James A. Owen

I don't think I can talk about this one without spoiling it, so stop now if you ever intend to read this one and don't want ruined the delight of sorting what's going on here for yourself.

On the night in 1917 when an Oxford professor is mysteriously murdered, three young men who are strangers to one another meet up at the professor's study through a series of coincidences. Shortly they are met by a strange man carrying an important book which he explains is the Imaginarium Geographica, an show more atlas of all the imaginary lands. He claims that the professor was training John, one of the young men, to be the Caretaker of the Imaginarium Geographica and that the Archipelago of Dreams is now under threat from the Winter King. The strange man, Bert, takes the three young men (the other two are named Jack and Charles--anyone have it sorted yet?) to his ship, which, by virtue of its living dragon-head mast, can navigate the barrier between the "real" world and the world mapped in the Imaginarium Geographica. Adventures ensue.

Anyone familiar with any works that might be deemed "fantasy" will find the characters, settings, and situations of the adventures in the Archipelago highly derivative--and that is precisely the point. Or rather, the implication is that those fantasy stories arise when Caretakers of the Imaginarium Geographica return to the "real" world from the Archipelago and share their wonderful adventures there in the only way they believe they can without being made a laughing stock--by turning their adventures into tales. Past Caretakers include Cervantes, Shakespeare, Poe, and Jules Verne, among others. Our three strangers are Charles Williams, C.S. Lewis, and J.R.R. Tolkien, though the book does not reveal this until the last page. (I was pretty sure before the one-third mark.)

The very delight of Here, There Be Dragons is in recognizing the characters and settings from various myths, legends, and tales and celebrating, along with the narrative, the importance to the "real" world of all that is encompassed in the Archipelago of Dreams. I think the revelation of who the three main characters are must be held until the end in order to achieve the desired effect of an ah-ha moment which confirms and underscores that importance of fantasy. But I wonder if suspicion of their real identity is not necessary as well, for that suspicion, once confirmed, creates a delicious sense of having been "in on it" and of having access to something quite wonderful that not just everybody could understand. People, like Eustace in Lewis's Voyage of the Dawn Treader, for instance, who haven't read "the right sort of books," here being marvelous tales involving the imagination rather than dull, practical books, might have difficulties.

This is intertextuality at its delightful, gleeful best and anyone who loves imaginative, fantastic stories will love Here, There Be Dragons for its own adventure, yes, but most for the joy it takes in the adventures that have gone before it. show less

Bland, poorly-written, overwhelmingly stupid fan-fiction disguised as a novel that's clearly supposed to make fantasy nerds cream their pants from all the references but probably only made the author cream his pants while writing it. As a fantasy nerd, I was not impressed. Neat premise, sure, but terrible execution. I can't help but wonder who this is for. It is so poorly written, so pandering, so bland, so generic, so predictable, so stupid, so contrived, so utterly derivative that you'd show more need to be a kid to get any enjoyment out of it, and this is coming from an adult that reads a lot of kid's books. Not a single aspect of it could be called good writing by any standard.

Characters
The characters have exactly zero personality until the author needs to manufacture drama, and then they get angry with each other for absolutely no reason. Jack (C.S. Lewis) in particular is portrayed as a callous jerk, but only sometimes, when it's convenient and the author needs to add some tension to a boring scene. At the start of the book he really tears into John (Tolkien) for things that are clearly not his fault, and continues to take shots at him throughout the book when you're least expecting it and never for any legitimate reason. What the hell? Why? It's the most contrived crap I've ever read, and totally unnecessary. Like I said, it's manufactured drama. It's fake. It's false. Is this a novel or reality television?

Having fictionalized versions of beloved authors that are kind of bland is something I can totally understand. If your prose, world-building, plot, and secondary characters are all fantastic then you can easily get away with bland protagonists, and they're real people, so maybe you don't want to portray them as anything other than stereotypical upstanding Englishmen just to avoid controversy and to be respectful to their memory. But then why turn them into annoying drama queens at the drop of a hat?

It very much seems like the author tried the first method, realized his characters were completely two-dimensional and every other aspect of the book was so terrible that it didn't make up the difference, so he added a bunch of random "flavor" to them in the second draft that straight up doesn't make any sense and comes out of nowhere. Such poor character writing I have scarcely seen in my entire life. If you're a writer yourself this book is almost worth reading just as a crystal clear example of what not to do.

Plot
The plot is just generic magical nonsense. To give you an idea of how much the story cares for logical consistency, the seat of power in the Archipelago of Dreams originally became such not through military might, but because they grow fantastic apples and people really love good produce. As if someone with military might wouldn't just take over your land and your apples... It's said as an off-hand joke, sure, but it's representative of how much the book as a whole cares about having any kind of logical consistency, which is to say it doesn't care at all.

Some more extreme examples of complete logical failings:

The Winter King, the clever and powerful antagonist we're supposed to fear, steals a leather-wrapped book from our protagonists and then immediately sails away and sinks their ship without unwrapping the book to make sure it's the right one, which of course it isn't. I check my bag at McDonald's to make sure they got my order right before leaving and you can't even check to make sure your enemy didn't sneakily hand you the wrong book before sinking their ship and leaving them to drown?! The Winter King clearly has an intellectual disability and needs a legal guardian to look after him, because nobody who's that stupid is capable of looking after themselves. This book is secretly a post-modern meta-commentary about the mental health-care system (I wish).

And this happens right after one of the characters mentions that he purposefully didn't sink their ship when disabling it with cannon-fire because he really needs the book and can't have it sinking to the bottom of the ocean and getting lost forever, which it absolutely would have if the protagonists hadn't been rescued from drowning by a deus ex machina. Speaking of deus ex machinas, they seem to be the main way of moving the plot forward in this book, so get used to that.

The Winter King isn't the only dolt though. Our characters are deliberately trying to destroy the aforementioned book at this point, sailing to the original creator of the book so he can tell them how to destroy it when The Winter King boards their ship. But get this, they can't destroy it because it doesn't burn. Okay, but then why do they take great pains to keep it from getting wet? Have you tried getting it wet? Have you tried ripping the pages into a million pieces and scattering them to the winds? No, of course they haven't. That would make too much sense. The only character that does try to rip it is one of the bad guys, towards the very end of the book. It doesn't work of course, but the fact that it wasn't even tried is ridiculous. Lazy, lazy author.

And if it can't be destroyed, why do they not think to throw it in the damn ocean which, as they just pointed out, would keep it out of The Winter King's hands? Literally things would've been better if our main characters just drowned, because they're so stupid that being alive is a hindrance to the entire world. It all works out in the end, of course, because this book is contrived bullshit, but you get the point. They had a specific goal and would have been more successful as corpses.

A human steward of The Winter King (the character that actually tries ripping the pages) winds up on the sinking ship with our protagonists and the depth of his past treacheries is revealed pretty much right after they're all rescued. They loathe him, distrust him, and debate killing him in cold blood (which is a messed up thing to imagine Tolkien and Lewis debating) and yet instead of doing that, they take him along on their adventure for...some reason that is not explained, and let him walk around freely and unobserved. It backfires immediately (duh) and he runs off with the two magical items they were supposed to protect.

Uhhhh, hey guys? You realize there's a grey area between murdering people you distrust like a freaking psycho killer and letting them just do whatevs, right? Tie the dude up, or have someone watch him at all times, or leave him behind and don't take him along on your super important mission in the first place. How hard is that? I swear, between The Winter King and our "heroes" this book is like watching two village idiots engage in a battle of wits. You just want it to end so the cringe-inducing second-hand embarrassment will go away.

Okay, let's not get too bogged down in specific examples here or I'll be at it all day. You get the idea. It's far too idiotic, poorly written, and generic for adults to enjoy, even adults (like myself) that regularly enjoy books written for children.

Children?
On the other hand, is it even enjoyable for kids? I didn't even know who Charles Williams was, so I know for sure kids don't have a clue. Why is his name some big reveal? Kids won't give a crap. And while I'll easily accept that a kid could be familiar with C.S. Lewis or Tolkien, would they know H.G. Wells or Jules Verne? Do they know what Avalon is? Are they going to be familiar enough with Jason and the Argonauts to recognize the reference to Argo? Do they know who the hell Nemo is, or is the adorable clown fish the only Nemo they know?

Maybe a kid wouldn't notice how utter crap this book is because kids don't know shit and have atrocious taste in entertainment, but the vast majority of the references would be lost on them. And the story often grinds to a halt for the sake of those references, or relies on those references to add context to what's happening or what's being said. The big reveal of The Winter King's true identity is Mordred, for instance, which no kid is going to get. The references seem to be the entire point of the book, and there's really not a ton of action or excitement, so you have to wonder if it would even hold their attention.

This really shouldn't have any audience whatsoever because it seems to please no one, and yet a decent number of people seem to love it anyway. Unabashed, five-star love! From adults! Madness! I won't even begin to try and understand what anyone sees in this masturbatory, self-congratulatory, fan-fic garbage. It's too confusing and I lose faith in the human race with every second that I spend thinking about it. Best just to move on and try to forget. This is the dictionary definition of a one-star book, and that's what it gets from me. show less

Three young men are thrown together in an adventure when John's Oxford University professor is murdered. Jack is due to start Oxford University next year and Charles works for the Oxford University Press and all are in London answering questions about the professors death. Whilst there the soon to be companions meet the strange Bert who claims to be a friend and entrusts John with a mysterious book called The Imaginarium Geographica.

The book is really an atlas and shows the worlds of the show more imagination. It is written in many different languages and John has been studying under the tutorship of the late professor and is the new caretaker. The problem is that the Winter King also wants the book and has sent all manner of beasties after them including the wendigo (half man, half wolf) and the shadow-born. The three plus Bert and his crew must sail the Indigo Dragon ship in a race to save all the worlds from the Winter King and being turned into shadows.

I LOVED this book, it as like it was written for me with anything I could possibly want in a novel! There are many references to novels and authors I love including JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis, Peter Pan, Alice's Adventures in Wonderlan, Sherlock Holmes, Shakespeare, HG Wells etc. I know some have faulted it for taking so many ideas, but this is exactly what I adored about it. It fitted the different worlds together in a great adventure with memorable characters. I knew a little about the book to begin with (including Jack and John's identities), but I won't give that away here. Suffice to say anyone with a real love of fantasy needs to read this book! I can't wait to read the next in the series, The Red Dragon. show less

{second of 8 in Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica; fantasy, audiobook, quest fantasy, adventure, children's, young adult, YA}(2008)

narrated by James Langton

We're back in the Archipelago of Dreams where myth and fantasy mix and the Caretakers of the Imaginarium Geographica are called back to help with another crisis. This story begins '9 years to the day' after the start of the first book, Here, There Be Dragons. I would read these in order especially as this one starts with a recap show more of the first book and there are some spoilers for book one plus it does help to know the background of the characters and this world going into The Search for the Red Dragon.

The three current Caretakers - John, Charles and Jack - have avoided each other since their earlier adventures so as not to raise the suspicions of who they really are by any observing enemy forces but now they have all been having bad dreams and suspect that something is going on in the Archipelago. They meet and decide to search for previous Caretakers to find out what's going on and to work out how to return to the Archipelago to help sort things out.

Time moves at the same rate in the Archipelago and they catch up with their friends and the progress made since they left the Archipelago. Children around the Archipelago have been disappearing without a trace, including Aven's son, and the only clue they have is something cryptic about a Crusade returning. Almost all the Dragonships have disappeared too, which will handicap their search somewhat, so they go in search of the last one, the Red Dragon. We meet the Lost Boys - and Girls - catch up again with Aven, Bert and Tumnus and make the acquaintance of one Peter Pan as well as the rather grumpy Cartographer

'Anyone who's indifferent to the fate of Edwin Drood is okay in my book'

who lives (perforce) on the top floor of the Keep of Time and keeps the Imaginarium Geographica up to date. (The Mystery of Edwin Drood was published about half a century before this book was set.)

There's a lot going on; we visit the underworld and see the place where Dante (another Caretaker) got his inspiration for the nine circles of hell, where J.M. Barrie (yes, a previous Caretaker) picked up ideas for Neverland and one of the present Caretakers rediscovers their inner child. Owens pulls together history, myths and legends and gives them a twist of his own. I confess that I tripped myself up trying to guess where the story would go based on the legends he used (especially since my ancient Greek legends are a bit rusty). I listened to this as an audio e-book with the same narrator as the first. I did get a bit confused with a couple of mythical characters (it's hard to go back and check on audio).

Still fun; I look forward to the third instalment.

(September 2025)
4 stars show less