Review: Stargazy Pie

Stargazy Pie by Victoria Goddard
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This just makes it onto my Best of the Year list despite a blatant piece of lucky chance (the most blatant of several) used to get the not-very-effectual main character where he needed to be for the plot to work. The author tries to hang a lampshade on it and attribute it to serendipity being more common where magic is being employed, but she knows and I know that it's just shoddy plotting, a workaround for the fact that her protagonist is a bit wet even when he isn't falling into the river, and not bright enough to figure out how to get to where she needs him by himself, or to pull off the job of getting there.

The main character is supposed to be part of what seems set up to be a detective duo, but his employer, the redoubtable bookstore owner, who is not one of the duo, is the one who actually solves most of the mystery and drives much of the plot. She would have been a much better main character than him, but he's a young man and she's a middle-aged woman, so the weight of tradition is on his side.

The setting is unusual; it's connected to the setting the author has used for other books that are more epic fantasy, and epic fantasy has definitely occurred, elsewhere and some years previously and to the main character's father, but this is not epic fantasy. It's happening in what is explicitly the least dramatic part of the entire setting, a sleepy country town. It's technically post-apocalyptic, but the apocalypse hasn't actually had much impact here - just making magic unreliable and difficult to do, mostly.

So there's plenty that's unpromising. An ineffectual, rather pathetic, and not particularly clever main character (though with both courage and tragedy in his backstory); a setting that is out-and-out stated to be the least interesting place in the known world; a mystery (the pie of the title) that seems stunningly inconsequential. But we do eventually get cultists, magic, organized crime, high magic, midnight adventures, and a decadent dinner party, and it's told in an appealing style. Mr Greenwing, the MC (I hesitate to call him a protagonist because he's driven by events rather than vice versa), may not be up to much in many ways, but he bears many trials with some dignity and acts with unhesitating courage when called upon. He's a bit like a sickly Watson to his employer's blend of Holmes and Mrs Hudson. His friend Mr Dart is... necessary to the plot, but at this point hardly worthy of his series title billing.

The editing isn't too bad, just a few typos and a couple of homonym errors. (My notes are on the box set I got it in here, starting at 52%.)

Despite its flaws, I did enjoy the book and looked forward to my sessions of reading it, and I would like to read the sequels - though they're a bit overpriced for the quality of the first one by my standards, and I will wait for them to be on sale.

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