Chain Reading

A deer man and an eagleman, faeries and gnomes, elves and priestesses--grab your popcorn and settle down. T. A. Barron spins his tale of Avalon with ingenuity. And boys who can fly are just cool.

As you can probably tell, I liked this book. Two boys are born in the year of darkness--one is destined to be the child of darkness, potentially the downfall of Avalon. The other is the true heir of Merlin, the one who can save Avalon from destruction. One is plagued by bad luck wherever he goes; the other is the guardian of a mysterious staff. Having grown up as brothers and spent years separated, they journey towards each other, a journey that leads them to the point of death, to the Lady of the Lake, to woodroot and to fireroot. Their fellow-conspirators, enemies, cohorts, and skull-crackers: a very cranky priestess of Avalon, Elli (the girl), several faeries, a mischievous hoolah, and a bat that talks baby language.

This is, unfortunately, about as far as one can throw it, unless we are going to kvetch about Elli. She is supposed to be a uniting force between races (you can probably already tell that there are plenty of them), but she holds the most idiotic grudges, playing nasty tricks, and resorting to physical violence in a quite sexist fashion. Barron apparently thinks it's funny to have everybody hide the fact that they like each other by calling each other names (which sometimes includes profanity). While Avalon is fairly complex, we spend very little time getting to know each place we visit; this may or may not be a good thing. Far too many fantasy writers get hopelessly bogged down in a delicious (but eventually boring) mire of their own creativity. All this--and the lack of depth---may only mean that it's not an adult novel, but J.K. Rowling had more to give, in spite of the youth and immaturity of her cast.

The Great Tree of Avalon is interesting, creative, exciting, and unpredictable, escaping almost all of the ever-present pitfalls of modern fantasy (red hair, sex, and those eternally-convenient portholes and healing potions). Expect to come away from is a person less bored, but not a person wiser or deeper.

The Great Tree of Avalon: Child of the Dark Prophesy TA Barron writes a novel based on a mythical world, Avalon with references to the Avalon of King Arthur thrown in to make sure you realize this is the same Merlin. It follows some of the generic formulas for creating a fantasy world, specifically, the ever-convenient magic portals, the healing potion that brings people back from near death, the budding sorcerer who conveniently performs subconscious magic that is apparently difficult for masters of the craft, etc. The main character’s inner struggle is difficult to follow, and he changes suddenly as you near the climax without the supporting development that helps a reader believe that he could have made the change. His leaps of intuition as you near the climax defy his character history with no developmental support. This is the first book I read by TA Barron but it was replete with enough references to previous novels that I have no desire to read those books, which precede this one chronologically by a few hundred years or so. The societal structure is vague because outside of the main characters, you meet only a few others in the entire novel. Either the world is remarkably sparsely populated or they are in the back end of nowhere hiding from people the whole time. I could be entirely wrong though because the development of the background was highly superficial, as though Barron is counting on you to have read the previous novels where I am assuming most of it was explained in a less hurried manner. The bulk of the explanation of landscape and history seemed to be references to other books, rather than useful description. I read it to the end though, because it did not offend and I was bored. Unfortunately, it’s a tough sell to say it was worth reading.