Garth Nix won my heart a long time ago with his Abhorsen books (Sabriel, Lirael, Abhorsen and most recently Clariel). The way he portrays his characters, in a matter-of-fact but sympathetic manner, always made me feel so much a part of their lives, especially when I was the same age as his protagonists. Getting to meet Nix during his tour for Clariel is still one of my most exciting moments as a bookseller to date. His latest work, To Hold the Bridge, is a collection of short stories similar to Across the Wall, a collection that he did after Abhorsen. My relationship with short story collections, particularly when they're all by one author, is decidedly hit-or-miss; either I adore an author even more for their bite-sized installments or I end up questioning myself as a fan.
This isn't fair on my part, and I'm aware of this. After all, it's exceedingly difficult to be able to engage a reader in a short story where, like poetry, every small word counts when you're accustomed to having an entire novel's worth of space to build entire new worlds and introduce readers gradually to nuanced, subtle plot and character details. Writers who can transition easily between formats and produce work that is equally impressive in both (or all) are in my personal experience very rare. While I still adore Nix's Abhorsen books and recommend them on almost a daily basis to customers, I have to say that To Hold the Bridge was a disappointment.
My initial excitement about this collection came primarily from the fact that the title story takes us back to the Old Kingdom, where the Abhorsen books take place. It's a fascinating world full of magic, mayhem and monsters, a constant battle between caustic (literally) Free Magic and the harnessed power of the Charter, which can be controlled by a trained Charter Mage using specific symbols. After having read this first story however, I felt somehow unsatisfied. The story had all the basic essentials: a young person struggling to make his way in the world, an objective and something held dear, evildoers to provide a conflict, a dangerous battle in which our hero must show his true mettle, and eventual victory. But to me it felt as though this story had been written just to appease fans with a nod to Nix's other popular work. Maybe it was the lack of development in the bad guys; you didn't really know who they were or why they attacked the bridge. It can be inferred, of course, but somehow the entire conflict felt unsatisfactory, if not in its execution then in its rationale and in its lack of follow-up.
Some of the pieces included in the collection were quite interesting. One about witches at a Hogwarts-like school of magic had me smiling to myself, and a very innovative story about a radioactive space lizard had me curiously turning to the next page time and again. A piece entitled "Vampire Weather" was full of the wry, dark humor that I generally like. But there were also overly simplistic or unnatural-feeling stories included that gave me the uncomfortable feeling of wanting to massage my brain and ask what went wrong. A piece about a teenage boy who stands up for a pair of new kids in school was stereotypical to the point of nausea, and another featured alien vampire nanomachines as antagonists.
Similarly, the question of intended audience was one that kept arising for me. Some of the pieces included were obvious coming-of-age stories, featuring young protagonists doing the difficult thing because it was right, and emerging victorious in the end. Classic. But the same book that featured a class bully being put in her place made reference to casual sex and whether or not to keep clothes on. I don't mind sexual references. In fact, some of what I read is quite descriptive about things like that. But given the fact that Nix's usual target audience is readers of Middle-grade fiction, I have to wonder about putting such different stories, featuring such an age discrepancy in their protagonists and containing such different levels of content, together in one collection.
Overall I'll say that if you're a Garth Nix fan who collects his complete works, you'll want to be watching for this one to be released in early June. But if you're hoping for a series of awe-inspiring tales that remind you of the Abhorsen books, you will be disappointed, as I was. I didn't expect this to be a continuation of those tales, but I was looking forward to the writing voice that I came to love there, and I just didn't feel it. Maybe you'll experience it differently.
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