(no subject)
fahye recced me Margaret Mahy's The Blood-and-Thunder Adventure on Hurricane Peak shortly after I discovered Mahy a couple months ago. (I still find it kind of a personal insult that I never found her when I was a kid, because I would have imprinted like a baby duckling! . . . I do not know who would have been doing the Deliberate Insulting except my own stupidity in not discovering her, but clearly it was a DELIBERATE AFFRONT on the part of the universe!)
The front cover of the library edition calls the book "inspired nonsense," and honestly I can't put it any better than that - it's just kind of adorable ridiculousness all the way through. Plot elements:
- a Wicked One-Legged Industrialist! Complete with several minions, a helpful amnesiac adopted aunt who rides around on the back of his wheelchair making repairs, and a Wicked Plan to kidnap a beautiful scientist . . . FOR HER BRAIN.
- lovers who are TRAGICALLY DIVIDED by the fact that she is a GENIUS INVENTOR-SCIENTIST and he is a BRILLIANT MAGICIAN. They wear competing cloaks with the arcane symbols of their profession inscribed upon them and have irreconcilable views of the universe! THEIR LOVE IS NOT TO BE.
- talking cats who are each other's pen-friends! This may be the point when I started cracking up. Everyone else is jealous of the lady cat for having a pen-friend, it is a very fine thing to have!
- a brother and sister who write and illustrate terrible, frightening, blood-and-thundery stories all over their walls! Their parents are very concerned and wish to give them a good dose of math and science.
- several students who cheerfully pass their school days by sawing each other in half, but, alas, occasionally forget how to put each other back together
Stick all these people together in a boarding school, stir them up with a hurricane, lose them in a Trackless Magical Forest for a while and stir, and you get The Blood-and-Thunder Adventure on Hurricane Peak. You can read it in 45 minutes and it is guaranteed to make you smile! That seems like a good deal to me.
The front cover of the library edition calls the book "inspired nonsense," and honestly I can't put it any better than that - it's just kind of adorable ridiculousness all the way through. Plot elements:
- a Wicked One-Legged Industrialist! Complete with several minions, a helpful amnesiac adopted aunt who rides around on the back of his wheelchair making repairs, and a Wicked Plan to kidnap a beautiful scientist . . . FOR HER BRAIN.
- lovers who are TRAGICALLY DIVIDED by the fact that she is a GENIUS INVENTOR-SCIENTIST and he is a BRILLIANT MAGICIAN. They wear competing cloaks with the arcane symbols of their profession inscribed upon them and have irreconcilable views of the universe! THEIR LOVE IS NOT TO BE.
- talking cats who are each other's pen-friends! This may be the point when I started cracking up. Everyone else is jealous of the lady cat for having a pen-friend, it is a very fine thing to have!
- a brother and sister who write and illustrate terrible, frightening, blood-and-thundery stories all over their walls! Their parents are very concerned and wish to give them a good dose of math and science.
- several students who cheerfully pass their school days by sawing each other in half, but, alas, occasionally forget how to put each other back together
Stick all these people together in a boarding school, stir them up with a hurricane, lose them in a Trackless Magical Forest for a while and stir, and you get The Blood-and-Thunder Adventure on Hurricane Peak. You can read it in 45 minutes and it is guaranteed to make you smile! That seems like a good deal to me.