REVIEW: The Secret Country
Mar. 22nd, 2025 04:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllThe Secret Country: Pamela Dean, Firebird (Penguin), 2003
This is Volume One of the Secret Country trilogy, first published in the 80s, and as it ends at a satisfying resting point, but with much left unresolved, I’m looking forward to finding out what happens next. Dean is the author of ‘Tam Lin’, which adapted and updated the ballad, setting the story at an American college in the 1970s, and which I rated very highly. (I’ve also read ‘The Dubious Hills’ by her, but not posted about it.)
Readers of children’s fantasy books will be familiar with the concept – Narnia is the classic example – where a family of children step out of our world into a fantastical one, where they probably have a part to play in its destiny. There is a twist to that, and in a way, it’s a homage, written with an eye to an older audience that craves a few more layers. We start with two sets of cousins playing a game they always play together during the summer, although it’s also a kind of play that they’ve made up, somewhat increasingly influenced by Shakespeare, called The Secret Country. In the opening pages, they’re playing a scene involving a traitor, a prince and a wizard, with a page who is acting more like a frustrated director, because the older ones aren’t getting it right, and it’s their last chance to do so this summer.
Oh well, they tell each other, they can get it right next summer. Except they can’t.
Ruth, Patrick and Ellen’s parents move them to Australia. Their cousins Ted and Laura are spending the summer with the wrong cousins in the States, because their parents have gone to visit the lot in Australia (why would you not go in the southern hemisphere’s summer? The answer is probably plot convenience.) Laura and Ted don’t quite fit in with their relatives and hosts. Laura is inordinately clumsy, which irritates their hosts. They feel like they have nothing in common with their cousins, even when they discover by accident that they have their own game, but it seems to involve spies, not wizards and royalty.
Getting lost after a desperate visit to the library that takes them out of the house, Ted and Laura come across a mysterious sword in a bush near an uncanny house inhabited by a woman who could be a witch, which transports the siblings…to The Secret Country that they made up.
Except it isn’t quite as they remember it. They find the other three, who have a similar story, having found a sword in a bottle tree, leading them to near the Well of the White Witch. They are delighted to be reunited like this - they range in ages from adolescents (Laura and Ellen) to mid-teens - but incredulous, and then it becomes all the more complicated, as a counsellor who they made up rides up to them, ready to return them to the High Castle, where they are princes, princesses and, in Ruth’s case, apprentice sorcerers.
After a return to the States and Australia, they return to the Secret Country, for the majority view is that they should continue to play the game, despite the differences in the Secret Country from the one they made up, and they keep finding out bits that someone else (usually Ellen) made up. So they look for a magical ring to help them do so. For this is a land of high fantasy and low technology, with wizards and sorcerers, who both use a different kind of magic. There is talk of unicorns, and cardinals play a crucial role.
Laura, who is nothing like graceful, brave, horses rider extraordinaire Princess Laura is the most afraid, while rationalist Patrick increasingly wants to prove that this is not real. Ted finds that being left-handed, quiet Prince Edward, who was supposedly in love with Lady Ruth, is hard for him to pull off, especially because his role in the game is to kill someone who is now a flesh-and-blood adult.
Ruth is expected to know more about sorcery than she does, Ted and Patrick are supposed to be able to fence, while Ted plays a greater role in court politics than the others as the King’s son. They thought they knew who the villain of the piece was, but things do not go as expected, and they are sure that they will be discovered. The return of the wizard Fence to court and the appearance of a beautiful, but dangerous lady only seem to up the ante. Laura, both perceptive and clueless, and battling her fears of horses, beasts and nearly everything that seems to excite the rest, is showing magical abilities.
The continual sense of children playing at a game that they don’t understand adds to the overall sense of mystery. There is clearly magic afoot. The reader wants to find out what’s going on as much as they do, while being open to possibilities that the characters aren’t – the dreams that some of the children have have to mean something, as do the colours of jewels and lights. The set-up is like a riddle, but the protagonists are very real. Laura and Ted are really the main characters, the cousins all argue repeatedly. Patrick can be extremely annoying, even more so when he’s in the right, and I imagine that having to deal with a klutzy younger sister or cousin like Laura would be irritating, especially if you’re trying to get somewhere unobserved.
But the characters of the High Castle are more multi-faceted than the parts the children made up, and often played (it was handy that Edward was bookish and Ellen was shy, so that they could play roles other than their namesakes in more interesting scenes. Now that they’re pretending to be them most of the time, it’s awkward.) Sometimes, these adults look like their creators, but more often than not they do things that certainly bewilder Laura. There is a threat of a repeat of a past battle, but there are those who would counsel the king awry. Randolph seems unlike the traitor the children are sure he will be, Fence is both comforting and seems the most likely person to see that they are not who they seem to be.
And then the events that they were most looking forward to, the Midsummer Feast and the Unicorn Hunt, are, like the High Castle itself, not what they expected. Laura learns some things, their way back home is made more difficult, and they still haven’t cracked what’s going on, but it cast a spell on me. The author’s note on the last page emphasises that this is for adults who loved these kinds of books in childhood. (Me!)
This is Volume One of the Secret Country trilogy, first published in the 80s, and as it ends at a satisfying resting point, but with much left unresolved, I’m looking forward to finding out what happens next. Dean is the author of ‘Tam Lin’, which adapted and updated the ballad, setting the story at an American college in the 1970s, and which I rated very highly. (I’ve also read ‘The Dubious Hills’ by her, but not posted about it.)
Readers of children’s fantasy books will be familiar with the concept – Narnia is the classic example – where a family of children step out of our world into a fantastical one, where they probably have a part to play in its destiny. There is a twist to that, and in a way, it’s a homage, written with an eye to an older audience that craves a few more layers. We start with two sets of cousins playing a game they always play together during the summer, although it’s also a kind of play that they’ve made up, somewhat increasingly influenced by Shakespeare, called The Secret Country. In the opening pages, they’re playing a scene involving a traitor, a prince and a wizard, with a page who is acting more like a frustrated director, because the older ones aren’t getting it right, and it’s their last chance to do so this summer.
Oh well, they tell each other, they can get it right next summer. Except they can’t.
Ruth, Patrick and Ellen’s parents move them to Australia. Their cousins Ted and Laura are spending the summer with the wrong cousins in the States, because their parents have gone to visit the lot in Australia (why would you not go in the southern hemisphere’s summer? The answer is probably plot convenience.) Laura and Ted don’t quite fit in with their relatives and hosts. Laura is inordinately clumsy, which irritates their hosts. They feel like they have nothing in common with their cousins, even when they discover by accident that they have their own game, but it seems to involve spies, not wizards and royalty.
Getting lost after a desperate visit to the library that takes them out of the house, Ted and Laura come across a mysterious sword in a bush near an uncanny house inhabited by a woman who could be a witch, which transports the siblings…to The Secret Country that they made up.
Except it isn’t quite as they remember it. They find the other three, who have a similar story, having found a sword in a bottle tree, leading them to near the Well of the White Witch. They are delighted to be reunited like this - they range in ages from adolescents (Laura and Ellen) to mid-teens - but incredulous, and then it becomes all the more complicated, as a counsellor who they made up rides up to them, ready to return them to the High Castle, where they are princes, princesses and, in Ruth’s case, apprentice sorcerers.
After a return to the States and Australia, they return to the Secret Country, for the majority view is that they should continue to play the game, despite the differences in the Secret Country from the one they made up, and they keep finding out bits that someone else (usually Ellen) made up. So they look for a magical ring to help them do so. For this is a land of high fantasy and low technology, with wizards and sorcerers, who both use a different kind of magic. There is talk of unicorns, and cardinals play a crucial role.
Laura, who is nothing like graceful, brave, horses rider extraordinaire Princess Laura is the most afraid, while rationalist Patrick increasingly wants to prove that this is not real. Ted finds that being left-handed, quiet Prince Edward, who was supposedly in love with Lady Ruth, is hard for him to pull off, especially because his role in the game is to kill someone who is now a flesh-and-blood adult.
Ruth is expected to know more about sorcery than she does, Ted and Patrick are supposed to be able to fence, while Ted plays a greater role in court politics than the others as the King’s son. They thought they knew who the villain of the piece was, but things do not go as expected, and they are sure that they will be discovered. The return of the wizard Fence to court and the appearance of a beautiful, but dangerous lady only seem to up the ante. Laura, both perceptive and clueless, and battling her fears of horses, beasts and nearly everything that seems to excite the rest, is showing magical abilities.
The continual sense of children playing at a game that they don’t understand adds to the overall sense of mystery. There is clearly magic afoot. The reader wants to find out what’s going on as much as they do, while being open to possibilities that the characters aren’t – the dreams that some of the children have have to mean something, as do the colours of jewels and lights. The set-up is like a riddle, but the protagonists are very real. Laura and Ted are really the main characters, the cousins all argue repeatedly. Patrick can be extremely annoying, even more so when he’s in the right, and I imagine that having to deal with a klutzy younger sister or cousin like Laura would be irritating, especially if you’re trying to get somewhere unobserved.
But the characters of the High Castle are more multi-faceted than the parts the children made up, and often played (it was handy that Edward was bookish and Ellen was shy, so that they could play roles other than their namesakes in more interesting scenes. Now that they’re pretending to be them most of the time, it’s awkward.) Sometimes, these adults look like their creators, but more often than not they do things that certainly bewilder Laura. There is a threat of a repeat of a past battle, but there are those who would counsel the king awry. Randolph seems unlike the traitor the children are sure he will be, Fence is both comforting and seems the most likely person to see that they are not who they seem to be.
And then the events that they were most looking forward to, the Midsummer Feast and the Unicorn Hunt, are, like the High Castle itself, not what they expected. Laura learns some things, their way back home is made more difficult, and they still haven’t cracked what’s going on, but it cast a spell on me. The author’s note on the last page emphasises that this is for adults who loved these kinds of books in childhood. (Me!)
