Note: This book isn't available in English (yet).
The book based on the new Efteling ride. I'm super excited to get to this one! Spoilers ahead.
Isabella and her adopted brother Florian grow up learning one thing: Never go to the cursed abbey. Of course, they eventually disobey this rule, which leads to a journey of Isabella discovering her heritage as a Charlatan, and Florian going down a darker path.
Okay so, is this perfect? No, absolutely not, and it probably did not live up to the hype I had for it. But did I enjoy it? Yes, and also I think it does have some genuine good in it.
I'll tackle the negative stuff first. The most obvious being Florian. He is our twist villain for the story, and while I don't inherently mind this concept, I do mind that the twist was obvious from the first chapter. As soon as the fact that Florian has one blue and one yellow eye was brought up, I instantly knew he was the Unnnamable (or at least in some way tied to it). But the book really just executes this concept straightforward, leading to it feeling very obvious and predictable from the start, especially once Florian starts to act "off" as the plot moves forward.
Another thing I didn't vibe with a lot was the character relationships. Isabella and Florian grew up as siblings (even if they later turn out to be adopted and unrelated), but they don't really feel that close throughout the story, even in the early chapters where they are supposed to be feel close-knit. I always felt this vague distance between them. The same can be said for their foster father Damian, or Isabella's relationship with Lukas (her eventual love interest). None of these character relationships just feel particularly well-executed or deep or tangible. They're just kinda there.
Finally, I'm also not too fond about how this book pretty much entirely forgets about Virginie and Otto. They are quite literally an afterthought, which just feels kinda weird because they are the central focus of the Efteling ride, the main characters if you will. I get that this is a prequel so there is more focus on Isabella here, but you'd think that Otto and Viriginie would at least play a slightly bigger role than this. Right now they only appear in the epilogue.
Now, for the stuff I do like. I liked the plot, or rather the events (there's not a whole lot of plot or an overarching goal to this book, it's mostly our characters going through a series of events) and the various scenarios our characters ended up in. They were all fun and creative and I'm sure that for some younger readers they could also be slightly scary and thrilling (young me probably would've thought this was scary).
I've seen people criticize this book for being vague, but honestly that's kind of what I appreciate about it? It leaves things up for interpretation and gives it an air of mystery. This is a story with a lot of horror (albeit children's horror) and mystery elements, and I think not a lot of it being set in stone adds to the mystery and intrigue. I'd much rather have this than Van Loon over-explaining the hell out of this story. Sure, you won't have an answer to every question by the end of the story, but you will have gained a fun and mysterious experience reading it.
I also do like the rift forming between Fabian and Isabella. Sure, they never truly felt like siblings from how they were written early on, but it was still sad to see this rift form between them, a rift that only gets bigger and bigger as Fabian becomes more corrupted and time goes on. So yes, the relationships weren't handled the best, but Fabian and Isabella growing apart still felt pretty realistic. There was one part where I was really angry with Isabella though (where she disowns Fabian just because he's adopted) but I also appreciate that we have flawed characters, including our main Isabella.
So, okay, it's far from a perfect book but I did genuinely enjoy reading it and I do think it adds to the overall experience of the ride. And for people who really don't like the book (I know there's a few), it's not the only Danse Macabre piece of media out there. We also have the ride itself but also the making-off videos plus the short film Het lot van de Charlatans. So if you really don't like the book, just watch those or just do the ride another time. There's plenty of Danse Macabre content out there and I am living for it.
Rating: 3.5/5
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