FICTION: The Letter for the King by Tonke Dragt

The book was originally written in Dutch, & the original title is De brief voor de koning. I read the translation by Laura Watkinson.

Image from Goodreads

At a glance: children's fiction, adventure, not-English


From Goodreads:

The rule-book says that a young man who is to be knighted by King Dagonaut must pass the eve of the grand ceremony in silent vigil. However, Young Tiuri, son of the famous Tiuri the Valiant, breaks the rules - he opens the door to a stranger, who begs him to deliver a secret letter to the Black Knight with the White Shield. The letter is destined for the ruler of the neighbouring realm, King Unauwen, and concerns a matter of paramount importance. 

Tiuri accepts this dangerous mission, but when he arrives at the appointed place deep in the forest, he finds the Knight dying, murdered by the vicious Red Riders. As he races to deliver the letter to King Unauwen in the Knight's stead, Tiuri is pursued by the Red Riders, who threaten his life - but he is determined to fulfil his promise: the Black Knight must not have died in vain.

I took the liberty of splitting up the paragraph & adding a full stop.



Luna comments

I'm looking for foreign-language stories at the moment, and apparently this is one of the most well-known Dutch children's books. That sounds like a good starting point.

I quite enjoyed this story! It may be because it's been so long since I last read something like this - a pure questing type story with nothing on the side. This story is purely about Tiuri getting from point A to point B without getting killed.

Now, I'm not saying that it's easy to write this story, but the overall simplicity of the plot made it a light & enjoyable read. At 400+ pages, it's incredibly long for its genre and age category (but that's by the standards I've known, which may well be different for the time period and nationality of this story), but I didn't mind at all. Wow, I miss being a child, in this aspect at least.

I really liked the setting of this story. It's set in medieval-like times, with lords and ladies and castles and knights. I enjoyed the descriptions of the places that Tiuri came to - the towns and cities, the forest, the mountains.

This being purely an adventure story, the characters don't have a great deal of opportunity to show various facets of themselves. But I liked them nevertheless. I liked Tiuri's determination, Piak's optimism and quickness, I liked the various people who decided to help them even though they didn't exactly know why Tiuri & Piak were in trouble. I liked how other characters, except those from the 'bad guys' side', helped Tiuri in some way, instead of being opportunistic. So despite the greater threat looming over them, it was a pleasant world and that made me very happy. =]

I'm also going to add that the author illustrates the pictures in this book as well =] So you get an illustration for each part - eight in total. Just a nice touch.

Closing

It's a nice adventure story suitable for children =] and over-sized, over-aged 'children' like me =] and maybe you too - who knows?