Wow!
I had an absolute blast reading this book. James Owen has created a whole new version of literary history with The Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica : Here There Be Dragons. It's really impressive how he has managed to pull so many fantasy classics (and sci fi) into his early 20th century (set during WWI) story. You've got everything from Peter Pan to Lord of the Rings to the reason why there's a monster in Loch Ness tied up in one fabulous adventure.
Really - I can't recommend the adventure angle enough here.
The set-up involves a young man named John who has just received a note from a professor at Oxford who desperately needs him to visit. John shows up but his beloved mentor is apparently, and quite violently, dead. John meets two other young men who were visiting the prof for other reasons, Charles and Jack, and they try to figure out what happened and why John was called back so urgently. (All this takes place in London btw.) In short order they meet a mysterious visitor who has followed them and insists that they immediately run for their lives to his nearby ship as they are all about to be killed by the same monsters that got the professor. And so, running through the night, the three young men who barely know each other find that they are targets of something unspeakable and must trust each other and the strange man who has found them - a man with a book that he says John must now take care of.
Oh yeah - and if he screws up it's pretty much the end of the world.
What you have in one tightly writtin story is everyone from Captain Nemo to King Arthur (or Arthur's world anyway) and elves and dwarves and dragons and someone who might just be Noah - as in Noah built an ark. It is never silly though, it never seems like Owen is dumping someone into the mix just to add another name. Everyone does what you expect them to do and combined they make such a wonderful adventure novel in the best sort of old fashioned sense (it felt a bit like Treasure Island or 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea while reading - in spirit or style). I can't imagine a better way to while away a rainy day this fall, really you have so much excitement and sheer fun in this novel that it doesn't compare to anything else out there. (Maybe to Looking Glass Wars but while there's some battles here, they are a bit less bloodthirsty in the description.) I would hope that purists don't have a cow over the real identities behind John, Jack and Charles (or Bert - how fabulous is Bert?!) and just let young readers enjoy themselves. Here They Be Dragons is all about stepping up to the plate and doing the right thing and being smart and brave and saving the world and readers are going to love it from start to finish.
Simply put, it has all the stuff good adventures are made of. (And boys in particular will go nuts for it.)
There are also enough moments about what real war is like (John is home on leave from the trenches and clearly suffering from Post Traumatic Stress) to keep it from being too light hearted, and that weighing in of truth adds just the right touch - it keeps the book from being a cartoon.
All in all, loved this. It will be in my September column at Bookslut, all about adventure novels.
(Sci Fi and Fantasy fans might recognize Owen's name from Argosy - the revamped magazine is up and running under his leadership. It is supposed to have a new web site soon and I will be sure to notify when that is up!)
