Magic Mirrors: The High Fantasy and Low Parody of John Bellairs

Prospero and Roger Bacon #1.5

by John Bellairs, Marilyn Fitschen (Illustrator), Bruce Coville (Introduction)

Magic Mirrors is a collection of the adult fantasy and humorous works of John Bellairs. This collection includes The Face in the Frost, The Dolphin Cross (a previously unpublished fragment sequel to The Face in the Frost), The Pedant and the Shuffly, and Saint Fidgita and Other Parodies. The collection introduction is by Bruce Coville. There is also a special introduction to the Dolphin Cross by Ellen Kushner.

The Face in the Frost is a fantasy novel that centers on two accomplished wizards, Prospero ("and not the one you're thinking of") and Roger Bacon, tracking down the source of a great magical evil. Playfully written with frightening dips into necromancy, the novel includes talking mirrors, carriages made out of turnips and miniature wizards bobbing through underground rivers in miniature ships, but also disturbing imagery including magically mummified animals, melting cities, and souls trapped within their own graves. Bellairs said, "The Face in the Frost was an attempt to write in the Tolkien manner. I was much taken by The Lord of the Rings and wanted to do a modest work on those lines. In reading the latter book I was struck by the fact that Gandalf was not much of a person just a good guy. So I gave Prospero, my wizard, most of my phobias and crotchets. It was simply meant as entertainment and any profundity will have to be read in."

The Dolphin Cross is an unfinished fragment (about the first third) of the sequel to The Face in the Frost, and shares the two protagonists from that novel, Prospero and Roger Bacon. In this adventure, Prospero is kidnapped and exiled to a lonely island. He escapes and manages to unravel some of the mystery as to who would want to do this and why?

The Pedant and the Shuffly is a short, illustrated fable detailing the chaotic encounter of the two title characters. The evil magician Snodrog ensnares his victims with his inescapable logic and transforms them into Flimsies (stained handkerchiefs)...until the kindly sorcerer, Sir Bertram Crabtree-Gore (Esq.) enlists the help of a magical Shuffly (Latin name: Scuffulans Hirsutus)...and Snodrog meets his match!

St. Fidgeta and Other Parodies is a collection of short stories satirizing the rites and rituals of Second Vatican Council era Catholicism. A mixture of mock scholarship, parodies of ecclesiastical language and manner, puns, jokes and occasional strokes of inspired foolishness.
Table of Contents

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction

377 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

John Bellairs (1938–1991) was an American novelist. He is best known for the children's classic The House with a Clock in its Walls (1973) and the fantasy novel The Face in the Frost (1969). Bellairs held a bachelor's degree from Notre Dame University and a master's in English from the University of Chicago. He later lived and wrote in Massachusetts.

Reviews

[SmokingMirror · Rating 5 out of 5]

Happily reread The Face In The Frost for the nth time.

[Colin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Bellairs' "The Face in the Frost" (which I had read because it was on the Appendix N of Gary Gygax, the list of authors and stories that had influenced the creation of Dungeons & Dragons), and I had heard this collection contained his partial, incomplete sequel, "The Dolphin Cross," but I never got around to acquiring and reading it until now. It really is fantastic, and I rather wish that he had finished it. There is also a bit of very witty parody of Catholic hagiography and such in this volume. Bellairs uses a lot of Latin in this collection, and it is clear to me that at one time he had a very firm grounding in Latin, though his occasional errors imply that he had lost some of his proficiency over time.

[Julian · Rating 4 out of 5]

*I really just read "The Face in the Frost," there's more excerpts and sketches in the book, as well as an unpublished sequel.

A great and unsung novel as far as showing a different interpretation of wizards that makes sense as part of Appendix N and beyond.