Bell Weather

May 4, 2015
In his second novel, Mahoney (Fellow Mortals) awkwardly attempts to merge the smalltown realism of his debut with a more fantastical style. The setting is 18th-century Floria, a continent being fought over by two competing colonial powers in a fantasy version of Earth. A tavern keeper named Tom Orange rescues a beautiful young woman swept up by a raging river and nurses her to health in Root, an isolated town surrounded by dense woods. The locals know little about Molly Bell, a mysterious strangerâonly that she recently gave birth and carries a chipped tooth in a locket. Tom and the village's suspicious inhabitants try to uncover Molly's closely guarded secrets even as they confront more pressing problems: a band of thugs called Maimers are intercepting travelers in the surrounding woods and inflicting brutal, Dantean punishments tailored to the profession of each victim. Eventually, Molly's past is revealed, often through overlong stretches of backstory, and cartoonish villains resurface to threaten her peace. As for the enchanted setting, Root boasts of many "native marvels," including immersive rainbows called colorwashes, a kind of "clinging lightning" called St. Verna's Fire, and exotic creatures such as wolf-bears. However, these details don't so much create an immersive world as add occasional touches of whimsy to momentarily distract from the wooden archaic dialogue. Beneath the novel's magical exterior lies a creaky, humdrum structure.

May 1, 2015
A young woman's past catches up with her in a magic, recently colonized new world in this historical fantasy from Mahoney (Fellow Mortals, 2013). When Tom pulls a near-dead Molly out of a river of flowers, she tells him she has amnesia, but neither the tavern owner nor anyone else in the isolated outpost of Root believes her. Her body suggests a recently born child, and she has arrived at a time of heightened anxiety, when lawless mutilators trawl the surrounding forest and cut body parts from travelers. Still, she settles in, befriending locals and learning about Root's exquisite natural beauty-slow-moving static lightning, inky-black fog, upside-down rain. Braided with Molly's new life is the story of her old one from across the sea: mother dead from her birth, father harsh and distant, and older brother her only friend, companion, and protector. After a peasant uprising against their family, she and her brother create new identities and take a ship to the new world to begin again. In Root, she becomes tangled in romance, remains under suspicion by the sheriff, and soon realizes that the troubles she thought were behind her are in fact still around, and the mystery of how she came to be in that river begins to unravel. While the premise is promising, Molly is the sort of incorrigible heroine whose antics seem adorably quirky until they continue to wreck everything around her; her inability to temper her "feistiness" or learn from her mistakes is profoundly irritating-she is almost too precious to be believed. The real strength of this novel is its stunning worldbuilding, which merges the aesthetic of the Colonial Americas with Marquez-style magical realism-take the weather and the old-fashioned, fantastical flora and fauna-but unfortunately it's merely backdrop to a plot that hits mostly expected beats and is populated by an uninspiring cast. A pleasant, passable diversion that never quite conquers its tropes or pitfalls.

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July 1, 2015
If the core of fantasy is about creating an ideal world in which a reader can explore and adventure with their heroes, Dennis Mahoney is an author who reaches deep into the heart of the genre. His new novel, Bell Weather, begins with a young man's daring rescue of a lost daughter of aristocracy, Molly, from a river swiftly carrying her half-conscious body to a waterfall. The rest of the story follows suit with Molly's determined quest to sort out her privileged family's sordid and tragic past. Bell Weather makes no apologies for fully, unironically embracing the deepest romanticism of fantasy adventure, for evil is challenged by the plucky, righteous youth accompanied by a variegated supporting cast. The cynical might be put off by the saccharine idealism, but Mahoney proves he can make a world that's both dream-like and substantial with vivid descriptions, clever dialogue, and relatable characters. Those wanting to find fantastical escape from the everyday world are advised to pick up Bell Weather for satisfying summer reading.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)

February 15, 2015

In a remote settlement in colonial Florida, Tom Orange rescues a young woman from the raging Antler River. At first, she has no memory of what happened to her, but painful truths start flooding back, even as a wicked band of masked thieves called the Maimers darken the surrounding forest. Mahoney's first novel, Fellow Mortals, received high praise.

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