Book: Enchanted Glass
Author: Dianne Wynne Jones
Lesson: Be wary of those last few pages.
The book itself was all right, though lacking in that sense of wonder I like from a young adult novel involving magic. It’s about a man who inherits a house from his grandfather to become the new guardian of the strange little county that has more than it’s fair share of odd magic. A child comes to the house looking for his grandfather and he takes the boy in as the fae folk start moving in.1
But we aren’t talking about the whole book here, just the last few pages. Now, I have seen so many articles on the importance on the first five pages, the first chapter and the first line, but almost nothing about the endings. It makes sense. To get published, you need someone to read past the first chunk of the book to get into the meat of the story. But the ending is what’s going to stick with your audience, and it needs careful consideration.
In general, the book was fine. Until the last chapter. See, they had just banished the fae folk to an alternate dimension using powers that came out of nowhere and our main character was settling down pondering how lucky he was to be getting married to a woman he had no chemistry with when the faerie king managed to get a letter to him. In this letter, he essentially finds out that the boy is not his fourth cousin, as previously implied in the story, but actually his uncle. Apparently his Grandfather was sent a troubled underage girl2 who was also his second cousin to try and fix and knocked her up.
This was a bit of a major reveal that sort of ruined the book for me. It was a bit dull, but generally all right before those last few pages and that note. With that, the kindly old grandfather became an entirely different character and the fact that our lead just accepted it without a second thought, indeed while going to tell his soon to be bride of some young age that is never actually mentioned,3 made me even more annoyed with the lack of surprise or wonder from any of the characters.
I couldn’t see a reason why all this was included at all, but that it happened right at the end left me with a bad impression of the book overall. I could have easily overlooked most of it entirely, but dammit if those last few pages didn’t put a whole different spin on the story. And it bothered me.
So remember, while the first five pages might be important to getting your work published, you last five pages are what people will probably remember when they read your book. Try to make them good and skip on the major reveals that change matters a whole lot.
End note: To all you angry Dianne Wynne Jones fans, yes, I know she died fairly recently. I’m sorry to say her death has not made my opinion of the book change. I’m sure the rest of her novels are lovely, and I do like what I’ve seen of Howl’s Moving Castle, but I do not find this book to be very good.