Horseman: A Tale of Sleepy Hollow
Author:
Genres: Literature & Fiction, Mystery, Thriller & Suspense, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Horror
Book Type: Paperback
Author:
Genres: Literature & Fiction, Mystery, Thriller & Suspense, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Horror
Book Type: Paperback
I really wanted to like this, as Washington Irving's original tale is one of my favorite pieces of fiction, and has been since childhood. This wasn't so much a re-telling of the story, but a re-imagining of it. It started out with great promise, actually, with town kids playing in the creepy, haunted woods, where a body is discovered... but it quickly takes a turn, and not for the better.
My primary issue was that it was just so unrealistic, almost like mediocre fan fiction. I just couldn't get past the utterly unrealistic notion of a fourteen-year-old transgender girl just living her best life in the early nineteenth century... and everyone in town just seems to play along, with her wearing men's clothing, getting into fisticuffs with boys in the streets, and climbing trees in the woods like an ill-bred ruffian. At FOURTEEN. Ten, eleven... meh. But, as the book notes, girls were preparing for marriage at fourteen; they certainly weren't climbing trees and creeping around in the woods with neighborhood boys. That's so utterly fantastical that it just tainted the rest of the story. Even if her family was the richest and most powerful in town, that would have been so utterly intolerable that to suggest otherwise just kind of spoiled it for me.
The anachronistic writing was also disappointing. I'm not saying that it had to assume a flawless early-American vernacular, but the prose was just too modern-sounding for my taste for a story set in this time period. Read the original (which was penned in 1820, which isn't too far-removed from the time in which it allegedly took place, in about 1790) for some of the most beautifully crafted prose in English literature. Seriously. This simplistic and uninspired writing just didn't do the original justice, which bothered me.
I will give it some marks for being at least somewhat creative by turning the original on its head, in making town bully/braggart Brom Bones the hero character, and the "lovely" Katrina a haggard shrew who is constantly at odds with her tomboy granddaughter. The villains in the story are Ichabod Crane, who, after his disappearance, apparently makes a Faustian deal with a demon to take revenge on the whole town which rejected him, the progeny of the woman who spurned him and the man who beat him at his own game, and a demon who somehow turns out to have taken human form and assumed the body of Tomboy's maternal grandfather (?)... It becomes an ever-increasingly tangled web of absurdity from there. The Horseman is also not a villain, but a manifested spectre willed into existence by the townspeople, especially Katrina herself...
The first half was decent, but, keeping in mind the above fantastical elements, I have to say that the last third at least really just goes off the rails. The ending was ridiculous, honestly, and unlike some other reviewers, I didn't find it endearing at all. Maybe I'm so harsh here because The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is one of my favorite old-timey American folk tales, one I've been enthralled with since childhood, so this poorly-conceived and mediocre reworking just kind of rubbed me the wrong way. I don't take issue with new themes and spins on old tales, but they should at least be somewhat faithful to the original, and should treat their ideas and themes with respect.
My primary issue was that it was just so unrealistic, almost like mediocre fan fiction. I just couldn't get past the utterly unrealistic notion of a fourteen-year-old transgender girl just living her best life in the early nineteenth century... and everyone in town just seems to play along, with her wearing men's clothing, getting into fisticuffs with boys in the streets, and climbing trees in the woods like an ill-bred ruffian. At FOURTEEN. Ten, eleven... meh. But, as the book notes, girls were preparing for marriage at fourteen; they certainly weren't climbing trees and creeping around in the woods with neighborhood boys. That's so utterly fantastical that it just tainted the rest of the story. Even if her family was the richest and most powerful in town, that would have been so utterly intolerable that to suggest otherwise just kind of spoiled it for me.
The anachronistic writing was also disappointing. I'm not saying that it had to assume a flawless early-American vernacular, but the prose was just too modern-sounding for my taste for a story set in this time period. Read the original (which was penned in 1820, which isn't too far-removed from the time in which it allegedly took place, in about 1790) for some of the most beautifully crafted prose in English literature. Seriously. This simplistic and uninspired writing just didn't do the original justice, which bothered me.
I will give it some marks for being at least somewhat creative by turning the original on its head, in making town bully/braggart Brom Bones the hero character, and the "lovely" Katrina a haggard shrew who is constantly at odds with her tomboy granddaughter. The villains in the story are Ichabod Crane, who, after his disappearance, apparently makes a Faustian deal with a demon to take revenge on the whole town which rejected him, the progeny of the woman who spurned him and the man who beat him at his own game, and a demon who somehow turns out to have taken human form and assumed the body of Tomboy's maternal grandfather (?)... It becomes an ever-increasingly tangled web of absurdity from there. The Horseman is also not a villain, but a manifested spectre willed into existence by the townspeople, especially Katrina herself...
The first half was decent, but, keeping in mind the above fantastical elements, I have to say that the last third at least really just goes off the rails. The ending was ridiculous, honestly, and unlike some other reviewers, I didn't find it endearing at all. Maybe I'm so harsh here because The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is one of my favorite old-timey American folk tales, one I've been enthralled with since childhood, so this poorly-conceived and mediocre reworking just kind of rubbed me the wrong way. I don't take issue with new themes and spins on old tales, but they should at least be somewhat faithful to the original, and should treat their ideas and themes with respect.
