Couldn’t put it down, and no, it wasn’t because of the honey sandwich I’d just eaten. I reviewed book two in the 100 Cupboards trilogy feeling that I had lost something I loved in the first book, the sense of mounting mystery. This third book managed to win me back completely with its combination of fantasy based action adventure, unexpected twists, original ideas and well crafted writing.
In Dandelion Fire we leave Henry relatively settled and safe: within pages of the start of The Chestnut King every single person he cares for is in terrible danger, and the family has been split up and by choice or force are heading in three different directions. We are introduced to an apparently invulnerable new foe. However, I was especially pleased to find that there was lots more about the “faeren”, the quirky “fairies” of Wilson’s world who are run more like a trade union than a fairy court. I just loved the description of Thorn and his hand carved “inscriptor” which turns out to be a wooden typewriter!
As with Dandelion Fire I have to warn that this is not a sweet tale for little children. There are battles, injuries, deaths, blood, and spine chilling dangers that Henry and his friends and family have to face. The book is also the longest of the three, so again I would think more suited to Year Seven and up than younger readers.
For older readers there is an opportunity to see what good fantasy writing is all about: there is no slavish following of hackneyed formulas, the characters are developed with distinctive voices, there are passages of really fine and poetical writing, and, I’m pleased to say, no danger of confusing right and wrong, good and evil. The normally vexed problem of how people move from world to world is dealt with in a creative way, with lots of tongue in cheek fun concerning the apparent disappearance of Henry’s Kansas home and how the local community deals with that.
Andrew Lack
Head of the Odell Learning Resources Centre.
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