The Riddles of Epsilon
The Riddles of Epsilon is a young adult or teenage fantasy novel by the British author Christine Morton-Shaw. It was first published in the USA by the Katherine Teegan imprint of Harper Collins publishers (April, 2005). It later appeared in the UK (October, 2005) and Italy (February, 2006). Review. Jess is a 14-year-old teenager who gets expelled from her school due to her increasing ill-disciplined actions. It becomes one of the main reasons why her parents decide to move to Lume, a remote island, where her mother had inherited acres of land . Her mother is a painter, and her father, a photographer searching for his lucky break. She has no friends apart from her dog, Domino, to keep her company so in a very short span of time she becomes very bored and tired of the island and begins roaming around it, discovering new things. “WHERE _ _ SILON DWELLS” “WITH A MIRRORED DREAM A FOLLOWED SOUND THUS LET IT BEGIN” Later that night, as she is getting some snacks from the kitchen, she notices a constant hum that is slowly moving away. She looks out and sees her mum humming to the tune  of the poem and slowly walking away from the house. She begins trailing after her until they reach a tower. The tower is seemingly useless as it has no entrance doors or windows, just four gargoyles carved in each direction. As she nears the tower, she can hear other chants coming from within, saying evil things and suddenly her mother stops. Jess goes closer to her and realizes that she is sleepwalking – and suddenly upon hearing the horrific words of the chants, her mother yells loudly, and the chants cease. She gets scared and tries to rush her mother into  leaving that place but as they are retreating, they get caught up by two people – Dr. Parker and his friend, Ely, who say they were fishing when they heard her. They bring her mum back home and give her some tranquilizers. The children are singing poems and telling stories to each other, and Jess goes and sits in a group of where Mrs. Shilling is also present. Upon Jess’s arrival, Mrs. Shilling begins telling a story of a stupid girl who’s task it is to find treasure under a rock; yet she keeps looking under white and black  rocks when what she really needs is to look under a black and white rock. All the kids become confused as Mrs. Shilling is telling the story and in the meanwhile is also drawing something on the ground. No one gets the point of the story and Mrs. Shilling tells them off by saying they should go to bed, specifically directing it at Jess. It isn’t until everyone is gone that Jess looks at the pattern Mrs. Shilling has drawn – it’s the same one as the one Sebastian described his mama had drawn in his room, the same  pattern drawn in the cottage too. Suddenly, she remembers what Martha had said to Sebastian about the space behind the swan. She runs to her house. Mrs. Shilling had asked Jess and her mother to come meet her, a few days later. Neither of them understood why, yet they went to her small house. She came outside wearing her coat and holding a bag. She walked with them to the beach and plucked some flowers on the way. Once she made sure no one was in sight, she asked them to sit with her on the beach sand. She began  telling them of a story about herself and her twin sister – how their father had married but then left their mother alone. She told them that her father wrote her and her sister letters, but they never read them, because they hated him for what he’d done. But she secretly read them and was fascinated by the tales of the house their father lived in, and the story of how his mother had one day vanished and that he was still looking for her. Eventually, her sister found out and broke all ties with her, so she went ahead  and explored the world on her own. She couldn’t live the same complaining life her sister did. She explained that her sister was Jess’s grandmother, and that Sebastian was her father. It felt like a sad, yet happy reunion as they all hugged and then Mrs. Shilling pointed to the bag she’d brought. Plot. "The Riddles of Epsilon" focuses on the character of Jessica (‘Jess’), who moves with her mother and father to the fictional island of Lume, far from the mainland (Scotland), after being expelled from school. While speaking to her friend Avril in an internet  chatroom, Jess encounters the mysterious character of ‘V,’ Who was a ghost who begins to warn her of an impending danger, relating to Lume’s distant past. Later she dreams of a boy named Sebastian, who she realizes lived in this same house nearly one hundred years previously. As the story progresses, events in Jess’s life begin to parallel those of Sebastian’s, particularly the fact that both the children’s mothers seem to be acting incredibly strangely. Much of the exposition in the novel is handled by way of riddles and clues, which take the form of puzzles  and images, through which Jess discovers, with the help of ‘V,’ the truth about the strange events taking place on Lume. Jess, having recently moving house to the Island of Lume after being expelled from school, is talking with her friend Avril in an internet chatroom, when someone called V also appears in the chatroom, who kicks Avril out of the chatroom. He talks about her being on Lume, despite her not mentioning the name to Avril. Later, exploring the island, Jess discovers a small cottage in the forest near the "Big House", where she now lives. On the black  obsidian doorstep are carved symbols and the words "WHERE _ _ SILON DWELLS". She goes into the cottage, where she thinks she sees a tall shadowy dark man standing by a rocking chair, but when she blinks, he is only an old coat with the sleeve resting on the chair. She attempts to explore the house, but then sees the rocking chair moving by itself. Terrified, she rushes out into the garden, where she discovers an arrow carved on the garden wall, pointing into the ground. She digs down at the place specified and discovers an old bucket, with a symbol like  half a feather, on its side and the word "EPSILON" carved on its base. In the chat room that evening telling Avril about it, the mysterious V appears and tells her to put the bucket on her windowsill. Later investigating, Jess finds that she can find no trace of "V" in the chatroom history or on the print-outs of her conversations with Avril. As V told her, she puts the bucket in her window and finds that somehow 37 symbols are projected on the walls of her room, despite there being nothing on the bucket for them to reflect  off. She copies them down, and upon entering the chatroom, is told by V to use the symbols on the black doorstep at the cottage to translate them. She questions him as to how he knew the black doorstep was there, but he logs out of the chatroom. She uses the English words on the doorstep to translate the symbols from the bucket when her parents are out which turns out to be the verse, "With a mirrored dream A followed sound Thus let it begin." Before she can puzzle this out any further, her parents return from their walk , having found a "whole belemnite, whatever that is". Later that night she has a dream about a boy, sleeping in her attic bed, who wakes in the middle of the night and scribbles on a piece of paper before rushing outside, drinking from a water pump and then following the sound of a flute down towards the cottage. Jess wakes up herself, writes about her dream in her diary, before realising she too can still hear the flute music, which she follows down to the cottage. She walks in the door, and the flute music stops, the flute itself falling  to the ground, as if whoever had been playing it had literally just dropped it. She picks it up, and finds it dusty and ancient, with Epsilon's symbol carved on it. She tries to blow it, and blows out a piece of paper stuck inside it. The paper is a sketch of her, sitting in her attic bed, reaching out for her globe lamp, and also a diary page written by a boy called Sebastian Wren. The diary page is apparently what she saw Sebastian writing in her dream before he went down the cottage, and in it he  talks about just having a dream himself about a girl who follows a flute down to the cottage (Jess). He talks about her nose ring being a sign of the 'Borus, which Jess does not understand, and also that Epsilon has told him to write the diary. He signs it, using the words "as Agapetos is my witness", and the date, 1894. Jess is bewildered, but realises the words a "followed sound" mean the flute music, and the "mirrored dream" is what she and Sebastian have just experienced: "I drew him, just as he looked when he woke after dreaming  of me. He drew me, just as I looked when I woke from a dream about him." But she doesn't know what will now begin. The next day Jess falls ill, and her Mum, concerned, gives her the belemnite she found, which Jess does not appreciate - ")Oh wow. A baby stone carrot. Why can't she give me a CD like other mums?)" The doctor, Dr. Parker, also comes to check her over, and tells her that it is probably just running about in the heatwave, and that even in the early mornings when she goes out she must  be careful. She spills out all her woes to Dr. Parker, but feels protective when he picks up the bucket off her windowsill, and feels like something is flowing out of it. He invites her to his garden party, the Greet, next week, and leaves, but when Jess checks the bottom of the bucket again, the base is bare - Epsilon's name and symbol have gone. In the chatroom, Jess works out that V is actually Epsilon, as he gives her the riddle "V is a letter that is not a letter". The letter V actually corresponds to the Roman  numeral 5, E is the fifth letter of the alphabet, and in Greek the letter "E" is called "Epsilon". Epsilon tells her that her mother is in danger, and that she shouldn't trust Dr. Parker. He also tells her that someone evil is watching her, whom he calls the "Eye of Miradel". Jess becomes exasperated with him and leaves the chat room. She later goes down to the cottage, where she spots the tall, dark man again. She opens one of the drawers in the desk, to find 3 boxes, only the first of which she can open. In  it she finds another diary page from Sebastian. He has discussed the girl he saw in his dream (Jess) with Epsilon, and the whole village is getting ready for the Greet. His mother is behaving strangely, collecting hundreds of shells from the beach, which she has dumped in his father's hollyhocks, which has made him angry; Epsilon has warned Sebastian to look after her. He also writes down the "Ballad of Yolandë", which he has heard the carver of the may pole (or the Coscoroba), Jerry Cork, singing. Epsilon also warns him that this ballad is not all it  seems and gives him the clue "V then V then V then V", which Sebastian does not understand. He has also heard his mother singing this ballad in the middle of the night, which worries him. Jess reads the ballad and cannot understand what Epsilon means about it, as it seems perfectly innocuous. But then, in another chat Jess has had with Epsilon, when Epsilon said goodbye, E, "Or should I say V." At this she realized there were 5 V's, not four, and this is what she finds out from "The Ballad of Yolande" (every five words ): "I awake in the time of dark choices She was appalled at this, and went on the greatest, biggest adventure of her life, to save her mother, and herself, and destroy the evil beings. Themes. The novel deals with the ideas of good and evil found in most fantasy fiction, whilst also blurring the lines between the two and asking questions about whether evil is easy to identify. Family discord and the importance of family is another key theme, as is the importance of courage. The novel also has a preoccupation with the passage and nature of time. Critical reception . "The Riddles of Epsilon" received many positive reviews on its publication in 2005. The Voice of Youth Advocates (VOYA) rated the novel as a "perfect ten" for both literary quality and "teen appeal". VOYA said of "Epsilon", "this novel rises above cliché, shining through well-developed and intriguing characters, a tangible atmosphere and heart-stopping pacing." The novel was also longlisted in the UK for the Manchester Children's book awards. Those reviews criticising elements of the novel have tended to focus on its dark atmosphere, complicated plot development and the use of a diary device through which to tell  the story.