Child Of Earth And Sky

By Menna van Praag
Fiction/Transworld/Paperback/253 pages/$31.48/Amazon SG (amzn.to/46yHZP1)
2 stars

The third and final instalment of fantasy series The Sisters Grimm is a pretty but flat affair, with too little magic and an enigmatically written finale that eschews violence for a vague sense of transfiguration.

Unlike her two previous books, English author Menna van Praag is here more interested in intimate human drama than bold clashes in Everwhere, the alternate magical realm she has created.

In place of wars waged with the elements, readers are left with essentially the story of single mother Goldie, who is trying to convince social services that she is capable of taking care of her gifted daughter Luna.

In the process, the happenings in Everwhere become so incidental, they are in danger of becoming mere allegory.

The author may be saying something worthwhile about the sacrifices of motherhood and the troublesome persistence of inheritance, but the real and fantasy worlds here are so haphazardly integrated that these points are lost in an unexciting blur.

Fans of the series will be familiar with Everwhere, “a place of falling leaves and hungry ivy, mist and fog, moonlight and ice, a place always shifting and always still”.

It is a place accessible by the Sisters Grimm – a network of gifted womenfolk – in their dreams or via specific real-life gates at 3.33am.

For Goldie and Luna, who live in Cambridge, this is the gate to the Cambridge University Botanic Garden.

Each sister Grimm is capable of manipulating only a certain element – be it fire, wind, water or air – but Luna, turning 10 in a few days, is showing signs that she has aptitude in them all.

Goldie, the unofficial matriarch of Everwhere, runs a parallel safe house for women in the real world.

What should be a laudable career choice becomes problematic when Luna’s physical education teacher notes the strange scars appearing on Luna’s back and Goldie is suddenly suspected of harming her child.

Crosshatched with this development are the random deaths now happening in Everwhere and Goldie has to find a way to protect her home in both realms.

A bruised woman who is seeking help at the safe house adds a further sidebar and there are arguably simply too many strands to fit meaningfully in a 250-page book.

As a result, Goldie and Luna’s relationship never succeeds in going beyond the cliche. The deaths in Everwhere are also so breezily written, they hardly make a dent on the consciousness of readers.

When the finale finally comes, van Praag ropes in a deus ex machina buried in a pointless prophecy.

The resolution makes less sense for an exciting narrative than as a piece of the puzzle in the thematic problems van Praag has set up, a flaw not mitigated by her pretty writing.

Some enchantment can be found in the feminist spins on Grimms’ fairy tales that van Praag has incorporated in the text and the lessons these hold for little girls – that living for others or for love will never be satisfying – are no doubt important.

But they remain that – little gems in an innocuous and unprovocative story that perhaps works better as a bedtime story for children.

In this day and age, Child Of Earth And Sky is not nearly dark or complex enough.

If you like this, read: Silence For The Dead by Simone St James (Berkley, 2023, $14.21, Amazon SG, go to amzn.to/3QuG0Gu). Kitty Weekes thinks she has pulled off a coup when she secures a job as a nurse at isolated Portis House, a convalescent home for war veterans, until strange things start happening, with the inhabitants dreaming a common nightmare.