After being so disappointed by Julia and the Shark I came across 'The Weather Weaver' on the Shetland Times Bookshop website (it'll always be one of my favourite bookshops anywhere), and then found we had it at work, so bought and read it.
Aimed at the same age group (9-12) and both using Shetland as a setting for their action these books are wildly different. Kiran Millwood Hargrave is the more elegant writer but I enjoyed 'The Weather Weaver' far more. It helped that Tamsin Mori does know Shetland and that knowing it, she uses an unnamed and made-up island for her action - although it does have one well-known landmark on it which in this context is a fun detail.
The plot is about a young girl, Stella, who's spending the summer with her grandfather on a remote croft, whilst her parents are working. She hasn't seen him since her grandmother died, and instead of the cheerful man, she remembers she finds a bad-tempered, elderly man who has removed every trace of the grandmother they clearly both miss and who is unwilling to let Stella leave the house.
After an argument, she runs away, meets an old woman called Tamar who encourages her to catch a cloud, and finds she's a weather weaver - a sort of witch. Tamar (a not unusual Shetland name in the older generation) starts teaching Stella what she can do with her magic, hampered by Stella's bursts of bad temper which make her cloud flash lightening with considerable risk to all until the appearance of the Haken, a fearsome sea witch, threatens them all.
The Haken steals clouds for their magic and traps them underwater until they go mad, so are obviously sworn enemies of weather weavers - and she makes a convincing foe, although not so fearsome that the eventual resolution seems unlikely. The real strength of this book is in the way Mori draws Stella and her relationships with her Grandfather and Tamar though. Stella is about 11, the age when often you can't do right for doing wrong - so she breaks things when she tries to help, accidentally annoys her grandfather by moving his tools, and is both capable of rising to a challenge, and being overwhelmed.
I was bought up on the unflappably capable Famous Five, and magical children who could save the world before breakfast, so to meet a character who gets frightened in the fog, and makes some fairly major mistakes is great. I love the way Stella interacts with Tamar as both a friend and mentor too - Tamar gets the best lines. But it's the relationship between Stella and her Grandfather as they get to know and trust each other that's the best thing here.
Mori nails the frustrated anger that both parties begin by feeling towards each other because frankly, they're both out of their depth, and then the slow thaw as they start to understand each other and deep affection returns to their dealings with each other. The balance between the magic and mundane parts of Stella's life is perfect. These bits remind me so much of the next door neighbour we had as children who stood as an honorary grandparent to me and my sister (our actual grandparents were far away and not overly affectionate or interested in hanging out with young children) that I'm currently feeling desperately nostalgic and a little tearful (in a good way).
So - a decent adventure, great sense of place, a nice setup for the second book without making you feel like the story is half told, and something that hits true on the trials of being an adolescent - The Weather Weaver has it all. I can definitely recommend this one for younger readers.
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