Marsha's Reviews > Wednesdays in the Tower

Celie is back again and this time the Castle has a BIG surprise in store.

The story of how Celie nurtures and raises a baby griffin is highly amusing. She has to keep it a secret but, unlike many children stories of this nature, she doesn’t want to keep it hidden. Right from the start, the baby griffin is a handful. It chews up clothing, claws the furniture, reduces her sister’s shoes to tatters and steals bright and shiny things. It makes loud noises and has learned to undo latches, so she has to search frantically for it when it gets out of its hiding place. Rearing a baby is exhausting, especially one that requires raw meat and dry corn.

Celie isn’t foolishly stubborn, by any means. She knows she’s in way over her head. Celie dearly would like to let her parents know so that some of this burden is off her hands. But the Castle won’t let her. So she staggers onwards, going on little more than adrenaline and too little sleep.

However, the appearance of the baby Rufus is part of a larger mystery and the author takes us through the twists and turns of this enigma as we and Celia explore the ever-changing Castle. She makes an atlas of its contours, which seems like an exercise in futility. The Castle is constantly creating new corridors and new rooms; what’s the point of making a map of its interior when that could change at any moment?

At times, I wondered why Celie and her family never seemed to leave the Castle but stayed cooped up in it like the isolated weirdoes in Gormenghast. Maybe the Castle doesn’t let them leave.

Such a sinister connotation seems to be borne out when the inhabitants begin to wonder about the Castle itself. They realize they know nothing of how it was built or the personal lives of the royals who lived there. Tapestries, stories and poems about griffins start cropping up but there aren’t any griffins about the Castle environs. The mystery is compounded when the grim figure of Wizard Arkwright appears. There’s something not quite right about him and he clearly knows more than he’s telling.

The ending doesn’t truly solve the puzzle but it does lead the way for another exciting sequel. Celie may be young but she’s being forced to grow up fast…just like griffin Rufus.