Lo, beyond the River Blapp
The Carriage comes, the Carriage black
By shadowed steed with shadowed tack
And shadowed driver driving
Child, pray the Maker let you sleep
When comes the Carriage down your street
Lest all your dreams be dreams of teeth
And Carriages arriving
To wrest you from your berth and bower
In deepest night and darkest hour
Across the sea to frozen tower
Where Gnag the Nameless pounds you
In Castle Throg across the span
A world away from kith and clan
You'll weep at how your woes began
The night the shadows bound you
Away beyond the River Blapp
The Carriage came, the Carriage black
By shadowed steed with shadowed tack
The night the Carriage found you
Thus begins the second paragraph of the first chapter of Andrew Peterson’s On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness, the first book of his four-book series, The Wingfeather Saga.
This poem, a nursery rhyme in the story, has five four-line verses, the first three lines rhyming or slant-rhyming, bumping along in iambic with the fourth line artfully breaking the rhyme with a punching point.
It’s good poetry.
It’s also terrifically fun to read to kids. Mine always lean in with wide eyes when I intone its dreadful strophes. I’m on my fourth time through the series (the fourth for my three oldest children, the first time for my littlest two).
The poem sets the quiet dread that hangs over the sleepy village of Glipwood where the Igiby family live their lives: lives that in a few days plunge from the bucolic and ordinary to fire and sword and flight. The Igiby children are Janner, the oldest who is feeling the ever-familiar teenage tension between responsibility and freedom, little brother Tink, ever peckish and puckish, and Leeli, the kind and steely-spined little sister. The adults are Nia, the faithful strong mother and the strong and resourceful, and tenderly irascible maternal grandfather and ex-pirate, Podo. The tubby and uber-bookish village bookstore owner and family friend, Oskar N. Retee, is practically a member of the family.
Peterson creates the Igiby adults statically kind and loving. Nia, Podo, and family friend Oskar, while having their own inner conflicts and pasts, are convincingly human yet also mature and good. They’re noble and consistently so. Good, static characters are thought of by some to be unrealistic and worthy of eye-rolling. But static characters loving others in difficult situations are unvaryingly interesting. In fact, we humans were all made to worship and love such a static character. And since all of time and history will flow into either unspeakable horror or into a new heaven and a new earth – a world of love – that kind of love is a well that we, including children, should drink deeply of now. The Wingfeather Saga’s well is deep.
Aerwiar, Peterson’s world, is alive, from the quirky Torrboro and the neighborly Glipwood to the chaotic East-Bend Strander culture. My favorite culture in the series is that of the people of the Green Hollows, introduced in the third book of the series, The Monster in the Hollows. The noble mannishness of this Viking-esque-yet-bookish warrior culture is fantastic. Its education system and brawling traditions make me want to settle down in the outskirts of Ban Rona. The quirky footnotes also contribute to the depth of world-creation, citing funny stories and books by long-dead authors, including dates and publisher info that make Peterson’s Aerwiar have depth and believability. One of the series’ companion volumes, Creaturepedia, which is an actual book referenced often by Janner Igiby in the series (channeling Rowling’s Fantastic Beasts) describes the particulars of Aerwiar’s fauna, showing Peterson’s joy and skill in sub-creation. My youngest asks of these creatures, “Are those real?” and I unfailingly reply, “They’re real in Aerwiar.”
Nicholas Kole’s cover illustrations are compositionally and symbolically brilliant and, like a good movie poster, capture the big themes of the book. Joe Sutphin’s interior illustrations, which always look like they would be soft if you touch them, capture the world and heart of the characters well. Sutphin’s art makes Tink’s smirks tender yet impish, the monster’s fangs sharp, and with a few lines makes the sea dragons’ eyes dangerous, dark, and deep.
Now, one of my friends said they lost interest in the first book because of the silly bits of the story. Yes, the dad-joke/Monty Python vibe is real in the footnotes and in some of the beginning lore. Now, my kids thought the quirks were funny. But when I mentioned my friend’s thoughts to my oldest son, he said,
“Yeah, they should’ve just read through it. The first book is like a funny dad telling a really good story, but in the second book, he really learned to be an author. And the last two books you can’t stop reading until you’re done.” If you start reading On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness and feel like my friend, then I heartily recommend my son’s advice: read on.
Like the grandfather said of The Princess Bride, the whole Wingfeather Saga is full of “fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, miracles.” It also has deeper themes of name, identity, betrayal, the hell of guilt and regret, stunning transformation rising from sin and weakness, ancient sin reaching to the present, compassion for the ruthless, ultimate sacrifice, forgiveness, and resurrection.
Beneath the sooty smudge and smell of the conquered Aerwiar, there lives, as Hopkins wrote, “the dearest freshness deep down things.” The sheer number of these glowing coals of themes, even if you touch carelessly, you will find your heart aflame. But if you read them thoughtfully, they may open you and your family up to what the real topsy-turvy epic of God’s redemptive love is all about.
Thus, I always cry through the last few chapters of the final book, the same kind of tears I cry at church every Sunday when I hear the old, old story again and again.
Because that’s what the best and truest stories do, even if you can’t explain why.
He once created a spelling rule in which village chiefs rejoiced, and a man once gave Adam a monkey for saving his life.
- On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness - February 10, 2025
- In Praise of Family Stock Stories - May 18, 2020
Leave a Reply