James P. Blaylock’s twee trilogy comes to close, oddly enough with a beginning of sorts. The Stone Giant does not pick up with the further adventures of Jonathan Bing. Instead it leaps back in time to the commencement of the career of the roguish Theophile Escargot. At first this might strike the reader as an odd choice. I, for one, was initially disappointed. Escargot was not a favorite character and I wanted to catch up with what the cheesemaker Bing might have gotten himself into next.
Yet it didn’t take long for Blaylock to draw me into the Escargot’s story. It begins as a bit of a picaresque, and I’m a sucker for that sort of tale. And as Blaylock pushes the hapless Escargot into worse and worse trouble, he starts ladling out references to people and items we readers have encountered before (and Escargot will bump into again in his future.) So it seems Blaylock decided he wanted to explain some mysteries via prequel rather than sequel. He does so with humor, verve, and a nod to Verne’s Captain Nemo. The story culminates with a grand, climactic battle. It is delivered in a somewhat muddled fashion, yet Blaylock carries it through on sheer eventfulness and momentum. He leaves us without closure, but it works well since we readers know that this is merely the start of many more strange adventures to come for Theophile Escargot.
The Stone Giant is, perhaps, the lesser of the three books. Still
Warning: This book may induce a desire for pie.
If, instead of pie, you are interested in something to read, let me again recommend the recently released four-book set of Semi-Autos and Sorcery. It’s priced right in both digital and audio formats. Give it a try and let me know what you think.