Genre: YA/future
fiction
Description:
The story is set in the far north of Scotland after climate change has
melted the great ice sheets. Little Yarnmouth inhabitants have disappeared because
of nefarious plans laid by powerful persons living in Middle Langton, across
the bay. The kidnapping is performed by members of tribes roving further south than
hitherto because of the thaw. The protagonists are two teenagers, Evan and
Nira. They are helped by a middle-aged eccentric who lives very comfortably in
the sewers beneath Middle Langton; his regular companions are Corporal
Punishment and a very large rat.
Author:
Tim Van Minton ‘loves cold places and warm people’. Thereafter,
different sources give different information. At the end of the book he says he
lives in a boat on the north coast of Scotland with two dogs, finishing his
next novel; on Goodreads he says he lives mostly in New York with his wife, son
and cat. Van Minton plans a trilogy of which The Little Yarnmouth Abduction is the first book. Meanwhile he has
written and published St Georges P.R.S. which
is another YA book, with leanings towards the paranormal.
Appraisal:
When I was a teenager (back when gin was tuppence a tot) there were no
books aimed at teenagers. Once one had consumed the contents of the children’s
shelves at the library it was on to Mills & Boon and Zane Grey. This may
explain why I enjoy the genre now. And what a rich genre it is for writers!
The book’s premise is intriguing. How will people living near what
used to be ice sheets fare when those ice sheets are gone? It makes a nice
change from witches, wizards, vampires, werewolves and other urban fantasy
tropes.
It is when dealing with boats that the story is strongest; be it a
dinghy with an outboard, a power launch, a dilapidated coaster, a tug, a
mistreated hover craft or a well-maintained patrol vessel, each vessel is
lovingly created and completely credible and pertinent to the story. Van Minton
loves his boats. As do I. Everyone in the story has recourse to boats as their
primary means of transport. The constant threat to water travel from ice bergs
is nicely drawn. There are a few references to how the lost ice impacts the
world in other ways.
The plot proceeds briskly. Occasionally elements of it feel a bit as
if they have been randomly generated. There is a mushroom fight which is an
original idea, but stretches credulity. From time to time the suspension of
disbelief is difficult to maintain; for example, at one point three people hide
behind adjacent, floor-length curtains and are not discovered.
I wondered, almost from the outset (and before I checked) whether the
author was American, rather than Scottish – and so it proved. I didn’t get a
feel of Scottishness from the story (despite attempts at dialect): rather a
sensation of the Pacific Northwest in the USA. Tribes emerging out of the
disappearing pack ice, with strangely Native American names such as Conkwoyoto, might have been more believable in that
location.
When the great ice sheets melt, oceans will rise. Substantially. The
book does not deal with that at all. I wondered, as I read it, how come the
rise in sea level had made no difference to the island on which Yarnmouth and Middle
Langton stand: how had it not flooded the sewers, submerged the quays, driven
the population to live on the hills? What about the Faroe Islands (which figure
in the story): would they not be drowned? Positing little or no rise in sea
levels as the Earth warms up flies in the face of current credible scholarship
and feels misleading to me.
Format/Typo
Issues:
The book would benefit from a thorough edit. Punctuation and spelling
aren’t as reliable as they should be. The odd authorial idiosyncrasy becomes
trying. For example, characters ‘cry’ things to each other frequently, often
when they have just been shushing each other because people wishing them harm
are in close
proximity.
Rating: ***
Three Stars
Reviewed
by: Judi Moore
Approximate
word count: 65-70,000 words
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