In the dryly hilarious, profane, genre-bending novel The Murdstone Trilogy by the late British author Mal Peet (Keeper), the hard-drinking, middle-aged Philip Murdstone is in "self-lacerating mode."
He has hit a wall in his writing career. Quite simply, his "lovely sensitive novels" are no longer selling. Fantasy is the money-maker. Asked by his agent, the "gorgeous, masterful and unshaggable" Minerva Cinch, with creating a high-fantasy trilogy--"Tolkien with knobs on"--Philip knows he's in over his head. He has neither experience with nor love for fantasy books. On a drunken walk through the outskirts of his British village, Philip hears two voices, one ancient, one "light and hoarse," begin to weave an incredible tale--a tale that Minerva could easily sell to the fantasy-hungry market. The hoarse voice is that of the dwarfish, childlike yet ancient-eyed Pocket Wellfair, a Greme of the Realm currently under attack by Morl. Pocket offers a deal: "straight arsy-varsy. I send you the rest [of the story], you get me the Amulet of Eneydos," a powerful relic hidden in the human world. With an oath sworn the Greme way, "on our eyes and eggs," Philip finds his reality colliding with a frightening, phantasmagorical domain he didn't know existed.
The Murdstone Trilogy, originally published in the U.K. as an adult title, is brilliant. Richly drawn characters ground the story, even at its wildest, and older teens steeped in the fantasy traditions of what Minerva describes as "Dwarves. Beards. Time and dimension shifts.... You know." will revel in this wonderfully witty, upside-down take on the genre. --Kyla Paterno, reviewer