Dragon's Green
The Worldquake series, Book 1
Scarlett Thomas
Simon and Schuster
Fiction, MG Fantasy
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: Euphemia "Effie" Sixten Bookend Truelove used to have a happy life, until the worldquake happened. Around the world, electricity dimmed, the internet died, and hints of long-hidden magic began to creep back, though most people continue to deny its very existence. Worse, though, Effie's beloved mother Aurelia vanished in the cataclysm - taking her father's love with him and leaving a stern, cold man in his place, one who remarried to a woman with little love for Effie or anyone else in her tiny heart. The girl was even sent to the dismal Tusitala School for the Gifted, Troubled and Strange. The only light in her life is Griffin Truelove, Aurelia's eccentric father, though even he has become changed and closed off since the worldquake. Effie's sure the old man is really some sort of wizard, with his odd travels and house full of mysterious things she's not allowed to touch - and if he's a wizard, surely there's some spell he could work to fix things - but Griffin refuses to teach her so much as a smidgen of the stuff.
When Griffin is attacked in an alley, Effie has nobody left to turn to. And when her father tries to deny her her inheritance - Griffin's mysterious library - he tries to sell it off to the charity man before Effie can lay a hand on a single volume.
Piecing together bits of conversations and other clues, Effie realizes there's something much more sinister and dangerous going on than random thugs attacking an old man... something that smells of magic, and could lead her to her long-lost mother in another world, in a place known as Dragon's Green.
REVIEW: Yes, I'm still a sucker for dragons. And, yes, sometimes that love leads me astray. It certainly did here. The title promised dragons, and the cover blurb and general plot promised magical books and other worlds and fun, somewhat perilous adventures: solid ingredients for a fantasy title, especially a middle-grade fantasy title, all around... or so I thought. Instead, I got a confused jumble of characters, plot points, and ideas that don't so much flow together as crash randomly into one another like insane literary bumper cars, hurtling the reader this way and that. Magic is rare and elusive and considered a lie, we're told - only literally every character except Effie knows pretty much all about it, or learns it's real and the basic rules in a fraction of a time in which Effie manages to repeatedly be confused (and I mean repeatedly, in that she's prone to repeating things she doesn't understand) and bungle the simplest of instructions despite ostensibly being a heroine. The author goes out of her way to raise questions and refuse to answer them... then goes out of her way to make Effie and her associates incapable of even asking the questions, let alone listening to the answers (though, in their defense, the entire rest of the world seems incapable of answering a simple question). What was the worldquake? Who are the oft-mentioned, only-very-belatedly-clarified Diberi antagonists? Why did Effie's father turn into an emotionally abusive monster, allowing his new wife to torment both Effie and her own baby Luna? Why was the theoretically wise Griffin too blasted stupid to teach Effie things vital to her survival until it was far too late? Who is the Guild who keeps messing things up for everyone but never once is explained or revealed or given any motivation for their actions other than "screw things up for everyone to enable a plot"? What's the exchange rate for M-currency to dragon gold to krubles, why is it so complicated, and what the heck does any of this have to do with the ostensible plot of books as gateways to the Otherworld and an implied but never clarified conspiracy to crush creativity out of Earth? What are the rules, here, and why should I even care? The story can't even find a consistent tone, veering wildly from whimsy to darkness to light to deep... then it introduces mortal danger only to yank back so hard on the leash I almost felt the whiplash as it prevents so much as a smidgen of actual peril from drifting near our fragile protagonists - only they weren't nearly that fragile a moment ago when they got into peril to begin with. As for the dragon, there is a dragon of sorts, but I still felt somewhat cheated on this account. The whole book turned into a slog of wasted potential and pointless plot turns and cul-de-sacs, with characters too conveniently plot-shaped to come to life in their own right and too many questions that never got anything like a satisfactory answer despite the author repeatedly reminding me that the question was there and needed an answer that was being deliberately, irritatingly withheld.
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