Author: James A. Owen
Published: September 2006
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing
Series: The Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica #1
336 pages (hardcover)
I saw this series at the bookstore and, reading the summary on the inside flap, became really interested in it because it sounded to me, like a mix of stories. Based on the summary alone, it kind of reminded me of The Game by Diana Wynne Jones, where all the worlds any story has ever taken place in exists in one universe. After reading Here, There Be Dragons, it’s clear it’s nothing like The Game. Instead of all the story worlds existing in one place, it is, instead, a place that inspires all the world’s greatest stories. The place of imagination.
John, Jack and Charles are called to the scene of the murder of Professor Stellen. While Jack and Charles have never met the professor, John knows him — he is his mentor, whom he was going to visit that day. The three men, a bit nervous over the murder, decide to go to an Oxford clubhouse together to relax. As if their day can’t become more strange, they meet a man named Bert who insists they are in great danger and hurries them out of the house, to the docks, where a great ship, The Indigo Dragon, awaits to take them to the Archipelago of Dreams. Bert explains that the Winter King and his wendigos are the ones who killed Professor Stellen, and now they will try to kill John, and by association, Jack and Charles as well, for John is now the Caretaker of the Imaginarium Geographica, and atlas of the imagination.
The world of the Archipelago of Dreams is not really what I expected. I guess I kind of expected some dream-like quality to it, as it is a place of imagination, but while there are oddities, I didn’t really feel like it’s ‘dreamy’. It is a world where there are four major races — Elves, Dwarves, Trolls and Goblins — as well as Men. There is one throne, the Silver Throne, which all of King Arthur’s descendants have been kings. King Arthur was the first king, who ruled both the Archipelago and our real world at one point in time, and commanded dragons. Anyway, it all sounded like … pretty normal to me, for a fantasy. Almost like a kingdom. So, the world was okay, but a bit underwhelming.
The beginning of the story is rather hard to get into. It most certainly gets better by the end though. As I was reading I was thinking this is a two or three star book, but by the end, I was thinking this may just be a four star book. (I settled for the middle of the road, haha). It’s hard to get into because, the beginning at any rate, moves very, very fast with little to no explanation as to why the characters go along with everything. Oh sure, they are bewildered, but they more or less just go with the flow. I’m sorry, but if I was taken into a whole ‘nother world with talking animals and witches and trolls, I would think I was going crazy. The characters themselves are, well, characters. They are funny but there’s no realism with the characters. No back stories. The relationships between them simply appear; John, Jack and Charles start off as perfect strangers, but by the time they board The Indigo Dragon, John is already calling him his good friends.
The writing, in this book, is really mediocre. After realizing the author is first and foremost, a graphic novel writer, it makes sense why his writing is sparse and not really descriptive. While it wasn’t bad writing, it certainly made me feel like I was reading a children’s book, as opposed to a young adult book.
The last half of the book and the ending were really good, in my opinion. It was exciting and quite a few twists occur; who doesn’t love a good twist? At the very end, it is revealed that all the previous Caretakers are famous authors of some sort, and that the novels they wrote were inspired by their adventures in the Archipelago of Dreams, protecting the Imaginarium Graphica. So at the very end, you find out who Jack, Charles and John really are. Some people say they didn’t see this coming at all and seemed kind of left field for them, but I think if you got all the literary allusions and references, it shouldn’t really come as a surprise at all.
Speaking of literary allusions, there are a lot, and it is what I really like about this book. I love it when I catch books alluding to other books, and because of the nature of this one, Here There Be Dragons is chock full of them. All the allusions are to pre-1917 books because that’s the time period John, Jack and Charles are in, in their real world. The thing is, I haven’t read that many books that are, well, that old, but I think if you have at least heard of them, you will understand the allusions as well. For example, we have 20, 000 Leagues Under The Sea, Alice In Wonderland, Sherlock Holmes, and those are only the ones I got; there are probably tons more I missed. You don’t need to understand a single allusion to read this book, but it sure makes reading it more fun.
My Rating: 3/5
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