Quantum Enchantment

Book 1: The Spell of Rosette
Book 2: Arrows of Time
Book 2: Strange Attractors

Harper Voyager (2009)
ISBN: 9780732287719
$20.99
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Reviewed by Gillian Polack, Jul 2009


There is an increasing number of books that bring together new ideas (quantum ideas, dare I say) and use the format and structure and character design of the fantasy trilogy to express them. The Spell of Rosette does this better than most. It reminds me a bit of Traci Harding's novels, but it's less mythic in tone, more grounded, and the characterisation is stronger (or perhaps just more to my taste).

The Spell of Rosette starts with a prologue. The more fantasy/science fiction prologues I read, the more I distrust them. Most of them are unnecessary. This one serves a function, but is quite different in tone to the rest of the book. I would have preferred it if the information from the prologue had been given to us as we needed it, rather than upfront.

I can see why Falconer has chosen this approach, however. The marriage of high New Age fantasy with general scientific theory is still not so common that a writer can afford to assume upfront that readers will be comfortable with it and that we will orient ourselves naturally. Having an explanation of this, told as a pivotal historical event happening before the major story, helps focus the reader on the importance of the computing elements and the Gaia elements of the tale. It shows us, in short, where Falconer is coming from and helps us read The Spell of Rosette in the spirit which Falconer intended.

Another element that wasn't quite an easy fit for me (but this might be due to the juxtaposition of science and spirituality and magic – I have something of the same discomfort with Justina Robson's work – not all readers like the same elements combined in a novel, after all) was the future Earth aspect. It didn't quite feel complete, as if the world-building wasn't all there. I would have like to see more of it and get a sense for how the water-economy operated: all we saw were its failures. This may, as I've said, be my idiosyncratic response to those aspects. I had no such failure of comfort for Rosette's voyages elsewhere.

It's hard to summarise the plot without spoilers. Rosette's life turns upside down in the worst possible way when she escapes from murder. She can't look back, only forward. She is forced to grow and to discover extraordinary things about herself and about her world. This volume is about that initial shock and growth. It's a coming of age novel, when the heroine is learning how to take on tasks bigger than they ever dreamed existed.

Falconer has one of the most charming super-computers I've ever met. JARROLD cares about humanity and about humans and the reader knows it. Following this interest of his is fascinating: I want to see what happens to him later on, how he grows and changes. Most good novels have a special bridging character into the universe of the novel. It helps us understand the world and feel part of the plot. Sometimes this is Rosette, but the times when it is JARROLD are when the underlying concepts behind the novel really start to shine. This is why I want to see what Falconer does with him and where his travels take him.

I reviewed from an uncorrected proof. Because of this, I'm not going to comment on a few infelicities of language I came across. They're very much the sort of thing that probably came about by mistake and have probably been corrected in the final. There were enough of them that I worried, initially, that they would distract me from the story, but they faded (or my attention to them faded) as I progressed. I haven't obtained a final copy yet to check against the proof, so all I can do is warn readers. I rather suspect, though, that the end book is fine, since I've not heard comments on this aspect from friends who have read it. This situation is a very strong reason not to quibble at individual phrases: I'm limited to the copy that's in front of me.

New Age ideas and Quantum mechanics are a heady mix, and not usually my sort of reading, but Falconer brings a charm and enthusiasm to her work and I found myself saying “I need to follow this story to the very end” when I had finished. In other words, The Spell of Rosette won't suit everyone, but it's worth checking out. Don't judge it by either the New Age feel or the quantum mechanics terminology – read enough of it to discover if you want to voyage with Rosette. If you do, you'll love this trilogy.

The Spell of Rosette has a solid amount of page-turnability. This is probably the single most important factor for the first volume of a series. No matter what criticisms my mind was making, my eyes were looking to find out what happened next and bits of me were cheering and booing at all the right places. Falconer's writing has a charm (I know I need coffee when I started to type 'naïve charm', but that's my caffeine withdrawal speaking and I shall make myself a hot drink as soon as I'm finished here, rather than spread condescension through the cosmos) and is a lot of fun. She appears occasionally unsure of her craft, but her skills visibly improve throughout the novel. If she keeps developing, she'll be a formidable writer, with charm and books that are eminently readable. Not a bad combination.

HarperVoyager (2009)
ISBN: 9780732287726
$22.99
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Reviewed by Mitenae, Oct 2009


Jarrod was right next to Rosette, just a second ago, but as Rosette soon discovers he is nowhere near her time. She’s stuck in a time loop, and unable to escape or to return home. Meanwhile Jarrod is on Tensar and at the Caller’s bidding.

Kreshkali has finally found her ancestral home, and it’s managed to survive the elements. But when Rosette doesn’t arrive, she quickly discovers something is going wrong.

If you found the films Memento and Pulp Fiction confusing, then you are bound to find this confusing, especially at the beginning. Kim Falconer attempts to demonstrate three forms of time in this novel: forwards, backwards, and circular. She even includes, before the story starts, notes on time. But if you think too deeply about her concepts and explanations, perhaps even do a little research of your own, you will find, as I did, that they are misleading and incomplete. She is in fact referring to causation theory, the relationship between cause and effect, within linear time. If you can, ignore her notes on time, do, as they are of no benefit to the story.

The sections that you may have the most trouble with are the chapters she titles “time: backwards” and “time: circular”. The backwards time chapters should be equivalent to how the scenes in Memento are structured. But, unlike the film, these sections lack the necessary devices (Memento uses the tattoos and photos) to key the reader into where they fit into each other, making it hard, especially early on, to get a sense of what’s going on and where it fits into the whole story. What disappointed me the most was that this technique wasn’t used more to the story’s advantage. Instead it is discarded half-way through, replaced with forward time, then circular, only to return to backwards time. If one particular reality is in backwards time (as she terms it), then I would expect it to have to remain that way, otherwise it negates the rules the writer has established for that particular world.

The chapters titled “time: circular” should be structured like the film Groundhog Day was, where a specific segment of time was repeated over and over until Bill Murray’s character had achieved what he was supposed to achieve first time round. This technique has a lot of potential but Arrows of Time doesn’t make enough use of it. When it is used it seems to be there for it’s own sake and the associated chapters don’t seem to serve any real purpose other than to demonstrate how it functions.

I’m in two minds about this book, mainly because it takes so long to get going (about 120 pages). I like the world Kim Falconer has created but the story doesn’t have enough depth to satisfy me and that feels partly due to her trying to do too much, trying to follow too many main characters without allowing any of them to really explore themselves or the worlds they’re in. I wanted to have more depth to the story and for me that would have made this a far more satisfying read than what it was.

As it is, a new reader to Kim Falconer’s work would have a hard time following the story or getting any real sense of how it connects to the previous book, The Spell of Rosette, mainly because the connection between the two is never established.

I was also disappointed about the inaccurate use of Spanish. Los Loma does not translate to “the hill” nor does it translate to “the hills”. “Los” is masculine and plural, whereas “loma” is feminine and singular. The two must match and the noun, loma, determines the gender. “La Loma” translates to “the hill” whereas “Las Lomas” is “the hills”. So the reader, if they understand Spanish, will have no idea if she is referring to a single hill, or many.

I expected a better novel, one where Falconer's development since The Spell of Rosette was clearly evident. But instead I found Arrows of Time to be a somewhat unwieldy and unsatisfying read. It isn’t a book I would return to any time soon and is certainly one that won’t be on my “must re-read” list.