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Overview
Not even Kaspian himself knows precisely what happened to him during his unaccounted-for ninety-six hours — though he does remember a light, three evil leprechauns, his dead father, and a frighteningly seductive angel-like being. The adults who control the sullen, disaffected teenager's immediate destiny view his disappearance — and his silence about it — as acts of passive-aggressive rebellion to be nipped in the proverbial bud.
But Kaspian believes his memories and emotions are precious treasures belonging to him alone. Now he must staunchly defend them from his born-again stepmother, a megalomaniacal alternate education tsar, sexually ambiguous counselors, corrupt Washington politicos, and wacko ufo abduction theorists. Recent events suggest that the laws of what's possible on this living Earth are constantly changing. And Kaspian must find his own way into the heart of the Great Mystery.
Editorials
Publishers Weekly -
Grant's In the Land of Winter acute ear for adolescent angst and a plot a step or two left of reality lift this coming-of-age tale a few inches out of the pimply preoccupations and surging hormones that dominate the genre. Stuck in an Accelerated Skills Acquisition Camp by his ferociously fundamentalist stepmother, Kaspian saunters one night into an Otherworld beneath a hill, where three wicked leprechauns lead him to an angelic libido-rocking girl in white. Waking four days later about 60 miles from camp, Kaspian spends the rest of the novel trying to preserve the memory of his supernatural excursion and piece together his personality despite being shanghaied to sinister Mr. Winot's franchised American Youth Academy in Virginia, near Washington. Kaspian hides his mysterious experience from all the adults who try to strip it from him--predatory psychiatrist Thera Boot, militant UFO expert Weeb Eugley, a well-meaning gay Episcopal seminarian, even an artist who specializes in comic strips starring photosynthetic bacteria. Grant scores some zingers on practically all of the phony strategies adults singly and collectively use to mold imaginative rebellious teenagers into prosaic clones of themselves, but his attempt to integrate all the theories about encounters with the Unknown bog down into a foggy, soggy Father-Knows-Best routine. Zippy language just isn't enough to carry Kaspian and his readers satisfyingly home from old Virginny. June Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.Library Journal
Fifteen-year-old Kaspian Aaby disappears from summer camp for four days but has no memory of what happened, except that the experience featured a light, three evil leprechauns, his dead father, and an angel. Already considered rebellious and uncooperative by his crusading, born-again stepmother, Kaspian is a candidate for an alternative private school run by rigid Jasper C. Winot. Angry and frustrated by the early loss of his loving father, Kaspian tries to keep his memories and confused emotions from prying teachers and his new school's psychologist. It seems as if supernatural forces are guiding him, but this is no extraterrestrial adventure. There are equal amounts of humor and pathos, with events and characters often suggesting Holden Caulfield in a Kurt Vonnegut yarn. Gleefully eccentric minor characters add to the fun. Grant, winner of the Phillip K. Dick award for Through the Heart, has presented a coming-of-age story like no other. For fantasy fans.--Margaret A. Smith, Grace A. Dow Memorial Lib., Midland, MI Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.Faren Miller
Kaspian is not a conventional fantasy fan....[B]y book's end, the whole melange has developed into something genuinely eloquent, satisfying, and touched with enough magic for this reader.— Locus