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Monday, July 26, 2004

Christian Alternative to Harry Potter

They had me at "an Anglican vicar, onetime roadie for the Sex Pistols and former all-around sinner, was roaring across the Yorkshire moors on his Yamaha XV1100 in a lightning storm when the idea for his hit Christian children's book, "Shadowmancer," came to him."

2 Comments:

Victor R. Volkman said...: Yes, but the villain is an "evil vicar". I guess they're happy to have an evil vicar if G-d wins out in the end. Bizarre.

For those of you who don't like the Spanish Inquisition just to read a web link from NYT or other pubs, we recommed BugMeNot.com which provides one-click access to any number of online periodicals without recourse to divulging or pretending to give your demographic details.

Props to NPR's On the Media, you can listen here on RealAudio or wait until Tuesday for the transcript.; 10:25 AM
Victor R. Volkman said...: The reviews on Amazon.com are uniformly mediocre to bad...

Demural as frightening as a cereal box villain, June 25, 2004
Reviewer: burgs66 (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews
Comparisons must STOP!!! It is grossly unfair to compare this author's work with Rowling and Tolkien. The aforementioned authors are geniuses, with Rowling creating a renaissance of "children's" books (indeed, we've seen some wonderfully written children's books that challenge children since the publication of The Sorcerer's Stone AND it's OK once more for adults to read children's books - yay!), and Tolkien single-handedly created a genre and wrote one of the great classics of the 20th century. THE great classic, according to numerous polls in Britain, which identify The Lord of the Rings as the most influential book of the 20th century.

Shadowmancer *barely* works, and it does so by the thinnest of margins. It has the distinct feel of a rough draft, with misplaced metaphors on virtually every page. It is written in fragments that hop from one scene to the next, introducing new characters that we care less about than the ones we were introduced to moments before, are given bizarre histories of these characters that are more senseless than the histories we know of fairy tale characters, and has the overall cohesiveness of paper that has been put through a shredder.

In any fantasy, whether it is aimed at children or adults, everything within it must be credible. The good magic, the bad magic - everything. In here, there is very little that is credible, even though the author is using well established religious themes as the focus, differentiating only by giving the various deities and angels different names, with the conspicuous exception of Raphael. I say that the book *barely* works because there is at least a hint of inventiveness, but even that hint of inventiveness disappears due to a distinct lack of credibility. The Varigals? Ridiculous! And the magic that Demural calls upon in the beginning of the book is ludicrous, and I laughed out loud when I read the scene.

I should care immensely for Kate and Thomas, and I don't. They are the "stars" of the book; however, they are largely ineffectual, if not entirely useless. I don't see the purpose for either of them. Once Raphah arrives on the scene, their necessity to the story completely disappears. With the "cliffhanger", I should be excited at reading the next book in the series. Personally, I can't believe there's going to be a second book.

I read that Taylor believed that villains in children's books weren't scary enough, and that was his impetus to create the wicked Vicar. Well, in order for something to be frightening, it needs to be believable. Obadiah Demural, because of a complete lack of believability with regard to his reactions, interactions, speech - everything about him - was about as frightening as Count Chocula. He's nothing more than a mean man who kicks his deformed servant. Wow. Terrifying.

Taylor just signed a lucrative deal with Putnam for his next six books. If his publishers don't insist on better writing, storytelling, and editing for his next several books(and they better have a whole team of crack editors ready and waiting for all of his manuscripts), they will find the rest of his books failing as quickly as Shadowmancer did. After spending a few weeks at #1 on the NYT bestseller list for children's books, it took a largely unprecedented nosedive. There was a reason for this nosedive: it's not a good book.; 3:56 PM

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Monday, July 26, 2004

Christian Alternative to Harry Potter

2 Comments:

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