The ropemaker (original 2001; edition 2001)

Printz Award. RGG: Fantasy fiction. Slow; overly detailed writing.

Printz Award. RGG: Fantasy fiction. Slow; overly detailed writing.

Printz Award. RGG: Fantasy fiction. Slow; overly detailed writing.

Peter Dickinson is the grand old man of young adult fiction, and The Ropemaker - mostly - is a good demonstration of why. His tale opens with a bang and the pace rarely lets up, though this does lead to some slight structural issues near the end.

Talja has lived in the valley her whole life. Sandwiched between a glacial mountain range and a forest impassable to men, the valley has been at peace for twenty generations. But something is wrong, and Talja - along with her grandmother and two others - is going to have the leave the valley before their peace is irrevocably shattered.

Something I really loved about this book: Dickinson doesn't condescend to his younger readers, and his prose is mature, cinematic, and free of the heavy exposition, genre fads, and patronising that can sink lesser YA writers. His characters are believable and well-drawn, and his world feels tactile and established - something the characters fall into, rather than a hasty construction built on spec just for them.

There's a lot of magic in The Ropemaker, and whilst it lacks the meticulous detail of Nix's Abhorsen trilogy, for example, I really enjoyed its power and immensity. Magicians are nothing short of demigods in The Ropemaker, and they protect their power zealously. These political undercurrents added a richness and maturity that I really appreciated - all the more so because it wasn't lost on its young protagonists.

Unfortunately, there is one issue that lets the book down: its ending. Dickinson has trouble with his climax; it's preceded by so much spectacular and exciting action, it's difficult for him to establish that _this is the one that really matters_. It's over very quickly, with a drawn-out denouement that's neither necessary, nor helpful in separating it as the final climax.

These issues are compounded by a practically deus ex machina villain and the feeling that it couldn't go any other way for the protagonists. There's a point two-thirds of the way through the book where the real climax happens, and everything after that lacks the immediacy and pleasurable surprise of what's preceded it.

A kid probably wouldn't notice or perhaps care about this so much, but I couldn't help feeling a few rewrites would have helped The Ropemaker finish at the level it started on - a very high level indeed. It doesn't invalidate the pleasure of this book, but it does lessen it somewhat, and bring it down from an excellent, to merely good. ( )