Boyett, Steven R.: Ariel
Ariel (1983)
Written by: Steven R. Boyett
Genre: Urban/Futuristic Fantasy
Pages: 435 (Mass Market Paperback)
Imagine you're holding something, anything at all, that you're examining really, really closely. Now image you're startled by the sight of the biggest, ugliest, deadliest spider in the world crawling TOO CLOSE TO YOUR HAND. First reaction? You fling it away, don't you?
When I first heard about Ariel's premise, that's what I did. My mind did a mental fling to get the premise as far away as possible.
Here's the thing: I'd never heard of Boyett until I read the Ace/Roc Sampler and his contribution for Elegy Beach. The back of the sampler advertised Ariel, so I looked it up, saw the premise, and did that mental fling. Why? Because it's about a boy and his unicorn. His UNICORN.
What you need to understand about me personally is that I grew up around horses. Miniature horses, to be exact, and my favorite toys IN THE WORLD were My Little Ponies. The unicorns were usually my favorite of each collection. And one of my favorite childhood movies? The Last Unicorn. One would think, that with this childhood love of unicorns in my background, that I would've been all over Ariel like white on rice.
I didn't because I've grown into a cynical bastard. But it's not so much cynicism as it is the fact I've probably grown out of unicorns, and when I do read stories with talking animals of any sort, I have really, really high standards because I have certain expectations. The biggest thing is that if you're going to give me a talking horse (or a flying one, or a horned one) you better get stuff right. I know what I'm looking for, behavior-wise. Anthropomorphism is hard to pull off, and I'm the first one to cry foul when it's ridiculously cheesy.
So why read the book? A couple of trustworthy, solid reviews from people I know. That and the shiny display in Barnes & Noble with all the copies facing out to the customer (me!). Also, I liked Boyett's prose in the sample of Elegy Beach, so I figured, why not?
The premise: Since the Change, nothing that's technological works properly, and suddenly, the new rules of physics revolve around magic. There's mythical beasts in the world now, and Pete Garey encounters an injured unicorn during his travels. They strike up an unlikely friendship and so travel this semi-apocalyptic world together. However, unicorns are rare even in THIS world, and are known for their powerful magic. A necromancer from New York City will do ANYTHING to capture Ariel's power, so Pete and Ariel must travel there to stop him, no matter what happens.
Review style: Review? What review? If I had the chance, I'd write a freaking RESEARCH PAPER on this book, but since that's a little much for a blog, so I'll stick to analysis. Yes, analysis, because there's too much that's worth chewing on aside from the story itself. Spoilers? You bet. If you just want a general review of the book itself and not what it all might MEAN, skip to the bottom and start reading at "My Rating."
First thing's first: let's discuss genre. Oh, we all know it's FANTASY, but there's a couple of sub-genres I want to examine in the category.
Urban fantasy: it's a fantasy that takes place in an urban setting. Namely, Atlanta, GA, Washington D.C., and New York City. Oh, there's rural and country settings too, but where the action mainly takes place is in the city. This is the most obvious genre classification, but there's another that wasn't true at the time but is ridiculously true now.
Alternate History: Huh? Why for? Because the time this book was written, and published, the Twin Towers were still standing. Whenever the Change happened in the book, it took place at some time during the late seventies, early eighties, and once that happened, the history's timeline branched off from what we know today. I was glad to read in both Boyett's introduction and Afterword that he decided NOT to change the book to accommodate the missing towers, because this book is a product from the time it was written, and why should said products be modified because of what a bunch of assholes did to our country? Therefore, I dub this book alternate history because it takes place in a divergent timeline from our own, and that divergence happened in our past.
There's a part of me that wants to make a case for futuristic fantasy (think Terry Brooks's Shannara series) because this is the future from the point and time the Change occurred, but it's not OUR future. It's the future of the past. Does that make sense? Probably not, which is why I'm not going to make a case for it. :)
But speaking of futuristic fantasy, let's look at a slightly different trend in fantasy fiction. It's more than just an urban setting, though that can, but not always, have some bearing on it: how popular IS the post-apocalyptic future (via nuclear disaster or a magical change) in fiction? Science fiction runs the gambit, but there are fantasies that also embrace the idea of the modern world being suddenly and irrevocably changed by magic. I've already mentioned Terry Brooks, who gives a hint of what his fantasy world is REALLY like during his cast's travels in The Sword of Shannara (which is, and I say this with love, an LOTR rip-off--if you wanna read the series, go straight to The Elfstones of Shannara. Trust me) and we see a destroyed city, and it has a stronger bearing on later books, some of which I haven't read. More notably is S.M. Stirling, who I haven't read at all, but has written his OWN series about a magical change that creates this kind of apocalyptic fantasy setting. I should note that 1) Boyett was published FIRST and 2) there was apparently some BIG FRICTION between the two authors because BOYETT CAME FIRST that has since been swept under the rug of Big Brother--S.M. Stirling even blurbs Ariel on the cover of this 2009 reprint! But whatever.
I find the whole post-apocalyptic fantasy setting to be fascinating. One thing to note is all of the examples I gave debuted in the eighties (though more recently, we do have James Maxey's Dragon Age trilogy), which shouldn't be to surprising given that point in history and the fear of nuclear destruction and the tension of the Cold War. People felt that something was going to give, and the world as we knew it would be changed forever, and not for the best. As I mentioned before, science fiction ran with this and is STILL running (just look at Cormac McCarthy's 2006 release of The Road), but the fact that some writers took a magical way of dealing with this fear instead of the obvious, SF-nal way fascinates me more and makes me want to read more about it. Then again, post-apocalyptic futures fascinate me anyway, so this should come as no surprise.
Now, before I get into the next section I want to discuss and examine, I need to unveil some of my reading history. While I've already mentioned I've seen The Last Unicorn a million times, I've never read it. Nor have I read another fantasy classic, A Wrinkle in Time. Essentially, while I was in love with My Little Ponies and the like and probably should've obviously transitioned into the fantasy genre as I grew, I instead turned to series like Sweet Valley (Kids, Twins, High, AND University) and The Baby-Sitters Club. I tell you this to REMIND you and to stress the fact that I didn't really start reading fantasy, let alone science fiction, until 2001-2002, and we have Peter Jackson's adaptation of The Fellowship of the Ring to thank for that. Blame him.
I say this because some of what I'm examining is probably OLD NEWS and painfully OBVIOUS to some of you who've been reading fantasy since the moment you could read. I don't have that background, and I wanted to make that clear so no one makes any assumptions. For the record, since starting this genre in 2001-2002, I have read a few classics: The Chronicles of Narnia, The Hobbit, and The Lord of Rings. So I'm not completely out of touch. :)
But let's focus on the meat of the story: a boy and his unicorn. It still strikes me as such an odd combination, which is why I suppose it works. To me, and of course, I'm a girl, so this would be my natural stance on the topic, unicorns are feminine. I never saw little boys playing with toy unicorns unless it was to have their G.I. Joe or Transformer shoot it to death, you know? So the idea of a story about a BOY and his UNICORN just struck me as really odd and really silly. After all, I am aware of what unicorns symbolize in mythology, though I did make a point to refresh my knowledge with a quick browsing of Wikipedia. But unicorns and maidens have always been synonymous with me. Unicorns and, erm, virgin boys have not.
Yet, I think that's why the combo works from a marketing level: the unicorn will attract the girls, the fact it's a boy in the lead role instead of a girl will attract the boys. Admittedly, this is not a YA novel, nor do I believe it was ever marketed as such (the profanity and rather detailed sex scene kind of exclude it from YA). But as Boyett points out in his Afterward, and as reviews on Amazon seem to also indicate, Ariel is a book best enjoyed by the young, teens to be more precise. The older you get, the more cynical you tend to get, and you'll start looking past the novelty of "a boy and his unicorn" and start really peeling story back to the meat on the bones.
What fascinates me about this particular combo is the stress on purity. Not purity of mind and heart and speech either: this is all about sex and the lack thereof, and I found that to be really perplexing. I mean, Pete swears, and because he does, Ariel does. But purity of speech doesn't matter. Sure, she doesn't like him smoking, but then again, that goes back to the purity of the body, and him smoking makes his body unclean. He can still touch her though, which made me worry during the course of the book that if Pete ever masturbated, or messed around with a girl, or had a wet dream (the latter did happen), whether or not he'd still be pure? Ultimately, I think it's the actual intercourse that taints a person, and I can understand how some readers, especially those enamored of Pete's relationship with Ariel and especially those who might be, yanno, YOUNGER, might find Shaughnessy to be a villain. After all, she knew the consequences and let Pete fuck her anyway. But there's something more to that, and that's what I really want to talk about:
Through-out the whole book, I was disturbed by Pete's immaturity, and there's still a part of me that wishes he were younger than twenty (maybe fifteen? Sixteen?), though I understand why not: given the author's age at the time, why in the world would he write a book about a hero YOUNGER than him? When you're writing, especially starting out, you tend to gravitate towards characters LIKE YOU in age and appearance: writing someone much OLDER or YOUNGER as your hero or heroine is a deliberate choice, and I daresay a choice of a writer who's more mature. But putting that little theory that likely bullshit aside, I'm not surprised by the age of Pete, but I still wish he was younger. It's not that I had trouble believing in a 20 year old virgin (I know a man who waited until he was 22--not for religious reasons--and another man who waited until he was 30--for religious reasons), but rather, there were other things that made Pete more immature. Granted, the fact the change happened when he was fifteen/sixteen has something to do with it: his normal social growth has been stunted in a way that wouldn't have happened if the world kept going on as normal, but his discomfort around women and about sex and others things got tiring after a while. And he couldn't stop crying. It got ridiculous and made me less sympathetic. I've always heard that when writing such scenes, when a character SHOULD cry but DOESN'T, that's when your reader feels for said character. Then again, maybe he's crying all the time because he's a virgin? ;) Kidding!
That's why his relationship with Ariel was so disturbing. He wants her to be a woman because he's completely and totally enamored of her. In love with her. And that's pretty believable, but completely and TOTALLY unhealthy. For starters: she's a fantasy creature. But there's also the fact that she's a fantasy creature he can only interact with if he retains the naivete and innocence of a child, and the older he gets, the bigger problem this becomes. Any mature reader HAD to know that Ariel was going to have to be out of the picture for Pete to grow up (and also have sex), because otherwise he'd be stunted, and that's not healthy no matter what kind of world you live in.
And I want to point out that while it seems that sex equals maturity, I don't mean to imply that, though I'll just go ahead and admit I'm going to screw up and end up saying that anyway. But on a personal level, I know that sexual experience does NOT equal maturity: after all, I live in a town where plenty of kids have sex and have kids and keep having sex and keep having kids without understanding that they CAN'T AFFORD THEM or whatever. In real life, sex DOES NOT by any means equal maturity.
However, in the case of this book, it sort of does. Rather, a better way of making the comparison is this: the longer one holds on to a fantasy (literally in this book in the form of Ariel), the harder it is to grow up and see/experience the world as it really is. People Pete encounters are in awe of his relationship with Ariel, but so many of them say they wouldn't trade places with him for all the world. Because what he has IS an addiction, and addictions aren't healthy.
What's interesting is that in the Afterword, Boyett talks about his own personal experiences while writing this book. He was in love with two women: one was down-to-earth and grounded, the other not so much. The other he'd created a fantasy around, so that the woman he thought he was in love with most likely wasn't what that woman was really like at all. Because of that fantasy though, a person has expectations, and when those expectations aren't met, there's problems. Boyett talks about how finally letting go of his fantasy of this other girl and recognizing her for what she was allowed him to move forward with his much more healthy relationship with the down-to-earth woman, the woman he ended up marrying. And then he makes the rather funny comment of how all of this shouldn't be apparent in the book, but it's the emotional context driving it (p.395).
Hell yeah, it's there! It comes through LOUD AND CLEAR for anyone who's looking past the novelty of a BOY and his UNICORN. When it comes right down to it, this story is a love triangle between Pete, Shaughnessy, and Ariel, with Ariel being the fantasy that if Pete holds on to, he's going to miss out on a lot of life. And I don't think it's a BAD thing for that to be apparent, because I find the metaphor is important. In a book about reality becoming contaminated by fantasy, how does a person who grew up in reality really survive? Oh, you guys, this is fascinating stuff once you get past the trappings of the story.
I do wish, though, that Pete's giving in to Shaughnessy wasn't so contrived. It's written off that both Pete and Ariel were confused during the raid on the Empire State Building and the shock of finding each other again, but Ariel running off, staying gone for days, when she KNEW Pete had come to rescue her? And then conveniently coming back RIGHT AFTER Pete gave into his humanity and emotional needs and slept with Shaughnessy? Contrived. Totally contrived. However, than said, something had to give: either Ariel had to die (which I totally thought would happen), or if she didn't, I'd rather Pete had to make a choice. An actual choice rather than giving into circumstance. After all, even Ariel says in the book that a unicorn belongs to no one, so her choice of sticking with Pete is robbing others of a magical gift, and my childhood knowledge of unicorns is that they belong to no one, but they belong to everyone. I rather wish that after the raid, Pete and Ariel recover and end up making choices. Maybe she chooses to leave him, or maybe it's a mutual decisions. But I do wish it was a CHOICE, because choices are what defines our characters.
Moving out of analysis, I do want to nitpick before I discuss the book generally in terms of how I liked it.
Ariel is modeled after an equine unicorn, and let me tell you something about equines (horses): if a horse breaks its leg, it's dead. Period. I know, I know: Ariel's a UNICORN and therefore MAGICAL, but I rather resented how THAT was the injury Pete ended up treating, because broken legs on horses are a DEATH SENTENCE. It's unfortunate, but that's reality, especially at the time this book was written, so if there were any magic cures for broken legs, I highly doubt a homemade split would be it. Also, she ran ALL THE WAY from New York (or somewhere) on a broken leg? I know unicorns are magical, but COME ON.
A question, based on the scene on page 7 where the dart hits the kid in the eye: would that REALLY kill someone? Did it just go straight to the brain or something? I don't know, that's why I'm asking.
Some of the world-building had me scratching my head too: a bike won't work, but a wrist-watch and a sailboat will? It would've made sense if the only things that didn't work were electricity-dependent, so I'm curious about the rules that govern everything. In the Afterword, Boyett acknowledges this as well and states he hopes some of it gets explained in the sequel, Elegy Beach.
But speaking of world-building, I do rather wish that we'd seen more magic. In terms of creatures (though we did get a unicorn, a griffin, and a manticore), but also in terms of magic users. Nobody explains how the necromancer was suddenly able to use magic, nor did it really address whether others used magic or not, though I suspect Malachai had a bit. This makes me wonder simply because I know people can do magic thanks to the sample I read of Elegy Beach.
I did have a problem with Pete seemingly to naturally know how to get the boat down and what all needed to be done once it was in the water. Sure, he grew up in Florida, but on page 219, even he admitted that the ocean was alien country to him, so it's not like he's familiar with sea-faring activity. That felt a little too easy, even though we've seen Pete survive based on what he'd learned in library books. If Boyett had given us a little more, like have Pete stop by a library to do some research before they went to the boat, that would've made me feel better.
Towards the end, the writing did get sloppier. There's a moment where Pete describes Malachai's sword as being stained red rather than simply saying it was dark with blood, and sometimes he doesn't describe the scene fully and I'm not sure what I'm looking at. When "they" charge out of the necromancers room to attack the heroes, I wasn't sure who or WHAT "they" were, and when "they" are coming out of a DARK MAGICIAN's room, you'd best be describing that. They could've been magical creatures for all I know!
My Rating
Worth the Cash: but it's close to "Give it Away." Honestly, I do believe (and the author does too!) that this book is better enjoyed by those in their teens (just note there is profanity, some graphic violence and detailed sexy images), and those reading this book as adults are more apt to find problems. I'm not one of these who read the book when it was first released, so I'm not reading it for nostalgia's sake. I was rather impressed by the writing, considering the author's age at the time (it was published when he was twenty or twenty-one), but it's pretty solid and tells a good story. The prose isn't perfect, and there are time when scenes are a little melodramatic, but the prose isn't dated at all (though some of the pop culture references are, which is actually fun), and that was surprising. The book's ending, while a little contrived, made sense. Certain things HAVE to happen in order for this book to have any kind of resolution, and I certain didn't go into this book expecting a happily-ever-after ending. It's not a sad ending either, but rather a human one, so that's important to note if endings are something that worry you. I liked the cast for the most part, though the characters weren't fully three-dimensional and some of the supporting cast often fell into types. Still, it's a fast, enjoyable read that will REALLY MAKE YOU THINK if you look past the trappings of the story itself. Me, I might check out the sequel, Elegy Beach, when it's released as a mass market paperback, which will be next year. It's coming out in hardcover THIS year, and while I'm sure Boyett's crafted has evolved and changed since he wrote Ariel, I'm in no hurry to read the next book in line.
Cover Commentary: eye-catching and nicely done, but I must nitpick: the Empire State Building looks like it was pulverized with meteors and the top is tilting to one side. Then there's the flames in the street, like this was some post-apocalyptic disaster in which meteors destroyed the Earth. That's not what happened, so while the cover is really pretty to look it, showing the post-apocalyptic imagery bugs me.
DON'T FORGET: September's book challenge is Emma Bull's War for the Oaks. Details are here. ALSO: I'm taking book title suggestions for October's theme: horror/ghost stories! :)
EDIT 9/14/09: I love it when the author responds and it turns out we're on the same page. Take a look! Author's response to review