Harry Who? Septimus Heap Makes Me Believe in Magyk
Written: Oct 04 '05
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Stewart loves the action. I loved the language.
Cons: Too much action for my taste. Too much language for Stew's.
The Bottom Line: In which the author's still a little hoarse.
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| plorentz's Full Review: |
I can't say I've ever cared too much for stories about dragons and wizards. I mean, yes, of course, I was a big time geek growing up, but not of the D&D variety. When it came to finding far-off places and taking imaginary journeys through books, Rand McNally was more my thing (and still is). There's a lady I work with who reminds me every day that she's sure I'd love those damned Harry Potter books crowding the entrance at every single one of my favorite book stores - used or new - only for me to remind her, in the most diplomatic terms I can muster, that as far as I'm concerned, J.K. Rowling and her blasted franchise can go suck an egg.
Things are a little more complicated these days, now that we have a real, live, almost-eleven-year-old Harry Potter fan and bona fide dragon enthusiast living with us (the adoption will be final soon); and if James and I have been working hard to broaden the kid's literary horizons at storytime, we've also had to set aside some of our own anti-wizard-fiction prejudices. Up until recently, neither of us had been much impressed by the wizards-and-dragons books Stewart has picked out for storytime. If anything, I'd enjoyed these books only inasmuch as it was fun to watch Stewart enjoying them. But that changed - a little - with Angie Sage's book (with illustrations by Mark Zug), simply titled Magyk, the first title in a series about a pre-teen wizard named Septimus Heap. I'd picked this book up at the library, right around the beginning of the school year (just weeks after the release of the latest Harry Potter book). I knew, of course, that Stewart would approve, but after reading the first chapter, I myself was struck by the immediacy and emotional vividness of Sage's writing.
Four weeks later, we still don't have a copy of Harry Potter Episode 6, and no one's complaining. Storytime, which typically involves me reading aloud for 15 or 20 minutes, stretched into a nightly hourlong epic while we read Magyk, Stewart greedily asking for "just one more chapter" as my voice grew increasingly scratchy and withered, my tongue rebelling against Sage's more alliterative turns of phrase. But with the book's generally brief chapters, it was a difficult request to turn down; and when I could go no further, Stewart took the book and read ahead in bed; he carried it with him every time we got in the car, doing his best not to reveal any spoilers. When he did finally, and somewhat smugly, reveal the answer to the book's central mystery - namely, the question "Who is Septimus Heap?" - I may not have been surprised. Though Sage goes to great pains to build the story's suspense, I could see the ending coming from three hundred pages away. Still, there's a lot to enjoy along the way; knowing exactly where the road leads doesn't make the road trip any less enjoyable. (And at about 550 pages, it's a pretty long one).
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Ordinary Wizard Silas Heap is on his way home from an herb-gathering trip in the Forest when he finds an infant girl in the snow. Knowing that his wife Sarah already has her hands full, having just given birth to their seventh son Septimus, but also knowing that this child will surely die if he doesn't take her home with him, he tucks the child into his jacket; only to arrive home to the shrieking of the midwife carrying the body of his infant son away bundled up in a bloody blanket. In their grief, Silas and Sarah raise the girl as their own, naming her Jenna.
Ten years on, and after the brutal assassination of the Queen and her Extraordinary Wizard Alther Mella, Wizards have lived in a state of constant persecution at the hands of the Supreme Custodian, a crony of DomDaniel, the ghost of a once-powerful Necromancer seeking once again to regain his status as Extraordinary Wizard and ruler of the kingdom. In order to do this, he must first find the Queen's daughter (who was stolen away to safety after the Queen's murder), and kill her. When Silas and Sarah learn the true identity of their only daughter, and that a Hunter has been assigned to assassinate her, they, with the help of the ghost of Alther Mella and the current ExtraOrdinary Wizard (and longtime rival of Silas) Marcia Overstrand, go into hiding at the cottage of Silas's Aunt Zelda, a White Witch who lives on a remote island in the Marram Marshes. There, they struggle to keep Jenna safe, while trying to find a way to defeat the evil DomDaniel and restore the throne to its rightful heir, and bring peace, harmony, and Magyk (the good variety, that is) back to the kingdom.
If you're like me, that plot synopsis most likely has you recoiling in disdain and reaching for something - err- a little more of this time and place. I'm certainly re-reading those last two paragraphs and wondering exactly how I came to actually enjoy this book.
It could be the fact that I identified with the Heap family of this book, the way Wizards and their families are demonized and scapegoated by DomDaniel's terror regime - it reminded me of the article I'd just read in Isthmus (Madison's alt-weekly) about the proposed anti-gay marriage amendment to our state's constitution, which featured a quote from one of the amendment's advocates suggesting that conservatives have been extraordinarily tolerant of gays and lesbians, allowing them (meaning us) not only to live wherever we please, but also to adopt children into destructive, motherless, fatherless homes. Halfway through the book, I found Angie Sage's story seguing organically into a meaningful discussion with Stewart of words like "propaganda", relating events in the story to events we were seeing on the news, especially the devastatingly propagandistic coverage of Hurricane Katrina. This may be a book about dragons and wizards, but like the best of fantasy fiction, it's a story that often relates to our current social quandaries, and it presents those themes in words and images and narratives that captivated my son.
But it wasn't so much the story - which, as I suggested before, struck me as pretty predictable - that captivated me. It was Angie Sage's writing itself, full of simple, poetic descriptions, and rhythmic waves of mood and drama (and not too many 20 dollar words or unwieldy character names). My Inner Master Thespian - stage-starved since my recent Dadhood - fairly gloried in her language as I read aloud every night; but even reading silently, I was struck by the way Sage could convey complex thought processes and swirls of emotion in straightforward, almost intuitive prose.
There were times when I found myself craving a little less action, and a little more character depth. As much as I enjoyed reading about the Heaps, I didn't find myself really caring about them specifically all that often. (I was generally more interested in the social consequences of DomDaniel's rule.) Perhaps, with the identity of the real Septimus Heap revealed, further volumes of this series will concern themselves more with the characters as individuals and as a family, but here, it's all about plot plot plot. Which is great for Stewart, but less satisfying for me. Still, we in Lorentzland are eagerly awaiting Volume 2 of the Septimus saga.
Recommended:
Yes
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plorentz
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Member: Paul Lorentz
Location: The Land of Limburger and Leinenkugel's
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