The sooner you stop expecting a linear, cohesive plot from Castle Waiting, the better you'll be able to appreciate what it does have: quirky characters with colorful pasts, an abundance of sly visual and verbal humor, allusions to everything from Green Eggs & Ham to Rip Van Winkle, lively artwork and even, given its fairytale trappings, a pleasingly down-to-earth sensibility. Within its stylish deckle-edge pages, there are pixies, princesses, stork-headed men, talking pigs (three of them who run the Wolf's Head Inn!), a whole order of bearded ladies and the devil himself. With all this, who needs a plot?

I found this out the hard way, skimming the final bearded lady-dominated quarter because I was so impatient to find out what was going to happen that I missed what was actually happening and had to go back and reread. Castle Waiting, however, is a book that rewards rereading, because -- as it demonstrates amply -- it's the little things that matter. If ever there was a book in which the journey, not the destination, was important, this is it.

While Castle Waiting is mostly composed of the stories of its various inhabitants, it begins with the story of the castle itself, abandoned when its vapid sleeping beauty awakes with a kiss -- and leaves with her prince charming. "She only wrote us once!" gripes one of the few remaining original denizens many years later. Since then, Castle Waiting has served as a sanctuary for wanderers and refugees while -- ostensibly, anyway -- waiting to have a king again. Into this scenario, enter Jain, a noblewoman pregnant with her lover's child and fleeing an abusive husband. At Castle Waiting she meets a broad range of curious characters, ranging from Rackham, a consummate gentleman who happens to have a stork's head, to the upbeat, no-nonsense, chatty Sister Peace and the blacksmith Henry who wears iron bands around his heart to prevent it from breaking.

But even to say that much is to give the wrong impression about Castle Waiting. It isn't really so much about Jain, or Sister Peace, or any of the many characters wandering in and out of its 400-odd pages. It's about life, as saccharine as that sounds: everyday life with its small joys, trials and friendships. Magic by itself solves no problems: Castle Waiting may have a hen that lays golden eggs, but it is also overrun by magical vermin who substitute rocks for gold and routinely play other pranks. No one theme unites all the stories within the book except, perhaps, the value of friendship and kindness, particularly (though hardly exclusively) between women, in making one's way through the world. But all that sounds cheesy and chicken-soupy, and Castle Waiting is too sharply intelligent and self-aware to be either.

Never pedantic nor overtly feminist, its feel-good quality balanced by Medley's wicked wit that works particularly closely with her illustrations, Castle Waiting is certainly an unusual -- er -- medley of modern fairytale, picaresque and graphic novel. Medley's black-and-white artwork isn't quite as delicately Arthur Rackhamesque as that of Charles Vess, but it is pleasingly expressive and becomes bolder and more stylized as the book goes on. Somewhat unusually for a graphic novel, Castle Waiting is suitable for a preteen audience, but is more likely to be appreciated by older readers for its subtle allusions and sly humor.

Even allowing for its emulation of the plotlessness typical of real life, Castle Waiting would have benefited from a bit more resolution to its many potential plot threads, a bit more time spent at the castle instead of with bearded ladies, no matter how congenial. In the end, it's a little frustrating that there's so much left unexplored in Medley's world. Regardless, it remains a marvelously quirky place to spend an afternoon. What are you waiting for?

by Jennifer Mo
Rambles.NET
7 October 2006