The Seventh Tower: The Fall

#13
Title: The Seventh Tower: The Fall

Author: Garth Nix
Publisher: Scholastic
Year: 2000
Genre: Children’s/Fantasy

195 pages

+ Worldbuilding, fast action, compelling protagonist

- A little underwritten, shape of overall narrative not yet clear

This is the first of a 6-book series intended for younger readers. As such, the narrative seems a little thin from an adult perspective. However, Nix is able to evoke character, situation, and complexity even within these parameters, and without a condescending or cute tone. As usual, Nix’s worldbuilding is compelling, with a strong archetypal undertone. The alienness of protagonist Tal’s world does require more exposition than I would like in an adult fantasy novel, but I think it’s necessary here and relatively naturalistic. Nix embeds much of the explanatory matter by two means: Tal’s worried ruminations allow the reader to understand his sociocultural surround and explain his urgency, and encounters with Icecarls allow further elaboration on customs, history, and the pragmatics of the world in which the action takes place. Within a rather grand and novel environment, Nix’s characterization is spare but deft.Tal’s antagonists are Roald Dahl-like in their pleasure in thwarting him, and the reader quickly learns, with Tal, that these intimate obstructions occur in the context of a more ominous, Kafka-like social context.

The storyline from the vantage of the end of this first book seem rather picaresque, though this appears to be a mirror of Tal’s perceptions of the events; the reader understands that the hints of as-yet unrevealed background and history will be further elaborated as Tal continues on his quest. The series is presumably a coming-of-age narrative and hero story, and I expect that Tal's concerns will become less personal and more universal.

The completed series was published from 2000 through 2001, which should suggest relatively good continuity, unlike more meandering and occasional series such as Orson Scott Card's disappointing Alvin Maker books.