COLMAN

Prefaced by an appreciation from Karen Cushman, this posthumously published sequel to Wise Child (1987) plunges its small band of fugitives into new adventures, but suffers from slow pacing and a general lack of internal cohesion. Furlong revises the previous volume’s ending, so that instead of making landfall on Tir-nan-Og, the healer Juniper takes a needlessly circuitous route back to her native Cornwall, where she learns that her brother, Prince Brangwyn, has been taken captive by evil enchanters Meroot and the Gray Knight. While Juniper helps to organize a revolt, young Wise Child, her cousin Colman (the narrator), and disfigured former leper Cormac join Juniper’s old teacher Euny in spying on the usurpers, then carry out a complicated plot to spring Branwyn. Wise Child and its prequel Juniper (1991) are widely admired for their feminist political and social attitudes and strong-minded female protagonists; here those attitudes are muted, and, seen through Colman’s eyes, the women seem mulish and arbitrary. Readers hoping for a big finish will be disappointed. Furlong merits a memento mori, but this one is more of a rough draft. (Fiction. 11-13)