Reviews: (by author)

Augarde, Steve. The Various. New York: David Fickling Books, 2004. $16.95. ISBN 0-385-75029-3. 447 pp.

This novel is barely shy of being a new creative genius in the world of gnomes, fairies and flying horses. Its twelve-year-old heroine, Midge, during a dreaded summer spent on her Uncle Brian's farm comes across a world of creatures and adventures that only she, and her ancestors will ever know. As she is exploring the farm, she comes across and injured animal, a flying horse named Pegs. As she rescues Pegs from being pinned under some farm equipment and nurses him back to health, she gains his trust and he reveals the secret of his home. Meanwhile, Augarde takes the reader back and forth from Midge and Pegs to the tribes of the Royal Forest and their struggles for survival. The tribes consist of the Ickri, the Wisps, the Naiad, the Tinklers, and the Troggles. The tribes have been slowly driven by humans, or Gorgi, into living within a forest protected by a thick wall of briars. They had lived undetected up until recently, but because of food scarcity, they have now been forced to venture outside the forest in search of resources. Pegs, the only creature of the tribe with the strength to fly the distance, being bred outside of the other tribes was sent on the mission. Pegs brings Midge back to the forest to share information her uncle has revealed to her in regard to the fate of the forest. Now with the land about to be sold and developed for Gorgi housing, the tribes must now rush to find a resolution, causing them to act out aggressively toward Midge and each other in a desperate attempt for power and survival. The novel entwines the lives of Midge, her cousins, Katie and George, the budding romance between a Tinkler maid, Henty, and the council woodpecker, Little-Marten. This novel loses much of its intrigue as it is very drawn out and slow to come to a conclusion, which climaxes at the news that the forest will not be torn down for development because it is not considered good land, and Midge and her mother decide to move in with Uncle Brian to open a bed and breakfast.

Throughout the novel, there are traces of explosive creativeness that throw the reader off, but help to keep the novel going. Midge learns that her great, great aunt Celandine is revered by the tribes of the Royal Forest as she had discovered and befriended them. Upon sharing the news with her family, Celandine was deemed insane and grew old treated as an invalid. There are a couple of gruesome murders and a plot by the Ickri to overthrow the tribal government. The biggest disappointment of this novel was the conclusion. It is so randomly conjured, and tries way too hard to add some spiritual/ other world dimension to the novel. In the end, Midge has this experience where she travels back in time and is connected on a psychological/spiritual level to her great, great aunt Celandine. The clock near Midge strikes 10:25, the same time a clock is stopped in a photograph of Celandine, and somehow this magically transports Midge back in time to be embodied in her aunt. Also, there is the dream that both she and Pegs has of floating through the universe on their way to some other world. Pegs also, throughout the novel is characterized as being wise beyond his years-like a prophet, and all of the tribe suspect they are from another planet . . . including the Gorgi or humans. As I closed the book and sat it down, I was left in utter disappointment and confusion, and felt let down at the potential this novel had for some refreshing and uniquely modern fairytale imagination, and was left with a fumbling denouement.

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