Look, a Book!

Satyrday

a fable by Steven Bauer
***

Every summer the local library has a used book sale which is a killer deal for any book fanatic. For a mere ten dollars you buy a box and cram as many books in it as possible. It's been a year since I've last been and I'm still trying to get through the box. In fact, I have too many books as is and tend to just reach for whatever one strikes my fancy at the particular point in time. The latest book was Satyrday, by Steven Bauer. I remember picking this book up at the library book sale because it was A) sitting amidst the science-fiction/fantasy table and B) had an interesting cover . . . yes, yes, I judge books by their cover. Who doesn't? I must admit that a part of me was leery about this book, simply because I never even heard of this author, but since it was going to cost nothing more than a little space within a ten dollar box, I thought: why not? And it took only one year for me to get around to reading it.

***

My initial suspicion about the author proved correct. What little research I've done on the author proves that he's (more or less) a one-time-novelist. I remember seeing somewhere that he was working on another novel, but seeing how Satyrday was published in 1980, I'm not going to anxiously anticipate another novel anytime soon. Not only has been thirty years since he's written a novel, in sincere honesty, he's not a very good author.

***

That's not too say that I didn't enjoy this book . . . which, well I didn't really, but neither did I hate it. In truth, I've read far better and I've read far worse. Overall, I generally liked the writing style, though it did become tedious at times. Apparently, the author is a poet (or at least was), and Satyrday is rich in poetic phrasing. Slant rhymes, alliteration and of course lush imagery are on every page of this book. But as I said, this heavy poetical influence did become rather blase, oftentimes having a rather dull affect during climatic scenes.

***

As for the climax, and with regard to any scene within the book, Satyrday felt a bit stilted, yet hackneyed. The characters were not terribly fascinating and seemed far too dramatic than was needed . . . of course, by dramatic I don't mean individual-character mannerisms or actions, but their overall presence within the story. For example, the evil owl which wished to cloak the world in eternal darkness and proclaim himself as ruler . . . a rather weak antagonist. Weak because there was little description of his wickedness. He kidnapped the moon, he wanted to kill the sun and he did banish a few creatures here and there, but overall he wasn't as villainous as he should have been. Most of his wicked attributes were thoughts and plans for action. Also, it was hard to view the owl as a convincing antagonist when it was difficult recognizing the main protagonist. In fact, every other character within the book seemed to be the protagonist, all of whom finally brought the evil owl's reign of terror to an end. Ergo, was it really an evil owl or an isolated character with opposing ideals?

***

Without getting too deep into a plot synopsis, the idea behind the story was appealing. An evil owl kidnaps the moon and a boy and a satyr and all manner of critters set forth on adventure to rescue the moon. And on the way there's a lot of poetic vices, but not enough literary compliments to keep one's attention. It wasn't a difficult read by any means, in fact it's a rather short novel, but from the very first few pages I knew it was going to be a novel which I would trudge through simply to finish it.