Review: On the Isle of Sound and Wonder

On the Isle of Sound and Wonder by Alyson Grauer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a rewrite of Shakespeare's The Tempest as a fantasy with some steampunk trappings (airships and an automaton) as well as the usual spirits and magic, set in an alternate 1873. It takes the setup of the original and goes in quite a different direction with it. For me, it largely, but not entirely, succeeded.

On the way through, I noticed that the names (of people, and even more of countries) were subtly distorted from the originals, but in a way that sometimes didn't quite work linguistically, given their origins. I felt much the same way about the change to the central character, Mira - based on Shakespeare's Miranda, but almost entirely different. Mira, rather than a naive and passive damsel, is a tough, decisive protagonist with a wide knowledge, both from reading her father's (non-magical) books and from exploring the island. To me, she went a little too far in the knowledgable direction; she seemed to understand things from the wider world that I felt she would have lacked the context for, having only read about them, and only in the kind of books that would be available when they left for the island in the late 1850s, at that.

The denouement is also just slightly too perfect a wish-fulfilment fantasy in 21st-century liberal terms. (view spoiler)[Mira's father recovers his sanity, feels guilt, and apologizes for his bad actions and inactions before conveniently dying so they don't have to decide what to do with him; the gay romance completes its arc, while the incipient connection between Mira and the boyish prince might or might not go anywhere; the king, who has disapproved of the prince's wider intellectual interests and general lack of traditional masculinity, says he loves him; the troublemaking troll/fairy/spirit is punished, the innocent "monster" rewarded; everything is as ideal as it could be. (hide spoiler)]

The island itself, while presumably somewhere near the route from Tunis to Naples (since that's where the king's airship is going), is somehow tropical, and reminded me of an old edition of The Swiss Family Robinson I had as a child: it seems to have flora and fauna from multiple continents, though the tiger is eventually explained.

All in all, it's a little too perfectly a 21st-century morality play, taking place in an island that is just slightly too obviously a stage set, with a protagonist who is a touch too exactly a modern, powerful woman. Don't get me wrong, I think powerful women are great, and love to read about them, but this one was a bit too flawless for her own good.

Other than that, this is a strong piece of writing, mostly well edited, and I enjoyed it. I won't be including it in my Best of the Year, because it's a bit too perfect in the wrong places, but I'm sure it will do well.

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