The Face in the Frost

"Unexplained noises are best left unexplained."

Sound advice from John Bellairs' whimsical and secretive wizard Prospero ("not the one you are thinking of, either," Bellairs tells us), to his stoic housekeeper Mrs. Durfey - and incidentally, a pretty good rule of thumb for fantasy writers in general. Fortunately, it's a rule that Bellairs adheres to faithfully and effectively in The Face in the Frost.

Good authors know that over-explaining is the death of storytelling, and John Bellairs was nothing if not a fellow who knew his work. He knew that readers like to use their imaginations, and despise stories that take us on a breathless, regimented forced-march. Many of us read to escape, and aren't willing to give up our time to a writer far too much in love with their own intricate plots, nor trade a mundane reality for a make-believe world that insists on controlling where our thoughts roam at all times.

The Face in the Frost doesn't fall into the complexity trap. It is a deeply satisfying and undemanding read. Bellairs sketches out just enough of the oddly funny and frightening world of the North Kingdom and South Kingdom to help us form a picture, and relies on his matchless descriptive power to keep us wanting to see more. No need to lead us down the path, he simply maps it out and makes us want to follow it.

Bellairs' storytelling gifts were many, and fully on display in The Face in the Frost, which I consider his finest book among a cohort of superb stories. He made his career as a moderately successful children's and young adult's writer, but all of his books have the sly, clever, grown-up humor of a man who tells everyone he writes for kids, but is really writing for himself and for anyone else who wants to get lost in bramble-filled woods pursued by strange, gibbering creatures, or explore the houses of wizards with their anachronistic curios, haunted cellars and bedsteads with bassoons carved into the headposts.

John Bellairs never achieved the fame of later authors who followed the trail he blazed - one thinks of the Lemony Snicket books, with their dark humor and mysterious twists, or the Harry Potter child-wizard phenomenon, that has ensnared kids and adults alike. Which is a grand pity, because his work (often illustrated by the magnificently weird Edward Gorey), surpasses both in simplicity and quality (and above all, in sympathy - for his characters and readers alike). Bellairs was telling stories, not building a "brand" or helping create a publishing empire.

The Face in the Frost is a masterpiece of mystery and suspense with fast-paced and slightly wacky magical adventure, leading to an unexpected ending. The characters Prospero and Roger Bacon are memorable and delightful, and the settings are described with an offbeat and humorous sense of detail.

Compared to subsequent books by John Bellairs this is more complex; older children and adults will enjoy it.

One of my favorite novels - a delightful, whimsical adventure without violence. I've given two as gifts.

This is my favorite book.

Found this little gem hiding on a dark book shelf in Dede's Bookrack in Trussville. I've known about this book for awhile, but not from the same sources as most. Up until a couple of years ago I had no idea what Appendix N even was. Sacrilege, I know. Sure I knew who Gary Gygax was, but I have never played D&D and had never encountered Appendix N. How many people read this because it was included in Gygax's Appendix N?

This is a quick read. Most of the book is a sort of waking nightmare for Prospero. Interesting set up and adventure; it kept me engaged. Even though a lot of the whys and wherefores were lost on me. I didn't love it, but I think I'll hang on to my copy.

The cover art by Carl Lundgren is very nice and actually illustrates a crucial scene from the book. Imagine that. This edition also boasts illustrations by Marilyn Fitschen.

A short book, but crammed with humor, horror and whimsy. The story marches cleanly along, with none of the irrelevant digressions and diversions that mar the bloated fantasy epics that publishers put out nowadays. This jaded fantasy fan was delighted, refreshed and gladdened to read it.

great read

If you even pretend to enjoy Douglas Addams, or the Discworld, you owe it to yourselves and your friends to read John Bellairs’ impossible to categorize novel, THE FACE IN THE FROST. This is a book that is equally terrifying with some of the most chilling imagery eve conjured, but at the same time there are moments so hilarious you feel honor-bound to go pester your roommate with juicy quotes.

What is it about? In a nutshell, Evil magic gone very, very evil. Who will save the world? Unfortunately for the world two elderly wizards, Roger Bacon and Prospero. “Though they could not make the moon eclipse, they could do some very striking lightning effects and make it look as though it might rain if you waited long enough.”

Prospero is described as living in “a huge, ridiculous, doodad-covered, trash-filled two-story horror of a house that stumbled, staggered, and dribbled right up to the edge of a great shadowy forest” I mean, seriously. His weathervane is a singing hippopotamus! He lives quite grudgingly with a talking mirror that has its own cozy notions on how life must go. Roger Bacon is:

“a short, burly, middle-aged man with a close-trimmed dark-red beard; the hair on his head was beginning to get gray, and it was hard to tell whether he was going bald or just wearing a badly over-grown tonsure. The monkish aspect was also suggested by a mud-splashed brown robe, over which a shiny rain slicker was thrown. But instead of sandals, the man wore scuffed brown waling boots. In one hand he held a dripping sou-wester hat, and in the other he held a long brass-tipped staff. A fat brown valise crouched at his feet, like an absurd and lumpy short-haired dog.”

Oh, dear. And THESE are the two who must save the world.

Along the way they come across some amazing characters--either characters or obstacles--such as a pleasant botanist monk who gets hurt if you compare his favorite plant, the Sensitive Anaconda, to the Creeping Charlie, and a cursed forest so extremely cursed that you actually wish it were haunted with ghosts instead of what is really inside; a troll who steals window-screens, and a pleasant magician-king Gorm (possibly related to gormless) who has created living models of the known Universe and suffers a butler who has sadly let less Beowulf and more rhetoric into his vocabulary. Other than one of his models, that of the planet Yuggoth is rolling aimlessly in the stupefying darkness and threatening other planets (shades of HP Lovecraft!), Gorm is unaware of the threats to his kingdom as much as the other many kings but at least he can point them the right way.

Reading this book is a treat for the English language. This mysterious kingdom has a lot of brown ale, monsters, bespelled furnishings with too much attitude, and examples of creeping terror:

“When he awoke, it was still night, and as he lay there half asleep he began to notice the swaying of the branches. They ought not to move that way, was all he could think. The forms they were tracing bothered him so much that he sat up on his elbows. He turned his head slightly and saw that something in tattered moon-gray was crawling out of the dark grass at the edge of the wood. A man on all fours, making no sound as he scrabbled over the dry grass. Prospero closed his eyes and said over and over to himself, “It cannot come into the circle. It cannot...”

Grab this book, people. And read it out loud if you can, to your loved ones at night. They might have some very interesting dreams about wicked books, parallel worlds, Kabbalah-trained rabbis, hysterical architecture, and Smead Jolley, the only baseball player in history to make four errors on a single played ball.