ISBN: 0-345-41687-2 Order from: Amazon.com
A tense, at times touching, novel of modern life intersecting with a fairy tale, this fantasy has few flaws except the somewhat overdone antagonist.
Reviewed by David on June 20, 1999 (rev. 1)
Genre: Fantasy (High Fantasy, Time Travel, Russia)
Synopsis: As a child in the USSR, Ivan has once experienced a magical sight, too vivid to be dismissed as a dream, too strange to be part of real experience. Years later, when he visits the newly independent Ukraine, now as an American graduate student, he revisits the forest of his magical memory. To his surprise, the magical sight: a woman covered by leaves, a menacing presence underneath the forest floor, the sense of enchantment is still there and as real as death.
Plunged into a fairy tale, Ivan finds that the gritty reality of a land nearly forgotten by history is far from the typical story ending. However, the sorcerous menace is all too real, and threatens both this ancient country and his twentieth-century family.
Full Review: This novel joins the small but growing list of fantasies using the Russian folk tales. Like Cherryh's Rusalka, this novel plunges the hero into the primeval forests, nature gods and fell sorceries of mythic Russia. Unlike that novel, Enchantment features a modern, and mostly clear-headed protagonist. With realistic difficulties, his life in the ancient Slavic principality whose name translates as "secret", is both plausible and hard. Despite good physical condition and modern knowledge, Ivan becomes neither a fearsome swordsman nor a prehistoric industrialist. Scorned for his lack of brawn or appropriate skills, Ivan has a hard time winning friendship, respect or affection.
Joy of family, scholarship, or romance is rare but all the more precious in Ivan's suddenly difficult life. A tense cross-time struggle, with a quest for survival, love, and feedom ensues, with a truly oppressive antagonist. The antagonist, whose almost omnipotent and flatly evil presense haunts the hero and his friends, is so overdone that her role removes much of the excitement in the plot.
While not without flaws, this novel combines razor-sharp realism (painfully plausible, at times) with emotional warmth and the magic of enchantment to make it a truly enjoyable fantasy.
Overall: 6.5; Plot: 7; Characters: 6; Style: 6; World-building: 7.5; Originality: 7;
Copyright date 1999, Ballantine Publishing Group (Del Rey), April 1999, Cloth, 390 pages
ISBN: 0-345-41687-2 Order from: Amazon.com