Shannon Costello

I did this on purpose:  before starting this post I headed to Vivian Vande Velde’s website.  It helps me know a bit more of where the author is coming from and that, in turn, helps me temper whatever negative things I might say.  Hey- She is from Rochester, NY!   I have warm, fuzzy feelings about Rochester, though I would never want to live there (since Rochester weather is anything but warm and fuzzy). (Um, I know, right now we have more feet of snow on the ground than Rochester- I meant in general.)

A fairly cynical teen girl heads to an entertainment company to play a hi-tech adventure game where the player is hooked up to a machine and thus able to experience what happens as if she were actually living in that fantasy world.  Enter the Christian right, opposed to evil adventure games.  Their violence disrupts the equipment such that Giannine can only exit the game and survive by actually winning.  The author carries this somewhat implausible idea off very well.  (In contrast, the final conversation between Giannine and Nigel is not at all plausible.  He tells her she made “unusual” choices to win the game, but it is difficult for the reader to see how they are unusual or how the choices most players make are more reasonable.)

This is a great example of a plot-driven story.  The parallel plots with the gamer’s actual and virtual lives constantly in danger work really well.  I appreciated how my own sense of frustration grew right along with Giannine and she was repeatedly “killed” and has to start over (not the grassy hillside again!). Since the focus is plot, potential weaknesses in the portrayal of Giannine’s character do not matter so much.  She seems pretty on top of things, but has extreme difficulty getting past the first level.  Why is that?  Why is she suddenly able to beat it?  We see her questions, but we don’t see as much of her thinking to get to the solution, which makes her less believable.

Ok, now here’s the real reason I’m writing about this book.  It is dedicated “with affection for but no patience with those who would protect our children through humorless moralizing and paranoia about fantasy.”  The protesters start quoting scripture to Giannine when they see her, “complete with yeas and thous and wicked ones.“  At the end of the book is a page encouraging those who feel that Heir Apparent and its kin are dangerous to start their own protest.  There is clip-out sign saying “Don’t corrupt the minds of our children!  Down with fantasy!”

Is it fair for me to blame this entirely on the Christian Right?  Here is my thinking:  members of the Christian right make strong negative statements against a work, often (it seems) without having read it themselves or considering the other side.  This is hot gossip and gets spread all over the globe, irritating fantasy fans (yes, I’m thinking about Harry Potter).  As a direct result we get a book with a dedication such as the one in Heir Apparent.  The references in this book may very well be the only sort of exposure readers get of that particular debate.  The comment about the protesters in the novel is funny, but it makes the Bible look irrelevant.