Thursday, January 24, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Spy with the Red Balloon by Katherine Locke




The Spy with the Red Balloon is the second in Katherine Locke's "Balloonmakers" series, a series of Historical Young Adult Fantasy novels featuring characters with magic in historical settings.  I actually didn't read the first book in the series (The Girl with the Red Balloon), and the series seems to be of largely stand-alone novels, so I had no problem starting the series here.  This book features a Jewish brother and sister using magic during World War 2 as they are forced into helping the US try to stop the German Nuclear effort.

The result is solid but unspectacular.  The story avoids some annoying tropes and the main characters are definitely likable, with the story going in some interesting directions, but it never really breaks through into something better than solid.  Moreover, while the ending is a reasonably satisfying resolution, it still is a bit soured from the twist at the ending not being fully explored (this might be caused by my lack of reading the first novel - it's hard to tell).  I'm gonna pick up the first novel at some point, but I'm not in much of a hurry to do so after reading this one.


-----------------------------------------------Plot Summary------------------------------------------------
The Year is 1943.  Jewish Siblings Ilse and Wolf Klein have a secret: they can use their blood to perform magic.  At age 16, Ilse is a genius already in university and has been using her scientific knowledge to experiment with formulas to figure out new uses for her magical blood.  Meanwhile at 19, Wolf is far less eager to use magic that could draw unwanted attention to the two of them - especially because Wolf is gay at a time where being such is against the law.

But when the US Government discovers their abilities, both Ilsa and Wolf are drafted into a plan to stop the Germans from obtaining an atomic bomb...and to use magic to aid the US deliver their own bomb.  Ilse is placed at the head of a research group of young women with magic to develop techniques via their own research, while Wolf is sent to Europe to use his magical abilities as a spy and saboteur of German Nuclear Research facilities.  Through the use of magical balloons the two keep in contact and Ilse covertly slips Wolf some of the products of her research to keep him alive.

But Isle and Wolf will be tested in ways even worse than they could have anticipated due to the efforts of a spy who seems to be leaking their plans to the enemy.  And the two of them will discover, in the middle of the dire dangers of war, individuals they could come to love, making everything far more dangerous, even if they can accomplish their missions and come out alive....
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Spy with the Red Balloon alternates between telling the story from Wolf and Ilse's points of view, with the siblings' stories diverging as they're separated early on.  The world that the story takes place in isn't really that special - it's a World War 2 setting and the addition of magic doesn't seem to have affected the events of the world basically at all (raising questions of how long magic has been known in this world), so the story relies upon its characters to provide an interesting story.

Fortunately, both Wolf and Ilse are pretty strong characters in some pretty different ways, and both grow admirably as the stories go on.  The book does a pretty good job making their own developments seem natural for their ages - as a 19 year old, for example, Wolf is well aware of his own sexuality (although he's scared of the implications in an age where non-hetero relations are illegal) and is more trying to deal with a relationship he really cares about and the difficulties of being thrown into a war despite an aversion at first to fighting than trying to find out who Wolf himself is.  His storyline is about finding the bravery inside himself to do what he thinks is right, both for himself and for the people suffering under Nazi oppression and it works well.

By contrast, Ilse is just discovering her own sexuality (I'd say spoilers but it's teased incredibly hard fairly early) and who she is, as she discovers the realities of a world she's been sheltered to.  She's not utterly naive - she is a little but doesn't take too painfully long to catch on to things like discrimination - but she's never had the pressure put on her by others like in her new situation, and as a 15 going on 16 year old, her panicky thoughts always seem natural and how she handles them and her growing knowledge of her own self is indeed really well done.  I kind of dreaded her being the prodigy who is all book smart and not street smart at all in the beginning, but the book did not go there and Ilse is a far better character than that.

Still, other than the two leads, the story isn't particularly special and has some issues.  One twist is predictable as hell early on and is then compounded by having a second twist that....isn't very satisfying and might be related to events of the first book in the series (or might not, but as someone who hasn't read the first book, it just feels completely unexplained and out of nowhere).  Again, the worldbuilding is very unspectacular - magic exists and the government is aware of it, but it seems to have made no impact on the world's history whatsoever?   There's no talk of the Nazis or Soviets using their own magical abilities?  The story still works overall and has a generally satisfying conclusion, but the book itself is held back by these problems into being merely decent instead of being truly great or interesting.
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)