He’s not afraid to throw a little horror into the mix as well.

It’s an exhilarating literary amalgam, made all the more so by the skill with which these elements are tied together. Golden is not merely a good horror writer or a good fantasy writer. He’s a good writer period. And in Strangewood, he utilizes the well-known conventions of different genres to concoct a tale that is unique, exciting, scary, and surprisingly moving.

The novel alternates between our reality and the fantastic Strangewood, and while the real world scenes have the potential to bog down with the redundancy of endless hospital vigils, they never do, primarily because Golden has crafted characters who, even in static situations, have an emotional complexity that keeps us interested and carries us through. The intrusion of this fantasy realm mirrors the problems in the lives of the protagonists, reflecting their inner turmoil, and Golden knows how to utilize the metaphoric possibilities of the situation without turning the story into an academic exercise.

More interestingly, though, the novel shows how children read sinister import into apparently safe and innocent tales — and the attraction that inevitably results. I myself had a picture book as a child that depicted a smiling moon that terrified me. I was afraid of the book but I loved it, and I returned to it again and again and again. Stephen King touched on this subject very effectively in Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands, where a sentient train from one of the characters’ childhood books appears to him as an adult, with all of its previously implied sinister attributes made manifest. Golden does the same thing here, just as effectively, showing us the mind’s dark twist on a happy fictional land, where familiar characters do unfamiliar things, and loyalties are not what one would have thought.

This is where the actions of those religious wackos come into play, for Golden makes a powerful argument for the necessity of fantasy. Children need imagination, they need magic, and, yes, they need to be scared. And if they can’t find what they need in existing pictures or text, well, then they’ll read it into characters and landscapes where it isn’t (A side note: it always amazes me that some people who call themselves Christians can be so shaky in their convictions that they honestly believe their children will eschew the teachings and values that have been ingrained in them since birth after reading one book. Don’t they have more faith in their religion that that? Don’t they have more faith in their kids?).

Strangewood contains a hint of The Talisman, as well as nods to Stephen Donaldson’s Thomas Covenant novels. The Fisher King motif so prevalent in alternate world fantasies also gets a good workout. But, ultimately, it is the strength of Golden’s own voice and his creation of believably complex characters that carry the novel and give it its power. I never do this, but the first time I read the book, I actually found myself looking ahead at one point to learn whether a particular character made it out of a scrape alive. I cannot give higher praise than that — breaking my own reading habits because I was so involved with the story — and I salute Golden for being able to make me do such a thing.

Strangewood is a wonderful book, a significant achievement by a talented writer whose pro-imagination message could not be more timely. Or timeless.

Bentley Little

2006