Yeah, that's my feeling about the Merlin revelation too - it comes off as something that could certainly be used as a springboard for a sequel, but works equally well as a grace note to make you think back over the story you've just read and go, "Oooooh!" Nice trick for making the book memorable, too.
What sort of stuff did you read/like from that girl's collection? I'd imagine E. Nesbit featured heavily... and yeah, I think Children's Radio 4 was gutted some years ago; I remember stuff in the press about how disappointed people were. It sounded like one of those situations where everyone sort of threw up their hands and said, "But they all watch television now!" rather than aggressively cultivating radio drama's reputation as a thing in itself among the young audience. Then a few years later there was Christmas Day when they played Stephen Fry's reading of the first Harry Potter book all day, and it got a phenomenal response, which does suggest kids like audio drama just fine if it can find the right space in their lives...
Sounds like Night Watch is a good comparison... it's like if you got conscripted to the Rebels or the Stormtroopers - like Finn's experience, really, but without the hope of ever escaping. :/ I get the feeling that Cooper was reluctant to tackle the moral weirdness she'd created overtly because it only leads to questions about why there's this Light vs. Dark thing in the first place, how it came about, etc. And especially - how weird is it that in all of human existence, this pretty narrow chunk of time (Dark Ages - 1960s/70s) is the one in which the great war between Light and Dark has its two key battles? That and the Britain-centrism I can forgive because obviously her point was to play with various strands of British mythology in those particular settings that meant something to her personally, and she at least acknowledges that there's stuff going on worldwide. But it only works as long as you don't keep wondering about the cosmic roots of it all...
I definitely think Greenwitch was an attempt to redress the balance - off to post about that now!
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What sort of stuff did you read/like from that girl's collection? I'd imagine E. Nesbit featured heavily... and yeah, I think Children's Radio 4 was gutted some years ago; I remember stuff in the press about how disappointed people were. It sounded like one of those situations where everyone sort of threw up their hands and said, "But they all watch television now!" rather than aggressively cultivating radio drama's reputation as a thing in itself among the young audience. Then a few years later there was Christmas Day when they played Stephen Fry's reading of the first Harry Potter book all day, and it got a phenomenal response, which does suggest kids like audio drama just fine if it can find the right space in their lives...
Sounds like Night Watch is a good comparison... it's like if you got conscripted to the Rebels or the Stormtroopers - like Finn's experience, really, but without the hope of ever escaping. :/ I get the feeling that Cooper was reluctant to tackle the moral weirdness she'd created overtly because it only leads to questions about why there's this Light vs. Dark thing in the first place, how it came about, etc. And especially - how weird is it that in all of human existence, this pretty narrow chunk of time (Dark Ages - 1960s/70s) is the one in which the great war between Light and Dark has its two key battles? That and the Britain-centrism I can forgive because obviously her point was to play with various strands of British mythology in those particular settings that meant something to her personally, and she at least acknowledges that there's stuff going on worldwide. But it only works as long as you don't keep wondering about the cosmic roots of it all...
I definitely think Greenwitch was an attempt to redress the balance - off to post about that now!