Hell And High Water by Tanya Landman
Jul. 11th, 2016 10:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
It was a man. Drowned. Dead.
Lying on the sand, waves breaking over his back.
The body should be moved, but Caleb couldn’t manage alone.
Yet who in this godforsaken place would help him?
It’s the late 18th century. 15-year-old Caleb Chappell helps his father, Joseph, run a Punch and Judy show but when Joseph is framed for theft and sentenced to transportation, he sends Caleb to his sister, Anne Avery, who is married to a sailor and lives with her infant daughter, Dorcas and step-daughter, Letty, in the village of Fishpool. Caleb finds life there difficult – his black skin (which always draws comment) makes him a target for gossip and violence. But when he stumbles upon a body on the beach, he and Letty find themselves caught within a dastardly plot that involves family secrets and financial rewards so big that the plotters will do anything to protect them …
Tanya Landman’s historical YA adventure novel is an intriguing tale of racism, family and fraud that’s filled with twists and turns from beginning to end (some easy to get, others altogether more fiendish). I picked this up because I’d enjoyed Landman’s Carnegie winning BUFFALO SOLDIER and this is much in the same quality vein – she’s particularly good at putting non-white characters in historical settings in a way that feels believable and easy to relate to. It’s easy to root for Caleb given his love for his father and his anger at the injustices that he sees and is subject to (including anger at the way the political and legal system protects the elite) and Landman really puts him through the mill in the story. I wasn’t particularly convinced by the romance between Caleb and Letty (mainly because it felt rather forced) but I did like the growing relationship between Caleb and his aunt and the slow reveal of her and Joseph’s background and how it ties in with the on-going plot. I also found the antagonists to be a little two-dimensional, particularly William Benson who only needs a moustache to twirl to cement his villainy and I would have liked a bit more in the author’s note at the end as Landman reveals that this book is based on real life events but doesn’t expand on the same or what happened. For all that, this is a book that held my attention from beginning to end – I can well see why it’s made the Guardian Children’s Book shortlist this year and I look forward to reading what Landman writes next.
The Verdict:
Tanya Landman’s historical YA adventure novel is an intriguing tale of racism, family and fraud that’s filled with twists and turns from beginning to end (some easy to get, others altogether more fiendish). I picked this up because I’d enjoyed Landman’s Carnegie winning BUFFALO SOLDIER and this is much in the same quality vein – she’s particularly good at putting non-white characters in historical settings in a way that feels believable and easy to relate to. It’s easy to root for Caleb given his love for his father and his anger at the injustices that he sees and is subject to (including anger at the way the political and legal system protects the elite) and Landman really puts him through the mill in the story. I wasn’t particularly convinced by the romance between Caleb and Letty (mainly because it felt rather forced) but I did like the growing relationship between Caleb and his aunt and the slow reveal of her and Joseph’s background and how it ties in with the on-going plot. I also found the antagonists to be a little two-dimensional, particularly William Benson who only needs a moustache to twirl to cement his villainy and I would have liked a bit more in the author’s note at the end as Landman reveals that this book is based on real life events but doesn’t expand on the same or what happened. For all that, this is a book that held my attention from beginning to end – I can well see why it’s made the Guardian Children’s Book shortlist this year and I look forward to reading what Landman writes next.
HELL AND HIGH WATER was released in the United Kingdom on 5th May 2016. Thanks to Walker Books for the review copy of this book.
Lying on the sand, waves breaking over his back.
The body should be moved, but Caleb couldn’t manage alone.
Yet who in this godforsaken place would help him?
It’s the late 18th century. 15-year-old Caleb Chappell helps his father, Joseph, run a Punch and Judy show but when Joseph is framed for theft and sentenced to transportation, he sends Caleb to his sister, Anne Avery, who is married to a sailor and lives with her infant daughter, Dorcas and step-daughter, Letty, in the village of Fishpool. Caleb finds life there difficult – his black skin (which always draws comment) makes him a target for gossip and violence. But when he stumbles upon a body on the beach, he and Letty find themselves caught within a dastardly plot that involves family secrets and financial rewards so big that the plotters will do anything to protect them …
Tanya Landman’s historical YA adventure novel is an intriguing tale of racism, family and fraud that’s filled with twists and turns from beginning to end (some easy to get, others altogether more fiendish). I picked this up because I’d enjoyed Landman’s Carnegie winning BUFFALO SOLDIER and this is much in the same quality vein – she’s particularly good at putting non-white characters in historical settings in a way that feels believable and easy to relate to. It’s easy to root for Caleb given his love for his father and his anger at the injustices that he sees and is subject to (including anger at the way the political and legal system protects the elite) and Landman really puts him through the mill in the story. I wasn’t particularly convinced by the romance between Caleb and Letty (mainly because it felt rather forced) but I did like the growing relationship between Caleb and his aunt and the slow reveal of her and Joseph’s background and how it ties in with the on-going plot. I also found the antagonists to be a little two-dimensional, particularly William Benson who only needs a moustache to twirl to cement his villainy and I would have liked a bit more in the author’s note at the end as Landman reveals that this book is based on real life events but doesn’t expand on the same or what happened. For all that, this is a book that held my attention from beginning to end – I can well see why it’s made the Guardian Children’s Book shortlist this year and I look forward to reading what Landman writes next.
The Verdict:
Tanya Landman’s historical YA adventure novel is an intriguing tale of racism, family and fraud that’s filled with twists and turns from beginning to end (some easy to get, others altogether more fiendish). I picked this up because I’d enjoyed Landman’s Carnegie winning BUFFALO SOLDIER and this is much in the same quality vein – she’s particularly good at putting non-white characters in historical settings in a way that feels believable and easy to relate to. It’s easy to root for Caleb given his love for his father and his anger at the injustices that he sees and is subject to (including anger at the way the political and legal system protects the elite) and Landman really puts him through the mill in the story. I wasn’t particularly convinced by the romance between Caleb and Letty (mainly because it felt rather forced) but I did like the growing relationship between Caleb and his aunt and the slow reveal of her and Joseph’s background and how it ties in with the on-going plot. I also found the antagonists to be a little two-dimensional, particularly William Benson who only needs a moustache to twirl to cement his villainy and I would have liked a bit more in the author’s note at the end as Landman reveals that this book is based on real life events but doesn’t expand on the same or what happened. For all that, this is a book that held my attention from beginning to end – I can well see why it’s made the Guardian Children’s Book shortlist this year and I look forward to reading what Landman writes next.
HELL AND HIGH WATER was released in the United Kingdom on 5th May 2016. Thanks to Walker Books for the review copy of this book.
