeg, MB.
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