Fiction Review: Francesca Forrest’s Pen Pal
This past month, I’ve not been playing much in the way of interactive fiction and my webcomics have fallen behind schedule–in part because I’ve been reading some great prose books. One of the most recent is the novel Pen Pal by Francesca Forrest, a self-published novel that began its life on livejournal and grew up into a full-fledged, completely remarkable fantasy. For those who have been looking for something different than fantasyland fare, this is definitely a novel you should check out.
As the story opens, young Em, a girl from the floating community of Mermaid’s Hands just off the Gulf Coast of the United States, is reaching for the larger world. She loves her community and trusts in the Seafather, the god worshipped by her small village of intertwined boats on the mudflats, but she wants to see more of the world. With the help of a friend, she tosses a message in a bottle into the sea, willing the Seafather to take it somewhere interesting, to someone who will write her back.
Whether through fate or the intervention of two very different gods, the letter ends up in the hands of Kaya, a political prisoner in the country of W–, near Indonesia, whose prison is a faux-temple suspended over Ruby Lake, a lava lake in the center of a volcano. Kaya is from the mountains, making her a minority in her own small country, and her people’s traditional religion, worship of the Lady of Ruby Lake, has been forbidden. Through writing to Em, she begins to examine how she became a political prisoner–she who had once embraced the lowland culture, attended college in America, and sought to advance in life. But her plan to hold a festival for the Lady, just as a cultural celebration, nothing to offend the government, crashes around her ears and sends her hanging perilously above the lava, in solitary confinement, but for letters from her mother and Em and a strangely intelligent crow companion.
