Myth Mixers

kw: book reviews, fantasy, mythology

There is but one constant about John C. Wright's characters: nobody is quite who they seem. We're not talking about wolves in sheep's clothing, or philosophers masquerading as longshoremen. No, no; here we have the pupils, faculty, and staff of a very odd boarding school-cum-orphanage, who are all disguised demigods and monsters from an eclectic collection of archetypes and myths. Some of those encountered "outside" are weirder yet.

Take Jove and Hera, Grendel, Jehovah, and their attendant deities and demons, and mix well. On one level, Fugitives of Chaos, the second of a trilogy in progress, is a teenage rebellion saga. But these teens, in one place called "the kids who don't get older", are ageless (but not immortal) monsters from other dimensions. The focus of a supernatural war, they have been held for...who knows how long...in an odd school in a place that really isn't there, once you get off the grounds. Their keepers are gods themselves, with powers barely capable of restraining the youngsters.

Wrights's kind of fantasy pits four or five kinds of magical tradition against one another, with combinations that oughtn't coexist, but in fiction, hey, sure they can! The story is a romp, deeper meanings are where you find them (within oneself, in other words), and the more you know of Beowulf and Hamilton's Mythology, the better. Guess I'll have to track down Orphans of Chaos...