Many epic fantasy novels for children and young adults, like their counterparts in adult fiction, inhabit what is usually called the 'high fantasy' world. Conventionally this has a broadly mediaeval setting peopled by a selection of good and evil characters from groups such as kings, warriors, wizards and their apprentices, probably alongside creatures like dragons and trolls. One of the most ubiquitous features of such fantasies is the presence at the start of a wonderful hand-drawn map showing the lands of the story and, quite possibly, the journey its protagonists will take.
Less strong offerings often repetitively churn out the features of this genre in a tired and formulaic way. Delightfully there are many other authors who rework the standard conventions of high fantasy with energy and imagination or add novel twists and features to bring the genre back to exciting life. From time to time even more adventurous writers transpose the fantasy genre to some hitherto largely unexplored place or time and give it an even stronger new lease of life. This is what the wonderful Michelle Paver did when she set her splendid historical fantasy sequence The Chronicles of Ancient Darkness in the far recesses of humankind's history.
Even more rarely, however, a fantasy author imagines a world so startlingly original and inventive that it pushes the boundaries of the genre in mind-expanding, and often for the reader life-enriching, ways. This is what the enormously exciting Nigel McDowell recently did in setting his superb The Black North in a fantasy Ireland with gun-toting rebels. It is what Philip Pullman did when, in His Dark Materials, he took the artistically bold step of reimagining elements of John Milton and placing them in a children's fantasy of complex parallel worlds. It is what, in a more Sci Fi orientated fantasy, Philip Reeve did in taking the superficially ridiculous idea of cities that move about and predate one another and built around it the fully believable, absorbing and complex world of his Mortal Engines quartet. In another amazingly imaginative and original coup, it is also what S.E.Grove has done here in this first of her Mapmakers trilogy.
Of course, as with all of the wonderful creations just mentioned, The Glass Sentence utilises some of the conventional features of the children's fantasy genre. Its protagonist, Sophia, is effectively an orphan in that her parents have been long missing. This is exacerbated when the uncle who is her carer also disappears. It is her quest to find him that is the main plot line of the story. She is accompanied on most of this quest by a new close friend, Theo, another 'waif and stray', of similar age but from a very different culture. These two and their other supporters, including a crew of friendly pirates, are opposed in their mission by a mysterious and powerful adversary, Blanca. She in turn is aided by her terrifying henchmen, and all are haunted by a number of seemingly inhuman spectral figures. Many of these characters are wonderfully creations in their own right, imaginately conceived and vividly drawn, not least the hideous grappling-hook-wielding 'Sandmen' and the insidiously wailing 'Lachrima'.
However all of these elements are essentially drawn from the stock components of fantasy and children's literature. It is the world in which S.E.Grove places them that is so startlingly, staggeringly original. The milieu of The Glass Sentence is geographically based, centering on the Americas and initially located in 1890s Boston. However, in the book, the entire world has previously been shattered by a cataclysmic and unexplained 'disruption' resulting in its being sundered into multiple diverse time zones or 'Ages'. Their earth, though, is not simply a mash-up of known historical periods. In some places two or more times have become mixed or integrated resulting in bizarre and intriguing imaginative cultures.
On top of this, the author takes the concept of the map, so often just a decorative frontispiece to high fantasy volumes, expanding and exploding it with stunning imaginative force, and making it central to her whole world. For this is a 'Mapmakers' story and in it the intricate creations of esoterically educated, specialist cartographers go way beyond the conventional two dimensional representations. They go beyond even three and, indeed, stretch the concept of dimensions itself. Here maps exist in many materials, metal, sand, the titular glass and even water. Not only this but they map much more than simple place. Most remarkably of all they can map time by capturing and holding sequences of human memory across long periods.
In all of this The Glass Sentence becomes a fantasy of ideas as well as of character and action, in much the same way as does His Dark Materials. It quite simply makes you think, ponder, reflect, imagine and even re conceptualise. It treats very much matters of place and time, but it also deals with socio-political ideas, for example by opposing the creation and closing of borders with the right of free movement and a love of exploration. It uses such oppositions both as a physical realities and as a metaphors. Even when its creations move beyond the historical and geographical into the world of pure fantasy, as with the mutations of the inhabitants of the 'Baldlands' into antagonistic communities carrying the 'Mark of Iron' or the 'Mark of the Vine', it raises very real questions about genetic inheritance and prejudiced thinking.
I do not want to give the impression that this book lacks action and excitement. It has both aplenty. Its writing achieves these with great effectiveness too, most particularly in later stages where its climax is viscerally thrilling, edge of seat stuff! However it is good to have a book which also gives cause for reflection, and allows time for it.
This is the first book of a trilogy, with its second part not yet published and its third, I understand, still in the writing. It is necessary, therefore, to reserve judgement on its greatness and its possible place in the canon until the whole is completed. There are many ideas in this first volume not yet fully worked through, as well as characters not yet fully explored. The fruition of these is hopefully yet to come. Meanwhile we have to enjoy a truly wonderful story of remarkable originality.
I just wonder if UK publishers are shying away from this book because of its clearly transatlantic settings or perhaps because of its sometimes more cerebral concepts. If so, either reservation is ridiculous. This is not a short, simple read, but neither are many of the greatest children's books. The Boston of The Glass Sentence is no less universally accessible as an imaginative creation than is Lyra's Oxford. The worlds of ideas and action visited from the one need to be just as openly accessible as those from the other. No closed borders please.
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