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Read The Secret Country (2003)

The Secret Country (2003)

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Rating
3.57 of 5 Votes: 4
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ISBN
0142501530 (ISBN13: 9780142501535)
Language
English
Publisher
firebird

The Secret Country (2003) - Plot & Excerpts

All right, this is technically a recent re-read, as I have read this book more times than I can count. I think the last time, though, may well have been ten or twelve years ago, when I was writing my own “children from our world are whisked away to another, which only they can save” book. Halfway through, I basically fell into a complete panic that I was not writing THE SECRET COUNTRY and that what I was doing was disasterous, so I did something I never ever do, which is went and read a book while writing one. And I discovered that although THE SECRET COUNTRY was indeed perfect in all ways, it wasn’t the story I wanted to tell, so it was all okay.I still find it astonishingly wonderful. I love…God. Everything about it. It encapsulates the pure belief and strength of childhood storytelling, albeit with more Shakespeare references than your average 8-14 year olds have a handle on (and I say this as one who had quite a handle on them, for a person in that age range). The repeated impulses the children have once they realise they’re really *in* the Secret Country–”Let’s say that this happens instead!” Exactly how kids tell stories, except of course it doesn’t work when the game turns real. And the depth of that discovery, that it is real, the things that go wrong from how they’ve told the story, their mirror being imperfect–it’s all exactly how a game turned real should play out.The relationships between the children are beautifully done, with characterization layered through their reactions to one another: Laura liked Patrick, but she did not trust him. God, Patrick is so annoying! In exactly the right way. They all play off each other well, although–and this is a personal thing due to having grown up with the family I did–the way that they tell each other to shut up all the time bothers me. But I recognize that’s because my family were taught that shut up was especially rude, so I don’t like seeing or hearing it often in any scenario. I like the struggle, particularly with Ted, to fit into the character they’re supposed to be playing.I love the language, and I don’t mean the Bardic references. It is told in the way children tell each other stories as they’re playing them, with deceptively simple language and sentences. I wish I could do that, but I have a really hard time with it.It *does* end a little abruptly. :) I wish I hadn’t packed my copies of THE HIDDEN LAND and THE WHIM OF THE DRAGON so I could carry on immediately, particularly since there are several things I think of as having happened in book one that actually happen in book two…Someday I will get to meet Pamela Dean in person, and get her to sign my 28-year-old copy of THE SECRET COUNTRY, and the only slightly younger copies of its sequels, and then I will retire those battered, beloved, yellow-paged, bent-cover, broken-spined, finger-sweat-stained books to the Shelf Of Honor along with DRAGONSONG and one or two others, and I will get newer copies to actually read. (Somehow.)

When I first read this book a few years ago, I had to put it aside almost immediately because it seemed hard to read. I picked it up again, however, a few months later and tried again, to see if it really was me, or if it was the book. Sadly, it was the book. Confusing and poorly written at times, The Secret Country is an awesome story and great plot, but in serious need of help. As I said, when I first read it, I was so thoroughly confused and put off by the writing style that I just had to put the book down, even though it seemed like a very interesting read. In the end, after slogging through the confusing story transitions and then even more confusing world/story building, I find, even after all that, I still loved the story. And a story has to be good when, even with all its faults, I still want to re-read it all again, pain in the neck it might be.As a fan of books about falling into another world, or even between worlds, I found the plot of this series very interesting. Especially since they thought this world was only imaginary and something they had made up. But to find that everything that had been playing at, everything they had thought up and imagined, was real? It must have been every dreamers, well, dream. I can’t say it enough: the plot was great, the world beautiful, and the characters, while at first hard to distinguish, started to be very compelling.One of the greatest hurdles I had to get over with this book were the characters. There were so many, and at first so easy to confuse with each other, that I sometimes found myself trying to remember who was who, what they were doing, and why they would be doing something. There were so many names to keep track of, and so many actions that, after starting the book up again after a day or so, I had to go back and remind myself who everyone was. What confusion! But still, after the first book or so, it did get a (little) easier, and I found myself wondering less and less “who are you and why are you doing that” and more “or, right, you’re this person!”To say the least, this book is a hard, slogging start, but a wonderful, superb read in the end. Especially after all three books are done! Four out of five, and I recommend this book to anyone who is a fan of Narnia, alternate worlds, and has good memory for lot’s of names and places!

What do You think about The Secret Country (2003)?

Every October I reread Pamela Dean's Tam Lin because it's such a good Halloween book. But this year, I couldn't find my copy of Tam Lin, I'm sure I have it somewhere, but it hasn't resurfaced since we moved last spring. I'm sure it will eventually. Fortuitously, I was able to read The Secret Country instead. It's the first book in a trilogy about five cousins who play an on-going pretend game about a fantasy kingdom, and it becomes real and the kids are shocked and surprised and there they are. Because it's based on their own game, they have a general sense of how the "plot" is supposed to go, but things don't always work out the way they expect. The kids are fantastic characters, I love how they alternate between being thrilled to be in a magic adventure, and then indignant when they realize there isn't any normal breakfast food. It did remind me of a funny thing about Pamela Dean books -- that they are filled with things that go completely over my head, but seem like the kind of things that will make sense if you read the book again knowing how things turn out ... except they don't. Like Tam Lin is full of Nick and Robin doing things like exchanging meaningful glances, and I know how the book ends and I still have no idea what they were supposed to be so glanciful about. And Juniper, Gentian, and Rosemary ... forget it. I have no idea what's going on most of the time. Usually I would be annoyed by this, but in the case of Pamela Dean, it makes me feel confident that she's brighter than I am. So it's good that she's in charge of the story.Grade: Solid A, although I will have to read the entire trilogy to be sure.Recommended: Very thoughtful, thorough YA fantasy, and it's serious but not so serious that you wish you were reading a book about grim totalitarian societies.
—Elizabeth K.

A group of children end up inside the imaginary world that they created as part of a secret game, and then they experience some of the adventures they used to play.I liked the characters, and the setting was fun because it fit with how a bunch of kids that age would create a fantasy kingdom, complete with enchanted forests, a wizard's tower, and unicorns. Unfortunately, the rest of the book had some serious issues.The kids were almost always confused about what was going on. They had a lot of knowledge about the country and its inhabitants, even if things in the game weren't quite the way they'd imagined them. That knowledge wasn't communicated effectively to me as a reader, especially thanks to the initial jumble of names and chatter about which child played which secondary character in which scene.There were a lot of arguments about if their trip to the Secret Country was real or a hallucination. The exact nature of their experience might become important in a later book, but anyone who's reading a fantasy novel is pretty much willing to go along with its premise. There was no need to talk it to death, all that navel-gazing held back the pace of the actual plot.If that ongoing disagreement wasn't enough, the characters spent a lot of time fighting over inconsequential things. It got old fast. Their motivations were also muddy, most of the time they seemed content to just go along with whatever was happening. I won't say they were entirely passive, but they were ineffective to the point of nearly being dull.Having said all that, I may pick the second one up if I come across it, because this book didn't really answer any of the questions it raised.
—Donna

You might wonder how I discovered this book. Well, my friends, even if you didn’t wonder, I’m going to tell you anyway. According to my somewhat possibly faulty memory, it happened something like this. I became aware of that fact that apparently on Goodreads you can review... fanfiction. As in, fanfiction—that, from what I gather, you can still find on fanfiction.net or what have you—can be found on its own page on Goodreads. And you can then review them.I wasn't sure how I should feel about this, so decided to do some Googling, to hear different sides out and that kind of thing. It seemed like something that would be a big topic. (Apparently not, though?) I was looking for articles, mainly, I think. Long story short, I ran across this record/article/thing on JournalFen. (Warnings: some cursing in link. If the link doesn’t work, please tell me and I’ll try to fix it.)What was revealed in the link was all new to me. I'm not gonna lie: I ended up checking out this book because I wondered what was so great about it that Cassandra Claire allegedly plagiarized it in fanfiction. Again, not gonna lie, I'm going to be honest and say I'm not too familiar with Claire's work. I know of it. I might have even read a book or two a few years ago (pretty sure I did), but clearly it didn't stick. I know she's a pretty popular YA author and I think there's a movie coming out based on her book series.So, now that you know how I found this book... let me tell you about this book. It has a simple premise: some close cousins play a make believe game together every summer. Then they find a world that is the very world that they made up. In this magical world, they are the characters they made up and acted as in the real world. Simple enough, right?But see, it's kind of fascinating. (view spoiler)[Because some of the things and plot the cousins made up for their game are off ever so slightly in their made up world they can visit. It raises interesting questions. Every time one of them did something not in the “original script” something Bad happens to basically get them back onto the original plot. (hide spoiler)]
—Grace

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