Dorothea’s Song is a 400 page D&D-style Chosen One fantasy adventure novel, written in the pages of a journal of a boy growing up Catholic in the early ’80s.  As we learn in the journal segments that start the piece and then occur at increasingly frequent intervals within the overall text, the story is written as an assignment (and labour of love) for the young narrator’s French teacher, each chapter being written first in English by the narrator, and then (we are told) painstakingly translated into French to be handed in.

The fantasy novel, which comprises the large majority of the text, is about a young elf (named after the narrator’s French teacher) who finds herself suddenly trying to save her people from a war with humans, a war cleverly and deviously masterminded by power-hungry functionaries, an evil coven of witches, and a traitorous Elvin mage.  Dorothea finds herself racing with her best and older friend Celas to reach the tower of the wizard Mohan, chased by demon spirits summoned by the witches to possess and destroy her.  Early in the story, while undergoing a test of her skills alone in the forest, Dorothea must fight off a human intent on raping her.  Later, while possessed by a demon of anger, she commits a murder against her will.  Meanwhile, the world around her marches inexorably toward war, driven by a confluence of magical and mundane forces.  Things grow more complicated from there.

The journal segments—which are very privately written to the narrator’s older self—are material of a deeper sort.  From the start, the narrator clearly has a crush on his French teacher, and it’s kind of bittersweet the way he talks about her and relates the things he does to get and hold her attention.  Meanwhile, his home life seems to be falling apart—his parents seem to be under some sort of stress, and they are becoming angrier and occassionally abusive as a result.  In one passage, he discusses how his Mother beat his younger brother for a fairly minor offense, and he seems legitimately confused and angered by what happened—and then, in turn, guilty about being angry.  It is some of the better material in the book.

I had a lot of trouble with the narrator’s age.  For the first hundred-some-odd pages, I was thinking maybe 12.  The sentence structures are simple and staccato, the characterization in the story is rudimentary and plot-driven . . . all very much reminiscent of the way I remember my own writing, at that age.  Also, there were references to life experiences that generally happen around that age.  But later, in the second half of the book (only a few months later in journal time) new references imply the narrator is actually mid-teens, and the voice did seem to grow more confident and older, in those latter parts.  I found the conflict between these two frames distracting, though I can’t say for sure how much of that was the author’s "fault" and how much was mine.

If I put the narrator’s age around 13, the voice is actually mostly believable, with a few exceptions.  But, ultimately, that very success is one of the story’s biggest shortcomings: there are very few middle-schoolers (or even high-schoolers) who can write a 400 page fantasy novel an adult would want to read—and, unfortunately, our narrator is not one of them.  The story is imaginative in its own way, but relies very heavily on the D&D clichés appropriate to a narrator of that age, and borrows major themes from Tolkien and Star Wars.  Combined with plot-driven dialogue and flat prose, it isn’t a very engaging read.

I wondered, early on, if maybe the story was written for kids, but that idea didn’t last.  The journal sections cover material that would instantly engage the ridicule-and-snicker-response of any self-respecting young male.  In one journal entry, the narrator describes a sexual fantasy he had about his teacher—an escapade replete with guilt and anguish and sticky sheets.  It’s the kind of thing an adult could read and appreciate as a part of growing up, but I can’t see many kids of that age finding the material a comfortable read.  Also, in chapter ten, there’s an in-story sex scene that definitely wasn’t written for kids, nor is it even believably written by a young male, still ashamed of his body and writing for a teacher he has a crush on (especially when the character driving the sex scene is the one based on her). 

I definitely got the impression that the author wanted the story segments to serve as some sort of refuge for the narrator—a place that he escapes to, in which he can deal with things he is too afraid to deal with in real life—with the literary purpose of shedding light on his character.  Unfortunately, until right near the end, the story sections aren’t successful in that regard—they really do just read as an imagined story of elves and mages and demons, without any significant "real-world" allegory.  And when the two threads do come together in the final pages, the resolution isn’t satisfying—it resolves the journal thread by breaking the story thread, and it just cheapens both.

I think either book—the fantasy novel or the journal—could have worked on their own.  The fantasy novel is nothing special, but would probably serve to pass the time, if you enjoy that kind of story.  And the journal could have been something deep and revealing, with a little more work.  But stick the two in the same book, and intercut between them, and they mostly fight each other.  The context of the journal makes it (much) harder to suspend disbelief in large parts of the story, and serves to call attention to the lack-lustre writing.  And the story adds very little to the journal, beyond demonstrating the crush the narrator has on his teacher.

Reading Dorothea’s Song, it felt like the journal wanted to be the important thing, and could have been successfully punctuated by imaginative short stories written by the narrator to deal with his problems-du-jour.  It is clear the author has put a lot of effort into the story.  But, as written, with the largest portion of the text (especially in the first 150 pages) dedicated to the adventure novel, the two parts just never gel.

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