Imagine this: you just came into existence. No personal memories, no idea of who you are, and you have no knowledge of how you came to be. This is how Happenstance felt a few months ago (in the previous book) when he woke up in an abandoned cavern. Besides having no memory, Happenstance is no ordinary boy. He possesses a strange ability to see great distances and in dark places, is able to leap great distances, and steer the course of fate. Happenstance is able to do this by following magical rays of light that shows the person's fate.
Happenstance lives in the great Aerie tower with Lord Umber, Oates, and Sophie. Umber is Happenstance's eccentric mentor and a brilliant inventor. He brings Happenstance with him on literally every adventure. Umber has the most complex back story of any other character. He used to be a normal person living in our world. After college, he was invited to work on Project REBOOT. The idea was to build a computer containing a vast amount of human knowledge in case disaster occurred and society had to start over. Umber and his colleagues had finished, but disaster did occur. Just before he would have died, Umber and the REBOOT computer were teleported to Happenstance's world. Umber is now secretly using the computer to introduce this medieval world to modern technology.
Oates is a man with superhuman strength, and a strange curse that makes him forever speak the truth, and blurt out whatever is on his mind. Sophie is a highly skilled archer and artist who was taken in by Umber as a little girl. She was born in a distant land that was ruled by cruel tyrant and his hot-tempered son. When Sophie beat the prince in an archery contest, he was so enraged that he cut off her hand that she uses to hold her bow and sent her away. With Umber's help, she has a complex prostetic that allows her to hold a bow again. Although shy to strangers, Sophie has shown deep feelings towards Happenstance.
Cryptic symbolism is prevailent through much of the novel. Most of the time, they relate to common fairy tails. A senator from another country told of how he fell curse to a demon trapped in a mirror. This was the same mirror from Snow White! (It was the mirror's fault, not the Queen.) The candy illusion that drew Hansle and Grettle to the witch was created from an enchanted amulate, which now resides at the Aerie.
The man in Jack in the beanstalk who traded the beans for a cow turned out to be a meddler like Happenstance. Umber has a magic key that belonged to Rumple Stiltskin, which is how he was able to sneak into the miller daughter's tower.
Most of the references were attributed to his old series, so someone who hasn't read anything from PW Catanese might not understand right away.
Pt 1 - This is so fabulously written, Stephen. Your sentence structure is beautiful and your fluency wonderful. You have gotten a little distracted from Characterizing though, and most of the time are summarizing.
ReplyDeletePt 2 - This is cool -really cool. You've outlined some allusions, or references. How are these artifacts symbols...and if they are, of what?