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The setting is Elizabethan England under threat of invasion by the Spanish Armada, and our heroine is Sidonie, who is, as the title suggests, the bookish daughter of an impractical and largely unsuccessful alchemist. Always convinced that the transformation of base metal into gold is imminently within his reach, Simon Quince has begged financing for his experiments from Queen Elizabeth, in return for a promise of gold to finance her war efforts. And Sidonie is terrified. What will happen to them if he does not succeed?

Determined to do what she can to help, Sidonie uses her gift for scrying and has a vision of ruined abbey she's sure is Glastonbury. So she decides to go there, in search of magic red earth for her father. As no woman can travel safely alone, she inveigles her friend Kit, the son of an apothecary, into helping her make a journey fraught with more difficulties and dangers than she had ever dreamed.

Eileen Kernaghan is a skilled wordsmith, and she has created characters who are very real, yet slightly whimsical, in a setting that feels historically accurate. Without going into too much detail she manages to convey the technological and social flavour of 1587 in a way that young 21st century readers should be able to grasp. There are a few magical elements in the story -- such as Sidonie's scrying abilities -- but this is for the most part a historical novel.

And that may be its weakness. In order to work the story around real events and characters (such as Elizabeth I, Dr. John Dee, Lady Mary Herbert and Sir Philip Sidney) and within the pacing of an age when journeys were completed on foot, Kernaghan sacrifices a certain amount of story tension. Sidonie encounters a series of challenges and is pulled through the story by events, but without a focussed plot problem for her to resolve, the story loses momentum at times.

I didn't find The Alchemist's Daughter as strong as Kernaghan's last young adult novel, The Snow Queen, but Kernaghan wasn't working with such strong epic material this time. Nonetheless, this is an entertaining, well written tale, once again presented very handsomely by Thistledown Press. (The multiply pierced ear of the medieval girl on the cover is a delightful touch.)

Donna McMahon discovered science fiction in high school and fandom in 1977, and never recovered. Dance of Knives, her first novel, was published by Tor in May, 2001, and her book reviews won an Aurora Award the same month. She likes to review books first as a reader (Was this a Good Read? Did I get my money's worth?) and second as a writer (What makes this book succeed/fail as a genre novel?). You can visit her website at http://www.donna-mcmahon.com/.