Dissonance Of Bird Song by Alexandra Beaumont (book review).

Cornwall is a magical county to visit, and it has generated a huge number of folkloric myths and legends. Alexandra Beaumont has taken some of these as the inspiration for ‘Dissonance of Bird Song’, a young adult fantasy novel about finding your own way in the world.

The story revolves around Eseld and her sister, Nessa. Living on the coast of Kernow (ancient Cornwall), they inhabit a Celtic village where the local seabirds, known as Mystcran, have a symbiotic relationship with their people. The birds migrate for the winter, and when they return in the spring, their lungs are full of ‘Myst’, which they allow the human family that has adopted them to breathe in. In return, the humans look after their bird, keeping it healthy and helping it to find a mate and produce offspring.

For ages past, the system worked brilliantly for both humans and birds. However, in recent years, fewer birds have returned each year, and some of the returnees have been sickly. Those families whose bird does not return or dies soon after reaching them are not able to breathe in any Myst. The village’s druid insists that this will lead to them going insane with a lust for Myst. They cart these poor unfortunates off to the local tin mine, forcing them to become miners whether they like it or not, to prevent them from harming anyone else.

Eseld thinks this system is cruel. She has built herself a small coracle and wants to leave the village, follow the birds’ migration path over the sea, and try to find out why they’re getting sick. The issue arises when the Druid discovers Eseld’s plan, putting both her and her sister in grave danger. Can Eseld escape punishment, leave her people behind, and solve the mystery of the Mystcrans’ sickness? If she succeeds, what will happen to her sister, Nessa?

I loved the world-building in this novel. Eseld’s village life felt entirely believable, and the people, places, and experiences she encounters later in the book all came across as authentic and believable in the context of this ancient, half-mythical world. Beaumont has clearly done her research, and her knowledge and enthusiasm for Cornish folklore shine through on every page.

Beaumont has also devised an exciting multi-stranded plot. What starts out as a simple quest to find out what is ailing the village’s Mystcran grows and builds, chapter by chapter, into a truly epic story featuring many different peoples and places, as well as several mutually incompatible goals. Watching the key characters trying to find a way through this ocean of complexity was hugely exciting and kept me turning the pages.

As the story develops, Eseld meets an ever-growing cast of characters. I was hugely impressed by Beaumont’s ability to make each of them distinct, engaging, and realistic. This became particularly apparent in the many sections where key secondary characters were in conflict with Eseld, as the three-dimensionality of these other people brought the arguments viscerally to life.

Indeed, this leads me to my one criticism of the book. While many of the secondary characters emerge from the pages as intriguing and complex people, I must admit that I found the protagonist, Eseld, increasingly frustrating as the story developed. I acknowledge the YA fantasy nature of the story, Eseld’s youth, and her initial focus on a singular, unambiguous goal. Even so, I found her to be obstinate and inflexible. Much more importantly, she seemed incapable of learning from her own mistakes. As Eseld entered the final chapters of the book, she appeared to have gained very little wisdom from her experiences and the many different people she had met. Compared to the richness of many of the other characters in the book, I found Eseld somewhat lacking in depth. That may, perhaps, be a necessary consequence of the leading role she plays in the story and the need for clarity in her storyline. If so, it’s an understandable authorial choice. Ultimately, this is a minor criticism, given that the author has filled the rest of the book with many other characters who evolve and change as the story develops.

In conclusion, ‘Dissonance of Bird Song’ is an extremely engaging YA fantasy novel, based on the folklore of ancient Cornwall, which kept me turning the pages from beginning to end. If you’re interested in historically inspired fantasy, I’d urge you to read it.

Patrick Mahon

August 2024

(pub: Brigids Gate Press, 2024. 268 pages paperback. Price: £13.21 (UK), £0.77 (eBook). ISBN 978-1- 96335-503-1)

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