Page 1 of 1 The Roumania Series by Paul Park
Submitted by Julian 
(Mar 23, 2007)Years ago, I picked up a book called Soldiers of Paradise. It was by a new author, Paul Park, and it was the first of a trilogy, The Starbridge Chronicles (1). I loved the series and would still rate it amongst the best debuts in fantasy. But then I sort of lost track of Park - I knew he went on to write a book called Celestis, but that was about it.
In 2005, however, Park published the first book in a new series. A Princess of Roumania. It was followed by The Tourmaline (2006) and The White Tyger (2007). A fourth and final book, The Hidden World, will hopefully be published in 2008.
I’ve read the first two and have just started on the third. Again, I find myself pretty impressed by what Park’s doing. Here’s why.
Ostensibly, the “Roumanian series” (an informal moniker, by the way) is Young Adult fantasy based around familiar themes. It’s about three teenagers – Miranda and her friends, Peter and Andromeda – growing up in an ordinary American town. They then get whisked away to a place called Roumania, which is like the Romania you and I know, but different. There, Miranda finds out that she’s a princess of the realm, whilst Peter is her champion and an honest-to-goodness hero to boot (2). Unfortunately, Miranda’s father is dead and her mother is imprisoned in Germany, so the obvious thing to do is set everything right and get Miranda on the throne.
Pretty straightforward, right? Right. Except…
Park is a complex and intelligent writer. Whilst the series really is, in a way, about the things described above, it is at the same time about very much more. Park has taken a set of almost formulaic fantasy concepts and has started playing with them. He’s turned them around, he’s delved into them more deeply, and, ultimately, he’s ended up with something rather unique.
I’ll try to explain this (without giving away too much).
Firstly, there’s the story itself; the plot, if you will. Right from the start, it veers off into unexpected directions. The Roumania the children are transported to isn’t an alternate Romania – it’s the real one. The one we know is the alternate one. In fact, the one we know doesn’t even exist: it’s fictitious, part of a book written by Miranda’s aunt, Aegypta, to create a place in which to hide Miranda from her Roumanian enemies, such as the Baroness Ceauºescu (3).
That, however, is just a starting point. In Roumania, reality is not quite as clear cut as you might think. What has happened in the past and why things are happening now is dependent upon the point of view of the different characters. And those characters are themselves complex; as the story progresses, one’s opinions of them start to shift. Take, for example, Aegypta. You start out thinking she’s the Gandalf – well, Gandalfess – of the tale. But by the end of the second book, you’re not so sure. Aegypta is certainly trying to get Miranda on the Roumanian throne, but her reasons for doing so aren’t that clear.
Take, too, the baroness Ceauºescu, the arch-villain. Except that isn’t really true either. The baroness - probably the most interesting character in the first two books – does, on occasion, do awful things, but she does so thinking she’s pursuing a worthwhile cause. In other words, in her eyes at least, she’s the good gal.
Then there’s Miranda and Peter themselves. When Aegypta sent Miranda into our world, Miranda was eight years old, too old not to remember the place she’d been sent away from. So Aegypta shaves off five years of her life, leaving Miranda a three year old infant. But when she returns to Roumania, she regains those lost years. She’s not just suddenly much older than Peter, but the two are actually divided in time, living five years apart. Part of The Tourmaline deals with Peter overcoming that time difference, but when the two do eventually see each other again, they are no longer the same people they were before.
That brings me to the second interesting thing about the series: the writing. I understand Ursula LeGuin has called it “transparent”, but I feel translucent is perhaps more fitting. There’s a certain diffusing quality to the way Park writes. The words are clear enough, but you still get the impression that you’re not actually seeing everything that’s going on. There’s always just a little bit more to what people are saying and feeling than meets the eye. It is a style that some will find bemusing and some perhaps even irritating, but it fits in seamlessly with the series’ themes.
And, personally, I find the writing, at times, to be astonishingly beautiful. Here, for example, is a passage from the Tourmaline, when Miranda and Peter have just met again, and it has not been the joyous occasion Miranda was hoping for:
Later, when she’d had time to think, she realized it was stupid to console yourself. Because nothing ever stays the same, and everything is always different, and Peter was different, and she herself was different, and everyone is simultaneously rushing towards someone and rushing away, especially people who care about each other after all. And the past drops away and has no meaning for the future, except for moments we look back and say, “Yes, I remember that.” Or, “Yes, I felt that. Or, “I believed that.” And those images of ourselves are bound to us as if through secret threads of glass.
But if we could forget out disappointment, and if there were something to shatter those tough, sharp threads, sever them, how happy we would be! And the past would recede from us, and we would turn from the people we have known and stumble forward, and meet them coming the other way.
This passage also seems to reflect well what the series is about. Yes, it’s about growing up, and in that sense you may well call it YA. But it is also, and more generally, about change and about accepting change, and about the fact that the world is never quite what you think it is, and once you think you’ve almost figured it all out, it will have become different again. And those themes are difficult, and ageless.
All in all, I liked the first two books immensely, and was impressed enough by The Tourmaline to vote for it recently as my favorite book of 2006. Having said that, I was the only one to do so, and it’s certainly true that the series will not be everyone’s cup of tea. It will appeal most, I think, to people who care not just about what a writer writes, but also how he does it. To those, in other words, who care about writing.
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(1) The second and third volumes are: Sugar Rain and The Cult Of Loving Kindness.
(2) And Andromeda? I’m not telling…
(3) Sound familiar? Ceauºescu was the dictator of Romania when Iron Curtain went down. Along with his wife, Elena. he was placed in front of a wall and summarily shot by a firing squad. Some of you will remember the footage.
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