Once Upon a Truth....Cygnus catches dreamers with her daughters. A lost Mermelf from the stars arrives in Storyhenge.An imprisoned girl with a blue birthmark. An 1803 edition of 'The Birdspotter's Guide' with a mysterious dedication. A rediscovered invention. A dying Earth where books are banned. And all anomalies are outlaw.What if our dreams are always caught?What if your dreams are always heard?What if dreams are Imagination's stars?..” I am 25-03 A and I am anomaly and I am Griffin and I am freer and wilder than those Nomenclature can ever ever be...”Imprisoned with others of her kind in the icy wastes of The Outerskirts, 25-03 A escapes into the primeval forest, where she meets up with the last bastions of the Resistance. And so begins The Flights of Prophecy.A timely tale told in verse of Earth betrayed and the rescuers who answered her call.
Deirdre Hines is an award-winning poet and playwright. She lives on the edge of fable with her seven cats and time-travelling father.
As a child she roamed forests and seashores having adventures, which she recorded in her Nature Diaries. Her first book of poetry, The Language of Coats was published by New Island Books and was a bestseller. The Mermelf – A Fable for Our Times came to her in a dream while holidaying at Gwythian in Cornwall.
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In this beguiling verse novella, a fantasy world enters a dystopian future where we meet 25-03 A :The feisty heroine who has been sentenced to live in The Outerksirts with others of her kind. Those are they who are born with a blue birthmark and whose difference is their ability to transform into avian form.They are known as anomalies. The journeys the characters in this magical tale embark upon are manifold: the journey the blue mermelf Xiu and her fireflier take by accident from the constellation Cygnus, the journey Nony Mous , her mouse host in the library of Storyhenge and the Spider Mirror embark upon to find a lost book, the journey the reader takes into a future world where books are banned, difference is outlawed and the fauna and flora of the Earth breathes its last gasps in The Haven, and finally the journey 25-03 A takes towards self acceptance and leader of the last bastion of Resistance against the Nomenclature-the rulers of this future Earth.
Hines is a mistress of lyrical storytelling. The narrative is written in blank verse , each verse thirteen lines in length with one intriguing exception. The imagery haunts long after the reading. I fell in love with the mermelves. But what is a mermelf?
' Sometimes a mermelf may look, at first, like a moving rainbow. This is because they like to decorate their fur with flowers, shells or borrowed items from Flotsam or her cousin Jetsam...'
Ther humour is gentle and never cruel, my favourites being schools described as 'Mereums of Colossal Mistakes', and in the fabulous side characters of Crook and Cranny and their Curiosity Shop. But where the writing surpasses itself is in the clever twists and turns objects help move the plot.And in its vivid characterisation.. Ovid's Metamorphosis comes to mind in the avian transformations, but it is the power of Dream that helps fuel the characters' strength and resilience.
“..I fell in love with Dream and how her world
made me feel. On the stars beyond the moon,
the Nomenclature did not exist.
In worlds that did and did not resemble Earth, I paddled over stardust lakes. Alongside tumbled gargantuan white otters, head over heels over tails, among the whistling swaying star-reeds. All watched by the sentry heron in the e-g lands of the galaxies..”
There are worlds within worlds in this beautiful little gem and the skies are ever watchful. The Griffin that our heroine morphs into flies alongside birds of our garden hedges through trees of fable alongside fabled flowers. This is a book that will appeal to those younger readers whose passions are the environment, Earth mysteries, historical what ifs, the skies above us, mathematical conundrums and justice. The last time I enjoyed a fable as much was on my first reading of Animal Farm many moons ago. In much the same way this book can be a read as a forewarning against intolerance of the anamalous, the dangers of a totalitarian state and as a championing of imagination
as the only defence the defenceless have. Go grab a copy before they sell out..
-Jimmy Pappas, author of Rattle chapbook winner Falling off the Empire State Building, Rattle Readers' Choice Award “ Bobby's Story”, and Rattle Pushcart nominee “ The Gray Man”.
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