A Spark Unseen by Sharon Cameron

Title: A Spark Unseen
Author: Sharon Cameron
Publisher: Scholastic
Rating: WARTY!

So what's the third volume to be called? A Bark Untreed? A Quark Unbecoming? Maybe there should be a competition? A Spark Unseen is the second novel in the series which kicked off with The Dark Unwinding, which I reviewed favorably back in early July, but wasn't sure that I would pursue the series. I guess I decided to go for it, because I didn't hesitate to pick this up from the library as soon as I found it there. I got three sequels off their 'new' shelves one after another. What an exciting moment that was! I couldn't believe it! Unfortunately, two of the three have so far turned out to be really awful, including this one.

Anyway, it's two years on from that original story (for reasons unknown) as this story begins with two French guys breaking into Katharine Tully's bedroom to kidnap uncle Tully, but they fail, and when the British government shows that it’s hell-bent upon holding Tully and Katie hostage while they try to get him to develop a torpedo in the shape of a fish, Katie takes drastic action. Why they waited two years - why everyone paused for two years is completely unexplained and makes zero sense.

Katie declares that her uncle has died, and she orchestrates his speedy burial before the government can take herself and her uncle into their "protective custody". Secretly, she dumps her (drugged) uncle inside a trunk and removes him from his modest estate, heading to France where she hopes to discover what has happened to Lane - her favored young man who preceded her to France two years ago and has since been reported dead - by the British government. So, other than the fact that Cameron evidently doesn't know that 'pence' is plural (p15 "...one pence..." should be "...one penny...") we seemed like we were off to a good start. But little did I know....

At only one third the way in, I was definitely not enjoying this novel. I was already skipping what I considered to be boring parts. Uncle Tully became tedious in the extreme. The problem is that nothing is happening but artificiality: cheap "scary" moments, annoyingly vague threats, absurdly mysterious men. Yes, in other words, it’s really badly and amateurishly written. This is the problem with the ubiquitous, creeping, insistent trilogy of YA fiction. You may love the first, the last or even the middle, but you rarely love all three volumes. Why, other than the obvious avarice, do publishers demand them? Why do writers cave-in and write them? What was the last trilogy you read and found completely pleasing in all its parts? When did you read one which honestly told an engaging story which could not have been completely, competently, satisfactorily, and adequately related in only one volume?

Let's talk about insane coincidences in A Spark Unseen (if a spark is unseen, does it really spark?!). How did it happen that a friend (Mrs Hardcastle) of her despised Aunt Alice is living quite literally right next door to her new home? What are the odds of that happening by chance? Yet not a single person in Katie's entire group even thinks for a second that there's anything remotely suspicious about this entirely artificial arrangement. Not only is she too dumb to even imagine a problem, she actually creates one with her snooping. I don’t get Katie's romping around Mrs Hardcastle's house exploring, uninvited, upstairs and listening at the walls. It isn't important at all to do this, yet she does it and gets caught thereby making herself far more suspicious than she would have been had she done nothing and instead simply let them wonder about any odd noises coming from their new next door neighbor.

And the bullshit M. Marchand? Amateur. It’s probably Lane in disguise, although if it is, Katie would have to be even more stupid than she already has proven herself to be to not recognize him, and he would have to be a complete jerk not to announce himself. I don’t know what his story is, but he's altogether too oily for my taste, and Katie is altogether stupid and entirely indecent in allowing him to escort her alone. And what’s with letting her new servants walk all over her? I was actually liking the DuPonts (the servants) better than any other characters, even as obnoxious as they are. That ought to relate something of my experience with this novel!

At about half-way through, there's no sign of Lane and many signs of how awful a character Katie is! I found myself living in hopes that he wouldn't show just for the hell of it! That would have been refreshing. Marchand is probably Lane's brother. I got to thinking that maybe it’s time to ditch Lane as an ally and tell him to take his street smarts and hit the road now their relationship has become a cul-de-sac? But the question remains: how are Katie and her uncle better off in Paris than if they'd simply taken the government's offer? And how can Katie be so selfish as to do this to her uncle for nothing more than pursuing her own selfish interest in finding Lane? At this point I not only didn’t like the novel, I neither liked nor respected the main character.

So I count this as a warty DNF! I was so tired of uncle Tully's madness, and of Katie's total lack of a spine, and one one asinine mystery piled on top of another, with neither sight nor sound of any of them ever being resolved, and with a sure conviction that the bulk of them were red herrings anyway, I said, "Enough is enough!" Life is too short to waste on trashy novels when there are so many good ones clamoring to be read!

The Dark Unwinding by Sharon Cameron

Title: The Dark Unwinding
Author: Sharon Cameron
Publisher: Scholastic
Rating: worthy!

A Spark Unseen is also reviewd in this blog.

In June, 1852, Katharine Tully is traveling by carriage to visit her uncle. Her aunt Alice believes he's quite insanely frittering away the family fortune, meaning that her own spoiled son will get nothing. She dispatches Katharine to cauterize the hemorrhage before it’s too late. Aunt Alice is not well-liked by Katharine, but the latter undertakes this odious task because, as her aunt's bookkeeper, she realizes that she has much to lose if the family becomes bankrupted by an insane relative's profligacy. Katharine can see her way to enjoying a comfortable living once Alice is dead and gone, and she has only to deal with her not-too-smart cousin, whose needs are easily satisfied. I wonder if Cameron chose the name 'Katharine' spelled with that second 'a' as it is, because it’s similar to the supposedly heretical Cathars?!

But I digress! She arrives at her uncle's mansion via a mile-long tunnel lit by gas lamps - all of which she compulsively counts. Cameron says the idea for Tulman's home was given to her by the residence and activities of the 5th Duke of Portland. Katharine is deposited at the front door with her trunk and valise, but when she knocks, no one answers. The house is huge and very dusty, and no one seems to be around. She follows some footprints left in the dusty carpet, which lead from the unlocked front door, and becomes almost lost.

After being virtually deafened by the chimes at five o'clock from an incredible number of clocks in one room - all working precisely in sync - she hurries to a different room which is dark, and where she hears giggling, and then is scared by someone watching her. It turns out that the observer is nothing more than a rather lifelike model with sparkling eyes. Eventually she finds her way to the kitchen where she's greeted in a hostile manner by the servants. A young man named Lane is gruff and very protective of her uncle. Mrs Jeffries, the cook, is equally unpleasant and quite territorial in her kitchen, and Davy is just a kid who is evidently mute and who loves his large pet rabbit. Her uncle Tulman is nowhere to be found. Apparently he only visits the house on Thursdays.

After spending a disturbing night in the unkempt bedroom, where she found cut human hair matching her own color in one of the wardrobe drawers, Katharine is taken by Lane to meet Uncle Tulman, which involves a long walk across windswept countryside and through a small village. She encounters a young girl called Mary in the village who she later discovers has adopted Katharine as her own mistress, and subsequently acts as her lady-in-waiting. Katharine's uncle proves to be very much more escapement than clockwork, but he's not what you'd call insane; he's merely eccentric with a touch of autism - but that's not how they would see it in 1852. Tulman takes to her, however, and shows her some of his "toys", which include a clockwork fish, a clockwork dragon, and a clockwork boy. Katharine also discovers that he's a math savant, and that he shares her own obsessive compulsive counting disorder, and also that he upsets very easily!

Another young man whom she encounters was an earlier resident of the village who is now back for a brief visit is Ben. He's fascinated by her uncle's toys, but I have a bad feeling about him - especially since at one point young Davy seems to be deliberately trying to drag her away from him! Katharine learns that there are in fact two villages with a population of some nine hundred people, all of whom were liberated from London workhouses. If she shuts down the operation, these people will be left destitute. She talks with her uncle's lawyer, Mr Babcock, who relates to her the history of the place. Her great aunt had wanted to protect her son Tulman, and set all of this in motion to provide for him, and to eventually start showing a profit which would repay the estate everything which had been taken from it, but she died before she could bring this plan to fruition. Babcock says he is merely finishing what she had begun all those years before.

As the days slip by, Katharine is more and more torn between her growing attraction to life at Stranwyne, the estate where she is a guest, and her practical inability to do other than what her aunt Alice has demanded she do. She decides to have a birthday party, but then dithers over that decision. She goes roller-skating in the underground ballroom with Lane. But on the other side of the ledger, there are weird and scary things happening.

Twice Katharine wakes up with a hangover even though she has definitely not been drinking, and she discovers there isn't even any drink to be had in the villages. One morning she wakes up with dirty boots and no idea how they got that way. She discovers Mrs Jeffries sneaking around in Lane's room where he creates fine miniature figurines in silver. She learns from her maid that someone is sending letters écrit en français from Stranwyne, and no one knows who is sending them. One night in the hallway outside her room, she encounters someone who she follows but never catches sight of, and finds her way to a place close by the kitchen, which has been decorated with things carried from elsewhere in the house, and where both a meal and a fire was set. She finds there a book about South America, and takes it the next morning to spend time with Davy, trying to teach him to read and write, but then she discovers that he appears to be able to read perfectly well. So why won't he talk?

Well on page 183, Katharine Tulman changes her name to Mary Sue as she's heading out with a picnic basket and encounters a man in the tunnel coming the opposite direction. She hides and then follows him, discovering (as she sees him in better lighting) that it's Cook, the surgeon, who meets Jeffries, the cook, in the underground ballroom. She simply dismisses this as unimportant despite everything which has happened to her. That kicked me out of suspension of disbelief right there, because I simply don’t buy that someone who would snoop in someone's room, or go wandering the house in the middle of the night merely to satisfy her curiosity, and who lives in an environment where she's already encountered many strange and suspicious things, and who already has reason to be suspicious of Jeffries, would just let this go.

That suspicion of Jeffries should have taken root when she saw the woman leaving Lane's room and slipping something into her pocket, but Katharine never called her out on that, nor did she tell Lane about it, and he's the very guy (so Cameron expects us to believe), with whom she's supposedly falling in love! What specie of love is it which has so little confidence?

On the day of Katharine's birthday, she drinks some wine - which I thought had been drugged, but evidently it had not. Something had, however, been poisoned, so maybe the villain isn’t Ben, but Jeffries? I’d thought they were in it together. Anyway, what happens is that two men show up with a warrant to escort someone to the "lunatic asylum". Mary greets them at the door, but then takes off in a panic when she realizes who they are, and she runs to Katharine's room where the party is, to warn them. The men then find their own way to Katharine's bedroom. There went my suspension of disbelief again, right out the door. There is no way in hell that these people would do something like that. Yeah, in a children's book perhaps. In a cartoon animation, but in 1852 England? Never. In fact, impropriety is rather high in this novel for its time. I have let this slip by for the sake of the story, but while some of it can be fitted to the tale, a lot of it cannot (such as the example depicted above) and stands out like a sore thumb - or more like a sore finger pointing out how fictional this tale is!

But we discover that they aren't here for Uncle Tulman, who has been squirreled away. Now that took me by surprise! Unfortunately, before any more can transpire, Katharine passes out from the poison. When she wakes up, she finds her life was saved by the quick administration of ipecac. Carapichea ipecacuanha is native to Brazil. It's a poison which is not recommended for use in inducing vomiting any more. It was known in Europe three hundred years ago, but how well it might have been known in 1852 in rural England, I can’t say. For myself, I actually never had heard of ipecac until I came to the USA.

So it turns out I wasn't quite as far wrong in my assessment of these characters as I'd begun to think! How unusual for me! I did have some minor issues with it, but it was nice to see a YA story that didn't become lost in a YA triangle of boring adolescence. This is a smart novel, well written, with a few issues, but nothing that would prevent your thorough enjoyment of it. It also appears to be the start of a series. The ending was dramatic with some unexpected twists and turns, so while I am not sure I will read any more of the series, I have no problem rating it as a worthy tale.