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I finished reading this novel about a month ago and found it a bitter disappointment. I did finish reading it though I almost quit several times.
The story starts with a boy and a Black Labrador Retriever ending up on the fabled Flying Dutchman. The first few chapters tells the legend of the ship and crew destined to sail the seas for eternity... except for the boy and his dog who manage to escape. Not bad so far, but the angel who saved them from such a terrible fate makes the boy and dog immortal(they can also communicate telepathically). In exchange, they must go wherever they're needed to help the needy and set things straight.
Still not bad, but it goes downhill from here. The boy is sent to a small town in 19th century England with the over-used plot about an old widow about to lose her home to industrialists that want to destroy the whole town to quarry stone to make cement. Naturally, the old lady owns the town but can't prove it without documentation. So the boy races to find the proof with some friends he makes in town who are being bullied by the son of the man who wants to run the old lady out of her home which happens to be the key location for the whole thing.
All through the book there are references to the boy's connection to the "Flying Dutchman" and her doomed crew. If not for this baiting me on, I would've quit reading it about halfway through. I kept expecting the author to connect this with the rest of the story. The proof the town did indeed belong to the widow was found. All was well, the bad guys defeated. So, what happened to the boy and his dog? They left to go wherever the angel needed them The "Flying Dutchman" was never connected to the village or what was happening there.
I've never read a more disappointing book in my life, but the author, Brian somebody, wrote the "Redwall" series that is supposed to be popular, and the owner of the used bookstore where I bought this particular book said the author is popular among his customers. If I get a chance to pick up "Redwall", I'll give it a whirl. Maybe "Castaways of the Flying Dutchman" wasn't one of this author's better books. <<big shrug>>.
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I enjoyed the first few "Redwall" volumes---ties into my appreciation for the best-known work of Kenneth Grahame, kind of---but over a period of time, as the series lengthened (and lengthened) and it became difficult to relate what happened in any one volume to what happened in the others, well, ultimately I had other things to buy.
Not that they weren't without their pecularities, as I recall...
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Thanks for the feedback on the "Redwall" books, Robert. If I can find the first one at the used bookstore, I'll give it a whirl.
One other thing that irked the snot out of me in "Castaways of the Flying Dutchman" was how the author used dialog for characters with accents. There was a Scotsman in the latter part of the book, and reading his Scottish brogue became so much of a challenge that I would skip over it. It drove me nuts and enforced in me never to try that in my own writing. There are other ways to do that without butchering the dialog. He did that with a couple other minor characters but not nearly as bad as he did with the Scotsman.
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I think I heard that Redwall, the first book, has several million in print in the USA...I saw brand-new copies in the YA part of my local bookstore just this Tuesday while looking for something else...so I'm thinking a copy should be easy to turn up somewhere. Definitely start with Redwall, though...
*****
I'm also thinking that dialect and accent are much, much easier to listen to than to handle in writing, of course...
Just wanted to let you know I found "Redwall" at the used bookstore and didn't buy it. I thought that author sounded familiar. I'm just not one for animals with human-like intelligence. I can enjoy movies like that but just don't like reading it. Don't ask me why, because I don't know myself. LOL
This author's books are compared to the movie "Watership Down", which I didn't like. So I think I'll pass on reading "Redwall" and any other books in that series.
It has become one of those movies that's so deeply ingrained in my psyche that I can be out hiking or even driving and something autumny will happen and bam, it brings me back.
I know smell is the most powerful memory jogger in that regard, as far as being taken back to a previous time or place, but Watership Down is a close second for me.
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Crystal - I'm the same way about animals as main characters, I really can't take it. I've discovered this extends to mythical creatures, too.
Too bad about the book you're reading, but thanks for the warning as I imagine it will come across my reading queue at some point, since i read a lot in the YA/middle-grade space.
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Well, I would have described Redwall as The Wind in the Willows meets The Lord of the Rings, not comparing it to Watership Down, really.
The animals in Watership Down are more definitely animals than those in either Redwall or The Wind in the Willows. I mean, they're species wild rabbit, like most of us here are species human, for all that they talk and demonstrate all the facets of intelligence than humans display. I suppose you could classify Watership Down as science fiction, rather than fantasy, in that it portrays non-human aliens.
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