This creates a mixture of recognition and uncertain discovery that keeps the book from being mundane. First: the confidence with which Funke has created her world, being careful not to explain new ideas any more thoroughly than the ones with which she knows we'll be familiar. So what saves this book from being merely a smörgåsbord of the fantastic? Two things. Mucking about with fairytales is an idea we're well used to now – witness the Shrek franchise, Tangled and their ilk. The book nods at almost every fairy story you've ever encountered – Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Bluebeard, the Frog Prince and so on – and features many other beings and objects from old stories: unicorns and the Lorelei, seven-league boots and Rapunzel's hair. What ensues is a fast-paced romp through the world of fairytales.įor it's not just dwarves and fairies that we meet in Reckless. Jacob, with the assistance of Will's girlfriend, Clara, and Fox, a shapeshifting girl, determines to prevent his brother's demise. Now Will, discovering the secret of the mirror, has followed him and promptly been slashed by the claws of a Goyl, as a result of which he is slowly turning into one of the stone-skinned beasts and losing his personality in the process. As the novel gets moving, we learn that Jacob has in fact spent many years visiting the Mirrorworld, a place where he has made friends and enemies, worked, fought, killed and fallen in love. Into this world step Jacob and Will, not brothers Grimm but brothers Reckless, following their father, John Reckless, who passed through a mirror in his study long ago and disappeared.
They are a species most notable for having stone for skin, which comes in many semi-precious varieties – a rather beautiful idea. And it's not just the beings we're familiar with – she also does the same with her own creations, notably the Goyl, a humanoid race who provide the necessary strand of cold-blooded menace in the book. Talking of capitalisation, I should really have given capitals to all the fantasy-world denizens listed above because that's what Funke has done, as if trying to ascribe nationalities to them. Fantasy of this nature (with a very capital F) is Marmite stuff, and there's little that can be done to soften the impact if you're not a Fan. I apologise for being so blunt but there's no easy way to break this kind of news.
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