Calli's Reviews: Under the Green Hill by Laura L. Sullivan

While inspired rants can be fun, it was high time to spend some time reviewing a book that I could actually reccomend. It might not be the right cup of tea for readers around here, but if you need to give a child a book (and really, if there is a child in your life, you should give them one,) I highly reccomend Under the Green Hill by Laura L. Sullivan.

Recommended Age: 9 or 10+, the book’s clearly written for a 10-12 audience due to the age of the protagonists. I enjoyed it as an adult, though. Thirteen year olds probably wouldn't find it childish, but fourteen year olds probably would.
Genere: Children’s/JYA fiction, fantasy,
My Reccomendation: Five Stars.

Overall, upon opening this book I was pleasantly surprised.

I had expected to find a very traditional children’s book setup, based on the subject matter, which was four siblings (Protagonists Meg, Rowan, and Silly, ages approximately 12, 11 and 9, plus their toddler brother James) sent to England to visit distant relatives for several months. I didn’t expect the kind of wit and wisdom from the author and narration that made books with this setup (The Chronicles of Narnia, and books by E. Nesbit,) classics. I expected the children to have adventures and learn life lessons, but not that the lessons would be handled so naturally or that the adventures would actually include the adult characters, who were far from useless or oblivious.

The book opens, as I said, with the protagonists sent off to their relatives, in the company of two boys from their neighborhood who are close in age to Meg and Rowan. One is their enemy, Finn, the “arrogant rich boy,” (despite being just about as well off as the other families, in which the parents are professors of various subjects at the same college: it makes sense because his father is just as arrogant,) and a boy named Dickie, who initially fails to make an impression. Dickie’s role in the story starts out as the primary way to determine that the protagonists are good, because they are kind to him despite him being the stereotypical child looser, sickly, chubby, clumsy and untalented at anything, while Finn is not.

It is at the relatives’ house, where they arrive on May first, or May Day, that they initially start an adventure by breaking the rules and sneaking down to the village to watch the bonfire, which inevitably leads to their introduction to the world of fairies.

Though the book is easy enough to read, it’s not simplistic or patronizing to the reader, and it includes plenty of description and characterization, done in the old-fashioned, Victorian narration style of addressing the reader directly, which is appropriate for the audience that the book is written in. But it manages to do it without being too long, preachy, or boring, which are the three things that usually put children off of old books written in that style. Sullivan has managed to merge both her own literary upbringing in the classics with the more fast-paced sensibilities of modern fantasy.

Characterization is another big strength of the book, because even though there are some characters that don’t appear to have grown at all during the book (Silly comes to mind: one must make an exception for James, who is too young to understand a thing that is going on,) there is a vivid picture of what everyone is essentially like and how they act, rather than what they look like. The adults don’t go undeveloped either, but my favorite change has to be Dickie, who goes from a total zero to a confident planner and the children’s expert in the fairy world by taking up residence in the library and getting Latin tutoring from a very small dragon.

The world in which the children are immersed – one with fairies cropping up at every turn – is amusing and accessible for those with only limited knowledge of traditional English stories of fairies, without being oversimplified or made gimmicky. (I cite the Spiderwick Chronicles, which dealt with many of the same fairies but which might as well have come with trading cards for them.) And the climax of the story is not only fully justified by the logic of the world and well foreshadowed, it contains an interesting element of chance and is not an entirely foregone conclusion. The only real problem that I had while reading was the title of the chapter in which Finn, who has been left out of the family’s adventure the whole time, finally achieves one of his goals was titled “Some People Get What They Deserve,” and although nothing truly bad happens to Finn in that chapter (though getting a glimpse of something that he will always want and never be able to have was probably punishment enough for him,) its direct result is some very nasty consequences for him down the road. Clearly the author wasn’t implying that he deserved what happened to him in the end, but it was a rather unfortunate implication in that chapter title.

Part of the reason why I recommend this to a slightly older audience is the complexity of the morality in this book. Fairies don’t have the same moral standards as human beings in this universe, because they can not only live forever but regenerate from practically anything, as well as transform into various shapes. Therefore, the very real consequences faced by the children and the novel’s three adult characters barely register to the fairies who have embroiled them in their intrigues. Finn’s ultimate punishment is painful and permanent, and the reader really has to think to realize that to the fairy prince who delivers it, it was a sort of slap on the wrist, as any fairy who the same thing happened to would be able to heal from it, if not quickly, then eventually. On the other hand, though, Fairies are apparently aware that humans can die while they can’t, because the seven-year battle needs two human champions to battle to the death in order to be complete. The fairies believe that it keeps the world from falling apart, but within the story when the terms are not technically fulfilled, nothing happens. It becomes apparent by the end of the book that the reason for Meg and Rowan’s great aunt being an ambassador between the human and fairy worlds is that without her adherence to ancient rituals, the fairies wouldn’t respect her enough for her to be able to protect the humans from their antics. The real reason for the sacrificial battle is to keep humans valuable enough to the fairies that they leave them mostly alone, and so that the humans whose job it is to watch over the intersection between the two worlds maintain enough power over the fairies to ensure some degree of safety for the humans.