July 11, 2004

With all the emphasis I've placed on children's literature lately, I should now note that July 11th is the birthday of E.B. White....

Having said that, let me state that today I finished reading Shadowmancer, a "young adult" novel by G.P. (Graham) Taylor. As I mentioned before, Taylor is a British vicar, but unlike his character Demurral, he is not an evil puppet of the devil. (That I know of.)

Now, some of the literary hype surrounding Shadowmancer compared it to the Harry Potter series. The same marketing concept was used on the Philip Pullman "His Dark Materials" trilogy (of which I've read The Golden Compass), A Series of Unfortunate Events, the works of Eoin Colfer, the works of Cornelia Funke (which I have not yet been privileged to read), et al.

But that's marketing. Taylor's work is neither as detailed nor as imaginative as Rowling's. When Taylor describes the supernatural creature the thulak, it recalls Rowling's descriptions of dementors. But Taylor shuns the idea that Raphah, or any of the protagonists, could be a wizard or witch. He unequivocally states that witchcraft is a tool of the devil, here called Pyratheon.

(It is unclear to me where Taylor comes up with these names - Pyratheon for the devil, Riathamus for God, Glashan for demons, etc. They may have meanings in Latin, but I don't understand them. I hoped there would be a website discussing the book to help me out here, but  I couldn't find one.)

And the book does tend to be preachy. Biblical phrases come from the mouths of nearly all the characters. The story is interesting enough, but the language can be a little clunky. Taylor uses the trite phrase "like a hot knife through butter" in one such passage. So I would in no way compare Taylor's storytelling style to Rowling's.

(Okay, so there is some language in the Harry Potter books that sounds a little funny to my inner ear. I seem to recall thinking there were a few too many descriptions of how Harry's stomach felt in Goblet of Fire, for instance.)

I would imagine Taylor is closer in spirit to the authors of the Left Behind series, Christian novels about the end of the world that crossed over to mainstream success. Nothing wrong with being a Christian writer, of course--it's not as though J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis suffered in popularity because of their spiritual beliefs....

That said, middle school girls who read Holes and enjoyed Kate Barlow may like reading about tough-on-the-outside, tender-on-the-inside Kate Coglan. If you find Hermione Granger to be too much of a goody-goody know-it-all, then I recommend Kate Coglan to you.

(Personally, I like Hermione. Her intelligence and level-headedness often save Harry's butt.)