REVIEWS AND RECOMMENDATIONS: THE TOYMAKER’S APPRENTICE

Abstract: An interesting take on The Nutcracker drawing from both the original story and the ballet while expanding into its own story.  The characters dynamics are enjoyable, and Stefan’s coming of age hits well from multiple angles, and there the author does a pretty good job with a variety of themes.  On the other hand, the world doesn’t quite fit together and has a couple philosophical and theological problems.  The author also allows too much sympathy with the villains for their motives, and the push for sympathy causes some issues towards the story’s end.

Content warning (highlight to view): some violent imagery, questionable philosophy/theology, frightening descriptions, magic

———

Well, it’s Advent now, so what better time than now to look at Sherri L. Smith’s retelling of E. T. A. Hoffman’s The Nutcracker and the Mouse King?

The Toymaker’s Apprentice tells the story of Stefan Drosselmeyer, an apprentice to his toymaker father, who has just lost his mother to illness.  Before he and his father can properly grieve, however, they are visited by his strange cousin, Christian Drosselmeyer, a clockmaker and troublemaker extraordinaire.  Christian brings with him stories of a distant land, in which lives a princess cursed by a Mouse Queen as revenge for Christian’s hubris, and his dangerous search for the magic nut that can cure the princess.  Stefan, wishing to learn clockwork from his cousin, agrees to become Christian’s student and to help search for the mythical nut.  Meanwhile, the Mouse Queen continues to spin her own plots, at the center of which are her sons: the seven-head Mouse Prince.

I finished this book pretty quickly.  The plot moves along well, with tension rising naturally as events progress.  There is some confusion in terms of timeline towards the story’s beginning, as certain characters seem to cover a great geographic distance in a very short amount of time, but for the most part events are easy to follow.  I also had fun towards the end imagining certain events with Tchaikovsky’s score playing in the background.

The main characters are engaging and fun.  Christian can be frustrating, but for the most part he’s fine, and I enjoyed seeing his relationship with Stefan form.  Stefan is a n overall good kid dealing with growing up from many sides: from his mother’s death, from his (cute) budding romance, from disagreements with his father on the craft of toy-making, from growing in his own craftsmanship, and from being introduced to the responsibilities of adulthood.  Pride, grief, perseverance, and the importance of familial love are all important themes for these characters, and Smith handles them pretty well.

My major issue would be with the world-building.  Some of her exposition doesn’t quite fit together, so while I really enjoyed how she used certain elements of her world’s structure later into the story, it never quite felt like a cohesive universe.  Furthermore, she takes the idea of the universe being a clock to a very literal level, and when you talk about the world in terms of clockwork, you end up along the line of Deism, the idea that God “wound up” the universe and has since left it to work on its own without His further action.  While I can’t say Smith definitely crosses that line, she at least gets close.  She also presents a view of the human soul that is theologically inaccurate, one which she uses later for a certain plot twist that I did not like at all.  I won’t spoil the twist entirely, but I will say that it falls under an “ends justify the means” idea and definitely crosses the moral boundaries of what humans can or even should have control over.

Another minor issue is that Smith alternates between describing the human side of the conflict and the mouse kingdom side, fleshing out the Mouse Queen, her seven-headed brood, and their rat tutor.  This is not inherently a negative, as we get to see how conflicts can be multi-sided and complex.  However, Smith allows too much sympathy for evil, trying to conclude that everything could have been solved with better diplomacy despite clear malice, even unjust and unreasonable malice, on the mice’s side at certain points that is beyond mere disagreement or misunderstanding.  That’s not to say the humans are entirely right in every place, but the way she set up her final conflict does not quite allow for the bitterness produced in her ending by her appeal to sympathy.  I keep this as a “minor” issue because Smith doesn’t say that the evil actions of the mice, or of the humans, are right, but I was bothered by where precisely she wanted my sympathy by the end of the story.

Still, I enjoyed the story.  It has definite theological and philosophical problems, and I don’t like the bitter taste I had at the very end, nor do I think Smith successfully counters that bitterness to make the ending satisfactory.  However, it was still an enjoyable read, and I liked how Smith introduced and handled some of her themes.  As far as Nutcracker retellings go, it’s not the best, but it’s a pretty fun time.