I’m all for a bit of JRR Tolkien in my literary reading list, so when I came across The Oddling Prince I thought it’d fit the bill perfectly. It’s by Nancy Springer, a famed fantasy author, it has an epic quest and it has a battle between good and evil, framed by the relationship between two brothers. Hooray, I thought, dear reader, and picked up the book eagerly.
Straight off the bat: it wasn’t at all what I was expecting. The story opens with Aric, a prince whose father, Bardaric, is dying due to a mysterious fairy ring that appeared on his hand. But somebody comes to save him: a fairy prince, who is suddenly revealed to be Albaric, Aric’s half-brother, fathered when the king was snatched away to the land of the fairies one day when hunting. So far, so unusual. The two boys quickly strike up a deep friendship, and must work together to survive coups, plotting, jealousy, and most of all the wrath of the cured King, who grows stranger and crueller by the day.
That’s the brief outline, but a hell of a lot happens between the lines. I lost count of how many times the plot twisted and turned, leading us to expect one thing- like Aric and Albaric going on a quest to find Albaric a place where he could be happy and not shunned- and then hitting us with another, like the boys having to turn back because their father’s kingdom had been taken over (spoilers, sorry). Springer has a marvellous imagination, and devices like a coil of hair that functions like a rope you can climb up, or the fairy ring itself, make the world seem magic and exciting, adding to the sense that you’re reading an epic fantasy.
That impression is only reinforced by the language, which is Tolkien-esque in the extreme. Indeed, with kings and queens, struggles for power, the fairy world and the extreme bro-mance, it did feel like I’d taken a step back to the storywriting of the fifties- and that was no bad thing. It was well-written, and some of the characters, like the young (too young, really) love interest to Aric, Marissa, was everything you want in a female character: strong, interesting, supportive and independent. The same goes for Aric’s mother, who was a strong, welcome change from the helpless damsel in distress stereotype. Aric, too, was quite an unusual hero: lots was made of his pure, clear, honest nature and desire to love and support his brother no matter what.
That’s all well and good, but the depiction of Albaric was a little confusing to me. He’s described as tortured, lost and in desperate search of somebody to love him. That’s fine, but the ethereal way he was described didn’t really do a lot to endear him, with the end result being that I didn’t really much mind what happened to him. Likewise, the insta-love between him and Aric made me feel a touch uncomfortable, and was described sometimes in an almost erotic way- so much so that I was relieved when Marissa was introduced.
By the end of the book, I was left feeling very confused. The ending was very cleverly tied up, and the writing was very pretty, but some bits felt a little contrived and the villain of the piece was a bit pantomime for me. If you’re looking for something a little bit different from your fantasy this summer, I’d definitely recommend it: it’ll leave you thinking!
Three word review: ethereal, epic, mournful
Book cover taken from Goodreads
The Roaring Bookworm 