Note: The title of this book has been translated into English by me for the reading comprehension of this blog's viewers as the book itself isn't available in English (yet).
So I'm a huge fan of the Efteling, a fantasy-themed Dutch amusement park. I've been there tons of times and can never get enough of it. Most of their rides are based on either a pre-existing or a made-up fantasy/fairy tale/folklore story. I've taken a look at Baron 1898 before, a book based on the eponymous roller coaster. Raveleijn here is based on a park show rather than a ride, but I still enjoyed the story a lot when I saw the TV series and of course the show itself, though the show in the park itself has been altered quite a few times.
So let's dive into the book version of the original story! Spoilers ahead.
Being an isekai story kind of in the vein of Narnia, this book follows five children/teens as they move into an old town that seems to be full of mysteries. When the youngest of them discovers a magical gate, it leads them to an alternate world/the past where the five siblings have now been transformed into adult knights. They soon realize that they are the Five, five riders of prophecy that are said to each wield a different element and thus bring peace to the county by defeating the villainous Count Olaf Grafhart and his mechanical monstrosities.
I don't have that much to say about this one. It's mostly just a pretty straightforward retelling of the park show and TV show. It's meant for a younger audience, but I still liked reading it nonetheless. Van Loon has a very pleasant writing voice despite it being in Dutch (I prefer reading in English when I can).
I do have some flaws, though. First of all, the characters are not amazing. I mean, Thomas is a pretty good lead, being the oldest and most rebellious of the siblings, but outside of him and maybe Joost the other three don't really get that much development. Maurits just kind of feels like your standard nerd character, and the our two only female characters, the twins, feel like they are interchangeable. It is exposition-ed a few times that they may have some different personality aspects, but the writing of the characters themselves makes them feel pretty much the same except for their element. The dog was also a completely pointless character, he didn't do anything of importance and just felt like a generic animal sidekick that should be there to appeal to the kids.
Also, there's a bit of a lack of explanation of this one. It's never quite established in this book whether the world of Raveleijn is a different (parallel) world altogether or if it's just the same location but in medieval times, making the gate essentially some kind of magical time portal. Both possibilities are brought up but it's never quite made clear. I don't need every bit of magic and shit explained for me, but it'd be nice to know if Raveleijn actually existed in the past in "our" world or if it's a world that's simply very similar to ours.
Certain characters re-occur in the "current/real world" timeline of the book, such as the one-eyed man and Samira/Samantha. At first I thought Samantha might've been a distant descendant of Samira, but I think that'd be impossible since there'd be so many centuries ago. She does mention having an ancestor called Samuel (Samira's father) but the way she talks about him he's still way too close to her generation-wise to be the Samuel from medieval-like Raveleijn. It's just a bit confusing. For now, I'm going to lean on the parallel dimension theory. That still doesn't explain everything, but it would make sense since there's also stuff like magic and steampunk dragons in Raveleijn, which obviously don't occur in the "current/real world" timeline unless you count the gateway to the realm itself.
Finally, I do think that the villain and his defeat defeat were weak ones. For most of the book, we're led to believe that the true villain really is Count Olaf Grafhart, the formerly benevolent ruler of Raveleijn. However, quite last minute, it's revealed that the Grafhart that's terrorizing the realm is actually an imposter (insert Among Us joke here) named Peregrinus who imprisoned the real Grafhart and took on his appearance. This was just kind of out of left field (there is some buildup, but it's very minimal) and it doesn't really give us any time to get to know the villain.
I'll give the TV series some credit: There, we weren't confined to one POV (Thomas'), so we got to see more action of other characters, including Peregrinus in disguise. It wasn't a lot and he still isn't a very interesting villain, but it gives us much more of a look at him. In the book, we don't encounter Peregrinus until the climax. We do get buildup about all the terrible things he's done from other characters, but there's no interaction whatsoever between our heroes and main villain until we get to the climax.
And his defeat is also very weak. They just let him go. I didn't need them to kill him, this is a book aimed at younger readers after all, so I understand if they couldn't do that. But at least capture him or something then? Now he's lost his powers and is free. If he finds a new source of magic, he may be able to return just because our heroes let him go.
My final criticism is incredibly brief but I'll mention it anyways: I could tell Bertram (I think that's his name, it started with a B) was in cahoots with Peregrinus from the start. He first shows up among the good guys of Raveleijn, the Banished, but from the moment the five siblings shows up there he's constantly portrayed in a negative light or like he's trying to prevent them from doing what they were prophesied to do. If you want to create some kind of illusion that he was really on the good guys' side, I recommend at least showing him sometimes in a neutral/positive light. I don't need him to be a goody-two-shoes before suddenly making an unprompted heel-face turn, that'd be jarring, but a bit more neutrality would be nice.
Still, this is a pretty decent Dutch fantasy book I do recommend if you're an Efteling fan! If reading is not for you, there's also the TV miniseries which pretty much tells the same story as the book. Or just visit the amusement park itself and watch the show there, though they changed the storyline quite a bit from this original incarnation these days.
Rating: 3.5/5
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