Monday, 25 May 2020 03:03 pm
Book Review: Egg & Spoon
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deckardcanineGregory Maguire is best known for writing Wicked. I saw the stage musical, and my mom told me a few ways it differs from the book. The latter sounds stranger. I figured on letting my first read of Maguire be something I didn't already know pretty well.
The dreary start I mentioned before involves Elena, about 13 years old, the lone surviving underage girl in the famished village of Miersk during the reign of the last tsar of Russia. Her father is dead, her mother is on death's doorstep, and her older brother is involuntarily drafted for labor elsewhere. Fortunately, she's right to believe in fairy tales, being in one.
Elena's fortune begins its improbable change when a train makes an emergency stop in Miersk and she makes the semi-friendly acquaintance of Ekaterina, a same-age aristocrat heading for St. Petersburg to present herself, reluctantly, as one of many potential wives for the tsar's godson, Anton, and give him a specially ordered Fabergé egg. A set of accidents sees the train leave with Elena and without "Cat" or the egg. Fearing dire consequences if found out -- and, yes, sensing opportunity -- Elena keeps up the facade of being Cat for as long as she can, helped by her great aunt's poor vision and then the servants' own worries for themselves. She also picks up another egg, which may or may not be special....
I've noted when fantasy books take a while to really get into fantasy aspects, but this may be a new record. Apart from Elena professing belief in what Cat considers kid stuff, there is absolutely no sign of anything unworldly until more than a hundred pages in. Then we learn that Russian folklore is at least partly true: Elena meets the Firebird, a wandering Cat meets Baba Yaga, and they all eventually meet the ice dragon, whose name is hard to spell on English keyboards.
To me, Baba Yaga is the highlight of the book. She and her magical slaves, including the signature chicken-legged house she calls Dumb Doma and a snarky talking kitten she calls Mewster, provide the vast majority of the humor, despite the whole fish-out-of-water setup. (You could make the case that introducing humor so late is just as awkward as introducing magic so late.) It helps that her chaotic mind's unmoored even in time, letting her make anachronistic references like the Robin Williams genie does. She has a history of eating children, but once you give her a reason not to, she's mainly just sassy. I think she grows more virtuous throughout the story in spite of herself. That fits with what Mom tells me about the Wicked book: No one's especially good or evil. That certainly applies to characters in general herein, alternating between selfish and generous. I think I like Anton best, because he has the most innocent, idyllic brand of selfishness.
As for why "Miss Yaga" would help the heroes, there is an overarching problem affecting Russia if not the world. It manifests as abnormally warm weather and a disruption of magic. You might call it anthropogenic climate change, but it doesn't work the way we usually hear. That dragon is supposed to cause the seasons by sleeping for months and breathing fire only when awake, but he can't easily sleep over the sound of...human greed. A Space Whale Aesop (warning: TV Tropes) if ever I read one.
That about covers the weirdness of the piece, but the part that really left me scratching my head was the choice of narrator: a monk writing from prison. I guess Maguire felt like piling onto the gloomy perspective, but the monk gets only a brief role in the events, so we're left to wonder how he gathered so many details, even with his power to use birds as extra eyes. To add to the confusion, he mixes first- and third-person references to himself. He doesn't seem insane, and I don't get the impression that the book is poorly edited otherwise, so what gives?
I'm not entirely sure about the reason for the title. Eggs feature prominently; spoons do not. The narrator does bring up the metaphor of a balancing game by that name, but on that basis, you could title almost any story Egg & Spoon. I suppose in a pinch, you could think of Cat having been born with a silver spoon in her mouth.
The ending is fair enough, mostly positive but not as dismissive as "happily ever after." There might even be room for a sequel. I'd sooner expect another musical adaptation. It's pretty enjoyable overall, but it doesn't put me in a hurry to read Wicked.
One of my birthday presents was a Discworld volume, Thief of Time. Instead of plunging into that one, I've now picked up one that comes before it, eheh, chronologically: The Fifth Elephant.
The dreary start I mentioned before involves Elena, about 13 years old, the lone surviving underage girl in the famished village of Miersk during the reign of the last tsar of Russia. Her father is dead, her mother is on death's doorstep, and her older brother is involuntarily drafted for labor elsewhere. Fortunately, she's right to believe in fairy tales, being in one.
Elena's fortune begins its improbable change when a train makes an emergency stop in Miersk and she makes the semi-friendly acquaintance of Ekaterina, a same-age aristocrat heading for St. Petersburg to present herself, reluctantly, as one of many potential wives for the tsar's godson, Anton, and give him a specially ordered Fabergé egg. A set of accidents sees the train leave with Elena and without "Cat" or the egg. Fearing dire consequences if found out -- and, yes, sensing opportunity -- Elena keeps up the facade of being Cat for as long as she can, helped by her great aunt's poor vision and then the servants' own worries for themselves. She also picks up another egg, which may or may not be special....
I've noted when fantasy books take a while to really get into fantasy aspects, but this may be a new record. Apart from Elena professing belief in what Cat considers kid stuff, there is absolutely no sign of anything unworldly until more than a hundred pages in. Then we learn that Russian folklore is at least partly true: Elena meets the Firebird, a wandering Cat meets Baba Yaga, and they all eventually meet the ice dragon, whose name is hard to spell on English keyboards.
To me, Baba Yaga is the highlight of the book. She and her magical slaves, including the signature chicken-legged house she calls Dumb Doma and a snarky talking kitten she calls Mewster, provide the vast majority of the humor, despite the whole fish-out-of-water setup. (You could make the case that introducing humor so late is just as awkward as introducing magic so late.) It helps that her chaotic mind's unmoored even in time, letting her make anachronistic references like the Robin Williams genie does. She has a history of eating children, but once you give her a reason not to, she's mainly just sassy. I think she grows more virtuous throughout the story in spite of herself. That fits with what Mom tells me about the Wicked book: No one's especially good or evil. That certainly applies to characters in general herein, alternating between selfish and generous. I think I like Anton best, because he has the most innocent, idyllic brand of selfishness.
As for why "Miss Yaga" would help the heroes, there is an overarching problem affecting Russia if not the world. It manifests as abnormally warm weather and a disruption of magic. You might call it anthropogenic climate change, but it doesn't work the way we usually hear. That dragon is supposed to cause the seasons by sleeping for months and breathing fire only when awake, but he can't easily sleep over the sound of...human greed. A Space Whale Aesop (warning: TV Tropes) if ever I read one.
That about covers the weirdness of the piece, but the part that really left me scratching my head was the choice of narrator: a monk writing from prison. I guess Maguire felt like piling onto the gloomy perspective, but the monk gets only a brief role in the events, so we're left to wonder how he gathered so many details, even with his power to use birds as extra eyes. To add to the confusion, he mixes first- and third-person references to himself. He doesn't seem insane, and I don't get the impression that the book is poorly edited otherwise, so what gives?
I'm not entirely sure about the reason for the title. Eggs feature prominently; spoons do not. The narrator does bring up the metaphor of a balancing game by that name, but on that basis, you could title almost any story Egg & Spoon. I suppose in a pinch, you could think of Cat having been born with a silver spoon in her mouth.
The ending is fair enough, mostly positive but not as dismissive as "happily ever after." There might even be room for a sequel. I'd sooner expect another musical adaptation. It's pretty enjoyable overall, but it doesn't put me in a hurry to read Wicked.
One of my birthday presents was a Discworld volume, Thief of Time. Instead of plunging into that one, I've now picked up one that comes before it, eheh, chronologically: The Fifth Elephant.