When I begin to really enjoy the work of a certain author, I tend to read everything I can get my hands on. Thus it has been a very Shannon Hale kind of year for me. Having recently read and enjoyed several of her books, it almost felt like a no-brainer to pick up River Secrets, the third of her "Books of Bayern," the mid-grade/young adult fantasy series that began with the acclaimed The Goose Girl.
Notice I said almost. Because I do confess to some trepidation in picking up this third Bayern tale. I loved Goose Girl: talked it up far and wide as a terrific novel, put it on my list of books I will definitely introduce to my daughter in a few years. When I moved on to Enna Burning, I expected more of the same kind of reading magic, that I would be transported back to the familiar world of Bayern (Hale's fictional Grimm-Brotherish kind of fairy tale world) and settle happily down for another literary ride. But Enna Burning unsettled me, for all sorts of reasons, not the least of which was that I felt the fairy-tale innocence of the first story turned a bit dark and ambiguous for my taste. (Hey, I guess it's bound to happen when an author hangs out regularly with the Grimm Brothers.) So I just wasn't all that sure how I felt about moving forward to the third book.
Still, despite some bumpy patches in my Hale reading this year, she has been an author who, by and large, I trust. I trust her to present characters I care about, a story that compels me to keep turning pages, and perhaps best of all, creative turns of phrase that make my writer heart sing. So I picked up River Secrets and hoped, hoped, hoped for a good outcome.
I'm now so glad I did. While I don't think River Secrets quite lives up to the very best of her work, it's nonetheless very good. What made me happiest was that I felt that I had at last "returned to Bayern" -- to the familiar sights, sounds, characters, and tones that I first enjoyed in Goose Girl. What surprised me most was how little time we actually spend in Bayern in the pages of this book, and how that turned out to be one of the most interesting things about it.
Spending Time in Tira
If you've read the first two books of Bayern, you'll know that the kingdom has a history of conflict with the neighboring kingdom of Tira. Although a lot of the plot has been driven by the ongoing tension between the two kingdoms, until now, we've not met many individual Tirans -- and the ones we have met have been baddies. One Tiran in particular has been a rather conniving and slimy villain. We've mostly seen them at the height of war, when they're out to trick or hurt the good guys we care about. People like Isi (once Princess of Kildenree, now Queen of Bayern) King Geric, and their faithful friends and servants Talone, Enna, Finn, Conrad, Razo and others.
River Secrets spends most of its time on the ongoing tension between the two cultures, but interestingly, puts a lot of the "good guys" we care most about actually in Tira. Isi and Geric are mostly off-stage, busy as they are with running Bayern and learning to be parents to their brand new baby boy, but all the other familiar and beloved characters I mention end up on a diplomatic peace mission to Tira following the end of the recent war (which Bayern won). It's an uneasy mission, because many people in Tira are still angry that they lost and hopeful that they can get their honor back and maybe still conquer Bayern in the bargain. Assassination attempts on the life of the Bayern ambassador (a spunky young lady cousin of Geric's) abound, and the uneasy truce seems ready to unravel numerous times.
Written from a third person point of view, each of the Bayern books nonetheless has a different protagonist or "stand-out" character, which makes these books a little different from series that follow the perspective of one character throughout. Isi's story was told in the first book, and the second belonged to Enna. River Secrets, in a delightful and surprising twist, belongs to Razo, the short, gawky adolescent boy from the forest who has mostly been comic relief or a helpful sidekick/friend until now. Having the sidekick move to the forefront gives this book a different feel, as does the fact that our protagonist is male.
Hale develops Razo's character in ways I didn't expect. He's always seemed a bit slow on the uptake, though unfailingly loyal, and while that impression is deepened in this story, readers also begin to understand some of Razo's personal strengths. Indeed, we get to learn those strengths along with Razo, who at first simply cannot understand why he has been chosen to be part of this mission. Everyone knows he's a lousy fighter, especially next to his talented friend Finn, a very able swordsman. Nor does he have great strength. The youngest of several brothers, he's used to being the brunt of jokes and the skinny loser in most wrestling matches.
So it surprises Razo a lot to learn that he has talents that really do come in useful on this mission. Some of them he learns by experience (keep an eye on that sling he's spent years hunting with in the forest) and some he learns after Talone, his captain, shares with him about why he was chosen. Some of those talents include Razo's sharp observational skills, again honed during his years of forest life. Another is his capacity for friendship and surprising willingness to step inside a new culture, even an "alien" and very different culture like Tira's. Hale does a good job of showing us, through the eyes of our familiar Bayern characters, just how different Tira's culture is, right down to clothing colors and different kinds of foods. Those differences make for a challenging adjustment for the Bayern peace contingent; it's Razo who begins to enjoy some of the differences and to try to find ways to bridge the two worlds. Given the violence that keeps erupting, and a mysterious and sinister plot that threatens to derail the peace talks, his culture-bridging is more perilous than it sounds.
A Bayern book wouldn't be a Bayern book without plenty of sword fighting and adventure, but it wouldn't be complete without some romance too (hello, young girl readers). Razo's romance is unexpectedly sweet, though it offers some highly comic moments as well -- if you thought he was clueless about life in general, wait till you see him in the romance department. It also gives Hale the opportunity to explore, in-depth, the character of a Tiran girl named Dasha, who is very much her own person but will also remind many readers of Enna and Isi at their finest moments.
Enna herself, though she gets more limited page-time here, feels like she's returned to her better self after the harrowing things she went through in the last book. Hale provides some good glimpses of her continued growth, though she keeps the spotlight on Razo. Enna's fire-speech is under firm control now. The first two Bayern books explored the "languages" of wind and fire. Given that, and the title of this one, I feel like I give nothing away when I mention that this one explores the language of water. It gets less full treatment, perhaps, than the other two elements, but it's still central to the story and quite fascinating.
I think I'm back to an "eleven and up" recommendation with this book. There's some moderate violence in the fight scenes, and one rather overt flirtation when a kitchen girl is trying to get information from Razo (his cluelessness actually helps here) but I think most late mid-grade readers would probably feel ready for this one.
I'm glad I read River Secrets. I finally felt like I'd made a return visit to the Bayern I'd come to know, and in a surprising twist, got to leave it and see another fictional culture through the eyes of familiar characters. The humanizing of the Tirans, Razo's growth as a person (literal and figurative), and the romantic subplot were all handled deftly and well. I think I will trod with greater confidence toward Forest Born, the fourth and supposedly final book of Bayern.
~befus, 2009
River Secrets by Shannon Hale Bloomsbury, 2006 ISBN 1582349010
Razo has never been anything but ordinary. He's not very fast, or tall, or strong, so when he's invited to join an elite mission escorting the ambassa...More at HotBookSale
Razo has no idea why he was chosen to be a soldier. He can barely swing a sword, and his brothers are forever wrestling him to the ground. Razo is sur...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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