John Bellairs: a unique voice in fantasy fiction
In 1969, a short novel called The Face in the Frost was released by an author named John Bellairs. Bellairs had previously written two satirical works with elements of the fantastic, but was not known for his fantasy work at the time. Thus, the novel’s accomplished tone shocked and amazed many readers, who discovered in its brief length a story of two wizards combatting a dark evil. The story veered from imaginative fantasy to surreal horror. In 1973, Lin Carter called the work one of the three greatest fantasy novels since The Lord of the Rings.Funnily enough, Bellairs had been inspired to write The Face in the Frost after being inspired by Tolkien’s famous workin particular, by a desire to add more depth to a powerful wizard like Gandalf. Bellairs chose to use two famous figures, Prospero and Roger Bacon, in his book, but to give them recognizable fears and follies.While the success of The Face in the Frost would have been an invitation to other authors to create a series milking the characters for all they’re worth, Bellairs never finished his intended follow-up, The Dolphin Cross. After his death, however, the unfinished work was published (along with The Face in the Frost and Bellairs’s first two published works) in the 2009 anthology Magic Mirrors.Rather than continue the saga of Face in the Frost, Bellairs began work on a new adult fantasy called The House With a Clock in Its Walls. However, one of the publishers he submitted it to recommended rewriting it as a novel for young adults, and after doing so, Bellairs shifted his focus to writing gothic horror mysteries for children.Predating Harry Potter, these books introduced young male protagonists Lewis Barnavelt, Anthony Monday, and Johnny Dixon. Each of these characters had a variety of allies, often skilled in the magic arts, who helped them put an end to the dark plots of other sorcerers and sorceresses. Booklist once described Bellairs’s deliciously creepy mysteries as having “suspense and action aplentyPerfect for the pre-Stephen King set.”The majority of Bellairs’s young adult books (including House with a Clock and all of the other novels from 1983′s The Curse of the Blue Figurine onwards) were illustrated by Edward Gorey, whose macabre covers were probably responsible for many children who initially picked up these novels. Of course, after reading the novels these children would then be hooked and eagerly gobble up the next volumes.Bellairs’s mysteries proved so popular that they have outlived their author. Tragically, Bellairs passed away in 1991 at the age of 53. He left behind two unfinished manuscripts and two synopses of future works. These would eventually be completed by the author Brad Strickland, who has since gone on to write his own works featuring Bellair’s characters. These are worthy follow-ups, but if you’ve never experienced Bellairs’s unique voice before, be sure to start with the originals.