Hey everyone! It’s been a while since I last wrote, but now I’m back again with another blog!
Previously on “The Issues With Geronimo’s Kingdom of Fantasy”: The Issues With Geronimo’s Kingdom of Fantasy (Part 1)
The previous link also has context for the series is on the first part, so make sure you read that first before you go ahead and read this part.
Issue 3: Fridge Logic
So, for people who don’t know your tropes, Fridge Logic is basically another term for the realization that the audience has when something doesn’t make sense in a piece of media (books, TV shows, et cetera), which can lead to heads turning due to confusion. Huge examples are:
- food (donuts and ice cream) made from animal products (eggs and milk) in Zootopia, a movie where animals behave like people and coexist together.
- The Marvel superhero The Silver Surfer being covered by a sheet of metal, which makes natural processes like breathing or going to the bathroom difficult for some people to understand if the Surfer does those or not
- In the third book of The Kingdom of Fantasy (The Amazing Voyage), the giant, Strongheart, can’t get over a ravine, even though he can just step over it.
Another one is how in The Enchanted Charms (the seventh book in the Geronimo Stilton series), in the scene where Geronimo has to try to get the fifth charm, which checks if you have lied in your life. If you have, then you will be turned into a crystal statue. Geronimo is weighed and gets the charm because he is honest.
This debate of saying that the truth is the best thing to say has been shown to be flawed today. This also is ignoring the times when Geronimo had to work as a spy and lie to others to make the spy work go smoothly and in the episode “Reported Missing” in the Geronimo Stilton TV series, Geronimo decides to lie about solving the mystery to conceal a diamond mine in an old African village.
So it’s obvious that Geronimo has lied before, and the book clearly leaves out the act of a “noble lie”.
Lying doesn’t always cause malice, it can also keep belongings safe to assure no one steals them, and lying is important if you want to protect someone you love or even yourself. That’s the art of the “noble lie”. This confusion makes you realize if Geronimo is actually honest as the books say he is.
But I’m definitely not lying about what the next issue of the series is.
Issue 4: Irrelevant Information
Remember how we talked about how in the first part of this series, there are WAY too many characters in The Kingdom of Fantasy? Well, this complaint connects with this, but in a different way.
Every book, we see Geronimo make a new friend, visit a new place and/or get a new artifact in the Kingdom of Fantasy. In each place, the world is described in great detail, with certain quirks of the place revealed, what species live there, et cetera.
However, for many writers and writing students (including me), this information can usually be CATASTROPHIC with the story, as it makes the reader lose focus with the actual plot to look at the side content. And believe me, it’s crazy.
In The Dragon of Fortune (again, the second special edition in the series), there are many factions that are introduced, with many pieces of information revealed about them. For example:
- The Seven Tail Dynasty, a rival kingdom of the Kingdom of Fantasy that wants to takeover the Kingdom of Fantasy by seizing Blossom’s throne.
- The Little Thieving Sprites, a species of pixie banished from the kingdom because of their kleptomaniac tendencies.
- The Three Chestnut Trees, sentient trees that enforce the rules of the Green Country.
- The Circle of Green Guardians, trees that decide if one is worthy to enter the Bright Empire.
- The Wizard Council of the Bright Empire, exactly what they sound like.
- And many others…
You see how confusing and mind-breaking all this information is? It may seem like all of this information is necessary to understand and comprehend the entire series, but in reality, only one of these factions appears again in the series, and that’s the Wizard Council.
And by them, I mean only one member of the Council (first named Selfie in The Dragon of Fortune, but renamed Solo in the eleventh book, The Guardian of the Realm) that appears in the eleventh book and just disappears for the rest of the story. This issue could be easily resolved by simply by reusing elements from other books instead of constantly expanding the world in the series
Issue 5: Clickbait
The worst event in The Kingdom of Fantasy possibly are the ones that don’t happen in the first place.
Clickbaiting is the act of saying something will appear in a piece of media (mainly based on the cover) and that even not ever happening in the first place. Usually the term only applies to videos, but I’m using the term to describe what happens to books as well.
This is a common problem Geronimo Stilton books have. Usually the cover of the books always show an event that doesn’t even happen in the book and even if it does, it’s not how the book showed that it was going to go in the first place. For example, on the cover of the 62nd book in the original series (Mouse Overboard!), Geronimo does go overboard as the title suggests, but he obviously isn’t swimming from sharks, nor is Bugsy Wugsy (called Pandora in the animated series) a princess!
This goes the same for the thirteenth and fourteenth books in the series (The Battle for the Crystal Castle and The Keepers of the Empire) show a white tiger (her name canonically is Dawn, she’s the tiger that appears in my art for this blog!) as a prominent figure on the covers of both books.
Except this is a lie, only appearing as a side character as Princess Winglet’s mount. Our dreams of a cute talking magical tiger companion were shattered >sigh<.
Another example is how the first special edition of The Kingdom of Fantasy (The Phoenix of Destiney), makes us want to believe that the titular phoenix will be part of the story. But in truth, she only appears for a brief moment in the book and never again! This false advertising has happened so much in Geronimo Stilton books, that I can’t list all the times stuff like this has even happened!
Bonus Critiques:
These are critiques I had with the series that bugged me a lot, but I couldn’t put them into a specific category to elaborate them on. So I put them all in here!
- Geronimo is way too much of a punching bag in the series, which I personally don’t see as funny even when it is played to be.
- When the thirteenth book came out (The Battle for the Crystal Castle), a person with an ominous red cloak was one of the main antagonists, even though we didn’t know who thy were. I genuinely believed that this mysterious crimson character was going to be Cackle, after she left the Kingdom of Witches in The Dragon of Fortune. Sadly, I would be disappointed, as instead of Cackle, it was Flamelet, a new character who is the daughter of Wither and Crowbar. so much for that!
In conclusion, The Kingdom of Fantasy may have spectacular visuals and great world building, but all that magic can’t hide all the problems the series has!
If any of you reading this liked reading The Kingdom of Fantasy, that’s great for you! The series isn’t my cup of tea, but even if you do acknowledge the flaws the series has, I hope you can enjoy the books all the same one a reread.
If there are some things I missed, go ahead and comment them!
Thank you! And see you all next time!
– Nova S.