Cooking with bones by Jess Richards
Average
I wanted to like this book but had several issues with it
that detracted from my enjoyment. The book is told from 3 different POV
characters, Amber – a difficult and rebellious child, Maya - her sister
who is a “formwanderer” (she subconsciously determines the desires of
everyone she meets and then fulfils them as best she can) and Kip a child whose
job it is to collect the “Fair”, a tithe given to “Old Kelp” the witch of the
village. The same Old Kelp alternatively blesses and curses
the small seaside village with cake based spells which Kip collects when
dropping off the Fair.
Amber & Maya start the book living in the future
utopian(?) society of Paradon and when they are assigned jobs which will split
them up they decide to run away. They come to live in a cottage that seems to
be waiting for them and Amber settles into the role of baking cakes using bone
implements, that is how she becomes Old
Kelp. This was a bit of head scratcher for me, and is never satisfactorily
explained. Old Kelp existed before the sisters arrive, the sisters arrive and
Amber becomes Old Kelp. The villagers notice no break in continuity.
There is a scene where Amber finds graves, of previous Old Kelps, going
back hundreds of years but the villagers stories of Old Kelp only go back to
the grandparents of Kip’s parents. Time here is uncertain.
I never got a grip on the setting either, some sort of post
collapse society? Kip’s village is within walking distance of a modern utopia
(which has genetic engineering, nanotechnology and climate control), a utopia
that some people leave for reasons that aren’t really explored (as well as the
sisters there are a few other characters from Paradon in the village). The
small village where the action takes place
in has holiday homes to let, Kip’s mother
looks after but are never let during the
events of the story. There are telephones and cars, doctors and police and
Paradon has its own climate control (causing Maya to spend a whole chapter
trying to work out what weather is for) but there doesn’t seem to be any
computer network and the society of the village seems more rural medieval.
I didn’t really get the whole concept of formwanderer
either, Amber’s desire is for a twin so to her Maya is a twin, one of the
villagers has always wanted a pet Grizzly bear so to him she’s a pet grizzly
bear. OK so far so Red Dwarf Polymorph but Maya is a person, grown in a vat
perhaps, but a living person created from Amber’s parents donated sperm &
egg. It’s explained at the beginning, in a clumsy piece of exposition – Amber
is watching a TV report on Formwanderers and seems to find the information a
surprise, although she’s been living with one for an unknown period of time
(but long enough for them to go to school together for some years it seems).
The presentation says Our initial intention in genetically
engineering these humans, using nanotechnology, was to enhance the development
of their mirror neuron pathways and make them deeply empathic. With nanotechnology
also causing their skin cells to be reflective, technically speaking they are
astounding creations, able to mirror desired behaviours and
appearances
Maya’s voice is unique also, often “jumbling” when
anxious, her character and language are not
fixed - Mysister grabbed my hand and said stop it, satellites
send the sun in. They’re too strongThe sun shone into my eyes. I was
dazzle blind. Our shrinking silhouettes danced with my laughing sound; clang
clang! I brimmed yellow-joy. Every reflection that lives in infinityland was
blanked out HAHAHAHA! and considering she is one of only 3
narrators it’s a little off putting.
When the book starts the sisters seem child-like and then they are removed from school and given jobs,
causing them to run away. Later Amber remembers a distant past where she was
treated badly by former lovers in Paradon, this didn’t really fit my perception
of the character at the beginning of the book where I’d thought they were early
teens. Nothing to say that early teens can’t be sexually precocious but it
seemed like an inconsistency in character. I can only think the inconsistencies
are deliberate, jumbling like Maya, the book formwandering itself. However the
effect is such that the shifting sands are subliminal and make the story
untrustworthy.
Throughout there are recipes to make
different cakes which are also spells and
whilst this is a potentially cool idea the outcome of any of these
spells is never explicit, nor who they work upon (although
sometimes hinted it is the villagers). However every day Amber leaves out the same old honey cakes for the villagers, who gladly take them, regardless of what the
recipe says in her chapters.
Is Richards deliberately obfuscating or is she just poor at
getting her meaning across? I really can’t tell. Is it SF? Fantasy? Magic
realism? Modern fairy tale? Well yes it wanders back and forth from one to
another of these creating an unhealthy chimera of all of them.
Overall – Very interesting but problematical, I never really
got it YMMV
