Fantasy in Fiction

In her Transition Year Extended Essay, Sofia McConnell wrote on Wicked by Gregory Maguire, Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and Michael Scott's The Magician. 

She comments:-

"Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland and Wicked are both well written, more so than The Magician which is a much more modern story and has a more modern style of writing. Wicked probably has the most complicated plot of all the stories, to be able to understand it you have to follow very closely, unlike Alice in Wonderland which was written for a much younger audience than Wicked. Unlike the story it was derived from (The Wonderful Wizard of Oz), Wicked is written more for adults than for children, parts of it tend to get quite crude and vivid, it contains a lot of adult language and content, there is violence and a few sexual situations. 

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was written for young children and older adults; it is very easy to follow if you are open-minded and don’t question all the incredibly curious things that happen in the book. The Magician is neither as complicated as Wicked nor as simple as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the book makes you concentrate more on the story rather than on the writing. It was written for teenagers and older children who wouldn’t really think about the writing anyhow. Alice in Wonderland and Wicked are timeless: both could be enjoyed now and also a hundred years ago, although possibly Wicked would have been strongly frowned upon. The Magician however is much more contemporary novel, it most likely would have been considered drivel that long ago, most likely wouldn’t even be published. 

All three are written in the third person and the present. Each writer went with the times, as can be expected: that is easy to see in these three books. Judging from these three books you would imagine writing is getting worse with time. The oldest book seems to be the best written."

Read Sofia's full essay here.