I’d seen some reviews of Verdigris Deep, by Frances Hardinge, that looked intriguing so I downloaded a copy. It sounded like something I’d enjoy, maybe even something I’d love.
Nope. But it’s not the book, it’s me. I can explain.
For one thing the review I remember best didn’t quite give the right impression, or at least I didn’t get the right impression from it. It said the books started out reminiscent of Edward Eager and then became numinous and deep, handling tricky issues of will and duty. Or something like that. The problem is, I was envisioning Susan Cooper, and what I got was Alan Garner.
As it happens, I don’t actually like Alan Garner. This is a bit odd, because he writes within a trope I enjoy very much: a bunch of kids encounter magic within our world and have adventures. That’s the basic storyline as written by E. Nesbit or Edward Eager; to elevate it to something I really love, the magic needs to have importance and consequence, as in The Dark is Rising or even the Harry Potter books (if you can call the wizarding world “our world”). It’s not that Garner doesn’t write well, either, not by a long chalk.
In any good book about magic, the magic is powerful, and like any powerful tool it can be misused; either due to accidental misuse (as in Half Magic) or bad guys using it for dark purposes, things get out of hand and must be brought back under control. Quests must be undertaken or battles fought. In the end generally the magic goes away; either it’s passed on to someone else, or it needs to go off to be renewed. Sometimes it goes out of the world entirely. (This is one way in which the Harry Potter books don’t entirely follow the magic-in-our-world trope; the magic hasn’t gone anywhere at the end, though the effects that are visible to Muggles and threaten Wizarding secrecy are ended.) Afterwards, people forget about what happened or are left with a life-changing memory.
But in all of the books I like, what was done was worth doing, whether to save the world or just for the adventure of it. In Alan Garner’s books, and now in this one by Francis Hardinge, the magic itself is evil and afterwards the protagonists are left wishing it had never happened. I’m left with the feeling that I’ve been reading about something that should never have happened. In that way it’s similar to a horror story, and the horror genre is a popular one. I think plenty of people would like this book a lot.
It’s just not for me.
I thought I was the only one in the entire world who felt this way.
That right there is what I love most about the internet. CS Lewis says something like, “Friendship begins when someone says, “You, too? I thought I was the only one who…” and it seems to happen so much more online.