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feather_ghyll) wrote2024-08-18 03:46 pm
feather_ghyll) wrote2024-08-18 03:46 pm
REREAD: The Iron Sceptre
The Iron Sceptre: John White. The Archives of Anthropos 2. Minstrel, 1988.
This is a sequel to The Tower of Geburah, and like that book, was read to me as a child. Some things about it have stayed with me even more than form the previous book, perhaps because one of the new characters is a girl, Mary, and she goes through an adventure-cum-spiritual journey that’s a bit like that of Edmund Pevensie’s. But there were also plenty of things that I hadn’t remembered, while others, like the name of the tapestry, rang in my ear.
My overall impression rereading it now was that it felt rather picaresque, with Mary and Wesley, Lisa and Kurt undergoing a series of trials to save the kingdom of Anthropos, once again in the last three’s case. Perhaps it’s too diffuse, as we switch from an adventure to a quest to the struggles of king Kardia. There are some of the problems inherent to sequels – telling the same story would be boring, although for newcomer Mary, it is about coming to know Gaal, choosing him and being claimed by him. But the other three children already know him, and though their obedience is tested (well, the boys’, Lisa is rather underserved), as is Inkleth’s and Kardia’s, it’s more about the external threat to the kingdom, and, indeed, the continent.
I felt this book was rather more influenced by Narnia than its precedcessor, as Mary is whisked away from Winnipeg to a cold, wintery land where she first encounters talking animals, and then a witch, Mirmah, who lives in the far north. To take a step back, we learn that Wes, Lisa and Kurt have a surname, Freisian. Their uncle is called John McNab (and in this book it’s confirmed that he is not the narrator, but is he the ‘John Wilson’ who visited Anthropos long ago.) The Freisians are disgruntled at the start of the book, set six months after the adventures of ‘The Tower of Geburah.’ Their cousin, Mary McNab, who’s a year younger than Kurt, is also staying there – using the attic room with the mysterious old TV sets as a bedroom.
Mary is plump and pimply, but worse than that, she’s boastful and talks up Toronto, from whence she comes, at the expense of Winnipeg, which irritates her cousins. But they have been told that her family situation is complex and to try to be kind. We find out, as Mary relives it and then tries to suppress it, about Mary’s upbringing, with a mother who values wealth and beauty, and who has a series of men in her life who Mary calls uncle. The latest insisted that Mary had to go, and go she did, to stay with her uncle John. In the airport, before she goes on the plane alone, the woman she has always called mother informs Mary that she’s actually her stepmother. (John McNab is Mary’s dead father’s brother, so an uncle in the sense that most of us understand it.) What a time and what a way to drop that bombshell!
It's fairly obvious that Mary isn’t so much greedy as using food as an unhealthy coping mechanism, having had a childhood of never quite feeling loved. Her stepmother would lavish attention on her between men, but then withdraw (and even drug her so that she wasn’t a bother when she held parties), and now there’s the revelation that she was Mary’s stepmother.
Mary first meets the paradoxical, wonderful Gaal in a dream, who gives her a message to pass on to the others. Maybe it wasn’t a dream, as she also has the sword of Geburah to pass on too.
As if that wasn’t enough to be getting on with, a great aunt who used to be a dentist turns up insisting that she will adopt Mary, although Mary is terrified of this eccentric relative. Uncle John is at work, expecting the aunt, who he plans to fob off, to come in the evening. Wesley and the others can’t cope with the early arrival, while Mary goes to hide in her bedroom, which is how she ends up going through a proseo stone into the same world as the others visited, although she doesn’t know that. For her, it’s a confusing world, where animals talk and she may or may not be imprisoned. She all but tumbles into the hands of the witch Mirmah, who has two guises. One is that of an elderly hag (with bad breath), the other is of a beautiful woman, who has a mole in exactly the same spot as Mary’s mother/stepmother did. In both guises, she wears an enormous crown. She promises Mary that she can make her beautiful, claims to love her as a mother, but issues her a series of tasks, which involve Mary in the lives of King Kardia, Queen Suneideisis and their son Prince Tiqvah.
For, as the Freisians discover when they go up to the attic room and see images on three TV sets, and choose to go through one, thirty years have elapsed since they were last in Anthropos. There is grey in Kardia’s hair, the Matmon (dwarves) have aged more slowly, and Chocma not at all, but the Koach (wolves) they meet are the grandchildren of the Koach they used to know. Anthropos is again in danger, and it seems as though the children must help – this news makes them forget about Mary, rather.
Apart from the impact of the time-lapse – with Kardia and Suneideisis having had a son who is older than Wes and the rest – there are things that were never mentioned before to learn about. The iron sceptre of the title is Kardia’s, a symbol of his authority over the kingdom. Mirmah wants it, and has already gained six sceptres from six neighbouring kingdoms that have fallen into literal darkness and cold, under her power. She’s also abducted Sun and Tiqvah. Gaal’s orders (via an eagle) are for the children to go rescue them.
What happens next is all rather a breathless rush, as we switch from Mary to the Freisians to Kardia. There were touches of ‘The Hobbit’ in the encounter out of time under the mountain with Goldcoffin, although Mirmah’s association with winter scream ‘The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe’. All the characters have to face temptations to stray away from the path Gaal has sent them on, but the temptation of bodily yearning tends to be food. Kurt has to overcome a rooster, a figure of fear for him since early childhood, although it has a particular symbolism in Christianity. I was particularly creeped out by a lobster, which is one of many monsters to for our heroes to face, quite a few being linked to Greek mythology. We get more hints about other adventures, as if returning to Anthropos wasn’t enough of a sign that this is part of a series of adventures. It occurred to me that all the stuff about Mary’s damaging family life was undercut by the Freisians’ parents conveniently leaving them with their uncle again, even if their mother has an important job to do. There’s just a hint of a romance with Prince Tiqvah for Mary, which has a lot of implications, as he is from one world, and she another, ours, to which she and her cousins return to find, as before, that no time has passed, although they, and Mary most of all, have changed.
This is a sequel to The Tower of Geburah, and like that book, was read to me as a child. Some things about it have stayed with me even more than form the previous book, perhaps because one of the new characters is a girl, Mary, and she goes through an adventure-cum-spiritual journey that’s a bit like that of Edmund Pevensie’s. But there were also plenty of things that I hadn’t remembered, while others, like the name of the tapestry, rang in my ear.
My overall impression rereading it now was that it felt rather picaresque, with Mary and Wesley, Lisa and Kurt undergoing a series of trials to save the kingdom of Anthropos, once again in the last three’s case. Perhaps it’s too diffuse, as we switch from an adventure to a quest to the struggles of king Kardia. There are some of the problems inherent to sequels – telling the same story would be boring, although for newcomer Mary, it is about coming to know Gaal, choosing him and being claimed by him. But the other three children already know him, and though their obedience is tested (well, the boys’, Lisa is rather underserved), as is Inkleth’s and Kardia’s, it’s more about the external threat to the kingdom, and, indeed, the continent.
I felt this book was rather more influenced by Narnia than its precedcessor, as Mary is whisked away from Winnipeg to a cold, wintery land where she first encounters talking animals, and then a witch, Mirmah, who lives in the far north. To take a step back, we learn that Wes, Lisa and Kurt have a surname, Freisian. Their uncle is called John McNab (and in this book it’s confirmed that he is not the narrator, but is he the ‘John Wilson’ who visited Anthropos long ago.) The Freisians are disgruntled at the start of the book, set six months after the adventures of ‘The Tower of Geburah.’ Their cousin, Mary McNab, who’s a year younger than Kurt, is also staying there – using the attic room with the mysterious old TV sets as a bedroom.
Mary is plump and pimply, but worse than that, she’s boastful and talks up Toronto, from whence she comes, at the expense of Winnipeg, which irritates her cousins. But they have been told that her family situation is complex and to try to be kind. We find out, as Mary relives it and then tries to suppress it, about Mary’s upbringing, with a mother who values wealth and beauty, and who has a series of men in her life who Mary calls uncle. The latest insisted that Mary had to go, and go she did, to stay with her uncle John. In the airport, before she goes on the plane alone, the woman she has always called mother informs Mary that she’s actually her stepmother. (John McNab is Mary’s dead father’s brother, so an uncle in the sense that most of us understand it.) What a time and what a way to drop that bombshell!
It's fairly obvious that Mary isn’t so much greedy as using food as an unhealthy coping mechanism, having had a childhood of never quite feeling loved. Her stepmother would lavish attention on her between men, but then withdraw (and even drug her so that she wasn’t a bother when she held parties), and now there’s the revelation that she was Mary’s stepmother.
Mary first meets the paradoxical, wonderful Gaal in a dream, who gives her a message to pass on to the others. Maybe it wasn’t a dream, as she also has the sword of Geburah to pass on too.
As if that wasn’t enough to be getting on with, a great aunt who used to be a dentist turns up insisting that she will adopt Mary, although Mary is terrified of this eccentric relative. Uncle John is at work, expecting the aunt, who he plans to fob off, to come in the evening. Wesley and the others can’t cope with the early arrival, while Mary goes to hide in her bedroom, which is how she ends up going through a proseo stone into the same world as the others visited, although she doesn’t know that. For her, it’s a confusing world, where animals talk and she may or may not be imprisoned. She all but tumbles into the hands of the witch Mirmah, who has two guises. One is that of an elderly hag (with bad breath), the other is of a beautiful woman, who has a mole in exactly the same spot as Mary’s mother/stepmother did. In both guises, she wears an enormous crown. She promises Mary that she can make her beautiful, claims to love her as a mother, but issues her a series of tasks, which involve Mary in the lives of King Kardia, Queen Suneideisis and their son Prince Tiqvah.
For, as the Freisians discover when they go up to the attic room and see images on three TV sets, and choose to go through one, thirty years have elapsed since they were last in Anthropos. There is grey in Kardia’s hair, the Matmon (dwarves) have aged more slowly, and Chocma not at all, but the Koach (wolves) they meet are the grandchildren of the Koach they used to know. Anthropos is again in danger, and it seems as though the children must help – this news makes them forget about Mary, rather.
Apart from the impact of the time-lapse – with Kardia and Suneideisis having had a son who is older than Wes and the rest – there are things that were never mentioned before to learn about. The iron sceptre of the title is Kardia’s, a symbol of his authority over the kingdom. Mirmah wants it, and has already gained six sceptres from six neighbouring kingdoms that have fallen into literal darkness and cold, under her power. She’s also abducted Sun and Tiqvah. Gaal’s orders (via an eagle) are for the children to go rescue them.
What happens next is all rather a breathless rush, as we switch from Mary to the Freisians to Kardia. There were touches of ‘The Hobbit’ in the encounter out of time under the mountain with Goldcoffin, although Mirmah’s association with winter scream ‘The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe’. All the characters have to face temptations to stray away from the path Gaal has sent them on, but the temptation of bodily yearning tends to be food. Kurt has to overcome a rooster, a figure of fear for him since early childhood, although it has a particular symbolism in Christianity. I was particularly creeped out by a lobster, which is one of many monsters to for our heroes to face, quite a few being linked to Greek mythology. We get more hints about other adventures, as if returning to Anthropos wasn’t enough of a sign that this is part of a series of adventures. It occurred to me that all the stuff about Mary’s damaging family life was undercut by the Freisians’ parents conveniently leaving them with their uncle again, even if their mother has an important job to do. There’s just a hint of a romance with Prince Tiqvah for Mary, which has a lot of implications, as he is from one world, and she another, ours, to which she and her cousins return to find, as before, that no time has passed, although they, and Mary most of all, have changed.