A Place of Stone and Darkness
Chris Mousdale
Puffin (2019)
415 pages
ISBN 978 0 14 377312 2
In A Place of
Stone and Darkness, Chris Mousdale has created not one but two worlds, each
with their own unique civilisation, language, customs and technology. Already
an award-winning illustrator, Mousdale now demonstrates his skill as a
storyteller by describing the consequences of these two races encountering (or rather
re-encountering) each other. Surprisingly the first dramatic meeting takes
place underground.
An adventurous young cave explorer, Ellee Meddo, is
investigating a secret cavern created long ago by her ancestors. Accidentally
plunging into a deep well system, Ellee risks her life to save and resuscitate a
half-drowned boy. When the narrative viewpoint moves to the boy, as he regains
consciousness, we find that he believes a strange feathered creature is jumping
up and down on his chest.
A Prologue explains that thousands of generations
earlier, a newly arrived group, the Toppas, had arrived and slaughtered almost
all species of birds. One group, the flightless Striggs saved themselves by the
desperate measure of moving underground and hiding in caves. Evolution produced
a highly specialised civilisation with the skills needed to survive
underground, far away from the murderous Toppas.
On page 6, a picture gallery of the main characters shows
the Stiggs, all looking like tall intellectual parrots who have developed
digits at their wingtips. Sidfred is Ellee’s inventive brother, while Kass is an
eager young organiser, impatient with the more cautious, older leaders.
The reader now understands that Ellee, of course, is a
Strigg, one of the evolved birds. The boy she has just saved from drowning, is
a Toppa from the terrifying world of Uptop, a young human named Blue.
Over the years bits of Uptop technology have ‘found their way’ underground and been
preserved in the Merzeum (Museum) sometimes with amusing results. (A gramophone
and clockwork technology both play a significant part in this story.) Because
he is fascinated by Toppa technology, Sidfred has mastered the Toppa language
and, therefore, he can communicate with Blue.
Unfortunately Blue is still suffering from shock and can’t
recall much. This means that the Striggs (and the readers) learn only gradually a little
about the Toppas and the current situation in Uptop.
Pollution from the surface is contaminating the Striggs’
water supplies, killing their crops of morra (mushrooms) and harming their health.
When Blue’s presence is revealed to them, the leaders are faced with a terrible
dilemma. On one wing, they feel they cannot kill Blue
but, on the other wing, if Blue returns to Uptop, it seems certain that he will tell of the birds
living underground. Then the Toppas will come down and slaughter them all.
With time running out, Ellee, Sidfred, Kass and a slowly
recovering Blue mount an expedition. They will try to ascend the dangerous well-shaft,
to reconnoitre the surface and report back.
What the four find on their arduous quest is a dramatic
surprise and makes the second part of this novel an even more exciting
adventure.
A high level of imagination has gone into creating the
Strigg world, complete with its customs, ceremonies, religious observances, songs
and mythology. Their language and figures of speech are skilfully created, so
that they make perfect sense. Striggs don’t tell their visitors to sit; they say,
‘Take a perch.’ There are even sayings, such as ‘Busy Striggs have their wings full.’
Mousdale has also made full use of his illustration skills, by
providing intricate endpaper cave-maps, and a selection of coloured
illustrations as well as two more maps (not a spoiler). The splendidly dramatic
cover picture, which shows Ellee as an alarming silhouette, gives us a good
idea of Blue’s view of the Strigg world.
Well designed and beautifully presented, A Place of Stone and Darkness is a strikingly fresh and enjoyable novel, unpredictable
and constantly surprising.
Note: Bright readers will have worked out the heritage of the Striggs
by their distinctive dancing customs. An extra hint is that the scientific name
of New Zealand’s Kakapo parrot is Strigops habroptilus.
Trevor Agnew 4 May 2019
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