Weekly Reader: Fancy Fanciful Fantasticality Book 3: Enchantment Now Enshrouds by Francessca Bella; The Fantastical's Third and Best Adventure Takes Her Into a Scientifically Engineered Fantasy
By Julie Sara Porter
Bookworm Reviews
Spoilers: A few decades ago, there was a trend that combined Science Fiction and Epic Fantasy. They did this by showing us an agrarian fantasy world of elves, wizards, dwarves,dragons, and feudalism. The Reader at first thinks it's a fantasy world that they are reading about but then the author drops several hints that it is actually a Science Fiction novel set either on a Post-Apocalyptic Earth or on another planet colonized by former Earthlings. The Dragonriders of Pern by Anne McCaffrey and The Chronicles of Shannara by Terry Brooks are some such examples.
In her third book in the Fancy Fanciful Fantasticality series, author Francessca Bella shows the point where the transition between Science Fiction into Fantasy begins. How once extinct magical creatures like fairies are genetically engineered and how some Earthlings begin to reject the technological future lifestyle that brought so much chaos to their world. Instead they revert back to a magical pre-Industrial following. This is all observed by Calista Soleil, the Fancy Fanciful Fantasticality and Overseer of Port Sunshinescence in what is the best so far in Bella's series.
While doing her usual duties, Calista hears rumors that creatures like fairies, demons, elves, and magic users have reappeared on Earth. Conceding that it would be interesting to see such creatures, she doesn't hold the rumors in much stock. However, she comes face to face with the truth of those rumors when Marius, a refugee, hides in her private quarters after telling her about some strange happenings in a forest down on Earth in which people enter but never return and are never found. So Calista and Marius go down to Earth to investigate the trouble. Along the way, they meet several characters who would be more at home in a Fantasy novel like Triella, a young woman who sports a pair of fairy wings, and Caimana, a woman who claims that she's a sorceress.
Here is the first book where Calista's more positive character traits outweigh the negative ones. In fact, much of her earlier uncompromising, arrogant, cold, sometimes polarizing behavior can be found in many of the characters that she encounters. Marius for example displays some arrogance as their adventures continue. He makes unwise choices that puts himself and the others in danger. Triella and Caimana have some Science Vs. Spirituality debates, similar to the ones that Calista herself had with Lavender in Overture for the Overawed.
Serenity, a young Earth girl put in Calista's care during this adventure, carries some of Calista's curious, adventurous, and overly emotional behavior.
In fact, Calista often has to be more diplomatic in her leadership skills. Here she shows it by listening to her team's concerns and keeping them in line while also disseminating the latest problems from Earth locals. She has definitely matured as a leader and we have seen a shift where she is less of the protagonist who is always considered right, but the leader of an ensemble of brilliant multifaceted characters. In fact, Triella and Caimana were the best characters in this volume. It's great to see other characters shine (pun not intended) just as brightly as the Overseer of Port Sunshinescence.
What is absolutely the best part about this book is how Science Fiction takes that right turn straight into Fantasy. Magic, religion, and mythology have always been in the background of the Fancy Fanciful Fantasticality series. There are cults that worship the sun and moon. In one book, Calista has a vision of a phoenix. She is even revered and treated like a Sun Goddess. However, many of these elements were subtle and could be handwaved by scientific methods.
Enchantment Now Enshrouds is where the line between Science and Magic is blurred implying that within a few generations, that line could disappear.
Triella is not an actual fairy. She was human but she had been genetically engineered with wings and can harness energy. That is confirmed in the text.
However, we also have Caimana, a sorceress who says that she has studied magic through books. Whether she is reading science books and channeling energy is never revealed. The point is that in the future there are still people who believe in the old, supernatural ways, and prefer to call it magic. We have two different looks at how legends and myths are created: either by man made events misinterpreted by future generations or by old ways that people were once in tune with but have forgotten about.
The society in Enchantment Now Enshrouds is in a transitional period where science is creating a decline in progress and in a few generations, that decline will disappear. Science and technology will be rebranded as magic. Creatures once thought to be nonexistent will be created not by supernatural means but by geneticists with too much curiosity, pride, and time on their hands. Then in a few generations, they will become those creatures forgetting that they were once ever regular unengineered humans.
Also the fact that most of the setting is the woods is also important. The woods was always the dark forbidden place where the protagonists were forbidden to go in legends and fairy tales. The witch could be in her cottage listening for lost children. Dwarves and other magical guides could hinder or help travelers on their Hero's Journeys.
The wolf could lie in wait for an unwary traveler. A circle of mushrooms could have been a ring of fairies dancing and luring a human to their realm. Don't get me started on all of the horror movie characters that hide in the woods before they strike.
Anyway, the woods is a deliberate choice setting for the majority of Enchantment Now Enshrouds. Calista lives in a futuristic colony which gets its power by the sun. She is a woman of the future.
In the forests on Earth, she is confronted with the past of myth and legend. It is unknown and as frightening to her as the untamed woods were to the villagers who first told oral stories warning the children to stay out of them.
Just like in those stories, Calista and her team find an untapped power source in the woods that tests many characters' honor, virtue, and resistance against temptation. Some succeed while others fail. But it also shows that the myths, legends, fairy tales served another purpose.
They weren't just created to build imaginary worlds or to frighten the listeners and Readers on a cold winter night. They were meant to call attention to traits that society considered admirable like valor, wisdom, empathy, dedication, and so on. Those that used them to achieve those goals are the ones worthy to be called heroes. Those that don't, well often have to wait for a postmodern revision novel for their story perspective to be told.
Enchantment Now Enshrouds combines beautifully the worlds of science fiction and fantasy. It shows that transition in a way that is hard to figure out and easy to visualize what could happen next.
