Category: Fantasy

A Tale Told By Mr. Barrie

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fantasy, Juvenile, Reviews3 Comments

All children, except one, grow up.

Peter Pan Statue in Kensington Gardens

I’m going to assume that most people are familiar with the premise of Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie.  In brief: Peter Pan flies with Wendy and her brothers to Neverland, where he lives with the Lost Boys and Tinkerbell the fairy, and has adventures fighting pirates and Indians.  And, of course, he never grows older.

Peter Pan (originally titled Peter and Wendy) is the ultimate celebration of childhood.  Neverland is the best parts of childhood, and the best parts of a child’s imagination, all rolled in together with none of the bad parts.  Even the bad things–say, villainous pirates–are only exciting adventures.

The peculiar thing about Peter Pan is that I don’t actually think much of the main characters.  Tink is a nasty brat, Peter is horribly arrogant (though oddly appealing in that, I must admit), John and Michael are fairly non-entities, and as for Wendy…well, I have no use at all for a girl who goes to Neverland and spends all her time cooking and cleaning and darning socks.  Hook, actually, is a more interesting character–dastardly but elegant, and rather melancholy (not sad–melancholy).  But it’s actually all right that the characters leave something to be desired as people, because the concept is so fantastic and the book is so charming.

More on the concept in a minute, but first on the charm.  That actually brings me to my favorite character: Mr. Barrie.  He doesn’t overtly appear in Peter Pan, not even in an fictionalized role like the kindly old gentleman in The Little White Bird, and yet he is very present as the narrator.  Every so often throughout the book “I” and “you” come into the narration–“I” who’s telling the story, and “you” the reader.  There’s a clear feeling that “I” is Mr. Barrie, and that you is you personally, you reading.

(On a side note, I always felt a bit smug in some of my writing classes in college, when the discussion turned to how wonderful experimental writing is, such as addressing the reader directly–experimental, maybe, but Mr. Barrie was doing it a century ago!)

My favorite part of the book is near the end of chapter seven–everyone is on the island by now, and Mr. Barrie is debating which of their many adventures to tell (because there isn’t possibly time for all of them).  Perhaps this battle with the Indians, or perhaps that prank of Tink’s…

Which of these adventures shall we choose?  The best way will be to toss for it.

I have tossed, and the lagoon has won.  This almost makes one wish that the gulch or the cake or Tink’s leaf had won.  Of course I could do it again, and make it best out of three; however, perhaps fairest is to stick to the lagoon.

I love it.  I know he’s not sitting in a study tossing a coin.  And yet, Mr. Barrie telling you the story is almost another level of the story.

Then of course the story of Peter Pan is exciting, dramatic and endlessly appealing…because who hasn’t occasionally wished they could escape to Neverland?  Even if most of us, most of the time, are reasonably happy about being grown-ups, Neverland is a place of youth and joy and innocence, free from cares or worries.  Sometimes a little fairy dust and a trip past a star looks very good.

Besides recommending the book itself, I also have to recommend a particular edition of Peter Pan.  I decided some while ago that I wanted to buy a really beautiful copy.  After looking at different versions in different bookstores, I fell completely in love with Scott Gustafson’s illustrations.  Every picture is an incredible work of art.  Lovely.

But so is the book.

An Uninspired Apprentice

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fantasy, Reviews1 Comment

There are some parts of An Unexpected Apprentice by Jodi Lynn Nye which may sound a little familiar.  A magical world with a number of magical races.  One of them is a race of kind people smaller than humans.  One of the characters is a wise old wizard.  There’s a quest, involving a group made up of several races.  There’s an object of immense power on the loose, which could destroy the world.  Said-object tempts its bearer to use its power for his or her own gain.

Some of it, I suppose, is archetypal.  Some of it is Lord of the Rings.  I could forgive An Unexpected Apprentice for resembling Lord of the Rings, but it’s harder to forgive it for being, well, kind of bland.  I’m not sure why I was left with that feeling of blandness.  There are dangers, and the world is reasonably well-developed.  But maybe the world lacks enough details, and maybe I didn’t care enough about any (except one) of the characters to feel much concern about the dangers.

One good point: I do like that object of immense power.  Rather than a ring, it’s a book.  The Great Book that holds everything’s true sign, from individuals to entire countries.  Change the sign, and you change the thing.  Destroy the sign in the book, you destroy whatever it represents.  There’s something fascinating about that.

The essential plot of An Unexpected Apprentice is that someone has stolen the Great Book, and Tildi (a Halfling, one of those small people mentioned above) and her friends go on a quest to get it back and restore it to a place of safety.  Tildi and all the rest are nice enough, but no one on the quest made much of an impression on me.  I wanted to like Tildi, if only because I have a soft spot for girls who disguise themselves as boys to go pursue their dreams (ever since reading The Song of the Lioness Quartet by Tamora Pierce).  Tildi does that at the beginning, although she’s unmasked as soon as she takes up her apprenticeship with the wizard.  But despite that, I never developed much attachment to her.

No one in the book experienced that problem.  That is actually at the root of one of the book’s biggest problems, and certainly one of the most easily defined.  The other characters like Tildi too much.  That sounds odd, but what I mean by it is that they have all only recently met her, yet they worry about her, care about her, appreciate her–when I don’t feel Nye has built relationships that would justify it.  It almost feels as though the other characters know that she’s the main character. 

There is one great and glorious exception to this band of so-so characters, and that is Magpie.  He’s a prince who travels around in an alternate guise as a minstrel.  During a recent war, he became a close friend of the enemy king by becoming the minstrel at his court.  He’s engaged to a princess, has a volatile relationship with his family, and is charming and witty and a bit roguish.  All around, he’s the kind of character I could love.  Unfortunately, he’s only here in a supporting role, and we find out most of the above as backstory.

If I find out that Nye has written a book just about Magpie, I’d pick it up.  But so far, despite doing some searching, I haven’t found anything.  There is a sequel about Tildi.  But so far I haven’t picked that one up.  I said this blog would be about sharing favorites and warning you off of some not so good books…and this post is much more of a warning.

With the Fairies in Kensington Gardens

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fantasy, Reviews1 Comment
J. M. Barrie

As I’ve said elsewhere, J. M. Barrie (best known for Peter Pan) is one of my favorite authors.  Peter Pan is not a series, but I have been able to track down several related books, by Mr. Barrie and others–prequels and sequels and so on.  So that I don’t overwhelm anyone with a steady stream of Peter, I’m going to spread some related posts out over the next several weeks, to explore the good, the great, and the simply dreadful.

To begin at the beginning–that’s actually not Peter Pan.  It all began in the The Little White Bird.  It’s very possibly my favorite J. M. Barrie book, even over and above Peter Pan. 

The Little White Bird; or Adventures in Kensington Gardens is a tale about a man who befriends a little boy, and has adventures with him in London and Kensington Gardens.  If you’re not already suspecting the autobiographical nature of this novel, the little boy’s name is David.  Historically, J. M. Barrie befriended the Davies brothers in Kensington Gardens.  Not too subtle!  He also has a dog named Porthos, as did Mr. Barrie.  The man in the story is left unnamed.  He’s referred to as Captain W–.  I somehow picked up the habit of calling him the kindly old gentleman.

A review in The Times said of the book when it was first published, “The peculiar quality of The Little White Bird…is it’s J.-M.-Barrie-ness…whimsical, sentimental, profound, ridiculous Barrie-ness…Mr. Barrie has given us the best of himself, and we can think of no higher praise.”

I couldn’t put it better.  The Barrie-ness is often the best part of Mr. Barrie’s books.  The charm, the whimsy, the flights of fancy, the sweet sadness…the book is funny and tragic, absurd and heartbreaking, and sometimes all at the same time.  The tragedy, for the kindly old gentleman at least, is that David doesn’t really belong to him, and will one day grow up and leave him.

And there we come to the Peter Pan connection.  Besides thematic connections, there are also four chapters in the middle of the book that are about Peter.  They’re almost oddly unrelated to the rest, other than by geography, but I think they’re meant to be stories that the kindly old gentleman tells David.  In Peter Pan, Peter tells Wendy, “I want always to be a little boy and to have fun.  So I ran away to Kensington Gardens and lived a long, long time with the fairies.”  And this is that story.

We read about Peter’s running away from home, find out why he doesn’t grow up, see him meet the fairies, and also meet a girl he knew long before there was Wendy.  This is before Peter went to Neverland (although an island features) and the Lost Boys and Tinkerbell are yet to come on the scene, but there are other wonderful magical creatures and adventures.  The four chapters about Peter, along with one chapter giving a Grand Tour of the gardens, have been excerpted and published as Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, with lovely illustrations by Arthur Rackham.

The Baby's Walk

The Grand Tour (and map) is especially wonderful, because if you’re ever in London, I highly recommend spending an afternoon in Kensington Gardens with The Little White Bird in one hand.  It’s what I did, and I spent a couple of hours going, “Oh, there’s Mabel Gray’s gate!  And the Round Pond!  And that must be the Baby Walk!  And this is probably the weeping beech where Peter sat!”  Even a century later, I was able to find almost everything J. M. Barrie described.  And it’s a little easier to get to Kensington Gardens than to figure out which star is the second one to the right.

One more note on The Little White Bird–George Davies, who was the chief inspiration for David, took a copy of the book with him to the trenches in World War I.  I think that’s one of the saddest and sweetest things I ever heard.

Even in much less dire reading circumstances, it’s a lovely, sweet and enjoyable book–and, of course, a bit magical too.

The Twisting World of Wizardry

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fantasy, Juvenile, ReviewsLeave a comment

Having covered Twilight, that leaves one more young adult fantasy novel I know I have to cover–Harry Potter, by J.K. Rowling.  Unlike Twilight, I can pretty unreservedly recommend the Harry Potter series.  Oh, I wouldn’t swear that they’re excellent writing, and the first few hundred pages of Book 5 does drag a bit.  But on the whole, Rowling has created a wonderful world and very enjoyable books.

If you are somehow not familiar with the premise of Harry Potter, they’re about a boy–Harry–who finds out on his eleventh birthday that he is actually a wizard.  He goes off to Hogwarts where he learns magic with his close friends Ron and Hermione, and does battle with the evil wizard Voldemort.  Voldemort killed Harry’s parents and, though defeated in the past, is always threatening to rise again.

There are several points that I find to be the great strengths of the series.  One is the complex world Rowling creates.  It’s detailed and plainly well-thought out.  The wizarding world has their own food, their own sports, a complex history, extensive legends…and without ever coming across like a bad historical fiction novel that’s trying to drum history lessons into you.  People (and by people I suppose I mean me) love the power of a book to take you to another world, and Rowling’s world is one that is easy to enter into, because it is rich and complete.

Second are Rowling’s plot twists.  I’ve noted elsewhere that I often can see twists coming, but I rarely predicted the twists in this series.  She is particularly good at disguising who the villain of the book is.  Voldemort is supported by numerous henchmen…but some are not nearly as obvious as others.  Despite unexpected turns, these are books that usually leave me saying “Oh, NOW I see what it all meant…” rather than feeling like I was tricked or misled.

I also love the way Rowling drops a side comment in book one that becomes pivotal in book three, or introduces a character in book two who becomes important in book six…she ties things together so well, and I enjoy spotting something important on a re-read that I didn’t even notice to begin with.

A few reservations on the series…I was never that happy with the romances that turn up.  There are solid friendships here, but the romance, though present in the later books, never felt all that satisfying.  And it’s not that I want characters to end up with different people than they eventually paired off with…but we didn’t get much in the way of romantic scenes for anyone.

I also was never able to feel much for the death scenes.  I know Rowling has said she’s cried while writing them, I know other readers have been deeply moved, and I respect that…but for me personally, I don’t feel a lot of pathos.  (There is one exception to that, and to avoid giving a spoiler, I’ll just say it was the one who died with “the ghost of his last laugh still etched upon his face.”)

Still, Harry Potter‘s strengths certainly outweigh what weaknesses there are.  And one thing the books do have in common with Twilight–I tended to read them for the first time in a few days.  And usually I’d read the last part of the book straight through in a couple of hours, because another strength of the books is extremely engaging climaxes.

Author’s site: http://www.jkrowling.com/

Of Sparkly Vampires

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fantasy, Reviews, Young Adult3 Comments
I NEVER sparkle. But I am double-jointed.

When I first started thinking about this blog, I knew that if I was going to write about young adult fantasy, there was one book I couldn’t ignore for very long.  So while I didn’t want to start with Twilight by Stephenie Meyer, I think the day has come to look at it.

If you’ve never heard of Twilight, I’m going to have to respectfully ask what planet you’ve been on recently.  Twilight is the love story of Bella, clutzy book lover, and Edward, ravishingly handsome vampire.  They’ve taken the teenage world by storm and spawned any number of vampire story knock-offs.  Some of which surely make Bela Lugosi, above, turn over in his, er, coffin.

I’ve read all four books in the Twilight series.  And there are few books that leave me so confused about how I feel about them.

You see, here’s the problem–I can tell you all about why they are deeply flawed books.  And yet I read each one in two or three days, and found it very difficult to put them down.  So let’s take both sides of it.

The flaws.  Well, chief in there are the characters.  I can’t tell you much of anything about Bella or Edward as people.  I described Bella as a klutzy book lover, and that is ALL I can tell you about her.  Oh, and she’s in love with Edward.  Madly, obsessively, all-consumingly in love with Edward.  Which kind of works out, because he’s madly, obsessively, all-consumingly in love with her.  And that’s pretty much all I can tell you about him.  Oh…wait…he plays music.  Which we mostly hear about because he wrote Bella a song.

The two leads are one-dimensional characters.  And, in the first book at least, none of the other characters are developed either.  That gets better later in the series…the rest of the vampire clan get their moments to talk about their histories and we find out more about who they each are.  I particularly like Carlisle and Alice.  Jacob has his moments.  Edward and Bella…stay pretty flat.

The all-consuming, to the exclusion of all other interests, romance is…well, it is kind of fun, but it’s also disturbing when you step back long enough to really look at that.  I watched the movie version of The Great Gatsby not that long ago, and there’s a scene where Gatsby stands outside Daisy’s house all night “in case she needs me.”  And I thought–that’s such an Edward thing to do!  Except that it’s clear Gatsby is unhealthily obsessed, and Edward is supposed to be a model for romance.

So there’s some massive problems.  And I know that the writing is really not that great, and even the plots are, well, not usually much more complex than “evil vampires are coming to get us!!!!”

And yet…I found the books so addictive.  Why????  I don’t really know.  The main thing I’ve been able to figure out for myself is that Edward and Bella are really cute when they’re romantic.  Yes, they’re obsessive…but there are a lot of cute, sweet scenes.  And one thing sort of on that note that I do have to give Stephenie Meyer huge points for (minor spoiler here)–way to go on not having them sleep together before they’re married.  Especially when Bella’s only seventeen.  That is so sadly rare in modern stories (books, movies and television) and it’s nice to see that.  And also–concrete proof that it’s possible to write extremely romantic stories without having the characters jump into bed (okay, well, literally they do–but you know what I mean).

Now that I’ve rambled a little about my Twilight conflict, I’m going to give up on inventing my own explanations and just point you to someone who’s already got it all worked out–Cleolinda Jones (maybe you’ve heard of her Movies in Fifteen Minutes parodies?) wrote an absolutely brilliant analysis on Twilight.  Here it is.  I think she’s nailed it on all counts.  And also, she pretty much sums up all of Twilight in this one line: “Omg I love him I love him I love him I love him I love him I love him he loves me!! And he sparkles!”

Yeah.  That’s Twilight.  And the literary analyst in me can’t stand the thing, but my inner teenage girl loves it.  So I’m conflicted.  And, please, by all means–tell me your thoughts about the sparkly vampire.

Author’s Site: http://www.stepheniemeyer.com/