May 31, 2019

"The League and the Lantern": Let the Buyer Beware

I love heroic fantasy -- fantasy set in Medieval lands with wizards, dragons, trolls, magic swords, Dark Lords, and heroes foretold in ancient prophecy -- but not the stuff aimed at adults, like Game of Thrones.  Too many heterosexual shenanigans and boy-girl fade-out-kisses.

It's in the fantasy aimed at children that you can find the gay subtexts, passionate buddy-bonding, the last-minute rescues, the touching of hands, the fade-out walk into the future. 

Recently my Amazon.com recommendations led me to The League and the Lantern by Brian Wells, advertised as a combination of Harry Potter (the boy who attends wizard school) and Percy Jackson (the boy who hangs out with ancient Greek gods).

It began with:
"Is he dead?"
The voice was muffled and fuzzy.  It sounded like a girl to Jake, but he wasn't quite sure.  Everything was black and spinning.
"No way. Not dead."
Definitely a guy's voice this time, and getting closer.

If I know my fantasy, Jake has just been transported to Eldorar or Faradon, where he will be lauded as the hero mentioned in the ancient prophecy.  The guy reviving him will become his companion on the quest to find the magic sword and banish the Dark Lord, and at the end of the story Jake will decide to stay with him instead of returning to Earth.

So I bought an $18.95 copy.

No, no, and no.

Jake is recovering from a mishap irrelevant to the plot, and the guy who revives him soon vanishes.  He's at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicgo for a "welcome to seventh grade" sleepover.

Almost everyone there is from the University of Chicago prep school, where the elite send their kids, so they already know each other..

So, when is Jake getting zapped to the fantasy world?

He hooks up with two other outcasts, T.J., who is tall, black and into fencing (fencing?  Medieval swordplay later on!), but not otherwise described, and Lucy, who is multilingual and has the "most piercing eyes Jake had ever seen."

Great, boy-meets-girl lo-oo-ove is in the offing for the 12 year old, once they make it to the fantasy world.

They wander off into the museum.  Suddenly there's an explosion, and everything goes black.

Fantasy world now?

Nope.  Vunmen broke in to look for a special artifact: the gloves Abraham Lincoln was wearing when he was shot.  The other kids are evacuated and not in danger, but guess who found the gloves?

Soon everybody is trying to kill them and get the gloves  Even the police.

I'm 50 pages into this thing, and no hint of magic doors to the other world, just a lot of annoying contemporary references to Harry Potter, the X-Men, and so on.

The trio take refuge in Jake's apartment in the mysterious, old-fashioned Greystone hotel (ok, there must be a wardrobe to Narnia in there)

He lives with his eccentric adopted father Gabe, who prefers to be called "Uncle."  The bellhop Artie also big-brothers him.

Aha!  No doubt Jake is the son of the King of Baraliel, and Uncle Gabe is his trusted advisor, who promised to keep him safe when the Darkness took over the kingdom.  Artie must be a comic-relief sidekick, maybe an elf or a fairy.

No, no, and no.  When the trio tracks Gabe and Artie (not a gay couple) to Springfield, the capital of Illinois and a much bigger Lincoln tourism spot thatn I remember, we finally uncover the mystery.  It has ore to do with the Illuminati than the Wood beyond the World.  Think The DaVinci Code, but with Abraham Lincoln instead of Jesus.

I start reading very quickly.  A donut place.  Hot-wiring a jeep.  A parade. Fighting Abraham Lincolns.  Jumping off a sky tram.  Fighting with a government agent who is not what he seems. Nepali Kung Fu.  The Big Bad, whose name is Anarchus, screaming about how bad Lincoln was.  

And suddenly the book is over.  There were some science-fictiony elements (cough -- cloning John Wilkes Booth -- cough).   BUT NO FANTASY.


I checked the book jacket.  Nowhere does it actually say that it is a heroic fantasy, but the marketing department at RepublicInk certainly worked overtime trying to fool you into thinking it was.

What else could this cover illustration possibly signify but a boy crashing through to a fantasy world?

Well, on the bright side, there is very little heterosexism. None of the adult characters display any particular heterosexual interest.  Neither does TJ (plus he's a fan of Taylor Swift -- gay coded?).    Jake doesn't actually fall in love with Lucy, although he has a moment of jealousy when she is hit on by a teenage cowboy with muscular arms (dude, she's twelve).  

Of course, no one expresses same-sex interest either, but I'll take what I can get.

I checked to see if Brian Wells is gay or gay friendly.  Nope: the appendix of his novel thanks about a thousand people, including 38 husband-wife pairs and no husband-husband pairs.

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