The Shining World

Tami Oliphant is a Ph.D. candidate in Library and Information Studies at the University of Western Ontario.

The Shining World is the second in The Notherland Journeys trilogy, a
fantasy adventure series. Peggy, a strong-willed teenager, moves north
to earn money tree planting in order to gain her independence. While
visiting a petroglyph site, she tumbles into a lake and finds herself
transported back to Notherland—an imaginary world created when she was
seven years old. Peggy is reunited with her childhood companions: Gavi,
the philosopher loon; Molly, the pirate doll; Mi, the child spirit; and
Jackpine, Peggy’s love interest. Peggy quickly learns that Mi has gone
missing from Notherland in pursuit of the mythical “Shining World.”

While trying to find Mi, Peggy and company pass through a number of
different worlds and meet Lord and Lady Franklin (the great Arctic
explorer and his wife), the Pirate Queen Grania, the poet William Blake,
and Queen Elizabeth I. During each of these journeys, the characters
learn something about themselves: Molly learns she doesn’t want to be
a pirate after staying with Grania, and Jackpine discovers his desire to
be an artist after meeting William Blake. In the meantime, Mi has been
abducted by a pedophile on present-day Earth. Peggy eventually rescues
Mi from a dimension called the FarNear and faces down the Evil Angel, or
the pedophile. Mi returns to Notherland and slowly begins to heal, Molly
guards Notherland, Peggy and Jackpine return to present-day Earth, and
Gavi returns to Earth in search of his mate.

The audience for this book is unclear. Teenagers would laugh at the
idea of an “independent and strong-willed” teen going back to a
world inhabited by childhood dolls. Additionally, the theme of innocence
lost through pedophilia and abduction would mystify a younger audience
and repulse a teen audience. Not a first-choice purchase.