Heksenhoeve - An Janssens

Over the past few years I have been trying to keep an eye on fantasy and science fiction (although the latter is virtually non-existent) originally published in Dutch. On one such foray I encountered An Janssens Drakenkoningin. It won a contest organized by one of the leading publishers of speculative fiction in the Netherlands. While not perfect, the novel showed promise and I ended up reading the two sequels as well. In her fourth novel, Janssens takes a different direction. Where her previous three novels were fairly traditional fantasies, Heksenhoeve is something in between horror and a thriller.The title literally means 'witches' farmstead', despite not actually featuring witches. Maybe bewitched farmstead' would be better. Although Janssens does not quite manage to keep the tension up in this novel, it is a very interesting change of pace in her career.

In the Belgian university town of Leuven, a brutally murdered student is found. The body is mutilated and several bits appear to be missing. Sander Dats, on the sufferance of his uncle working of the federal police, does not buy the easy explanation of a jealous ex-boyfriend being responsible. The trail leads to a nineteenth century farmstead in the woods outside of town. It has some very peculiar inhabitants but he can't quite seem to convince his uncle there is more going on than meets the eye. In the mean time Sander's ex-girlfriend has her own run-in with the farmhouse. Looking for a good location to practice her photography she enters the woods on her own. She soon discovers she should have stayed away.

One of the things that makes this novel interesting is the language Janssens uses. She is from Flanders, the Dutch speaking part of Belgium. For anybody who has Dutch as a first language, it is obvious which side of the border someone is from as soon as they open their mouth. In writing however, that difference largely disappears. Written Dutch is very standardised and most fantasy novels, whether translated or originally written in Dutch, go to great lengths to weed out all regional variations of spoken Dutch. You may get away with a few bits and pieces in the dialogue but even that is rare. While I dislike the sloppy use of language and the rampant use of English when a good Dutch alternative exists, I have always enjoyed this regional variation. Might have something to do with living in various places in the Netherlands.

In Heksenhoeve there is a fair bit of Flemish and, surprisingly, it is not contained to just the dialogue. Some thought must have gone into how much Flemish was acceptable as Janssens probably sells more books north of the border. Janssens even varies it with each character. For some it is just a choice of words, for others it is completely phonetically written dialect. Standardisation has its uses, but when I read a book like this I am reminded that the richness of language goes far beyond what is considered correct.

Janssens uses two point of view characters to tell her story. They are both flawed heroes in a way. Sander is suffering from a compulsive disorder that requires him to count everything and attach meanings to random numbers. Being around him would drive most people crazy in under an hour and as a result he is lonely. Being acutely aware of numbers also makes him see connections others would miss though, and he feels compelled to follow up on them. Janssens shows how his disorder both limits him and helps him find clues. A sympathetic view on mental problems is rare in genre fiction but here we have a fine example.

Anouk has her own problems to deal with. Like Sander, she is lonely. Her relationship with her mother is complicated and she is single again after breaking up with Sander. When her thirtieth birthday comes around and there isn't really anybody to celebrate with, self pity threatens to take over. Anouk may be lonely, she is also independent, resourceful and strong, and brutally honest with herself. Qualities she will need to survive her ordeal. Janssens manages to avoid making Anouk into a damsel in distress when the story could easily have accommodated that.

While I liked the characters and the writing, the novel does have problems keeping the tension up. The plot is fairly straightforward and not all that difficult to predict. It is obvious early on that the official explanation for the murder doesn't fit. It is obvious where to find the real perpetrator, it is obvious what the farmstead is hiding. In terms of suspense Anouk's story line is probably the most successful.  For most of the novel she is in much more immediate danger than Sander though. While he puts what could generously be called his career on the line, she is in mortal danger. Even in Anouk's story line you never really doubt the outcome though. Janssens is simply too generous in doling out clues to the reader to make it a real mystery.

Janssens tries something different in this novel and for the most part it succeeds. While the real tension in Heksenhoeve never really takes hold, there are quite a few things to enjoy. If you look at the character development and structure of Janssens' fantasy novels, Heksenhoeve is an improvement. I enjoyed her use of Flemish in the book, the characterisation and the setting of the novel. As a thriller it may not really thrill but if you look beyond that, there is a lot to like.

Book Details
Title: Heksenhoeve
Author: An Janssens
Publisher: Luitingh-Sijthoff
Pages: 283
Year: 2016
Language: Dutch
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 978-90-245-7082-9
First published: 2016

Drakenvuur - An Janssens

I only read a couple of Dutch language novels every year. While I do like to stay in touch with what goes on in the small but vibrant fantasy community in the Dutch-speaking part of the world, these novels are almost always a few steps behind in craft and professionalism compared to the bulk of my reading. My reviews of Dutch language works tend to focus more on the technical side of writing, (structure, pacing, plotting) than on language, themes or interpretation of the novel. While there are some very talented people out there, a lot of what is being published is substandard. There are reasons for that. Nobody can make a living writing fantasy in the Netherlands. There are no magazines and very few other places to publish short works, the number of professional editors in he field is limited and the few publishers with resources tend to be more interested in translated works. Being a fantasy writer in the Netherlands with aspirations of writing a novel that can compete in international company is hard indeed.

An Janssens is one of the few authors being backed by a large publisher, a privilege she won in a writing contest a couple of years ago. Drakenvuur (literally: Dragon's Fire) is the concluding volume of the trilogy that started with Drakenkoningin in 2013. I picked up the first two volumes at the local bookstore but the third book I received directly from the author. This may seem surprising. The reviews of Drakenkoningin and Drakentovenaar were not exactly  jubilant. There is a story behind this of course and maybe I'll tell you about it some other time. Right now we are going to focus on the book.

For seven centuries a magical barrier has divided the north and the south. Slowly the north has cooled and the south warmed to the point where both of them are becoming uninhabitable. The leaders on both sides of the barrier understand something needs to be done to prevent the extinction of their peoples but neither has the skill and power to undo the magical damage wrought on the world by the powerful wizards of the past. Tentative contact has been made and now the time for bolder action has arrived. Var, Wizard-King of the south sets out to meet the Dragon Queen of the north. Together with their companions they set out to save the world, or break it forever.

With the first and second volume in the trilogy set primarily in the north and south respectively, this book is the first opportunity to see the two sides interact fully. Groups of characters from both novels make an appearance in the book and most of them get a point of view. I counted five major point of view characters and two minor ones. To accommodate the crowd, Janssens writes even shorter chapters in this novel. Drakenkoningin has 19 chapters, a prologue and an epilogue. Drakentovenaar, which is approximately the same length, has 32 chapters, a prologue and an epilogue. Drakenvuur has 47 chapters, a prologue and an epilogue. It must be noted that the page count of the final book is a bit higher than the other two though. It's no surprise then, that the novel moves at the same breakneck speed as the previous two books. In fact, the rapid changes in point of view, especially towards the end of the novel, give it the appearance of even more speed.

Janssens has grown more adept at saying more with fewer words but some readers will feel that being forced to look at the story from a different angle every few pages is a bit too much of a good thing. It also doesn't do the characters any favours in terms of development. Nevsemir for instance, is struggling with what can best be described as post-traumatic stress syndrome. Something she conveniently shrugs off when it really matters. Var, who like in the previous novel, is manipulated at every turn, easily forgives Thala for yet another piece of misdirection. Thala herself struggles with the secret she is keeping from Var but the whole thing is quickly brushed aside when it comes out. None of them seem to have a moment to spare to consider the rather large number of casualties among the population of both the north and the south their campaign to save the world demands. Like in the previous two volumes, many things that could have made the story more challenging, and in my opinion a more satisfactory read, are sacrificed to the demands of a fast paced plot.

Drakenvuur is a book built on shaky foundations. It has inherited the problems of the first two volumes and these issues show in the final instalment as well. That being said, there are elements in the novel that show Janssens growth as a writer. When she  wrote the first novel, it was by no means certain there would be a second volume. There clearly was a bit of improving involved in the creation of this trilogy. Where the first and second book are more or less separate stories, only slightly related to each other, in this novel she must find a way to unify the two halves of her tale. A lack of foreshadowing in the previous volumes sometimes crops up in some elements of the tale. The magic employed by the characters is one area where she succeeds into creating a coherent fusion of the previous two volumes. The abilities and limitations of each of the forms of magic are well thought out. Probably the best element of worldbuilding in this novel.

Janssens' trilogy is a good example of why I don't read many works in Dutch. On the one hand it is brimming with potential, enthusiasm and love for the genre. On the other you can feel the heavy hand of the editor speeding things up and removing the peculiarities of the author's style from the text. What remains is a trilogy that is marketable but not surprising. A fantasy that is both limited by the author's inexperience and the publisher's ambition. Had it been among the English language books on the bookshelves I would have passed it without looking twice. Looking on the bright side, Janssens was presented with an opportunity and she took it. A rare chance to be published as professionally as is possible in this part of the world. While there is still plenty of room for improvement, her writing has gotten better over the course of the trilogy. I hope she can take that experience with her and go on to create something that is a bit more challenging and a bit less traditional. I think she has the talent to do it. It will be interesting to see where she will go from here. Despite not being blown away by Janssens' Song of Ice and Fire, I will be keeping an eye out for the next one with her name on it.

Book Details
Title: Drakenvuur
Author: An Janssens
Publisher: Luitingh Fantasy
Pages: 316
Year: 2015
Language: Dutch
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 978-90-245-6776-8
First published: 2015

Drakentovenaar - An Janssens

In 2013 An Janssens' debut appeared. The novel Drakenkoningin (literally translated: Dragon Queen) was the winner of a contest aimed at finding new Dutch language Fantasy talent, organized by one of the largest publishers of Fantasy and Science Fiction in the Netherlands. Drakenkoningin is a novel that doesn't stray much from the proven recipe for Fantasy novels that sell well in the Netherlands. As such it was a bit of a disappointment to me. Especially since the novel itself showed more than a few flaws in the writing and characterization. It must have sold well enough though, Luitingh Fantasy bought two more of her books, making Drakenkoningin into the first novel in a trilogy. October 2014 saw the release of Drakentovenaar (literally: Dragon Wizard) the second volume and I understand that the third one is in the editorial stages already. Despite not being terribly impressed by the first volume curiosity got the better of me when I came across Drakentovenaar during a recent visit to the book store. Time to see if Janssens has improved.

Seven hundred years ago a magical disaster of epic proportions tore the world in half. The north (see the first  volume in the trilogy) is growing ever colder, while the south is suffering increasingly hot temperatures. So much so in fact, that humanity has retreated to a vast system of caves to escape the heat that blisters the surface. The remaining wizards have managed to stay in power but their numbers are so few that they have been forced to intermarry with humans. As a result, each generation their power lessens. Now they have gotten to the point where their strictly patriarchal society has to accept a female heir to the throne, and one with limited magical powers at that. Not everybody is pleased with this prospect. Mutiny is brewing.

I characterized the first novel as hasty. It had a relentless pace and lots of action scenes pretty much from start to finish. It didn't do the novel any favours in terms of worldbuilding and characterization. In Drakentovenaar Janssens slows down just a little bit. Especially in the early stages of the book we get a bit more time to become familiar with this new set of characters and their environment. Towards the end Janssens speeds up again, giving the book a proper climax. The chapters have become a bit shorter too, which fits the pace of the story and the multiple points of view Janssens employs. Technically the novel works a lot better than the first volume.

The story runs parallel to that in Drakenkoningin. Like in the first novel, there is a sense that the world is facing its doom if the situation is not remedied. Where the north is said to be cooling even further, the south is heating up. Life underground is just about bearable but especially the less privileged parts of the population are beginning to feel the squeeze. Throughout the novel links between the north and the south are inserted, and one character from the first novel makes a minor appearance. Janssens is clearly setting things up for a third novel in which we can safely assume righting this ancient wrong will be the goal. It's another bit of skill the previous novel lacked. Of course when she wrote that, it was by no means certain there would be a second or third novel, but the forshadowing still adds a bit extra depth to the novel.

Improvement in some aspects of the writing still doesn't mean I absolutely adore Drakentovenaar though. Problems remain with both thematically and with the characters. The novel's main theme is clearly sexism, it crops up in the storylines of most major characters. The society Janssens has created is strictly patriarchal and has become even more restrictive towards women in the last generation or so. One of the main characters, the thoroughly unpleasant princess Nevsemir, is the embodiment of the treatment women suffer. She is heir-apparent because of a lack of male heirs and her father tries to seize every opportunity to find a male heir. Her mother, known as the Nameless Queen, doesn't seem to care for her at all. Nevsemir is determined to take the throne, feeling she has as much right to it as any man, but is something of a contradiction as she does insist on clothes that cover her completely and is outraged by public displays of affection, immodest clothing or pretty much anything else a woman might do in public that gets her attention. Does she intend to rule the nation demurely hiding behind a veil? There is a contradiction in this character that Janssens doesn't really manage to resolve in the novel.

Sexism is also very much part of the life of Zia, another main character in the story. She grows up with her brother Var who, besides being male is fortunate enough to have a few wizard genes expressing themselves. He therefore receives much more of his father's attention than Zia. This might have been reason for a bit of jealous backstabbing in the family but mysteriously, Zia loves Var as no sister should. Even in a world with a severely reduced population this is incest and Zia knows it. Janssens could have done a number of things with this situation that would have made the character of Zia a lot more plausible. It will not surprise the reader that Zia and Var are not really brother and sister but Zia doesn't even begin to suspect this. If she had, the dynamic in the family could have been a whole lot more interesting. Another thing that struck me as strange is that Janssens doesn't use the fact that incest among wizards is not entirely unheard of in this part of the story. In an effort to keep their powers concentrated instead of diluting them further with each generation, marrying family members in the royal family has been proposed. Maybe Zia isn't aware of this but she doesn't reach for this breach of the taboo for justification. It reduces her to a frustrated teenager whose main purpose in the story is to make life hard for the two characters that really call the shots, and that wasn't necessary. Especially not in a novel with sexism as an important theme.

The third main character  in the novel, Zia's brother Var,  is perhaps the most problematic of all. He is manipulated to such and extend, both by emotional means and magic, that the man can't possibly know anymore who he is and what he is supposed to want out of life. In the end he picks the one goal the story demands of him but why he does so remains completely unclear. His story is so erratic that without magical means to move this character would make no sense whatsoever. As it is, Var is a classical example of a writer pulling the strings on a character too obviously. Var will most likely play a major part in the third novel. Let's hope Janssens gives him some more space to develop on his own terms there.

In the end, Drakentovenaar is a step forward but clearly not all I'm looking for in a Fantasy novel. The whole plot feels a bit contrived with the characters mostly present to serve the plot. Still, if Janssens manages to keep taking steps forward in her writing, the final volume of the trilogy could well be a good read. Janssens' creation doesn't lack possibilities. Despite not being thrilled by this second volume I can't deny being curious about the resolution of the story. I guess I will keep an eye out for the third part of the trilogy.

Book Details
Title: Drakentovenaar
Author: An Janssens
Publisher: Luitingh Fantasy
Pages: 287
Year: 2014
Language: Dutch
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 978-90-245-6474-3
First published: 2014

Drakenkoningin - An Janssens

When you look around on in a the genre fiction section of your average Dutch bookshop, you'll notice that not much in the way of fantasy and science fiction on the shelves is local produce. Science fiction is nearly impossible to find in Dutch and fantasy is almost always translated, with the English language world being the biggest supplier. One of the reasons I started reading in English is that the selection offered is very limited in some ways. I do try to keep an eye out for fantasy originally written in Dutch however. It doesn't happen often that I find something worth reading but once in a while I come across a title that makes me curious. Drakenkoningin (literally translated: Dragon Queen), is one such book.

There are two publishers in the Netherlands that publish the bulk of fantasy available in Dutch and one of them, Luitingh Fantasy, must have noticed the shortage of homegrown talent. In 2012 the set up a contest, challenging writers to submit their manuscripts. The winner would, if the manuscript was of sufficient quality, be published. From the conditions of the contest it is clear that Luitingh wasn't going to take too much chances besides publishing a new name. The novel they were looking for should be firmly rooted in fantasy and should appeal to a wide audience. If you read between the lines of the conditions, they were essentially looking for a novel much like the translated works they are publishing and in a way, that is exactly what they got.

Drakenkoningin by Flemish author An Janssens is the winning book of the contest. It was published in October 2013 by Luitingh Fantasy after a round of edits of the original manuscript. It's a fairly short novel that nevertheless seems to check all the boxes of bestselling Fantasy in the Netherlands. It's a not too challenging read, is set in a secondary world in which a magical disaster too place in a distant past and it has dragons. In short, it is the kind of Tolkienesque fantasy that has been doing well here in recent years.

Seven hundred years ago, a magical experiment has gone awry. The wizards responsible for the disaster retreated behind a magical barrier, leaving humanity behind to fend for itself in a cooling world. Their influence isn't entirely gone however. The wizard Venor set up a contest to be held once every century. The winner and his or her descendants would rule of humanity until the next contest was held.The contest is rigged however. For seven centuries, one queen has ruled practically unopposed and with an iron fist. Soon a new contest will be held, and this time the queen has serious competition.

If I'd had to capture this novel in one word I'd probably say it is hasty. The concept behind the story offers lots of possibilities but almost all of them are sacrificed to keeping the plot going at the fastest pace possible. The novel's prologue illustrates this perfectly. We catch a glimpse of a world in turmoil, the last moments of a civilization. It's a chaotic scene and tosses the reader a few riddles to explore further on in the novels. Or at least, that is what one would expect of a prologue. An awful lot of the things mentioned in the prologue are not followed up on. There is the suggestion that wizards are actually a different species instead of humans with magical powers, there is the riddle of what they were doing that so hopelessly screwed up the world and why they thought it was a good idea to try, there is motivation of Venor to create the barrier that remains completely unclear. The contest itself is one of the few things that Janssens does follow up on. The prologue a nice action-packed sequence but if not for the contest and appearance of one of the main characters in the novel, there would have been a total disconnect with the rest of the story.

Fast-forward seven hundred years and we end up in the main body of the story. To further introduce the reader to her creation Janssens uses a main character Thala, who wakes up a captive in the single city humanity is confined to. Most of her memories are gone and she is severely weakened. This memory loss offers Janssesn another opportunity to slip in some tidbits about the world the reader needs to know. She uses it very sparingly however, Thala is soon caught up in a whirlwind of events that sees her take part in the next contest. For most of the story, Thala's actions are driven by an acute need to survive. She is weakened from injuries, dependent on others to keep her safe and on the move and rarely able to make her own decisions. We see what she does, share her most basic responses and feelings but never truly get into her head and that is a huge missed opportunity when you consider the magic that surrounds her.

The wizards may have withdrawn, that doesn't mean magic is gone from the world. The Queen for instance, employs a kind of magic that lets her influence the thoughts of others. Sometimes it is quite crude but she is also capable of very subtle manipulations. Her victims are not always aware that she is manipulating them. The talent is not widespread but a number of other characters are also able to do it. This makes the queen very suspicious, in fact, she is bordering on paranoid for most of the novel. Oddly enough, the knowledge that whatever you are thinking at a specific time might not be your own though, doesn't seem to affect the other characters as much. Thala realizes quickly that the queen and a number of other characters can get into her head. There is a great possibility for a psychological game here but it never really materializes. The more mundane, physical challenge of the contest takes precedence.

Thala has essentially lost her entire identity when she wakes up. She needs to find herself, her past and her place in the world and is surrounded by people she can't trust, tried to hurt or imprison her or plant thoughts into her head designed to keep her form winning the throne. Doubt, paranoia and confusion could have been used to much greater effect. If this novel had explored the psychological aspect of the situation a bit further I think it would have been a much more interesting read.

Thala's nemesis the Queen falls victim to minimal characterization as well. She is essentially cut off from the truly advanced magic of the wizards, ostracised from a society that may have looked down on her but offered possibilities to expand her knowledge and power. What we find seven centuries on is a woman obsessed by staying in power but apparently blind to the fact that the pitiful remnant of human society she is ruling over is effectively dying. Nowhere in the novel is there any trace that she means to reach beyond what she already rules to try and stop this decline. Or perhaps beat the contest once and for all and take revenge, that would have been another good motivation for this character. As it is her ambition is to stay in power, period. Had she had more ambition, the reader would have had to ask the question whether the Queen's goals justify her means, injecting a bit more grey into a character that, right now, is just plain evil.

Drakenkoningin is a novel for really plot oriented readers. Janssens made is a very fast paced tale, where the reader (or the characters for that matter) barely get time to catch their breath. To achieve all this speed and action, worldbuilding and characterization are, sometimes quite brutally, sacrificed. That is a choice some readers may appreciated. Personally, I look for a little more in a fantasy novel. Janssens has the basics for an interesting story here but I feel she is not making the most of it. There is too much shaky worldbuilding and too little attention to the motivations of her characters for me to really appreciated it. In the end I felt that this book needed a bit more Philip K. Dick and a little less Raymond E. Feist to make it rise above the fantasy that crowds the shelves in Dutch book stores. That being said, I understand that it is to be the first book of a trilogy. Some of what I am missing in this story may be addressed in later volumes.

Book Details
Title: Drakenkoningin
Author: An Janssens
Publisher: Luitingh Fantasy
Pages: 271
Year: 2013
Language: Dutch
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 978-90-245-6254-1
First published: 2013