THE AMBERSTONE

Whimsical quest fantasy.

Caught between the dependence of childhood–particularly the lack of a driver’s license–and the pubescent yearning for autonomy, 13-year-old Carrie faces another boring summer day at home. At her mother’s urging, she settles down in her father’s rock garden to tackle one of the remaining titles on her summer reading list, The Hobbit. Her reading is interrupted, however, when Earth momentarily scrapes Vale, a planet from another dimension. This improbable intergalactic event deposits Carrie on a world of talking birds, animals and insects, where her attention is immediately arrested by a shard of glowing amber that speaks to her, revealing itself to be Alma, a goddess trapped eons ago by Lucifer. To be freed, Alma needs Carrie to deliver the amberstone to Lobo, the Great Wolf Spirit, an appropriately Tolkienesque quest that Carrie readily takes up. Aided by a pill bug named Tilt and two youths from the near-utopian city of Safe Keep, Carrie faces natural disasters, ravenous predators and, most daunting of all, the prevailing view that the amberstone should be returned to Safe Keep rather than to Lobo. Finally, Carrie is forced to choose whether to listen to her instincts or to the voices of those who have helped her. Clearly an allegory about emerging from adolescence to find one’s moral compass, Carrie’s journey is dominated by two spiritual systems, one represented by the Guardians–ethereal, Miltonic angels who serve the Creator and guard Safe Keep–and the other embodied in Lobo, Alma and even the imps of Bleak Meadow. Lobo and Alma embody the intuitive and immanent portions of Carrie’s youthful identity, while the Guardians are the transcendent, superego of the adult world–how she chooses to balance these elements will say much about her path to maturity. Heavily influenced by Tolkien and Lewis Carroll, Lecoq’s promising debut is a lighthearted amusement powered by crisp and economic descriptive prose. The dialogue, unfortunately, rarely matches the quality of the narration, and this weakness dilutes the drama of Carrie’s adventures. Billed as young-adult fare, this would appeal more to an even younger audience.

Fun juvenile fiction with lively, precise narration and a strong tendency to allegory.