Heir Apparent
Vivian Vande Velde
Harcourt, 315 pages
Order this book Parents’
attempts to remove the Harry Potter series from library shelves and reading
lists (for advocating witchcraft, promoting interest in occult subjects,
and a laundry list of other sillinesses) have received wide media coverage
over the past few years. Though the Potter books are the ones most
frequently targeted, they aren’t alone; according to the people who
keep track of book challenges, parents’ focus has shifted more and more toward
fantasy over the past decade. It’s a situation that seriously irritates
many authors of fantasy for children and young adults, and Vivian Vande Velde
is clearly one of them. The dedication of Heir Apparent reads:
“This book is dedicated with affection for, but no patience with, those who
would protect our children through humorless moralizing and paranoia about
fantasy.” (Personally, I would have left out the “affection” part.
But that’s just me.)
It’s Giannine Bellisario’s fourteenth birthday. This year, her absentee
father actually sends her gift on time: a certificate for the Rasmussem
Gaming Center, where a host of “total immersion” virtual reality games are
available. Inside the Gaming Center (which is being picketed by members
of a coalition called Citizens to Protect Our Children, carrying signs with
slogans like MAGIC = SATANISM), Giannine chooses “Heir Apparent”, a medieval-themed
game of strategy and shifting alliances in which the gamer must find a way
to survive long enough to claim the throne.
Giannine’s character is the king’s illegitimate daughter, raised in secret
by a peasant family. The king has just died, and to everyone’s shock
she has been named his heir. Fetched to the court, she must confront
hostile royal relatives, shifty would-be counselors, a dangerously disaffected
palace guard, and the threat of barbarian attack. It’s all a bit more
complicated than Giannine expected. Still, everything seems to be going
normally--until the Rasmussem technicians break through the game interface
to tell her that the CPOC people have overrun the building and damaged the
VR equipment. Giannine is now stuck in the game; the only way
to exit is to complete it. But the damage to the machines has made
prolonged immersion dangerous. If she doesn’t get out soon, her brain
will fry.
Giannine’s efforts now take on urgency, as she struggles through a game scenario
that has an infinite number of permutations, and no single right road to
the finish. Wrong choices are very easy to make; her character
keeps getting killed and looped back to the game’s entry point, where she
must start all over again. It’s a repetitious plot structure that runs
the risk of becoming monotonous--but in Vande Velde’s skilled hands it’s
anything but, for with each new beginning Giannine must re-think the choices
and decisions she made the last time, and fresh plotlines and possibilities
unfold from the changes that result. In the process, Giannine hones
some very useful life-skills (tact, compassion, quick thinking), uses diplomacy
to avert conflict, and faces dangerous and difficult tasks with bravery and
ingenuity. In short, she undergoes the very sort of character-building
the anti-fantasy camp claims that fantasy subverts.
It’s a subtle message, and Vande Velde doesn’t belabor it. The focus
of this fast-paced novel is entertainment, with lots of zany action, magical
hijinks, and a large cast of eccentric characters--a centipede-eating wizard,
a barbarian warlord with a soft spot for the ladies, a birdbrained warrior
prince, plus assorted ghosts, saints, werewolves, and of course, a dragon.
Giannine is an appealingly plucky heroine, with a sarcastic sense of humor
that lends bite to her first-person narration, keeping things amusing even
in dire circumstances. This is one of Vande Velde’s best--and that’s
saying something.
Copyright © 2003 Victoria Strauss
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