code name verity

The Pearl Thief – Elizabeth Wein

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This is going to be a weird review because a comprehensive review of The Pearl Thief would involve cultural/subject matter expertise which I don’t have. Specifically, many characters in this book, though not the protagonist Julie, are Scottish Travellers, and the prejudices they face form a large aspect of the plot. So I’m putting it upfront that I’m not going to review the representation of that culture in this book, because I don’t have sufficient knowledge. I will say that Scottish Traveller author Jess Smith is thanked in the acknowledgements for reviewing the manuscript for Traveller cultural elements.

I’d also like to thank Hyperion for sending me an ARC.

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Unlike Code Name Verity, The Pearl Thief is not presented as a found manuscript, so it is very much franker about sexuality, for example, than Code Name Verity. Julie has two crushes over the course of the book, one on the contractor who is turning her grandfather’s estate into a school, Frank Dunbar, and a more serious one on Ellen McEwen, a proud and prickly Traveller girl with an interest in archaeology and geology. Ellen and Julie never “get together” in the sense of explicitly forming a relationship, but they do clandestinely kiss once under the guise of showing how a man kisses a woman. Julie is clear that her “passion for Ellen” is equivalent to and even deeper than her passion for Frank.

I enjoyed this book actually even more than Code Name Verity, though I missed the character of Maddie (we see in this book how Julie got the nickname “Queenie”). I thought it was more plausible than Code Name Verity and I liked getting inside Julie’s head a bit more and seeing more of her brother Jamie. However, as is usual with Wein’s books, the very ending is fluffed a bit and spells out the epiphanies too much. And while I enjoyed the exploration of class in the book (Julie is an aristocrat, and coming to terms with the privileges that entails), it struck me as a gap in that theme that the only working-class characters were either Travellers or two prejudiced and unsympathetic servants.

As to the mystery element, I figured out who the villain was immediately upon his introduction, but I didn’t predict some of the twists. I also loved a scene which I will put under a cut for mild spoilers.
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Five Most Anticipated Books of 2017

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Happy New Year, all! Hope you had a great holiday season.

It’s time to look ahead to all the exciting books coming out this year, and here are five to get you started!

1. Poor Relations by Jo Walton

The acclaimed fantasist, author of Among Others and The Just City, makes her first novel-length foray into science fiction with this tale of an alien invasion of human-colonized Mars, loosely inspired on the Jane Austen novel Mansfield Park. (ETA: This may be a 2018 release instead!)

2. Among the Red Stars by Gwen C. Katz

A debut starring the Night Witches of the WWII Soviet air force, as Valentina joins the all-female night bombers and has to use her flying skills to rescue a boy trapped behind enemy lines. That plus the epistolary style makes me think of it as an Soviet-set Code Name Verity.

3. The Pearl Thief by Elizabeth Wein

Speaking of which, a prequel to Code Name Verity is coming this spring! Julie solves a mystery on her grandparents’ estate in Scotland–a murder for which local Travellers were framed.

4. Seven Surrenders by Ada Palmer

The second half of the notorious Mycroft Canner’s thrilling story will hopefully resolve the many mysteries of Palmer’s first book, a riff on the Enlightenment set in the far, far future.

5. The Scarecrow Queen by Melinda Salisbury

The conclusion to the series that began with The Sin-Eater’s Daughter and continued with The Sleeping Prince. How will the supremely creepy Sleeping Prince be defeated? And who will die in the process?

plus one that I’m hoping for but that doesn’t have a firm release date yet

6. The Monster Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson

Following on from The Traitor Baru Cormorant, Baru is elevated to the high political class of the Falcresti empire. She’ll have to be more cunning than ever to succeed in dismantling the Imperial Republic from the inside.

UK Cover for Elizabeth Wein’s The Pearl Thief

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screen-shot-2016-11-12-at-1-14-26-pmElizabeth Wein’s Code Name Verity prequel, The Pearl Thief, has a UK cover! And you can get this edition from The Book Depository with free shipping. It’s a paperback, cheaper than the US edition, but comes out two days later.

I love the elegant Thirties style of the cover, particularly Julie’s hairpiece! Can’t wait to see what the US cover looks like. In the meantime, here’s the UK description:

From the internationally acclaimed bestselling author of Code Name Verity comes a stunning new story of pearls, love and murder – a mystery with all the suspense of an Agatha Christie and the intrigue of Downton Abbey.

Sixteen-year-old Julie Beaufort-Stuart is returning to her family’s ancestral home in Perthshire for one last summer. It is not an idyllic return to childhood. Her grandfather’s death has forced the sale of the house and estate and this will be a summer of goodbyes. Not least to the McEwen family – Highland travellers who have been part of the landscape for as long as anyone can remember – loved by the family, loathed by the authorities. Tensions are already high when a respected London archivist goes missing, presumed murdered. Suspicion quickly falls on the McEwens but Julie knows not one of them would do such a thing and is determined to prove everyone wrong. And then she notices the family’s treasure trove of pearls is missing.

This beautiful and evocative novel is the story of the irrepressible and unforgettable Julie, set in the year before the Second World War and the events of Code Name Verity. It is also a powerful portrayal of a community under pressure and one girl’s determination for justice.

Code Name Verity prequel- description of The Pearl Thief

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So you may have heard that Elizabeth Wein is writing a prequel to Code Name Verity. Below is the description I found on her publisher’s website:

Before Verity . . . there was Julie.

When fifteen-year-old Julia Beaufort-Stuart wakes up in the hospital with a head injury and no memory of the events that landed her there, she knows the lazy summer break she’d imagined won’t be exactly like she anticipated. And once she returns to her grandfather’s estate, a bit banged up but alive, she begins to realize that her injury might not have been an accident. One of her family’s employees is missing, and he disappeared on the very same day she landed in the hospital.

Desperate to figure out what happened, she befriends Euan McEwen, the Scots Traveller boy who found her when she was injured, and his standoffish sister Ellen. As Julie grows closer to this family from the opposite side of the banks, she finds herself exploring thrilling new experiences that have nothing to do with a missing-person investigation.

Her memory of that day returns to her in pieces, and when a body turns up, her new friends are caught in crosshairs of long-held prejudices. Julie must get to the bottom of the mystery in order to keep them from being framed for the crime.

In the prequel to Printz Honor Book Code Name Verity, this thrilling coming-of-age story returns to a beloved character just before she learned to fly.