Have I told you how much I adore Kieli? I really, really do. I can't figure out if it's the atmosphere of sweet, awkward melancholy or the dreamy quality of the storytelling (interrupted by brief and disturbingly clear instants of graphic violence and action). Is is the reflective mood? The detached but sad tone? The brisk pacing that seems languid at the same time? The spine-tingling weirdness that creeps in sometimes? The amusing and crotchety relationship between the lead characters?
Well, a lot of it is the characters. I love the idea of a beat-up old radio possessed by a foulmouthed, dead, young soldier as the sidekick/mascot. Nothing cute and cuddly here. It fits with the story surprisingly well, though. As much as I wished him peace, I was glad the Corporal decided to stick around and play fairy godmother/conscience/voice-of-reason/brow-beater/babysitter. And I still giggle every time he calls Harvey Herbie.
Harvey is great. He's hardly a hero anymore if he ever was; he's too tired and grouchy for that. There is so much potential when you're dealing with a character over a hundred years old who has seen every imaginable horror of war and its aftermath. He's been on the run for 80 years; he can't stay in one place because people will notice he doesn't age, or he'll end up getting hunted down. He's really tragic and also really crabby. Who wouldn't be? And of course he doesn't deal well with people, and is especially out of his depth with fourteen-year-old girls who start following him around and causing trouble for him by being so dang young and curious all the time. What about her could possibly make him choose to continue living his pathetic existence? He sure doesn't know, but you feel that connection, and it feels so real and right and realistic, if I can use that word about a book set on a post-apocalyptic world where perpetual motion machines exist as part of the premise. What is it about Kieli that makes it impossible for Harvey to really leave her alone? It's not like he doesn't understand her loneliness; he just doesn't understand why she needs him.
Neither does she, really. Like most fourteen-year-olds, she can be kind of annoying, but this is her first time seeing anything outside her hometown, and there is so much to see outside the walls of that convent school. Is she tagging along because Harvey's the first person she's met who can also see ghosts? Because he represents a sort of freedom and escape? It can't be pity; I don't think pity could cause someone to risk life and limb and future to save another. Is is co-dependence? Doesn't really feel like it. Who needs who more? I don't know, but I really can't wait to read volume 3.
One quibble I have is about your marketing tag-line, the part about it being an uncommon romance. I've read the first two novels, and I'm glad to see it's really not that, although there were some hilarious and endearingly awkward questions in volume 2. The author is kind of genius about this because we as the readers know what Kieli knows and why she is asking, but Harvey doesn't, and the sheer snort-inducing power of that scene was kind of staggering. I would like to hope that before any actual romance happens, Kieli is allowed to grow up a little more. (And Harvey, too, though it seems odd to want a 100+ year old man to be more mature.) That's hardly your responsibility, though, since you're just providing great translations of a haunting story.
I just hope volume 3
comes out on time because I need it to still be warm outside when I read Kieli. If I can't sit outside in the sun while reading it, the horror and bleakness can get to be too much because I'm not much of a horror fan normally. So please bring it out in September as planned. I have it pre-ordered.Thanks for keeping the series going. I can't wait to love on the enticingly-titled volume 3.
Sincerely,
TMIA
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