Prospero's Children [Hardcover]

Jan Siegel (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 6, 1999

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.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Fern and Will, the children of a feckless art dealer, find themselves sharing the remote farmhouse he has inherited with his current, and sinister, mistress. Something snuffles outside; a stone in the garden, which bears an odd resemblance to a passing tramp, moves in the night; a wolfish dog befriends them. Dreams and sleepwalking and the most remarkable videotape ever watched provide 16-year-old Fern with evidence that the world is not the controllable, rational place she thought it was--and that her own future is to be altogether more remarkable, and full of pain and wisdom, than she has expected.

Jan Siegel has taken the material of a hundred good children's fantasies and woven a story which hovers, like her heroine, on the brink of being fully adult, with the visionary power that often comes from inhabiting the threshold between states. Her handling of shopworn questions--the paradoxes of time, the price of souls and the sinking of Atlantis--is as fresh and remarkable as fantasy gets; this impressive first novel is a classic in the making, and, it is to be hoped, the debut of a brilliant career. --Roz Kaveney, Amazon.co.uk --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

From 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. (May)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Voyager (December 6, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0002258366
• ISBN-13: 978-0002258364
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (47 customer reviews)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I want the whole trilogy!, July 13, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Prospero's Children (Mass Market Paperback)

Prospero's Children was such a good book. I couldn't put it down! I'm 15 and I loved it soooo much that the night I finished it (which was the sama as the day I started it) I went and asked about the second book in the trilogy...the answer? [....] I can't wait!!!!! THisd book was awesome to the very last page, I loved how it left you wanting more...it started and ended at the same spot- at least the Atlantis part did. I thought Fern was so brave in what she did! Going to Atlantis, being taken prisoner. It was so exciting! Not only that, but the only part I really didn't like was when the boy Fern really loved died...it was so sad and it seemed so wrong...but I guess it was right, how would there be a continuation if he had lived? well I can think of how but...it wouldn't make sense. I think I loved it so much because, as all my friends say, I'm a dreamer. FOr those of us who believe in the tooth fairy, witchcraft- good and bad, Atlantis, and unicorns...this book is perfect. I believe in all those things, I always have...well except the tooth fairy, after I got three teeth pulled and recieved no money for them...and found all my teeth(that was a gross expierence.) I kinda stopped beliveing. All the others I do belive in though. Lewis Carroll once said that when he saw a unicorn the unicorn said: I'll belive in you, if you belive in me. well I figure that I do want to believed in so why not believe that all those magical creatures exist? Somewhere they probably do...I know where that is too...in the mind. Even if they don't exist in the world. They can still take you places...have an imagination? Read this book.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A good but schizophrenic fantasy, July 2, 2000

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Prospero's Children (Hardcover)

The first half of the misleadingly titled, "Prospero's Children" is wonderful and scary, choc-a-block with evil villians (a witch, an idol, and an art gallery owner) and eccentric good guys (the Watcher, a female werewolf, a house goblin). The second half of the book is standard Swords and Sorcery. It's almost as if the publisher said, "Okay, Jan, this is great but we need another 100 pages and a better title." I'd give the first half five stars and the second half two stars, then round high just because I loved the Watcher, the idol, and the witch.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A refreshing fantasy story with a very compelling female lea, May 17, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Prospero's Children (Hardcover)

Overall, I liked this book very much! It was a refreshingfantasy story with a very compelling female lead. I felt as though Icould almost feel the story unfolding, for Jan Siegel painted such a vivid, lush environment. I enjoyed the European setting with the mystery of Atlantis as a backdrop. The characters remain clear and memorable long after the story has been read. It is very rare to read fantasy stories that use Atlantis as part of the storyline - which makes this novel standout. Her words are almost lyrical and poetic - yet every sentence is intensely riveting, and almost draining. For me, this style of writing became somewhat ackward to read at times, for the lavish descriptions almost detracted from the story itself. I felt that there were many similes used throughout the novel, which seemed to momentarily divert my attention. Nevertheless, a wonderful new fantasy novel!