The Girl Who Drank the Moon

by Kelly Barnhill

[nannah]

Okay, I know this book has a lot of awards and rave reviews, but it felt like two separate stories with separate moods and writing styles. I’m not sure that they really came together the way the author intended them to at the end. So I think the book had great promise? Just that maybe the ideas were clumsily executed (I’m sorry!).

Content warnings:
Ableism!
and maybe mild lying/manipulation to/of a child

Once Upon a Time (basically, how the novel is written) there was a Bog. A great big bog and a bog monster and a poet. They’re all the same, and his name was Glerk. And Glerk loved a witch named Xan--and they all live together with a Perfectly Tiny Dragon named Fyrian. He provides some rather cringy comic relief, to be honest, twirling like a ballerina and acting like a child--or rather, like how an adult who doesn’t know how to write children writes a child:

“‘Why are we up here?’ Fyrian wanted to know. / ‘Hush,’ Luna said. / ‘Why must we hush?’ Fyrian asked. / Luna sighed deeply. ‘I need you to be very, very quiet, Fyrian. So I may concentrate on my drawing.’ / ‘I can be quiet,’ Fyrian chirped, still hovering in front of her face. ‘I can be so quiet. I can be quieter than worms, and worms are very quiet, unless they are convincing you not to eat them, and then they are less quiet, and very convincing, though I usually still eat them because they are delicious.’” … etc.

Anyway, near this bog is a town called the Protectorate, a sad place where its citizens live in fear of the Witch in the woods. Every year they offer the youngest of their babies to it so the Witch won’t terrorize the town. What they don’t know is that there is technically no witch out there devouring or stealing their babies, and that Xan is the one picking them up so the kid doesn’t die. She takes them to a nearby village so they can survive.

Now Luna, the protagonist, is one of these babies, one of these Star Children (because Xan feeds them starlight so they can survive the trip). But by mistake, Xan feeds her moonlight, which Enmagicks her. Because of this, Luna becomes unpredictable and dangerous with magic. To protect her, Xan and Glerk (the bog monster), hide her magic till she’s twelve years old, even if it hurts Luna, and will drain all life and magic from Xan when Luna becomes twelve.

Meanwhile (whew), Antain, a man from the Protectorate, decides to take fate into his own hands and kill the witch so he won’t have to offer up his firstborn child. And that’s where things get messy and Luna’s storyline intertwines with that of the Protectorate’s.

Quite honestly, this book was an easy and fun read, but the two storylines were VERY different in mood and pace. Luna’s was overall pretty silly and fun, with bits and pieces very serious when the PoV swung over to Xan and even Glerk on occasion. But Antain’s was overwhelmingly serious and even grim. And when years passed and he became a married adult, Luna only aged a year; it was jarring.

There were also the villains to consider here: the Grand Elder Gherland (of the Protectorate), who was nearly cartoony, and where the novel was a bit heavy-handed with its morals. I know this is middle grade, but it kind of felt like speaking down to the age group … maybe I’m wrong, but it’s the impression I got.

The other villain is maybe a spoiler, but they're involved in the climax, which was extremely anticlimactic. It was basically saying to the villain but don’t you remember loving someone, too? And having the villain break down crying -- and that was the end of that. I’m all for non-incredibly-violent climaxes too, but this was just way too easy.

ALSO: I'm soooo done with characters called/labeled/whatever the "madwoman". Descriptions were "she was, in fact, quite mad" etc. Can we just ... be done with that sort of thing, collectively, as a society, etc? Using this trope to further the plot is just ableist and hurtful to everyone (ESPECIALLY CHILDREN WITH MENTAL ILLNESSES). Just ... full stop.

I’m getting really negative here, but I didn’t … not enjoy it? It just wasn’t overwhelmingly good. Just kind of … eh, an okay read in an interesting world. The mythology of the world and its Bog was probably my favorite part.