HER MAD SONG by C J Halbard #RBRT

3.5 out of 5 stars

On Amazon UK
On Amazon.com
On Amazon.aus

On Goodreads

How I discovered this book: it was submitted to Rosie's Book Review Team, of which I am a member.

In A Nutshell: Sort of fantasy, sort of folklore, sort of pre-climate change apocalypse....

I admit to struggling a bit with this book, although it was well-written in many ways.  A look at Goodreads half way through told me that Her Mad Song is not the first in this series, and I did feel as though I needed to understand more about the world the author has created, to fully 'get' it.  An introduction tells us that Tempest Bay {a remote coastal town in New Zealand where the series is set} exists in novellas, podcasts and interactive experiences.

The story begins with an unnamed man and a twelve-year-old girl, Lucia, arriving at Tempest Bay, and moves on to curious relationships with the people they meet there, including a meteorologist they've sought out.  CJ Halbard certainly has literary talent and has produced some fine atmospheric prose.  The characterisation and dialogue are both fairly good, though the experimental style didn't always work for me; the predominance of the subordinate/dependent clause became irritating after a while.  The subordinate clause in place of a full sentence can have such impact, but it needs to be used sparingly.  Then there's that lack of speech marks thing ... writers such as Cormac McCarthy manage to get away with it by leaving you in no doubt when a passage or line is speech rather than narrative, with minimum use of he-said-she-said, but it's not the easiest of skills to master.   Breaking 'the rules' tends to work better once you've worked within them for a while.

Readers who appreciate poetic writing and like something a bit unreal and outside the box may absolutely love this, but I thought it could do with the hand of a good developmental editor to give it better structure and definition; the story seemed a bit 'all over the place'.  There is much to commend, but I'm just ... not sure. 

I read the information at the back, hoping to get a bit more insight.  Much of it appears to be allegorical; an 'emotional climate change', an 'external imaginative environment that connects us all', in which we could be 'causing permanent lasting damage'.  The concept seemed rather vague, without much substance or explanation, though I took a look at the excerpts from the other stories, at the end, and I liked them well enough.  Could be that I'm just the wrong audience; the website is enticing and well-presented, for anyone who is interested; it's HERE.