The Whispering Mountain by Joan Aiken, 1968

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In the small town of Pennygaff, where Owen has been sent to live after his mother’s death, a legendary golden harp has been found. Knowing of the prophesy of the Harp of Teirtu, Owen must prevent the magic harp from falling into the evil clutches of its reputed owner, the sinister and diabolical Lord Mayln. But it won’t be easy. Owen and his friend Arabis are plunged into a hair-raising adventure of intrigue, kidnapping, exotic underground worlds, savage beasts...even murder.
For only too late will Owen learn that Lord Mayln will stop at nothing to have the golden harp.
(240 pages)

I love Joan Aiken's books so much. Every year or so I go on an Aiken kick where I read a bunch of books in her amazing Wolves series. The thing about those books is that they always look so boring from the cover description and synopsis, but are actually amazing books full of humor, terror, mischief, and clever plot twists that make things fun. You always know the young main characters won't come to any real harm, but anyone else is fair game. Aiken's books are written for a less sheltered generation of children, where murder and terror are part of the story. This serves to increase the tension, and sweeten the reward.

Now for this specific book. I picked it up for a quarter at a flea market, very excited to find a Joan Aiken I hadn't read yet. I read it in one sitting (staying up a bit later than I really should have, more from an unwillingness to go to sleep than any driving desire to finish the book), and - well, and then I fell asleep. It was good, but it wasn't exactly thrilling.

This is a book with many pieces and people and plot devices, all rolled together in a way that makes things seem ridiculously complicated at first, but actually winds up fitting together perfectly in the end. There is a father and daughter team of gypsies, a nerdy-yet-inwardly-strong young boy, two nasty thieves, a prince, an evil Marquess (It took me a while to get it straight in my head that this is a male term), a monk, a foreign Seljuk (apparently some sort of Rajah), a bunch of dwarf-people, and many more wildly different characters. This is a story told in bits and pieces, where everyone pursues the truth from a different angle and then at the end of the book figure out the whole picture by talking to everyone else. This  is a very clever way of telling the tale, because there are many "mini books" inside the big book, with the various main characters ducking and weaving throughout the stories of the other characters.

However, it's the story itself that just doesn't really appeal to me. Aiken is a genius at taking seemingly worn-out tales and making them fresh, but it just didn't happen for me with this one. Arabis is like a mix between Aiken's other main female characters, Sophie and Dido, and I have to say I like the others better. Ditto for Owen - I liked him, but I like Simon better. According to Goodreads this is book 0 in the Wolves chronicles (does that mean it's a prequel?). I don't really see how it fits in with the others at all, except for its similar time-setting. I love the later books far, far more, from the wonderful Wolves of Willoughby Chase that I first read in lower elementary school, to Black Hearts in Battersea, which is one of my later-discovered favorites.

If you love old-fashioned adventures full of danger, excitement, humor, and compelling characters, then I wholeheartedly recommend you read this series. I'm sure that many would like this book, but for me at least it just felt a bit too ordinary - and I kept getting flashbacks to George McDonald's The Princess and the Goblins. If you're a fan of the series and haven't gotten around to this one yet, then by all means read it. It's not that it's bad by any definition of the word - it's just not as good as many of the other books in the series. If you have never read a Joan Aiken and you want to, then start with The Wolves of Willoughby Chase or Black Hearts in Battersea. Trust me, you'll be happy you did.

The Prophet of Yonwood by Jeanne DuPrau, 2006

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It's 50 years before the settlement of the city of Ember, and the world is in crisis. War looms on the horizon as 11-year-old Nickie and her aunt travel to the small town of Yonwood, North Carolina. There, one of the town's respected citizens has had a terrible vision of fire and destruction. Her garbled words are taken as prophetic instruction on how to avoid the coming disaster. If only they can be interpreted correctly. . . . 
As the people of Yonwood scramble to make sense of the woman's mysterious utterances, Nickie explores the oddities she finds around town--her great-grandfather's peculiar journals and papers, a reclusive neighbor who studies the heavens, a strange boy who is fascinated with snakes--all while keeping an eye out for ways to help the world. Is this vision her chance? Or is it already too late to avoid a devastating war? 

Each book of Ember has a very specific role in the series. The first one, The City of Ember, was an adventure, suspense novel with the threat of the dying generator looming over Lina and Doone at every turn. The second one, The People of Sparks, was a look at conflict, war, and the slippery slope of giving "an eye for an eye." Both yielded even more on rereading than they did the first time, so I had high hopes when I started reading what was, for me, a boring and pointless addition to the series the first time around.

Unfortunately, my opinion hasn't risen too much the second time through. It's true that I see now the purpose of putting this book in the series: it shows the beginning of Ember, life on Earth during the conflicts that would ultimately tear apart all of human civilization. It explains in a way that the Emberites, clueless to their past, never could, what life was like in the lead-up to the events that destroyed almost all of humanity.

At least, I think that's what she was going for. In reality, it wanders all over the place and never really delivers on any of its promise. Parts of it remind me a little bit about Leaving Fishers by Margaret Peterson Haddix, because of the cult-like behavior of the superstitious village-members. Then there's Nickie's plans for the summer (she wants to fall in love, move to Yonwood for good, and help make the world a better place), which you'd think would help give the story a bit of backbone as she works toward those goals. Nope. For me, what kills any enjoyment I might have had is the fact that not only does DuPrau wander all over the place with her plot (religious fanaticism! Impeding war! Nickie wants a dog!), but she takes the time to set up for a great story . . . and then lets the reader down in practically every respect. Nothing happens the way you would expect it to, and I don't mean that in a good way. I mean it in a "wow, what a letdown" kind of way.

Nickie just never really clicked with me as a character, partly because she wasn't very bright (she spends half of the book spying on people to find sinners because she believes this is how she can help the world) and partly because she wasn't very, well, original. She just kind of was, and there was nothing special or unique about her. Grover had a lot of potential, and I was actually more excited about him than I was about Nickie. But while he wasn't as great a letdown as Nickie was, I still felt like DuPrau missed the mark so many ways with what could have been a great character.

All in all, this was a book with a great set-up and a very poor execution. Because it's a prequel, I would almost advise skipping over it as you read through the Ember books, unless you want to see if you can get more out of it than I can. I most definitely do not advise starting with this book before reading the rest of the series because a) it's really not necessary and b) it might turn you off from trying the rest of the wonderful series.

Have you read this book in the Ember series? Do you agree with me about The Prophet of Yonwood?