Has anyone on this stupid app read The Face in the Frost and can tell me what the hell I just read? Cause I like it but am afraid I'm overthinking the complexity to gleaned from it. Is it simply a Good Book?
— goggle beanie (@aw_buiscuits) October 29, 2020
Has anyone on this stupid app read The Face in the Frost and can tell me what the hell I just read? Cause I like it but am afraid I'm overthinking the complexity to gleaned from it. Is it simply a Good Book?
When the Starry-Eyed Rougarou asks for specifics, goggle beanie provides the following:
Essentially nothing, and everything. In my efforts to consume early adult fantasy I've come to the realization the part of what makes the writing so good is the exclusion of what would, in more modern fantasy, be explicitly explained and expounded. For example, Prospero's use of tarot cards in the use of his more volatile magics. What is up with that? I want to know more. How are renowned wizards such as prospero and roger so powerless in the face of danger. Which harkens back, and is apparently directly inspired, by tolkien's use of magic. Gandalf never does anything explicitly powerful, and yet he is a most powerful wizard. Just because. Bellairs has his wizards use "words of power," but gives more weight to those moments by never telling you what the particular word is, made up or otherwise, or what it even does. Only deigning to give to the reader the nonsensical rhymes and chants that are much more mundane and lesser in their effects. Which does do wonders to help create the duality of horror and humor.
Also, did prospero's meddling in the Empty Forest lift the curse of the forest? Or no? Master wizard that he is he proclaims not to know one way or another and it is never really said whether the forest ever returned to a norm. The ending might imply but, even then, loosely.
Tl;dr I just want to know ~more~ about the world and physics and the workings. But I'd also stake the claim that knowing would take away from the whimsicalness of the story itself.
Starry-Eyed Rougarou notes Face is Bellairs's first book explicitly for adults and in his book Bellairs shows us Propero's world and does not tell us about it:
He shows us the world and allows us to draw our own conclusions because to Tell us is to insult our intelligence and break the immersion of the story. It’s much more enjoyable to be placed in a world that isn’t overly explained. And a lot of what this novel does is subvert what we think of as “Magic” and emphasizes the power of subtlety. He is powerful because he is powerful, not because he does powerful things.
Bellairs noted in a 1990 article with the Eagle Tribune how "some people think horror is to be grossed out by really disgusting things. But for me, horror is suggestion and what might happen and the old-fashioned haunted house movies."
Does his suggestive style keep contemporary readers interested or does it confuse or annoy? Do we need to know the secret name Melichus was given by Michael Scott? Do we need to know the inner workings of the fifth dial? Does knowing the word "wizard" in the three principal languages of the South matter? (What are those three languages anyway?)
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