Cover and interior illustrations: Jessica Courtney-Tickle
No comparison
This children’s (MG) trilogy takes me right back to my original theme of magic fantasy.
It is a work with many exceptional qualities. In fact, it is as exciting an example of ‘magic fiction since Potter’ as I have come across in quite a while. A cover quote calls Celine Kieran ‘Ireland’s answer to J.K. Rowling’, but this is not a comparison I find particularly helpful. The two seem to me to have relatively little in common, beyond authoring fantasy for children. Although The Wild Magic Trilogy is unlikely ever to achieve the global cult status of Harry Potter, in terms of the quality of its writing, the richness of its imagination and the resonance of its themes I rate it by far the better work.
Celine Kieran established herself as a notable writer with a string of very successful YA novels. In now producing a work for a rather younger readership she has done something very special for this age group too. She started off with Begone the Raggedy Witches and followed it by The Little Grey Girl. Just recently she has completed the trilogy in fine style with a truly magical finale, The Promise Witch.
Breathtaking language
For openers, few writers for young people match the beautiful, flowing cadence of Celine Kiernan’s prose. Without being in any way pretentious or flowery, she constructs language that flows mellifluously over the reading ear. Even her simple sentences have lovely balance, both in themselves and in relation to those around them. Here again we have an example of the remarkable way with words that seems to epitomise Irish writers. I am sure these books would read aloud wonderfully.
Whilst she eschews the current fad for writing in the first person present tense, her narrative is vivid and compelling. She takes us intimately and intensely inside the thoughts and feeling of young protagonists Mup, as she flies around her castle home, as she is dragged from her body to ‘spirit walk’ in the company of a ghost girl, as she is entrapped inside the crystal of a witch’s pendant and as she excercises her particular talent of envisioning the path between worlds.
Old magic, new magic
These stories manage to capture the essence of ‘classic’ magical fantasy, but expressed with an originality of imagination that stops them from being in any way clichéd or blatantly derivative. They embrace numerous exciting and entertaining elements, many traditionally associated with witches; flying, shape shifting, curses and enchantments, even necromancy. Yet they are reimagined in the context of a fresh-feeling and totally captivating story. Here too are a rhyming crow-boy, a younger brother who prefers the form of a scamp of a puppy dog, ghosts (mainly friendly), an awesomely powerful witch mother, a ‘clan’ of Romany-like people living in vardos, and of course the terrifying raggedy witches of the first title. The most horrendous of them all of them actually Mup’s grandmother. And then there is young Mup herself, as vulnerable as she is strong, and wearing her pyjamas through the whole nightmare journey of this concluding part.
Celine Kiernan’s is ‘old magic’, rooted in folklore, making her closer in tradition to Alan Garner and Susan Cooper that to the invented shenanigans of ‘Wingardium Leviosa’. These archetypal elements are reimagined as a battle between malevolent power, dominance and exploitation, and a life of enlightened benevolence, education and individual worth.
Celine Kiernan’s story is rich and compelling. Her young characters are completely engaging, and her evil ones truly terrifying. The skilfully subtle chapter head vignettes from illustrator Jessica Courtney-Tickle enhance the magic without denying the right of the reader picture for themselves.
This third book revolves around the restoration of a cursed and parched land, through the hunting down and final defeat of the former witch queen, Mups grandmother. There is humour here as well as thrilling scariness and tension aplenty. But the story itself has an almost poetic feel to it too. It is ethereal, almost airy. It is a tale of sacrifice, of atonement, of forgiveness, in a world that, although completely credible, is never fully real. It is truly other; a magical other realm. It is the Glittering Land. This too is the heritage of the Irish.
Close up magic
But despite its otherworldliness the Witches Borough still reflects back to us the big issues of our lives, death, loss, selfless bravery, hope - and love. The book’s ultimate message is powerful - and profoundly beautiful. It shows us the utter loneliness of those who know nothing but hatred and cruelty. Against this, it reflects back to us the combined magics of caring and healing, that can turn the parched world velvet with new grass.
‘Inside, the castle was alive with many different kinds of people . . . working together with innumerable magics. . . The green was spreading out from the castle. Soon it would hop from village to village, from town to town as even more people joined their magics to the brew.’ (p 170)
Even though the raggedy witches destroy each other through their own selfishness and greed, their influence seems vast. But it is not so huge that it cannot be defeated.
‘And everything was right again. . . The gentlest summer rain began to fall. Everyone turned their faces to its caressing touch, and smiled as it washed them clean.’ (p 209)
Here then is a final huge distinction between Celine Kiernan and J K Rowling. Harry Potter is a hero. Although many others are involved, at the end of the day it is down to him alone to defeat Voldemort, just as it is down to Frodo alone to take the One Ring to the Crack of Doom. But Mup is not that sort of hero, she is not a weapon, she is the pathfinder, a channel, spreading the magic of others out into the world. The message of this book is far more relevant today. It is not a message about the power superheroes, it is a message about the magic of us all.
‘There’s nothing broken in the world that cannot be fixed, if people have the will to fix it. We need to work together in all our differences. We need to walk together on all our many, varied paths. We need to listen in every language. We need to,speak every truth.’ (p 211)
And, whilst messages in this books are vital to children, its final ones of all are perhaps especially for parents and teachers, for it ends with a passionate endorsement of education and its real meaning.
‘All (Doctor Emberly’s) pupils really wanted was for their beloved teacher to set them free.’ (p 212).
It may be the last day of term at the school in theWitches Borough Castle, but that is not the only freedom implied.
Although Celine Kiernan seems to have received accolades and awards aplenty in Ireland, I do not think The Wild Magic is yet getting the huge attention it deserves here. Ireland has produced, and is still producing, some of the world’s finest writers. This includes writers for young people and Celine Kiernan is a star amongst them.
