The Face in the Frost

"The Face In The Frost" is a richly imaginative tale of two wizards, Prospero (not the one you're thinking of) and Roger Bacon, who must overcome a third wizard, the evil Melichus before he destroys them, and a lot of other folks as well. Even if you think you've heard this story before, you've never come across a variation like this one. The closest analogue that I can come up with is "Howl's Moving Castle" for its eccentricity, but 'Face' outdoes 'Howl' in this respect as well as in its fear quotient. The scary scenes approach M.R. James in intensity, and they are always preceded by migraine-like aura. Prospero senses that something is slightly off about the inn where he is staying. He is still trying to figure out what is bothering him at four in the morning: "Strange thoughts began to come to him now: locked boxes and empty rooms. Four dials and a black hole. Four cards and a blank. And a dead sound on the stroke of four. Why did that mirror bother him? "Quietly, Prospero got dressed, took his staff from the corner, and opened the door of his room. The hall was dark and silent...He lit [a candle] and tiptoed down the stairs to the place where the mirror hung. Prospero stared and felt a chill pass through his body. The mirror showed nothing-not his face, not his candle, not the wall behind him. All he saw was a black glassy surface." Prospero explores further and finds his landlady standing fully-clothed in her room, with a butcher knife in her hand. "In her slowly rising head were two black holes. Prospero saw in his mind a doll that had terrified him when he was a child. The eyes had rattled in the china skull. Now the woman's voice, mechanical and heavy: "Why don't you sleep? Go to sleep." Her mouth opened wide, impossibly wide, and then the whole face stretched and writhed and yawned in the faint light." Prospero manages to escape the inn and town that were nothing more than an elaborate trap set up by Melichus to destroy him. He is reunited with his friend, Roger Bacon and they continue on their quest to find and destroy Melichus's evil magic. There are delightfully eccentric set-pieces in 'Face:' a king who builds elaborate clock-works of the universe; a monk who collects strange plants; a talking mirror that divulges scores from a 1943 Cubs-Giants baseball game. I suspect the author wove his fantasy out of migraines, nightmares, and a love of mechanical oddities and spells that turn tomatoes into squishy red carriages. Prospero himself has a "cherrywood bedstead with a bassoon carved into one of the fat headposts, so that it could be played as you lay in bed and meditated...On a shelf over the experiment table was the inevitable skull, which the wizard put there to remind him of death, though it usually reminded him that he needed to go to the dentist." I'd better put an end to this review before I quote the whole book. It's so good, it pulls me in every time I open it---Enchanting, in the original sense of the word, and frightening, too.

Gary Gygax included *The Face in the Frost* on his now-famous list of books that influenced the first iteration of Dungeons & Dragons. I'd known about it myself for 30-plus years, but I'd never gotten around to reading it. On the upside, it's short compared to most novels these days. It's also lighthearted for a fantasy work: Bellairs doesn't take himself too seriously, and he's happy to throw in laughs now and again. On the downside, *The Face in the Frost* doesn't leave much of an impression. It's a fun read, and the two central characters are interesting, but it's not what I'd call a page-turner. If Bellairs weren't such a talented wordsmith, I'd have left it three stars, since the plot itself is fairly "meh".

This novel is considered a classic because it helped define a new genre: high fantasy for young adult readers. For that reason alone, it should be accorded five stars. However, I am reviewing the novel as it compares the the crowded field of great fantasy stories that have emerged since. The characters are interesting. The story is interesting. But on a scale of utter sludge to Harry Potter, I can only place it squarely in the middle. I never came to love the characters, nor care that much about what they were doing. Perhaps that has more to do with the fact that the novel was written for tweens and teens, not for jaded adults. So ... tweens will probably like this, and many teens. Everyone else will struggle to not compare it to the fantastic fantasy novels written since, most of which owe a debt to The Face in the Frost for blazing a trail.

"Unexplained noises are best left unexplained." Sound advice from John Bellairs' whimsical and secretive wizard Prospero ("not the one you are thinking of, either," Bellairs tells us), to his stoic housekeeper Mrs. Durfey - and incidentally, a pretty good rule of thumb for fantasy writers in general. Fortunately, it's a rule that Bellairs adheres to faithfully and effectively in The Face in the Frost. Good authors know that over-explaining is the death of storytelling, and John Bellairs was nothing if not a fellow who knew his work. He knew that readers like to use their imaginations, and despise stories that take us on a breathless, regimented forced-march. Many of us read to escape, and aren't willing to give up our time to a writer far too much in love with their own intricate plots, nor trade a mundane reality for a make-believe world that insists on controlling where our thoughts roam at all times. The Face in the Frost doesn't fall into the complexity trap. It is a deeply satisfying and undemanding read. Bellairs sketches out just enough of the oddly funny and frightening world of the North Kingdom and South Kingdom to help us form a picture, and relies on his matchless descriptive power to keep us wanting to see more. No need to lead us down the path, he simply maps it out and makes us want to follow it. Bellairs' storytelling gifts were many, and fully on display in The Face in the Frost, which I consider his finest book among a cohort of superb stories. He made his career as a moderately successful children's and young adult's writer, but all of his books have the sly, clever, grown-up humor of a man who tells everyone he writes for kids, but is really writing for himself and for anyone else who wants to get lost in bramble-filled woods pursued by strange, gibbering creatures, or explore the houses of wizards with their anachronistic curios, haunted cellars and bedsteads with bassoons carved into the headposts. John Bellairs never achieved the fame of later authors who followed the trail he blazed - one thinks of the Lemony Snicket books, with their dark humor and mysterious twists, or the Harry Potter child-wizard phenomenon, that has ensnared kids and adults alike. Which is a grand pity, because his work (often illustrated by the magnificently weird Edward Gorey), surpasses both in simplicity and quality (and above all, in sympathy - for his characters and readers alike). Bellairs was telling stories, not building a "brand" or helping create a publishing empire.

A Face in the Frost is an almost forgotten fantasy classic, out of print for decades but now resurrected in e-book form by those nice people at SF Gateway. The story of a conflict between good and evil wizards, it's set against a charming and original background, with highly engaging and frequently comic characters. The horror scenes of black magic have a genuinely unsettling nightmare quality. It may be marketed as a Yound Adult novel but it's a perfectly satisfying read for adults as well. A great little book of the sort they just don't seem to write any more, and an absolutely flawless transfer to e-book, which is something you can't always say with the SF Gateway output, unfortunately.

Creates and maintains an atmosphere of creeping dread - very Lovecraftian - while also having some evocative descriptions and excellent characters.

魔法使いの家、食べ物、魔法の小道具、そしてもちろん魔法使いその人や魔法の数々が満載のとても楽しい本です。疲れた頭を休めるのにもってこい。ベレアーズは子供が主人公のファンタジーも書いていますが、これは大人しか出てきません。でも中学生くらいからなら読めるかな。楽しいですよ。お勧めです！

When I was trying to explain to younger friends what wizards were like before Harry Potter and Discworld, John Bellairs is one of the writers who came to mind. Like Lewis's Uncle Jonathan in the "House With a Clock" series, the Prospero in this book (not the one you are thinking of, as the author is quick to specify), is much closer to TH White's Merlin in terms of his knowledge of 20th century pop culture than the enchanters of Middle Earth or Earthsea. I didn't get to read this book until recently, and I was not disappointed ... it's creepy, off-the-wall, and poignant by turns. What a pity John Bellairs died before writing much more about the mysterious Dolphin Cross and the adventures of Prospero and Roger Bacon (and of course, the unforgettable snarkiness of Prospero's magic mirror).

An odd confection. Two wizardly chums are subjected to magical attacks and journey off together to confront their mysterious enemy. Prospero (not that one) and Roger Bacon (yes, that one?) are wizards who hang around in the North and South Kingdoms, but also have access to the lands and history of Earth we are familiar with. Thus the book is peppered with indulgent anachronisms - Prospero tells his talking mirror to shut up and watch some late-night movies, for instance. This whimsical tone is light-hearted without ever quite making it to funny, and was a tad distracting to this reader. I also lost track of the plot a little - not that it's that complicated, but it is a little buried under the wonders, and I spent too long over this short book! My final complaint is that, not knowing the rules and constraints of magic in the depicted world, events appeared to me arbitrary and sometimes unsatisfying. However, above all that is the nature of the enchantment preying on our heroes. Here the author's imagination shines, depicting endless subtle transformations and spooky distortions in the world, such as the face that seems to appear in thawing frost on villagers' window-panes, or the shifting cloak hung in Prospero's cellar. The sense of the entire land becoming ever more bewitched and uncertain is palpable and chilling, reminding me of Algernon Blackwood's stories. For this admirable tapestry of growing supernatural menace, the tale is well worth reading.