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ageorgiadis 's review for:
Wildwood
by Colin Meloy
An Ordinary Day (In Portlandia)
A traditional story told well.
A young girl is biking around town with her one year-old brother, when they are accosted by a murder of crows. The crows grab her brother and carry him into the nearby “Impassable Wilderness” abutting modern-day Portland. No one goes there, and no one comes out. She must try to find him.
Prue McKeel sets out on a standard adventure, part Alice in Wonderland, part Lemony Snicket (I am told), and certainly part Redwall and LOTR. Her tale proceeds efficiently and capably, and despite its borrowed conceits I enjoyed it greatly. While the story may not excite a lot of passion in the reader, for the outcome seems certain from mid-novel, the plot and “reveals” unfold classically and comfortably. It was somewhat disappointing to have armed conflict in its ending, as in so much fantasy nowadays, but Meloy keeps the fighting to a minimum and sets up the series’ next novel nicely. He infuses his anthropomorphic woodland creatures with a reasonable set of values and reactions, and doesn’t linger on accents/cultures/tribalism overlong.
Of course, the author lives in Portland and cleverly uses the local geography and sites to whimsical advantage. Mostly. His writing does teem with clumsy and unnecessary insertions of hipster culture. Our twelve year-old heroine practices breathing techniques from her yoga class. A critical scene includes someone recounting “I was out looking for rudabaga or something” (emphasis mine), there are talking animals who diatribe against industrialized humans “destroying our world,” and every 50 pages Meloy treats us to a distractingly complex vocabulary lesson. A few character names are quite lazy, too (e.g. Iphigenia and Hydrangea). This is unsurprising considering the author’s penchant for the same in his self-consciously complex song lyrics. Luckily such offenses are relatively infrequent and not too distracting.
I’ll give the next novel a shot. It is crisply written, sparsely but elegantly illustrated in a “Fantastic Mr. Fox” styling, and certainly holds potential for further adventures into its Impassable Wilderness.
A traditional story told well.
A young girl is biking around town with her one year-old brother, when they are accosted by a murder of crows. The crows grab her brother and carry him into the nearby “Impassable Wilderness” abutting modern-day Portland. No one goes there, and no one comes out. She must try to find him.
Prue McKeel sets out on a standard adventure, part Alice in Wonderland, part Lemony Snicket (I am told), and certainly part Redwall and LOTR. Her tale proceeds efficiently and capably, and despite its borrowed conceits I enjoyed it greatly. While the story may not excite a lot of passion in the reader, for the outcome seems certain from mid-novel, the plot and “reveals” unfold classically and comfortably. It was somewhat disappointing to have armed conflict in its ending, as in so much fantasy nowadays, but Meloy keeps the fighting to a minimum and sets up the series’ next novel nicely. He infuses his anthropomorphic woodland creatures with a reasonable set of values and reactions, and doesn’t linger on accents/cultures/tribalism overlong.
Of course, the author lives in Portland and cleverly uses the local geography and sites to whimsical advantage. Mostly. His writing does teem with clumsy and unnecessary insertions of hipster culture. Our twelve year-old heroine practices breathing techniques from her yoga class. A critical scene includes someone recounting “I was out looking for rudabaga or something” (emphasis mine), there are talking animals who diatribe against industrialized humans “destroying our world,” and every 50 pages Meloy treats us to a distractingly complex vocabulary lesson. A few character names are quite lazy, too (e.g. Iphigenia and Hydrangea). This is unsurprising considering the author’s penchant for the same in his self-consciously complex song lyrics. Luckily such offenses are relatively infrequent and not too distracting.
I’ll give the next novel a shot. It is crisply written, sparsely but elegantly illustrated in a “Fantastic Mr. Fox” styling, and certainly holds potential for further adventures into its Impassable Wilderness.