04 December, 2011

Parody, but not completely successful

The Chronicles of Blarnia

Michael Gerber

A parody along the lines of The Va Dinci Cod (itself essentially a parody of a parody), so much along the lines, in fact, that it’s probably published by the same people, possibly written by the same person (though the name is completely different). I have to say, however, that this one is not quite as clever, and definitely more tedious, than the other, so not nearly as successful by my estimation. To be honest, i found it dragging at points, much as the Wide Witch’s sledge dragged and fought against travel, particularly towards the end of the novel, when the repetitions of the jokes became merely annoying (thinking here, for example, of the beavers’ log babies, the hairballs Asthma brought up, even the mock-Tudor speech of the children once they became kings and queens).

At first, though, i have to say i enjoyed the book; it is quite clever, though i should think that the original, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, is quite an easy target for the author, with nice touches such as children living in the present, but still thinking that the Second World War is raging, being sold for human experimentation to a mad professor, and the Beavers as a lesbian couple. Indeed, i did not not enjoy the thing, i simply found it going more slowly than i wanted; for, when the reader (in this case me) starts looking at page numbers and working out how many more are to be read, it is surely a bad sign for the author.


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