Melissa Hardy

In 1995, Margaret Atwood published Strange things. The malevolent north in Canadian literature, a lecture series which she had given in Oxford during the 1990s. Each essay deals with fragmented pieces of history, legend, facts and lore of Canada. Some of these essays may have inspired Melissa Hardy to write her short-story collection, The uncharted heart.

The uncharted heart consists of eight stories, set in the decade between 1905 and 1915, in Ontario, Canada. The author found inspiration for her stories on a visit to the family of her husband in Timmins. Possible sources are probably local oral traditions, legendary Native American figures, local legends or memories of local people tracing back to the era of the gold rush around Porcupine lake.

The eight stories are all spooky. Two of them deal with legendary creatures from local Native American folklore, the weendigo, a demonic being featured in legends of the Algonquian peoples, and the nebaunaube, a kind of mermaid in the oral tradition of the Ojibway. Two stories deal with halucinations under the influence of morphine. The first story, "Lightning" seems based on a combination of superstition and possibly a core of a local legend: is is a fantastically weird story. The most gruesome story is probably that of the burnt heifer.

Melissa Hardy is excellent at creating suspense, developing each story slowly to a climax at its end.… (més)

The Geomancer's Compass is a decent book with an intriguing premise that it just doesn't quite live up to in its execution. The Chinese elements--Daoism, tai chi, hungry ghosts--make a nice change from the typical western swords and faeries fantasy fare, and Hardy's melding of the former with modern cyberpunk elements was certainly novel. Hardy also nails the voice of the novel's main character: Miranda is spot-on as a snarky, irreverent teen. That said, I've read too many YA novels in which the female "leads" spend their time in various permutations of shrinking violet-hood while the male characters take charge of moving the action forward, and this book is no exception. There are far too many scenes in which Miranda's sole role is to discuss how scary/stupid/dirty/unappealing some situation is while her male relatives get on with the important stuff--be it chatting up minor characters to discover pivotal clues or fighting the baddies. In addition, the (pun reluctantly intended) toilet humor at the story's climax was both clumsily handled and visible a mile away. Combined with a few very clunky deus ex machina, what you end up with is a book that's fun for its narrator's voice but far less clever plotwise than it could, and should, have been. Which isn't to say that The Geomancer's Compass is a bad book--it's an entertaining, fast read. But with a little extra work, it could have been more than that as well.… (més)