Book Review: Cold Shoulder Road
May. 20th, 2025 08:16 amAfter Is Underground, ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
littlerhymes and I approached Cold Shoulder Road with trepidation. However, I am happy to report that our concerns were unwarranted. In this book, Joan Aiken returns to form with an adventure story that is gristly but mostly in a way that is fun for the reader, like the Edward Gorey covers that grace many books in this series.
(Except for a very minor character who she kills at the end for no apparent reason except to remind us that she can. Spoiler redacted didn’t deserve that fate!)
Anyway. Is Twite and her cousin Arun have made their way back to Arun’s hometown, where Arun will be briefly reunited with his mother, whom he hasn’t seen ever since he ran away from the Silent Sect because he couldn’t stand not being allowed to sing or talk. They arrive at the family home in Cold Shoulder Road… and find it empty! Arun’s mother has disappeared! And the Silent Sect has been taken over by a charismatic leader by the name of Dominic de la Twite…
Later in the book Is and Arun learn a song, the substance of which is that “When Twites are good, they are very very good, but when they are bad they are horrid.” Old Domino, as Is calls him, is definitely on the horrid side. He also appears to have command of at least an unconscious form of the thought speech that Is discovered in Is Underground, which he uses to mind-whammy Arun into submission until Is drags him away.
Other typical Aiken touches:
A down-trodden but plucky orphan
The Admiral’s giant pet spider Rosamunde
The Admiral’s dupli-gyro (bicycle), which he likes to ride while flying a kite
The system of caverns beneath the Admiral’s house where Is and Arun find three large vats of treasure.
(The Admiral is doing a lot of work to bring the quirkiness to this book.)
And of course the reappearance of Is’s cat Figgin, who occasionally appears in danger but pulls through at the end, which almost made me forgive Aiken for killing spoiler redacted. (But not quite.)
Next book, we’re returning to Dido! We had the briefest mention of her when the downtrodden but plucky orphan brushed minds with her across the sea, as Dido has been Sir On a Vacation to Nantucket for the previous two books. Does this mean that Dido is going to carry the thought speech forward into the last two books of the series? To be honest I’m not madly keen on the thought speech, so I kind of hope not, but we’ll see.
littlerhymes and I approached Cold Shoulder Road with trepidation. However, I am happy to report that our concerns were unwarranted. In this book, Joan Aiken returns to form with an adventure story that is gristly but mostly in a way that is fun for the reader, like the Edward Gorey covers that grace many books in this series. (Except for a very minor character who she kills at the end for no apparent reason except to remind us that she can. Spoiler redacted didn’t deserve that fate!)
Anyway. Is Twite and her cousin Arun have made their way back to Arun’s hometown, where Arun will be briefly reunited with his mother, whom he hasn’t seen ever since he ran away from the Silent Sect because he couldn’t stand not being allowed to sing or talk. They arrive at the family home in Cold Shoulder Road… and find it empty! Arun’s mother has disappeared! And the Silent Sect has been taken over by a charismatic leader by the name of Dominic de la Twite…
Later in the book Is and Arun learn a song, the substance of which is that “When Twites are good, they are very very good, but when they are bad they are horrid.” Old Domino, as Is calls him, is definitely on the horrid side. He also appears to have command of at least an unconscious form of the thought speech that Is discovered in Is Underground, which he uses to mind-whammy Arun into submission until Is drags him away.
Other typical Aiken touches:
A down-trodden but plucky orphan
The Admiral’s giant pet spider Rosamunde
The Admiral’s dupli-gyro (bicycle), which he likes to ride while flying a kite
The system of caverns beneath the Admiral’s house where Is and Arun find three large vats of treasure.
(The Admiral is doing a lot of work to bring the quirkiness to this book.)
And of course the reappearance of Is’s cat Figgin, who occasionally appears in danger but pulls through at the end, which almost made me forgive Aiken for killing spoiler redacted. (But not quite.)
Next book, we’re returning to Dido! We had the briefest mention of her when the downtrodden but plucky orphan brushed minds with her across the sea, as Dido has been Sir On a Vacation to Nantucket for the previous two books. Does this mean that Dido is going to carry the thought speech forward into the last two books of the series? To be honest I’m not madly keen on the thought speech, so I kind of hope not, but we’ll see.
