Mitchison, Naomi: Travel Light
Travel Light
Writer: Naomi Mitchison
Genre: Young Adult/Fantasy
Pages: 135

Yes, I'm still trudging through The Ends of the Earth: An Anthology of the Finest Writing on the Arctic and the Antarctic edited by Elizabeth Kolbert and Francis Spufford, and I don't mean trudging in a negative way. It's just that it's non-fiction and therefore slow reading for me, and I needed another break. Thankfully, boonofdoom provided me one with the short little nugget that is Travel Light.

I'm not going to bother with a cut for this one. At 135 pages, I could've read this in one sitting, but I did it in two. Mitchison is the author of over seventy titles, and she died in 1999 at the age of 101. Pretty impressive, I must say. Travel Light is a very simply fairy-tale fantasy that has some fun spinning conventions on their heads. Halla, turned out as a baby by her wicked step-mother, is saved by her nurse who transforms into a bear and raises baby Halla in the forest. The little girl grows up with a hint of bear, and then a hint of dragon when she's taken to live with them. All the while, she's developed a hate for her own kind, particularly heroes, who do nothing but cause trouble for the dragons and disturb the natural order of things.

There's a lot of fun to be had in this novel. Fans of Norse mythology will find quite a few little gems, and did I ever love the reference to Beowulf and Grendel. And this isn't merely a tale of making the stereotypical bad stuff good and the good stuff bad: it's fleshed out storytelling. The reader is left to make their own decisions, as is Halla, because her perfect life with the dragons and their treasure isn't meant to last, and that's when Halla transforms into a kind of Wanderer, which takes her on a journey to help right some wrongs and lift a curse she knew nothing about, as well as discover the secret to who and what she really is.

The book's enjoyable. The prose is very much storytelling, and there were times I found myself stumbling over the construction of sentences. Sometimes it was due to typos, and others, well, it was just plain long and awkward. But for the book's length and its audience, it does call attention to serious issues that are deeper than just good and evil, but extend to loyalty and politics and religion as well, and the ethics behind following such things blindly.

I'm glad I had a chance to read this, though I agree with the intro that this book would be downright magical if illustrated properly, as the story and the tale just lends itself to lush illustrations. I wouldn't mind reading more of her work. It's fun and fast, despite its hiccups, and smart enough that adults can glean just as much, if not more, from the text than younger readers. And in some ways, it reminded me of Catherynne Valente's The Orphan's Tales: In the Night Garden. It's not a similar structure, but its themes, handling of fairy tales, and settings are comparable.

Next up: The Ends of the Earth: An Anthology of the Finest Writing on the Arctic and the Antarctic edited by Elizabeth Kolbert and Francis Spufford

Although, don't be surprised if you get Finding Noel by Richard Paul Evans first.