THE BOOK OF ALFAR

Eleven-year old Sander, who has just moved to the country with his family, sets off to explore his new surroundings. On a trail near his house he spies a strange-looking boy in a red baseball cap who disappears into the brush. It turns out to be not a boy, but 200-year-old Alfar, reluctant heir of his grandfather, Dwerg, who rules the Black Dwarfs. Sander also encounters a Hessian soldier trapped in a time warp and forced to play out a doomed love affair with a Native American girl and his tragic death over and over again in a misguided attempt at revenge by Dwerg. The Indians who chase the Hessian through the woods turn into allies in Sander’s and Alfar’s bid to defeat Dwerg. What with shape-shifting, a magical cloak, a silver belt that renders its wearer invisible, and menacing owls, one is reminded of the books about you-know-who of the scarred forehead. But the plot meanders, with Sander and Alfar hatching a plan to steal Dwerg’s magic cloak in order to free Mini (Sander’s friend and a descendant of the Indian girl who was betrothed to the Hessian) from an endless reenactment of her fantasy that her ancestor’s love affair ended in marriage, not death. The urgency of their mission is diminished by its vagueness. Hassinger relies on long passages of simile-laden narrative, which can be lyrical when describing the Hudson River area, the story’s setting, but fails to inject the necessary dramatic force. (Fiction. 9-12)