12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Can't put it down., February 28, 2009
The first time since I read Harry Potter that I have been tempted to keep reading rather than feed my family. I suggest getting multiple copies if you have more than a few kids, or you may also be tempted to steal from your children. Tons of excitement and great sentence structure in this delightful series.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Closes the cupboard door, July 25, 2009
The wonderful novel 100 Cupboards--to which this is a sequel--set up the magical cupboard that leads to other worlds. Our hero Henry, of Henry, Kansas, discovers the cupboards in that book and discovers the mystery of his own origins. I loved that book and was thrilled to read Dandelion Fire, but though WIlson shows that his next books will move easily into high fantasy, I was disappointed that the worlds he set up are not more thoroughly explored and the charming situation set up in 100 Cupboards was swiftly transformed into a very dark fantasy. As I note in the title of this review, kids will enjoy this book, but be warned it's much, much darker than the first volume and not a little disturbing. That said, I'm looking forward to following Wilson's career. He's going interesting places as he finds his voice and subject matter of choice. Leepike Ridge made allusions to alternate history; 100 Cupboards opens the door to full-fanstasy; and Dandelion Fire moves through the cupboard...
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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Simply Wonderful, June 17, 2009
Book two in the "100 Cupboards" trilogy (with book three, The Chestnut King due out early-to-middling next year), Dandelion Fire is masterful, glorious, breathtaking, dark and charming all at once. This is fantasy worthy of the name, and stands starkly in the same stream that Tolkien and Lewis stood in, if a bit downstream and only up to its knees.
Dandelion is much richer, both as a narrative itself and in its themes and messages, than was 100 Cupboards. As a necessity then, the situations are a bit more intense, the quest is a bit more serious and life-threatening, as is typical of the middle book of a trilogy.
The writing too is richer and has more depth; Wilson's charm is in his use of language and part of that involves his staggeringly fine prose. He relies heavily on metaphor, not in a strictly English-major sense, but in the broad sense of letting the mind of the reader assemble the picture via some back-ended sentences that seem to go around the block to get next door. That is an intentional and magnificent way of using not merely the words but the spaces between the words, to create meaning. It is not merely in what he says, but also in what he does *not* say that the reader finds meaning. His method of writing is associational rather than flatly literal and subtractive; instead of spoon-feeding he allows meaningful associations to cluster together. But do not fear; it is not difficult reading either and he is careful not to overwhelm the reader with that sort of thing.
But by far the best thing about this book is the thematic message, which is why I was surprised to see a couple of reviews claiming there was none; it is rather like God in The Lord of the Rings. It is everywhere present but nowhere mentioned. The novel is about fathers and sons, which appears to be a regular motif in all of Wilson's fiction thus far. In particular, this book revolves around naming and unnaming, the power of names. Henry quickly finds that he has not been named by his parents because he has not yet been christened. The Christian undertones of the first book begin to come to the surface here; Henry is a boy in search of an identity, one that can only be found in family and baptism/christening.
I do not know what lays ahead in Wilson's final chapter; I can merely count down the days until the final installment is released. Until then, this book has earned itself a permanent place on my "Favorite Novels Ever" shelf.
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