Hey everyone! It’s been a while since we talked! I was doing a lot of ACT and SAT prep, so I couldn’t really have any time to actually write a blog. Sorry, guys!
So before this, I was listening to my podcast episode on the Our Sunday Project Podcast (which you guys definitely should listen to, the podcast I mean) and I though my episode was… pretty decent! There could have been more work on volume control, but that’s pretty much it.
But then I watched a video from Rerez, with their series Just Bad Games, and I watched my favorite episode: where they talk about the game that is Balan Wonderworld. And believe me, that video is MUCH better than my very bad podcast episode with very bad voice clips. Due to this, I decided to explain everything wrong with the Kingdom of Fantasy once again, but in a better way so that you all can understand what my little brain is telling you all.
So, context: the anthropomorphic mouse author Geronimo Stilton is the pen name of Italian author Elisabetta Dami. Geronimo’s books are about his adventures around and out of New Mouse City, trying to explore the world and solve mysteries as he tries to get the newest scoop for his newspaper company called the Rodent’s Gazette.
If you’ve read the series, including its spinoff, the Thea Sisters, you can tell that despite everyone in the Geronimo Stilton universe are mice, you can easily tell that Elisabetta’s niches in writing is obviously in mystery and adventure. Many of the adventures are definitely in a one-time, trip-of-the-day format, where Geronimo goes on an adventure and then it’s rarely ever mentioned again.
So when good ol’ Stilton published the first installment of his first fantasy series, called the Kingdom of Fantasy (so creative), in 2003, this really turned heads.
The series is about Geronimo having dreams, entering himself into a mystical realm called the Kingdom of Fantasy. Ruled by the Queen of Fairies, Blossom, the kingdom is frequently in trouble due to the Queen of Witches, Cackle, having many attempts to take over the kingdom. This means Geronimo and many of his friends have to save the kingdom before it’s full of evil!
And I enjoyed them as a kid! Here’s some good things about the books:
- The world building is MASSIVE. In every book, it seems like that the Kingdom of Fantasy keeps expanding for every book, and it gets SO detailed on what’s in each one!
- The adventures are captivating in a way (at first glance), and are good to get invested in!
Well, we talked about some good things in the series, and you may be a little bit peaked!
But ohhh, this blog isn’t called “The Issues With Geronimo’s Kingdom of Fantasy” for no REASON! To loosely quote Rerez, “not all as it seems in the Kingdom of Fantasy!” As behind the glistening sky and palace, the edifice is simply an illusion to hide the terrible writing behind its closed doors. Despite this, the series is still going! And I’m quite surprised by this. Now, onto the problems.
Issue 1: Characters
Yes, the trusted companions of Geronimo are among the worst things about the book series in general, and this is mainly because of one specific reason: there are WAY too many of them!
This usually isn’t an issue when it comes to some kinds of book or TV series. For example, the Simpsons, which is famous for its many characters. But what the Kingdom of Fantasy does wrong that The Simpsons does right is that these many characters set up in two categories, ones that are the main view of the episode/book and the ones that aren’t.
While The Simpsons have episodes where Lisa and Homer Simpson star in to get a new saxophone, the Kingdom of Fantasy has a book (specifically the 11th, The Guardian of the Realm) where there are SIXTEEN people in the adventuring party (including Geronimo)! And out of those fifteen, only about seven are utilized to move the party forward! Put that in your calculator, and that’s only 44% of the party!
This means, in the 11th book alone, less than HALF of the adventuring party actually have a role to play, making the 66% of the party just there for the fun. I can’t even begin to count how many books have characters in the adventuring party that either:
- Utilized once and never used again
- In the party, but doesn’t do anything!
The many characters also means there is usually that one character that could have been utilized for the plot instead of the new character that was just brought up a few pages ago. A huge example is how in the 2nd Special Edition, there is an owl that carries four of the characters (Scribblehopper, Chatterclaws, Blue Rider and Geronimo) to the Kingdom of Fantasy. But instead of this character that is here, why couldn’t Scribblehopper’s daughter, Scarletthopper (who can turn into a phoenix), to carry them there instead?
Another example to this is present in the 13th book (The Battle for Crystal Castle), where a greedy, but good-hearted fox merchant named Foxylynn joins the party and helps them for a while. But instead of a fox merchant named Foxylynn, why not use the crow merchant, Cleverwing, that appeared in The Dragon of Fortune before that?
But what makes a story interesting besides the characters is the plot, which the Kingdom of Fantasy also struggles with.
Issue 2: Plot Holes and Lore
For people who don’t know:
- Plot holes are inconsistencies in the storyline that mess up what happens in events, the past, the future and other aspects of the story.
- Lore is a term to describe the knowledge or personal backstory of any character or topic. Think of it as the life events the characters are or were going through.
One example of lore in the third book (The Amazing Voyage) is the fact that Thunderhorn, King of the Elves, is a mysterious shapeshifter that only takes the form of a white deer with golden antlers in front of non-elves, his true form being a big secret. Nevertheless, Thunderhorn uses his wisdom and leadership to deal with the troubles that Geronimo and friends face against.
An example of a plot hole is how in the fourth book (The Dragon Prophecy), this is changed to how Thunderhorn was trapped in the form of a deer by the Witch Queen, Cackle, and restored to his “true form” at the end of the book after healing from an injury with magic water.
As you can see, Elisabetta Dami just threw the shapeshifter aspect of Thunderhorn out of the window, instead of simply making him reveal his true form to Geronimo after he gets healed with the injury.
The worst part of this is the plot grievance in the eleventh (The Guardian of the Realm), where after finding Blossom’s (Queen of the Fairies) newborn baby, Winglet, Geronimo is given the ability to turn into a dragoning (a dragon of light in the series lore). Not only does he use this ability to fight against Wither (Blossom’s sister, later Queen of the Witches) and Crowbar the Cruel (Wither’s boyfriend and later husband), but also to get back to his house in New Mouse City and back to the Kingdom of Fantasy after a stowaway, Bluewing the Mini-Dragon, wants to go back home. This is where the eleventh book ends.
Then in the twelfth book (The Island of Dragons), the book doesn’t open back up to Geronimo the dragoning and Bluewing the Mini-Dragon going back to the Kingdom of Fantasy. In fact, it opens up with Geronimo, no Bluewing in sight, at a dance party, conking out and going to the Kingdom of Fantasy once again.
The characters from the eleventh book (or the Dragon of Fortune) and before and Geronimo’s ability to turn into a dragoning is GONE. The only characters kept are Blossom, Blossom’s husband George, Winglet (now a teen), Wither and Crowbar, and everyone else is wiped from existence.
There’s actually a term for this, it’s called a retcon, where previously established events in a story are removed, edited or given a new meaning. One huge example of this is from the fifteenth book (The Golden Key) onwards, the ruler of the Kingdom of Fantasy isn’t Blossom anymore. It’s a lady named Queen Imaginaria. This means that the first fourteen books of the ENTIRE series are just nonexistent at this point. Yeesh!
I would keep writing about more, but it’s safe to say that this is a series that will continue next week. This blog is already SUPER long, and I don’t want you all to keep reading all this, so stay tuned for next time!
– Nova S.