Wildwood, by Colin Meloy

I just finished reading Wildwood, by Colin Meloy (of The Decemberists). Now, Jamey and I usually read books around the same time, and he almost always beats me to blogging about them (see The Hunger Games). I guess that’s because I’m at work all day, and – although he obviously works very hard as a doctoral student – he has more flexibility in his schedule. But he hasn’t read this one yet, so I finally get to write about something!

The Decemberists are one of my favorite bands, at least partially because of their ability to tell stories (and create worlds) in their music. So I had high expectations for this book, which were not fully met (neither were they disappointed). It was definitely good. It’s long (541 pages), and at times feels like it, but that doesn’t mean it’s unenjoyable.

Set in Portland (what better setting for a fantasy novel?), the book seems like a love story to that city. I’ve never been to Portland (or farther west than Texas, truth be told), but Meloy paints quite a picture. The descriptions of the setting are where he shines – the skills shown in the band’s lyrics are on full display here. I imagine this book started out as a song, and Meloy realized not even he could tell that story in one track, so he wrote a book instead.

The story takes place mostly in the woods, with talking animals, a power-hungry evil sorceress, and children who find out they belong (and matter) more in this world than their own…which brings to mind The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (there’s even a feisty rat!). I guess it would be hard to write a young adult, fantasy novel that didn’t borrow from those common tropes. Nonetheless, little about the novel seemed, well, novel to me. This would be problematic, except that I enjoyed all these “standard” elements in classics, like The Lion... and LotR, and I also enjoyed them here. Also, in its defense, the book is meant for ages 9-12, and that audience probably hasn’t read (and re-read) books about Narnia the way I have/did.

I guess I simultaneously hoped for both more and less detail about the world behind the story. On the one hand, the book is already long enough, and describes the world of the story well. On the other hand, there are a lot of unexplained plot points. And, unfortunately, these unexplained things are the elements that would be the most original, the things that could set this book apart from the classics from which it draws.

The obligatory plot summary: A girl named Prue is babysitting her baby brother when a murder of crows (this bird was chosen, I assume, solely because a group of crows is called a murder, and that’s eerie) swoops down and kidnaps him. She follows the crows into the woods, called the Impassable Wilderness, to rescue her brother.  There, she discovers a secret society in political upheaval. She and Curtis, her friend who followed her in, become involved in the conflict of this society and learn about their own pasts before returning to the outside world (again, C.S. Lewis seems to play heavily here).

The website calls Wildwood Book One of The Wildwood Chronicles, so I imagine there’s more to come. I liked this book enough to read the others. But I didn’t like it enough to reread it whenever the next book comes out, like I did with Harry Potter (rereading all previous books every time a new one came out).