After finishing Jane Eyre, I find myself pondering what I might want to read next. At the moment I am torn between wanting to keep my sufficiently "Victorian-calibrated" reading mind in practice by reading something else from the 19th century — I have several things in mind, including things that are both new and familiar to me — and wanting to read something simple, straightforward and, let's be honest, dumb.
There's a certain appeal to reading something that is well below your ability level. I'm obviously not talking about regressing to See Spot Run or suchlike, but returning to what tends to be lumped under the all-expansive "YA" (Young Adult) umbrella today offers a compelling prospect. Not only are titles from this particular part of the literary sphere easy to read, they also tend to be short, which, after ploughing through Jane Eyre (which had been formatted incorrectly on Kindle so it only displayed the amount of reading time remaining in the book rather than in your current chapter as it is supposed to) is definitely appealing.
One pair of books I'm actually quite interested to return to is Douglas Hill's Poisoner duology, which consists of Blade of the Poisoner and Master of Fiends. These were probably some of my earliest exposure to fantasy fiction, and I remember absolutely loving them as a kid. Well, more accurately, I loved Blade of the Poisoner; I never had my own copy of Master of Fiends, though I believe my friend Matthew had a copy that I borrowed on more than one occasion. I definitely read it at least once.
Blade of the Poisoner is fairly traditional, unremarkable fantasy with a touch of childish wish-fulfilment in there. The protagonist is a 12 year old boy called Jarral who, in fantasy novel tradition, grew up as a country bumpkin. Through certain misadventures, the details of which I forget, Jarral becomes marked by Prince Mephtik's magic blade; specifically, he gets a big letter "M" carved on his chest, and the nature of Mephtik's blade means that anyone given so much as a scratch with it will die on the next full moon, hence his colloquial name, "The Poisoner". You probably see where this is going.
Blade of the Poisoner does indeed go exactly where you expect it to, but that's what made it appeal to me as a kid. I enjoyed the simple, straightforward fantasy story of good versus evil, and even though I knew things were almost certainly going to be all right for the good guys by the end of proceedings, I still enjoyed reading it. Blade of the Poisoner, I recall, stood quite well by itself, but Master of Fiends was a solid sequel that raised the stakes somewhat.
I also remember being quite taken with the descriptions of the Lady Mandragorina as a kid; from what I recall, she was a pretty young woman around a similar age to Jarral (and me, when I was reading the book) and… well, there was definitely some teenage wish fulfilment going on there. These days, I suspect the formidable figure of Archer may have some appeal for me, from what I remember of her powerful thighs and suchlike.
Sorry, where was I? Oh, right. Yes. I think I might actually re-read Blade of the Poisoner (and possibly Master of Fiends also) if it's available on Kindle (it is!) and see how well it holds up to my old, jaded eyes. And then I'll jump back into some sort of Victoriana. Maybe.
Aside: The cover for the Kindle version sucks. Look at this low-effort photoshoot of a dude in an anorak in someone's back garden:
And compare, if you will, to the cover of the version I grew up with:
Yeah. C'mon. That's more like it.
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