Booknotes : Trilogy of Wildwood Chronicles
I was browsing for used books on the Carousell app (a community marketplace platform where you can buy and sell used items (sometimes brand NEW too!)) and found Wildwood, the first book of Wildwood Chronicles by Colin Meloy. It looked like a brand new book with beautiful illustrations owned by another fellow reader who was leaving the country and needed to find a new home for her books.
In 2 days, the book arrived and I fell in love with its book cover. Yes, I judged the book by its cover especially when there’s beautiful illustration was carefully made for it. I appreciate the aesthetic look of this book so much and quickly get the Narnia vibe from it (yes, I’ll explain later).
First 20 pages in the book, I decided that I needed to research the rest of the sequel and made another used book purchase directly from a small bookstore, the name I can’t recall but it is in Portland, USA. The other two books of this trilogy are Under Wildwood and Wildwood Imperium; the covers are absolutely gorgeous.
This is a children's fantasy book but it has a hint of a political message of the present age, magical realism elements, and a set of the secondary world that’s perfuming the pages of this book. It’s an adventure of a group of kids from a town in Portland, Oregon who found a strange, magical city hidden behind the Impassible Wilderness in their city.
I have neither been to Portland nor America, but I could imagine how beautiful nature and its big trees in the wood are through Colin Meloy’s writing. This includes loads of illustrations by Collin’s wife, Carson Ellis who has decorated the book with maps and illustrations of the magical creatures throughout the book. I have never heard of Colin and Carson before, but only later learned that Colin is a lead singer and songwriter in Portland and Carson had done illustration works for Lemony Snicket’s books!
Our main girl character is Prue, Prue McKeel who is aged 9 years old was pedaling together with her baby brother Mac who was in tow. Till when the murder of crows took her brother away, crossed the river, passing the Industrial Waste and into the Impassible Wilderness; Prue’s ordinary adventures turn wild! Impassible Wilderness was always been a forbidden place for Prue and his brother; their parents never told her why they warned her not to go.
She made an adult decision to pass through the wilderness to save her brother anyway whilst her nerdy neighbor, Curtis came along to help her. This secondary world of the Impassible Wilderness is where they both were separated in a different adventure and met speaking animals who live together with another worldly human in this magical city. Curtis was captured by a pack of coyotes who walk on their hind legs, wear military uniforms and speak like humans. Prue in her own adventure into the Avian Principality (name of the place) where it's populated by talking birds, and overseen by the princely Owl Rex (of the South Wood), a town runs in bureaucracy.
The villain in this place is Dowager Governess, who rumors were saying she was raising an army in the deepest part of the wood and preparing to sacrifice Prue’s brother to bring back her dead son which will force a ruin to Wildwood. Curtis who was first captured by the coyote was brought to meet Dowager and deceived of the intention, but Curtis soon learned her evil intention and was then locked up in prison.
The storyline in Wildwood has a dash of Edmund, Susan, and the White Witch from Pacific Northwest Narnia throughout the book, and there’s also a bit of Morticia and Gomez Addams from the Wednesday series in the child labor factory, and a bit too Alice In Wonderland feeling when Prue arrived in a minions city in her adventure of the third book!
In this book, the whimsical pictures of the characters, and the illustration of a quirky scene like a bear who sits together with Prue’s parents for breakfast, a rabbit who rides a bicycle, a mean child labor factory where children casually handle heavy machinery (not a good sight of the imagery though!), and an owl that holds a book to read is sharp imageries that create a delightful strangeness.
I am most identified with the Owl character in the third book, I could see myself in that character, who is extremely introverted and cares nothing but his bunch of books and methodical daily routine!
I like how Colin writes the story where at a certain time the scene of being heartwarming and adorably cute and weaves into shocking violence, a terror of battle with danger and suspense to save Prue’s baby brother and to bring justice to the citizen of this magical world! There’s a mix of magical powers, fairytales, witches, gothic, folklore gods, and a force within the earth, wind, and air in this book too.
If you are not up for a deep and lengthy storyline, you might feel like the book has a slow start and is a bit too long-winded. It is a type of book for someone who likes slow reading and immerses in multiple scenes and characters, paying attention to every little detail of the world-building as you carry along with the adventures. If you are interested to learn about how this book was created, watch the Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis Discuss WILDWOOD on Youtube.