Will Wilder: The Relic of
Perilous Falls. By Raymond Arroyo. Crown. $16.99.
The Secrets of Solace. By
Jaleigh Johnson. Delacorte Press. $16.99.
The Elementia Chronicles, Book
Three: Herobrine’s Message. By Sean Fay Wolfe. Harper. $9.99.
Predictability of plot and
characters is not a reason to avoid preteen adventure/fantasy novels, but it
does make it difficult to choose among them. Whichever one – whichever ones – a reader selects, he or she can be
sure that there will be evil elements, dire dangers, fantastic family secrets,
scenes of fear and worry and (almost) doom, plus the usual mentors and
companions and nemeses required to make the stories exciting. Indeed, excitement
is the primary reason-for-being of these adventure/fantasy books;
characterization inevitably takes a back seat, when it is present at all. To
the extent that an author can manage a consistent thrill ride, a book will
attract at least some coterie of readers. And if it falls short or is not
engaging enough, there are many, many more where it came from. So Raymond
Arroyo’s Will Wilder: The Relic of
Perilous Falls, a series opener, will be a lot of fun for some readers and
can readily be abandoned by anyone who is not immediately gripped by it.
Actually, the book is immediately
gripping, starting in high-flown fashion with a quotation from King Lear about “monsters of the deep”
and proceeding to an opening background scene, set during World War II, that is
as chilling as a reader could wish. After that, though, things follow a common
and predictable path. Headstrong 12-year-old protagonist Will Wilder has an
apparently straightforward family: younger brother and sister, nice mom and
dad. His Aunt Lucille looks like a sweet little old lady but is a bit on the
unusual side, and readers will instantly realize that she will turn out to be
very important; but before Will himself figures that out (he is a touch slow on
the uptake), he will jeopardize the entire family and the town where they live.
Will causes an accident that seriously injures his brother, and realizes that
he can make things right by borrowing a healing relic from the museum that Aunt
Lucille runs. So he takes it – and promptly unleashes the sort of unimaginable
evil that is all too easy to imagine when it comes to books like this one. The
emergence of deadly creatures from the waters around Perilous Falls (a town
whose name alone tells readers what to expect from the book) is coupled with
Will’s discovery that his family is (of course) not as plain and forthright as
he had thought, and that he himself is involved in an ancient prophecy (yes,
one of those) and has powers that he has been coming into only gradually (yup)
– powers that let him see the encroaching evil that is invisible to others. Not
a smidgen of this is new; in fact, the blend of sometimes-effective humor with
action appears deliberately to recall the Indiana Jones movies, although
nothing in the book justifies that opening Shakespeare quotation except on the
most superficial level. Will and his inevitable friends and companions,
especially Andrew and Simon, are interesting although not especially
distinctive, and Aunt Lucille is a lot of fun because of the contrast between
her appearance and her abilities (although, again, that sort of thing is
nothing new). Arroyo seems to revel in
the detailed descriptions of the demons and assorted baddies, and readers may
enjoy that aspect of the writing – plus the overall pacing, which is handled
skillfully. But those who start the book and decide it is not for them can
readily switch to something else.
Such as, for example, The Secrets of Solace. Arroyo’s book is
aimed primarily at boys; this one by Jaleigh Johnson targets girls. It is
actually the second book in a not-quite-series that opened with The Mark of the Dragonfly, an engagingly
unwieldy novel that somewhat uneasily combined elements of steampunk with
more-traditional fairy tales. The earlier book featured the standard faux medieval model of kingdoms and fiefdoms
populated by high-living royalty and by commoners left to scavenge for their
livelihood, was all about the (usual) importance of friendship and camaraderie,
included shapeshifters (“chamelins”) and other unusual-but-typical characters,
and was most distinguished by having the inevitable quest journey occur via an
uncommon method: on a fascinatingly described train called the 401. The Secrets of Solace does not continue
the earlier book, though: it stands pretty much on its own, although readers
who did read Johnson’s previous novel will find this one considerably richer
and deeper. That would be a good thing, since The Secrets of Solace, although perfectly adequate in plot and
characterization, lacks some of the intriguing complexity and steampunk sensibility
of The Mark of the Dragonfly. What
happens in The Secrets of Solace is
that a typical central character – a disheveled orphan who is a loner and keeps
getting in trouble (and is thus a blend of several tropes of adventure/fantasy
for preteens) – lives in a land called Solace, where she is training as a
cataloguer. In the course of her work, Lina Winterbock discovers a wrecked
airship in a cave that no one with adult proportions can enter. She decides to
restore it to prove her worth and (naturally) find her destiny. Also seeking
destiny is Ozben, secondary heir of one of two dynasties that are at war
elsewhere in the world. Ozben too is lonely and trying to figure out where he
belongs, and he and Lina – who discovers his true identity – are soon bonding,
and the story is told in alternating chapters from their perspectives. The
growing closeness of Lina and Ozben makes both of them targets of assassins,
and matters are complicated because the archivists of Solace are determined not
to take sides in the war going on outside their land’s borders. The pacing of The Secrets of Solace is a little odd,
even if the events themselves are generally unsurprising. For example, Lina’s
parents’ death has been followed by the emotional withdrawal from her of her
guardian, Zara – a state of affairs not explained until it is resolved rather
abruptly late in the book. Similarly, Lina has an antagonist, a fellow
apprentice named Simon, whose one-dimensional determination to put Lina in her
place turns out – again, late in the book and rather too abruptly – to be
understandable and based on Simon’s own inner life. The Secrets of Solace is all about the typical themes of love,
betrayal and sacrifice, and the less-typical one of putting scholarship at the
center of one’s life: the concept of Solace as a nation is one of the novel’s
most interesting elements. However, if that theme and the comparative lack of
background information on the world that Johnson has created make the book less
than gripping, a reader can quite easily move on.
For instance, to Herobrine’s Message, the conclusion of
Sean Fay Wolfe’s Minecraft-based trilogy, The
Elementia Chronicles. The first two books of this fandom fantasy, Quest for Justice and The New Order, were comparatively
standard-length novels, but this conclusion is anything but: it sprawls through
nearly 800 pages. Intended from the start only for Minecraft fans and fanciers,
the trilogy is self-limiting in its reach and its expectation that readers will
know and recognize the characters and the situations in which they find
themselves (although Herobrine, interestingly, is not a character in Minecraft, despite many players’ speculations
about him). Some of Wolfe’s writing echoes that in much better fantasies, as in
dialogue that recalls attitudes toward Voldemort in the Harry Potter books:
“‘You know, Stan, that’s something that’s really bothered me,’ Sally spat out
in annoyance. ‘You know who Lord
Tenebris really is. And you know what he’s doing to Elementia, and thousands of
other Minecraft servers, as we speak. He’s the most evil and destructive force
that Minecraft has ever faced, so the least you can do is call him by his real
name.’ Stan shuddered. It was true. He, along with the rest of his friends, had
avoided calling Lord Tenebris by his true name. It just seemed that if they
didn’t say it, they wouldn’t have to face it.” But of course the good guys have
no choice but to face Lord Tenebris – whose true name is Herobrine – which also
means confronting their own worries, uncertainties and all the rest. The whole
of The Elementia Chronicles is
resolutely serious in tone, which is too bad, because the series is badly in
need of occasional lightening-up. Some elements of it are unintentionally
funny, such as calling one land Nocturia, which is the medical condition in
which people awake at night because they need to urinate. But the writing in
general is intended to be intense and even dark, despite that fact that Wolfe
and/or his editors do not always seem to know the meanings of some of the words
Wolfe uses: “‘Yeah, someone threw a brick through our door,’ replied Ben
forebodingly [sic], gesturing to the
wooden door and brick lying in the empty doorframe, through which the
boisterous [sic] anger of the crowd
was still raging.” Good does triumph over evil by the end of Herobrine’s Message, as if there was
ever any doubt, and Minecraft fans who enjoyed the first two books of The Elementia Chronicles will find that
the third one wraps things up neatly, if scarcely in any surprising way. Those
who are not Minecraft devotees or who, for one reason or another, find
themselves less than enthralled by this extended conclusion of Wolfe’s saga,
will have no trouble at all finding explorations of the good-vs.-evil theme,
presented in various more-or-less entertaining ways, in other books. Lots of
other books.
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