The Cobbler's Boy

by Elizabeth Bear, Katherine Addison

Brilliant, bookish Christopher Marlowe is fifteen years old and desperate to qualify for a scholarship to the King's School in order to escape his brutal father.

But the only man who could have helped him has been murdered... and now the killers are looking for Kit.

A fast-paced historical mystery by the author of KAREN MEMORY and the author of THE GOBLIN EMPEROR.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Historical, Mystery, Fiction, LGBT, Fantasy, Novella

115 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 4, 2018

About the author

What Goodreads really needs is a "currently WRITING" option for its default bookshelves...

Reviews

[K.J. Charles]

Highly enjoyable novella with the young Christopher Marlowe's introduction into the world of espionage, as he struggles to solve a mystery while seeking to escape his brutish father and also finds first love dawning with another boy. Fast paced, intriguing plot, lovely proto-romance, and Kit's competent and unexpectedly violent sister Mog is a great character. I hope there will be more of these.

[Teal]

Kit Marlowe, Boy Detective.

KIT MARLOWE, BOY DETECTIVE.

There was never any chance I could resist this.

Buying it for the concept, it doesn't even matter whether it turns out to be good or not.

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Christopher "Kit" Marlowe, fifteen year old suspected homosexual and serial failed apprentice, is headed home after the loss of his latest potential trade. In no hurry to face his brutish cobbler father, himself without an apprentice after beating the last nearly to death, Kit detours to visit a friend who asks him to hold a package overnight. Murder, espionage, and family drama ensue.

This is the awesome gay YA historical mystery spy novel I didn't know I wanted. It's the best! Read it now.

I don't know for historical accuracy or period language, but the authors do an excellent job at balancing intrigue, first love, and family conflict here. Kit's own conflicting motivations feel realistic and make sense of plot situations that I've seen handled very poorly elsewhere. The tension is powerful and focused around Kit's own life. If the book has any weakness it's a scarcity of suspects for the crime, and while that's likely realistic for the situation I was a bit concerned early on how it would play from a narrative standpoint, but I was ultimately satisfied with the resolution. Other readers with more of a whodunnit mindset might find this more of a weakness than I did, but that's really the only weakness I can identify in the story at all.

Highly recommended.

[Contrarius · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a brand new collaboration between two excellent authors. Oddly enough, it's a little outside either one's typical genre -- rather than fantasy or science fiction, this one is a historical mystery.

This is a quick, entertaining story of the teenaged Christopher Marlowe (yes, that one) in Elizabethan England, following him along as he becomes embroiled in: 1. solving a murder; 2. rooting out a group of scheming "Marianists" (supporters of Mary, Queen of Scots); 3. saving the life of a Queen's Agent; 4. surviving the wrath of his abusive father; 5. securing a future for himself as something better than a cobbler; and 6. exploring his attraction to another local teen boy. Whew! All in one novella-length story!

Personally, I was saddened by the use of Marlowe as the protagonist here. After all, we readers are meant to believe that Kit has a glowing future ahead of him -- but we know that the historical Marlowe was stabbed to death when he was merely 29. So I wish the authors had made a different choice there. OTOH, the historical record shows us that Marlowe did indeed perform some sort of secret service for the Queen, and the mystery surrounding that service must be like waving a red flag in front of any imaginative author's face -- so it's understandable that writers would construct stories around it.

Likewise the dialogue style is authentic but a little off-putting, filled with thees and thous and so on. I'm sure that's good practice for authors, making old idioms feel natural, but I'm not sure I as a reader really needed to wade through it.

And the plot itself was too crammed full of twists and turns and developments and crises to really have time to be expanded properly within just 2500 Kindle locations.

Nonetheless, it's well-written -- both Bear and Addison have great writing chops -- and they easily made me care about what happened to Kit and his family. I'm giving this about 3 1/2 stars, rounding up.

[Tracy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyable fictional story about Kit Marlowe as a young boy, dashing about Canterbury, solving a mystery, falling in love, fighting with his abusive father. Pretty good all in all. Three and a half stars.

[Emily · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a sort-of-decent YA or even middle grade outing, I guess, maybe, although that wasn’t how it was marketed or perhaps even how it was intended, given the massive tonal shift between the fun espionage adventures and the abuse by Kit’s father, which is an outlier to the middle grade plot and tone. The book was much shallower and less well-written than I had expected, with the poor writing taking the extremely uncomfortable attitude of not just a lack of depth, but in fact an utter voyeurism about child abuse.

Wherever possible, Kit’s beatings by his father were dwelt on in graphic terms - how many times was his shirt bloodied? I lost count - in a way that felt familiar from bad fanfic and not from reading Addison’s Goblin Emperor. I don’t object to a certain amount of the woobie trope - cf Maia! - which they certainly inhabited with all the references to Kit’s small size and dark eyes and longing for what he couldn’t have, but WOW is it not cool to romanticize or focus on his beatings in the way the writers did here. The violence felt less useful or central to the plot or the characterizations than like an excuse to focus on this slight blond young gay teenager bruised by his evil hulking father.

I’m not objecting to the fact that violence happened in the book - abuse should be discussed, and I had expected some level of violence in a book about a spy who went on to write extremely bloody plays - so much as to the way it was shown; Kit himself literally loses count of the number of times he casually says he was beaten half to death, just like I lost count of them. If that’s the tack a book takes, then it needs to actually confront violence with nuance and an understanding of its traumatic effects, not get off on the fact that when the protagonist kisses his crush, he inadvertently pulls at his own healing welts.

I do actually want more of the writers’ original premise: I want this to be a series about Kit’s adventures, despite the historical anachronisms and the lack of the beautiful language I’d hoped for from Addison. There were plenty of glimmers of the kind of nonentity romp a series like that could be. But oh my God, be better about violence. This shouldn’t read like something I found on Ao3 at three in the morning.

[Abi Walton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Elizabeth Bear always writes Marlowe right, anything that she writes is a win but doubly if Marlow id the main protagonist. I hope this book links with her Ink and Steel series.
I am definitely going to Canterbury very soon the rich language that has inspired this book is masterful

[Jenni · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kit Marlowe, boy detective! Friends, I loved this. The writing was captivating (I wasn't sure about the thees and thous at first, but once I got into it they started working for me) and Kit's burgeoning romance with his friend Ginger was very sweet and well done. I also really loved the portrayal of his sisters. It's definitely the kind of historical fiction that feels lived in, where the authors have clearly done their research but wear it lightly. I hope there will be more.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really like this book a lot. Although it is only a novella (novelette? I never can remember which is which), the characters and plot make it seem much bigger somehow. Kit and his struggles are engaging and realistic, and I wanted to know more from the first page.

This book was co-written by one of my favorite authors, ever, Ms. Katherine Addison aka Sarah Monette, and it shows the same attention to detail and love for characterization as her other works. This is the first I'd read from Ms. Bear, but I plan to remedy that soon.

If you've read and loved The Goblin Emperor, this book may fill that same niche in your heart as Maia did. It isn't really fantasy, but again, the characters are so carefully done that I loved (most of) them.

4 stars.

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kit Marlowe: Boy Detective was not something I thought I needed.

I was wrong.

Everything about this book, basically, made me happy. Bad stuff happens in a murder-mystery type way - and it needs a trigger warning for domestic violence - but there's compassion throughout, and a resolution. Kit is a really fun narrator, and you can completely see how the young man making these observations could end up being the playwright.

I was particularly impressed by how readable it is while still keeping a bunch of the period-appropriate language. That's a really hard balancing act! Sound too modern and you're not believable; sound too archaic and the readers spend the whole time trying to figure out what you're on about. To me, this hit that midpoint perfectly.

Also, there is a super, super adorable queer love story involved, for those of you who also like that kind of thing. I wasn't expecting it - I am used to historical stuff basically believing that queers were invented in the 1980s - and it made my cold black heart go clench. It is surprisingly wonderful, to be told you always existed.

[Amy Linton · Rating 4 out of 5]

A clever, queer-focused historical novel, The Cobbler's Boy offers a view of Kit Marlowe -– yes, that Kit Marlowe, Shakespeare's predecessor –– as a 16thC boy who finds himself unwittingly embroiled in espionage and the solving of a murder. Young Kit has an absolutely forbidden crush on a Puritan neighbor boy and wants nothing more than to be a scholar, though his village-drunk cobbler father is unlikely to permit it.

Kit is a fascinating historical character whose mysterious life and death colors the story and makes it a vivid introduction to the complicated world of Elizabethan England.

[~ Lei ~ Reading Is An Adventure ~ · Rating 3 out of 5]

★★★☆☆ ~ 3 Stars
The last thing Christopher Marlowe wants to be is a cobbler's son and work with his abusive father. However, Christopher manages to get involved with a political plot when his friend gives him a book to hold on to. Then his father gets drunk and ends the night as an accused murderer. Kit doesn't believe his father is guilty and begins his quest to prove it.

It was ok. I felt vaguely disappointed and I don't know, it was technically very good. I rarely read young adult so that could be the reason too.

[Stonemagpie · Rating 3 out of 5]

The plot is really slow-going until about 60% or so, when it picks up. I really enjoyed the last 25%.

The dialogue is written in Early Modern English(?) which made it a big of a slog as well.

"Thinkst thou I know not why thou gazest at the door"
Took a second or two to unravel.

[Macha · Rating 4 out of 5]

The authors always write excellent Kit Marlowe. here he is at 15, still living in his father's house in Canterbury, where he becomes unwittingly involved in a bit of espionage between religious factions, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and several queens.

[Oshun · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wish it had been longer.

[Sue · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was great fun and I hope there will be another installment soon.

[Nicky · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reviewed for The Bibliophibian.

This novella is basically the story of how Kit Marlowe (think “Come live with me and be my love” if you know poetry!) and how he became a spy, as the rumour about his life and death goes. In this story, he’s a teenage boy, just awakening to his sexuality (with a local lad named Ginger) and forced to be quick-witted to help his mother and keep his lout of a father from being accused of the murder of one of his own friends.

It’s a quick read, and it almost doesn’t matter if you know about Marlowe or not: you quickly orientate yourself with the time period and the circumstances of young Marlowe’s life. The authors chose to go with fairly period-authentic language for the dialogue: thees and thous abound, which I know would turn some people off (but it is, I promise you, all grammatically correct and appropriate, to the best of my knowledge).

It’s not quite a rip-roaring thriller, but it does go along at a fair clip, and it’s a fun adventure whether you know Marlowe or not. If you do, and are aware of some of the facts about him, it has a little extra depth and savour.

[Lindsay · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quite enjoyable, if brief. I got a little worried at times but I think this just shows the sympathy the authors built in the narrative for Kit (Kit Marlowe, Boy Detective!). I think this is a little stand-alone thing, but it was quite a fun world to be in and I would return to it. It felt believably of the time and had enough depth to feel real, but was an easy-to-understand narrative filled with derring-do.

I have never really read Elizabeth Bear, for reasons unknown, but I do see some of Addison's delight in using thou and thee as well as some of the themes that carry over into her other books.

[Ryofire · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting read in Monette's back catalogue, if a kind of depressing one. I can't speak for how much this reflects on Bear, because I haven't read much of her work, but it reads enough like "The Goblin Emperor" that Monette's influence is obvious. It's also the most Christian of Monette's works I've read. Not in the sense that you'd have to be a believer to enjoy it, or that it's trying to convert you, but that it's the most set in the real world and focusing on what it's like to be a Christian in a heavily Christian world. I'm not Christian, so at times it was a Bit Much, but I was able to push past it.

Monette writes a lot of fiction that involves gay men dealing with homophobic worlds, and that's present here, and well-written, as usual. CW references to spoilers for "The Doctrine of Labyrinths", "The Witness for the Dead", and "The Bone Key" It's also oddly the most positive of her works about gay men: Kit does end up with his lover, with the potential for future trysts, and no evidence that they'll break up or hate each other. This is in contrast with her other queer male leads that I've read: Felix, Booth, and Thara, all of whom end up alone. I say oddly because it just had a kind of... sad air about it? Kit has a hopeful future, but he's still shackled to his father, and his hopes of being more intimate with his boyfriend are ground to dust under having to support his family, which is really only his problem because his father nearly murdered his own apprentice. Yes, he'd still have to support his family anyway, but it's... frustrating that so much of his life will be shackled to his abusive father. So in that sense, despite the hopefulness of the end of the story, I find "Corambis" far less depressing than this, despite the fact that Felix is alone (with hints of maybe being with Murtagh in the future), than this, where Kit is still with Ginger, because at least Felix is free of his abusers.

The cast is fun, and the plot itself is mostly enjoyable. I'm not a fan of detective fiction, but this does a neat job of making a mystery.

If you're a fan of "The Doctrine of Labyrinths" or "The Goblin Emperor" and want more Monette/Addison, this might be for you. It's a nice little read, but a bit depressing and VERY Christian.

[Rachel Roberson · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I was buying Katherine Addison's novella set in her Amalo universe, I came across this novella/novelette she did with Elizabeth Bear, another fave author. As reviewers have mentioned, it's nothing like either writers' usual fare, but both women are masters of plot. And that came through in this story of young Christopher Marlowe and the fictional origins of the espionage career he was thought to have had, while also being England's most famous pre-Shakespeare playwright. His smarts, poor impulse control, charm and bravery are on display--all of which were likely relevant in his short, action-packed adult life. Bear and Addison chose to make him queer, which also aligns with the historic record, though homosexuality was not thought of in the same way then as it is today.

For such a short book, there was a lot of running around Elizabethan Canterbury, quite a bit of breaking and entering, and a very hearty helping of family drama. I couldn't find anything in the historic record that Marlowe's father was as violent or abusive as he's portrayed, but there is record of him being involved in multiple lawsuits, as well as being elected to various positions of community leadership (the John Marlowe in this story would not have gained those positions). In that same vein, the only thing I didn't love about this story was the intensity of the drama. John Marlowe is SO violent and repressive. His mother is SO long-suffering. His relationship with his friend/sweet first love is SO forbidden that it drives Marlowe to almost be disowned (for unclear reasons because their relationship was not exposed), etc. Anyway, this is minor, though consistent enough throughout to drop a star. It's definitely worth a read, should you feel like a short, well-plotted historical mystery.

[Mint · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 rounded to 4, because stories about Christopher "Kit" Marlowe are always a delight to read. His drive, whether it be from his passion, compassion, and the most ridiculous of predicaments, keeps me hanging onto the page and rooting for him. Even though this is just a short novella, I like how it explores so many different relationships in his life - with his family, friends, lovers, and figures of authority. The authors did a great job painting the scene of 16th century England through both social and religious lenses through these relationships. The mystery part is relatively insignificant without any major twists or suspense. It adds just a little bit of spice and tension to this character and societal study, just enough to keep the plot moving. And I think it works well.

[K.S. Trenten · Rating 5 out of 5]

A marvelous origin story is created in this for the Christopher Marlowe of Elizabeth Bear’s Promethean series, the tale of how Kit, a mere cobbler’s son got his first taste for adventure and intrigue, along with his love for scholarship and boys. Readers receive a closer look at Kit’s family; his parents and his sisters, his place with them as a youth or a lack thereof. We meet Ginger, Kit’s first crush, and see how the murder of an old friend and mentor, along with rescuing an intriguing stranger gives Kit a sense of the turbulent politics of Elizabethan England and its impact on ordinary folk. This book is a heady mixture of historical fiction, mystery, and adventure, with a dash of Young Adult m/m, mingled together in a delightful genre cocktail more than deserving of five stars.

[Anna Mussmann]

The characters in this historical mystery are handled with great deftness, allowing them to feel satisfyingly dimensional even though the book is short. It has the feel of historical fiction written by people who truly like history (and the references to Elizabethan classical education were fun). The happy ending achieved a little too easily, but I can forgive that. Parents of young readers should note that the male protagonist's romance is with another boy and that the relationship involves kissing/etc.

[James Garman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Christopher Marlowe (known as Kit at home) wants to go to King's College and become a priest. His father apprentices him out, but that doesn't work, and he is no good at cobbling like his father.

However, he gets involved in a mystery that involves John Latimer, and his friend Ginger (Claybourne) , both of who his father has told him he can not associate with, in saving the murder of John and what appears to be a spy ring.

It was very well written and entertaining and concise enough to read in one day.