Thursday, March 22, 2018

Appendix N Review: The Face in the Frost



On a world dominated by a Northern Kingdom and a Southern Kingdom divided by a large river, a late spring day brings surprises to an eccentric home near the village of Brakespeare. Inside lives an old wizard named Prospero (expressly stated to NOT be the one you're thinking of). He gets a sense that something would very much like to kill him but isn't strong enough. His friend Roger Bacon (yes, THAT one, the monk who made a talking bronze head) arrives to pay a friendly call and the two get caught up in a magical mystery of who is trying to kill Prospero and why.

1969's The Face in the Frost is a curious book from John Bellairs, a fantasist who mainly wrote young adult gothic mysteries about young heroes overcoming some supernatural threat to the world. Those all came after this novel, however. Here, two old men have to solve a supernatural threat that might threaten the world, or at the least throw two kingdoms into chaos and war.


It is a short book, but very dense in descriptions. The two kingdoms are lushly described as they are visited, and Prospero's house is a marvel of whimsical engineering. The overall level of whimsy in the story is incredibly high, as is the comedy, such as when Prospero and Roger visit King Gorm the Wonderworker, a hobbyist wizard who spends his days happily tinkering away with a cosmic pinball machine that uses miniature galaxies as pieces. Prospero has a passive-aggressive magic mirror that likes to show him baseball games of the Cubs losing. Christianity is woven into the fabric of this world, as are other assorted mystical traditions, and there's even what's very obviously a Jewish wizard who helps out later on with the powers of the Kabbalah.

If this kind of free-flowing kitchen sink approach to worldbuilding annoys you, you're probably going to have a bad time. Especially since Bellairs is able to smoothly transition from whimsical charm to supernatural horror. This is not Lovecraftian horror, but much more like unvarnished fairy tale horror. Creepy, but in a different, much more chaotic way.



The two biggest standout scenes are the false village of Five Dials (named after its clocktower), and the haunted forest where an evil wizard and former colleague of Prospero's named Melichus was supposed to have been killed in.

   A voice breathed in Prospero's ear with a wet-leaf smell, and 
   what that voice said, Prospero has never told anyone. He turned, 
   and he grasped an arm, but his hand sank into mud—mud with a
   center like bone.

Descriptions like this abound, and therin lies the strength, and weakness of the book. Details are lovingly described, filling out what is in actuality a thin plotline. The bulk of the book is made up of episodic subplots full of magic that lead toward a final confrontation (that's a little bit anticlimactic). The descriptions are dense, and the paragraphs are too, and often quite long. Its not really pulp in that it frequently takes the time to stop and smell the roses, but it also describes the roses in excellent and entertaining detail.

Bellairs writes the pretty words good, is what I'm saying.


While it may not be to everyone's taste, I do recommend the book. (Don't let the “Ursula Le Guin loved it!” put you off. Stuff actually does happen in this story.) The wizards are suitably wizardly and solve their problems in a way that makes sense (by not making sense, this is magic, after all). Come for the charming setting and stay for the supernatural horror. Its a fun little palette cleanser between TALES OF TWO-FISTED ADVENTURE!

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