Tuesday, March 19, 2013

A novel interrupted

I've been reading the Fat Cyclist blog for a long time now - it's one of the really appealing and well-written big endurance sport blogs (and "Fatty" a.k.a. Elden was instigator of the 100 miles of nowhere insanity). It is a funny and wide-ranging blog that began in part because Elden's wife Susan was battling advanced metastatic cancer; as well as chronicling endurance sport as coping strategy, the blog's raison d'etre includes fund-raising for cancer-related causes.

Susan died some years ago just before completing a novel that Elden has now published. I was keen to read it anyway out of a sense of loyalty (buying an author's book is good, but reading it is perhaps as much or more appreciated?), and I'm also happy to report that it's a really lovely young-adult urban fantasy novel of a sort I particularly enjoy. It reminded me a little of Robin McKinley's Sunshine, a book I have read at least half-a-dozen times, but it's also fresh and original in terms of voice, storytelling and worldbuilding; if you like that kind of book as much as I do, then consider purchasing a copy of Susan Nelson's The Forgotten Gift for yourself.

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