Prospero’s Children
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- ¥430
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- ¥430
発行者による作品情報
English fantasy at its finest, the first in this exciting new trilogy steps into the gap that exists between The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Clive Barker’s Weaveworld.
A mysterious, isolated house awaits sixteen-year-old Fern and her brother Will for the summer holidays. As the old house reveals its secrets, their familiar world starts to fracture, giving access to a magical and corrupt land destroyed thousands of years ago.
For hidden in the house is a talisman which has been sought by the forces of good and evil for millennia. And only someone possessed of the Gift can use it.
Soon, Fern finds herself being courted by the enigmatic wanderer, Ragginbone, and the sinister art-dealer, Javier Holt, who know that she has the Gift. Both want her to find the talisman, and use it to unlock the door, but what awaits her on the other side…?
This is English fantasy at its finest. Prospero’s Children steps into the gap that exists between The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Clive Barker’s Weaveworld, and is destined to become a modern classic.
Reviews
‘Prospero’s Children is a piece of pure magic – a charming, eccentric, and powerfully imaginative work of fantasy which will enchant readers for years to come.’
Clive Barker
‘A lyrical, captivating first novel of mermaids, magic, lost worlds and found souls. Once read, this book will not be forgotten’
Terry Brooks
About the author
Jan Siegel has already lived through one lifetime – during which she travelled the world and supported herself through a variety of professions, including those of actress, barmaid, garage hand, laboratory assistant, journalist and model. Her new life is devoted to her writing, but she also finds time to ride, ski and attend the opera.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Proving that a breath of imagination can rekindle the embers of a spent theme, Siegel enlivens this schematically familiar fantasy with a new twist on the old legend of Atlantis. The sunken island is the former homeland of the mystically minded kind that 16-year-old Fern Capel and her younger brother, Will, encounter when they move to an inherited family house in the Yorkshire countryside. Left to themselves by their loving but oblivious dad, they soon discover that their home is a magnet for sorceresses, shapeshifters, unicorns and god-possessed vessels, all of whom survived the island's cataclysmic collapse into the sea eons before and are drawn by a potent Atlantean talisman--a magic key that unlocks the door between life and death--kept hidden on the premises. When a scheming opportunist misuses the key and accidentally ruptures the barrier separating past and present, feisty Fern, whose maturation draws her own latent magic powers forth, must retrieve it from the antediluvian past it has disappeared into--just as the island is starting to crumble. Much of the novel is struck from the rigid template for modern teenage quest fantasies, but Siegel distinguishes her story once she shifts bearings to the island setting. Though it recapitulates much of the tale already told, this Atlantean interlude is captivating for its vivid depiction of an ancient civilization where exotic beauty, decadent corruption and magical good and evil all commingle. "Our story is over--for a while," says one of the fey folk in the epilogue, and this serviceable debut will have readers anticipating the sequel it portends.
