The Princess and Curdie by George Macdonald

When I first discovered that the sequel to The Princess and the Goblin was called The Princess and Curdie, I half-hoped that it would take place at least 5 years after the first book and involve a romance between the title characters. I was disappointed, however, when the first chapter of P&C placed it only a year after P&G. Oh well, I should have known better :-p In retrospect, it's hard to imagine MacDonald switching genres on this set of characters, especially since the theme of childhood is so important to both stories.

Overview
The title of this story is slightly ambiguous, because there are actually two princesses involved--the young princess Irene who left for her father's court at the end of the last book, and her great-great grandmother, also named Irene, who is fondly referred to as "the old Princess" by Curdie and his family. For at least the first half of the book, it seems that the old princess is actually the title character, for Irene the younger does not make her appearance for quite awhile. The first half of the story focuses on Curdie, who has settled down to life as a miner after turning down the King's offer to join him at court in the first book. The old Princess, however, has other plans. She sends Curdie off on a mysterious quest, with one of the goblins' monster-animals for company. This strange beast, named Lina, at first disgusts Curdie, but eventually manages to earn his love and loyalty.

Upon reaching the capital of the kingdom, Curdie discovers that the inhabitants of the city are not only unwelcoming, but dishonest and outright hostile. After a little more digging, he finds that the King is suffering from a mysterious illness, and the country is completely under the control of his cabinet, all of whom are less than savory characters. Curdie joins forces with the young Princess Irene, and with a little help from Lina and the old Princess, they save the day.

Recommended for: Anyone who liked the first book.

Parental Worries: Still a children's book, but P&C is a little darker than the first one. Some of the judgements handed out to evildoers are a bit harsh, and the sheer number of bad characters is a somewhat depressing.

Audiobook Comments: Read by Ian Whitcomb, who also read P&G. Its nice to have all the old voices back, it's really weird when they switch between books.

Ramblings
Overall, I'd say this book isn't as good as its predecessor, but still very good. The darkness that sets it apart from the first book is not quite the same as the darkness that slowly grows with, say, each Harry Potter book. There's almost two different conflicts--one between Curdie and the King's evil ministers, and one between the King and his people. The first half of the story belongs to Curdie, and it is excellent, possibly even better than the first book, both in terms of adventure and in its allegorical messages.

However, once the kingdom is reached and the king is returned to his rightful position, things get strange. I can appreciate on one level that the people without their king symbolize the people who have turned away from God, but on another level it's not only depressing but downright insulting to the people to suggest that one year without a good, strong human ruler is enough to turn every one of them into little better than beasts. Of course, we have no idea what they were like when the king was in control, but the assumption is that the good king would not have allowed such bad behavior in his subjects. This conflict between the king and his people reaches the point where they welcome an invading power into the land, and when the king marches to battle with a ridiculously small force, the people actually fight on the side of the invader! Well, obviously the good guys win, and the traitors are either wounded or killed. Again, we get the two levels of meaning here: there's the allegory of a people turning against their God and the necessity of a harsh rebuke to save them from an even worse fate, but in a political, worldly view, the thought of a good king taking arms against his evil subjects and vice versa is just . . . wrong. And then to top it all off, the story only has a temporarily happy ending. The ultimate ending, in an attempt to explain why the kingdom does not appear in history, is completely bleak, with no last note of hope. Definetly a case of allegory gone wrong.