Under the Pendulum Sun by Jeannette Ng

[superborb]

This was what I was being all hesitant about on twitter, the idea of writing a review for a book where the author can potentially see it without deliberately seeking out reviews of her work? But I figure it'd take at least one click out of twitter to get here, and I really want to talk with people about this book!!!

The premise: in Victorian England, Catherine Helstone's brother, Laon, has gone to be a missionary to the land of the fae. As the letters he's been sending back are scant, she decides to follow him. There, she meets a handful of mysterious and unusual fae and discovers the history of that world.

Would recommend if you like: intricate but well resolved plot, Gothic novels, Christian theology, tight first person unreliable narrator

One of the parts I enjoyed most was figuring out what the next plot point was going to be from dropped hints! The narrator is quite unreliable, and that is used to great effect. Some of the inconsistencies and weirdness early on in the novel become explained later on, which was very fun when suddenly it was like-- OH I should have interrogated that more. Though to be fair to myself, the ones I missed were due to not knowing Christian theology very well, which brings up the next point.

Despite the whole novel taking place in the land of the fae, it felt to me like it primarily drew upon the Gothic tradition for style/atmosphere and Christian theology for plot. Like, I think if you loved Gothic novels, I would recommend this to you, versus if you were just into novels about the fae, it's not guaranteed? It obviously pulls from fae mythology, but I think those parts were more optional in terms of understanding what was going on. In contrast, if you didn't grow up in the West and thus weren't ambiently surrounded by Christian theology and the missionary narrative, I feel like the novel would be quite impenetrable. Like, most of the more uncommon references are explained in text, but it just felt more structurally necessary to plot understanding than a deep fantasy background would be.

I really loved Ariel Davenport and the other side characters, but because there were so few of them and the narrative in such a close first person POV, the entire book felt SUPER claustrophobic. Also contributing was that most of the book is restricted to the one house, even if it's a big fantastical house. After a lot of metaphor and ambiguity in the first 90% of the book, the ending was also really concrete and literal. As a result, the story felt oddly-- small? I don't think this is necessarily bad, just unexpected give the whole land of the fae, unearthing the wider story of the world part of the story? Like, NOT at all what I expected until I was relatively close to the end and like, oh this is going to wrap up really neatly, isn't it.

Overall, I enjoyed it, but it was not at all what I expected! I went in without having read anything at all about it (rare for me!) on the strength of Jeannette's twitter ahaha.

Comments

[brownbetty]

Here's my review from when I read it a while back, and I don't think I feel about it now quite how I did when I read it. I'm definitely going to read anything else she writes, just because it was so different, and takes a very different approach.

I think when I read it, I wanted it to take a position on missionaries, and I think it did, it just wasn't a simple "good guys vs bad guys" position that I was looking for.

[brownbetty]

(I no longer remember what my frothing incoherence near the end of that review was about, tho. Mystery!)

[superborb]

Aha, the Laon Helstone name is a Reference, which I did look up because what a wild name otherwise?

Yeah, it didn't really interact as much with the ethics of missionary work as I expected! Though I guess there's been a lot of ink shed about that already, so maybe it was not the story she wanted to tell?

[brownbetty]

Yeah, and not everyone needs to have all the weird feelings about the ethics of missionary activity that I do. I guess.. I wasn't expecting the missionary activity to play out between cultures on a more level playing field, (or possibly even slanted against the missionizing culture) but maybe why not?

[superborb]

It's a very different narrative than I was expecting, and it did make me wonder if there were lots of areas where that was the more common experience? e.g. when traveling to areas where the imperial might of Europe couldn't yet reach

[rekishi]

you had me until "first person pov"

[superborb]

lol. It follows in a lot of Gothic novel tradition though!

[rekishi]

Yeah but....I can't -_- Idk what it is about first person pov, it drives me nuts. Which is stupid, because I have no issue with third person limited but I just can't. -_-

[superborb]

Hah, I usually strongly prefer 3rd person, so the bar is higher for 1st for sure! And I've yet to find a 2nd person POV that I felt was worth reccing.

[lirazel]

Ooooh. This sounds fascinating. As I am both a big fan of the gothic and deeply immersed in Christian theology, it sounds like something that might be just for me. Thanks for telling us about it!

[superborb]

Oh yes, I would definitely recommend it to you then!

[starshipfox]

I went into this sure it was going to be a satire about missionaries, and was kind of surprised by what I got. I found it very odd that she didn't take any kind of stance on missionaries, whether positive or negative -- I don't think you can write a whole novel on that subject and 100% ignore the ethics. In general, I think I felt like there were a lot of cool ideas in this novel, but it was poorly executed.

[superborb]

Mm, I don't think the ethics were entirely ignored? There were definitely snide extra-narrative comments, but it's hard when it's tight first person. But it didn't address it head on for sure.