The Phantom Library

This is what I would call a questionable book. I had questions, and also I question the wisdom of reading it.

The back cover copy of this book claims that Leroux is its main source material; the full-face mask on the front, which resembles the one worn briefly in the 1925 Julian/Chaney film, seems to bear this out. It's a nice idea, and I'm glad Leroux is mentioned, but the text itself is going to make it pretty clear that a liberal amount of the material is actually based on Lloyd Webber's 1986 musical.  

Chapter 1

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This is a sequel, so it's unsurprising that Erik is revealed to have faked his death and placed a false ad in the paper in order to fool his acquaintances. It's very easy to recap too much when going over setup events from a previous story, but Pettengill handles it nicely, giving us a look into the Phantom's thought processes that explains without overdoing it. His psychology seems fairly similar to the original's and his motivations for the original novel's events are laid out as she sees them with minimal repetition. 

An ongoing issue of the novel is introduced here when we discover that Erik has a heart condition (though, despite his ostensibly highly-educated genius, he doesn't seem to recognize it). I was curious as to whether this might indicate a little influence from Kay's novel, which featured a similar ailment, but later glimpses into Pettengill's version of Erik's backstory seem to disprove that theory. 

In spite of the business with the newspaper and the corpse, the Phantom is pretty obviously based on Lloyd Webber's musical version. Pettengill works hard to make sure that the reader knows that the only unattractive part of Erik's body is his face, whereas his body is strong, firm, and various other positive adjectives. This is combined with a lot (and I do mean a lot) of inner monologue in which Erik discusses what a massive boner he always has for Christine, and the obvious setup of Sexy Virile Phantom is not so much a clue about where this book is going as a shotgun blast to the face.  

Chapter 2

Despite this novel's role as a sequel, Pettengill inserts an original scene into Leroux's (or Lloyd Webber's, or most likely a melange of both) story itself, moving Raoul's first glimpse of Erik from the graveyard at Perros-Guirec to an earlier encounter at Christine's father's cottage (apparently located in Paris). The scene has equal parts interesting choices and questionable ones; Christine's flustered and nervous demeanor is very understandable, since Erik's presence in her father's cottage is a blatant confirmation of the fact that the Phantom is separate from her father and his stories about angels. However, Pettengill's Raoul has gotten extremely feisty since Leroux's novel, initiating and holding his own in direct conversational confrontation and even an exchange of threats with Christine's shadowy stalker. 

I can't quite get behind the revelation that Erik is severely claustrophobic, though. I can see that Pettengill is trying to set him up as having lasting psychological scars from childhood imprisonment, which I am on board with, but there just isn't enough explanation offered to convince me that this severe claustrophobe could voluntarily live in a dark underground and routinely move through catwalks, small passageways, and various other secret passages. His condition will mysteriously disappear now and not reappear for about twenty chapters, so it’s one of those mysterious and rare Plot Device claustrophobias. 

Chapter 3

While I haven't encountered a version that told the story from the Phantom's first-person point of view since the end of Kay's 1990 novel, I felt that Pettengill did a pretty admirable job of giving him a believable persona and conversational voice. There is more recapping going on here, too, but again it has just enough new material in it to keep me interested, despite a heavy-handed representation of Raoul as obnoxiously hysterical. 

The manager of the opera house is a gentleman named Vaurien; this change from the original novel is not explained. He appears in only a handful of peripheral scenes, so the only thing I can think is that the author didn't feel like managing two characters instead of one. 

A particularly snort-worthy line comes in here when Erik explains that he did sleep in a coffin for many years, but after meeting Christine had "judged that behavior a little too morbid even for [him]". Too morbid for Pettengill, rather; she has systematically removed all the elements of Erik's character that specifically tied him to the idea of death (the coffin and Erik's corpse-like body are the most obvious examples of elements that have been removed or softened). A large amount of the original Phantom's power to terrify the denizens of the opera house (and, of course, the reader) hinged on the fact that he was basically death personified, adding the horror of mortality to the already potent fear of the unknown. But Pettengill wants him to be the hero of her novel (the sexy hero of her novel!), so these ideas have been pretty much wholly excised in order to make the character more attractive and less spooky. 

In the same vein, Pettengill never completely describes Erik's facial disfigurement, which is clearly full-face, suggesting influence from Leroux's novel, but has no other details to give us an idea of what makes him look so unacceptable. The best clues we'll get over the course of the novel are that he successfully passes it off as the result of an accident, making it unlikely to be Erik's death's-head and more likely to look as though it could have been caused by an injury, and that he has abnormally large, grotesque lips, which suggests some influence from Michael Crawford's makeup job in Lloyd Webber's musical. The under-description of the deformity makes it difficult for the reader to form a clear picture of Erik's struggles, which again leaves the door open for us to imagine him as more attractive.

Chapter 4

Pettengill begins her relentless campaign of sexual tension between Christine and Erik. It’s overt and, honestly, kind of boring. Christine, as a paragon of innocence, seems at turns too easily swayed and hopelessly clueless, while I felt that much of what could have been fantastic subtext was ruined by just a little bit too much internal monologuing about how horny everyone was. 

References are being made to an "Opera Populaire", which dispels any lingering doubts that large chunks of this novel are clearly based on Lloyd Webber's musical; Leroux's novel was set in the real-life Opera Garnier in Paris, whereas the Opera Populaire is an analogue invented for Lloyd Webber's musical and does not actually exist. 

Examples emerge here of the trend toward entitlement of the underdog that seems to be so prevalent as we continue forward in Phantom literature; specifically, Erik justifies his actions by claiming that he "needed [Christine] more" than Raoul did. This always grates on me because of its side effect of completely reducing Christine to the role of trophy up for grabs between the two men, but Erik goes ahead and just vocalizes that by completely dismissing Christine's feelings for Raoul with a flippant, "I think she did love him in some fashion..." Smooth, dude. Come on, you're coming from the standpoint of being a villain; you have to work to make me like you. 

Pettengill's version of the Phantom is here revealed to be "almost fifty"; while this is on the bottom end of the probable age range for Leroux's Phantom (most likely mid-fifties), it's nice to see that the age divide and its implications will not be totally ignored in favor of youthful sexiness. The Phantom's father role and the general power of his presence are more believable with a slightly older character, and Pettengill capitalizes on that. 

But the writing, already pretty bad, becomes outright difficult to live with in this chapter. The sentences have become choppy and ungraceful, often suffering from omitted comma disease, and the effect is a little bit like reading a novel-length telegram. Even worse, Erik's attempted seduction of Christine here is just as clumsy and cringeworthy; sure, he can be bad at seduction (cut the dude some slack, it’s his first time), but the narration shouldn't make me want to go take a nap while people are trying to get their groove on. The creepy internal monologue that makes Erik sound like a budding rapist did NOT help. If he were being set up to be a psychologically deviant character in that respect I'd be on board, but since he's being obviously set up as a hero rather than as a sympathetic villain, it just makes me not like him. Pettengill spends a lot of this novel trying to have her cake and eat it, too: she wants Erik to have a dark side for dramatic purposes and moral lessons, but also wants him to be the good guy, and she doesn't manage the balance to really pull it off. 

Chapter 5

Erik decides to get rid of Raoul completely in this chapter, because Christine is apparently so popular now that the opera doesn't need his patronage anymore. In fact, with Christine, the opera apparently doesn't need ANY patronage anymore. Snort. Riiiiight. Because box office proceeds TOTALLY cover all of the expenses of running a monolithic theatre, in this world or any other. 

So Pettengill makes the classic move and places Raoul in the role of antagonist, freeing Erik to become more palatable as a hero. Unfortunately, this is accomplished pretty excruciatingly from a narrative point of view, with Raoul sabotaging performances in order to get the Phantom blamed for them and then shooting said Phantom when caught in the act. This kind of character reversal requires more setup than it was given here, and the result is that it was unbelievable and frankly kind of painful to read through. It was neat to see that this effectively changes Leroux's shooting scene from Raoul defending himself in his bedroom to Raoul attacking his rival in the middle of the opera, though. I waited for several chapters to see when Raoul would make up the story about the bedroom in order to explain the gunshot wound, but he never did and the whole scene was more disappointingly redundant. 

Raoul is further demonized with a slew of unappealing adjectives such as "wicked" or "crazed". While, again, I think a case could be made for him to have a different personality, Pettengill doesn't make it; as a reader, I'd like to see him do something that shows me that he's crazed and wicked, or see some event that clues me in as to how he might have gotten to be that way. You can’t just forcefeed the reader adjectives with no support. It doesn’t work and it’s lazy. 

Also, his name is Raoul de Chagny, not just Raoul Chagny. Was this a major problem in Phantom writing in the early 2000s?  Because Meadows did that, too.

I have to call shenanigans on Erik's assertion that he has "specifically designed" his catgut lasso to leave no marks when strangling someone into unconsciousness. I'm pretty sure that isn't possible, due to the nature of strangling, what with all that blood constriction, and the nature of catgut, which is pretty unforgiving. That’s not how the human body works.

Some interesting hints at a backstory for Erik come in here; while his full origins are never explained, it becomes revealed over the course of the novel that his parents abused him because of his appearance and that he left home voluntarily to escape them, probably at a young age. The by-now-familiar trope of him traveling with a carnival or circus is also mentioned, mostly in order to let us know that he was frequently restrained or imprisoned (hence the weird, gone-for-twenty-chapters claustrophobia). 

Erik's mask is mentioned in passing as being black and full-faced, both elements that point to influence from the original novel. I'm not sure why the mask on the front cover is white since he apparently never wears a white mask at all over the course of the novel, but some mysteries were never meant to be solved. 

Erik has A Plan here, and that plan is to run away to New Orleans. Actually, I really like that choice of locale; culture- and language-wise, it's a great choice to transplant a Parisian, giving him a better chance to adapt to the Americas while still being a far cry from life in France. Sadly, we will not actually arrive there for some chapters yet. 

Sigh. I'm sorry. I know I said that I wanted to see Raoul do things that demonstrated his evil rather than just being told about it, but when I said that, I meant that I wanted to see him do believable, natural-seeming things that demonstrated that he had serious personality defects. Instead, he hits the trifecta of tired cliches used to tell the reader that this guy is a Bad Bad Nobleman. Automatic dismissal of the hero as unworthy/subhuman? Check. Smug, obnoxious elitism? Check. Borderline rape of the heroine? Double-check. If he'd thrown in some animal abuse, we'd have the entire collection. 

And while I'm on the subject of people doing and saying ridiculous things to try to shortcut to convincing the reader of something, we have yet another case of Erik not really being a bad enough guy to torture people. I mean, yeah, he built that torture chamber in Persia, and then he built another one next to his house, but he just did that to "keep himself occupied". He never intended to use it on anyone. This is the third time we've seen an author specifically go after the torture chamber as an element that they felt they had to soften in order to make the character of Erik "hero" material (the other two that come to mind are Siciliano's 1994 novel and D'Arcy's 1999 novel). Apparently, kidnapping, stalking, and even murder can be smoothed over, but torture is a major sticking point in morality, and we now have a trend of authors that feel that it is necessary to remove it entirely (implying that the character would not be redeemable to hero status if they did not) in order to cast the Phantom as a hero figure. (Y’all, is it possible that if your hero is a torturer, he might not be able to be shiny and un-grey? Maybe? Consider.)

And in keeping with Pettengill's determination to make Erik more sympathetic, his ranting, raving, death threats and physical violence during the climactic scenes of Leroux's novel are all but entirely glossed over; he barely even remembers them, and he (and the author) brush them off as events that he can't be held accountable for because he was in the throes of "near mental breakdown". Yeah, he was never a bad person doing bad things, so leave him alone! What redemption at the end of the novel? What are you talking about? 

Not much else is really added to the story in this recap, which is now thankfully drawing to a close. Most of it is just reiteration from here on out. However, it is interesting to note that the daroga is mentioned as "the closest thing to a friend" that Erik has, very reminiscent of Kay's treatment of the character. Both works probably draw from the fact that the daroga is obviously somewhat sympathetic to Erik's plight in Leroux's novel; in fact, I suspect that the Persian becomes Erik's best friend by default because he's the only major character, aside from Christine, to show any sympathy for the Phantom over the course of the novel. Especially in cases where the writer is attempting to paint Erik as a more human, sympathetic figure in order to place him in a hero role, the idea of a friend figure, even one as briefly mentioned and thoroughly forgotten as the Persian is in this book, is an easy way to show some socialization and empathy in Erik's character. I would have preferred an actual relationship between the two that could have told us something about their characters beyond their capacity to like one another, but I don't get the things I want. 

But now, the first of many plot shenanigans is about to unfold. You see, after sending Christine off with Raoul, Erik goes off to mope and fast, mope and fast in his underground cave, whining to himself about the unfairness of life. And after a few days of mope-fasting, Erik arrives at the conclusion that he's going to kidnap Christine after all, stages his death in order to lure her back to the opera, and knocks her ass out. 

What? But... but... arrgh! The redemption! The beautiful, relevant, significant, point-of-Leroux's-entire-book redemption! Gone. Sigh. Somehow, Erik has managed to do a 180 from "repenting his sins and finally accepting good in himself and treating others with humanity" to "bitter pissing and moaning followed by lying and kidnapping". That mope-fasting is some dangerous shit. 

Weirdly enough, and this is the first time any writer has mentioned the idea, Erik has to shave to avoid growing a beard. I have to say I've never envisioned a bearded Erik, probably because the original one had enough trouble with hair not growing on his head at all. It certainly brings home the idea of him as more human and virile, again. 

Erik claims here to never have felt guilt before his re-kidnapping of Christine; while I initially rejected this as silliness, upon further thought it might be a valid way of approaching the character. His many remorseful scenes wherein he apologizes to Christine and begs her not to hate him could easily be motivated not by true remorse but rather by simple fear that he might lose her regard, and it's conceivable that his release of Christine into Raoul's arms was motivated by a desire to see her happy rather than by any admission of misbehavior on his part. Again, however, I would have liked to see some kind of action that supported this claim. 

But then there was page 65, with some of the laziest shit I've ever seen a writer try to pull: 

"I knew when Christine arrived back in town. I won't bother to explain how; suffice it to say that I always knew exactly what was going on when necessary." 

I realize that the idea of near-omniscient knowledge (within the opera house, though... not necessarily within all of Paris) is an important element in the original character's mystique, but from his point of view, so baldly spelled out, that smacks of not caring enough to think through it. How hard would it have been to come up with an appropriately ingenious method by which Erik gets his news, or even with some kind of vagueness to semi-explain it? Readers don’t like to be told “I just did, stop bothering me” by characters, Pettengill.

So Christine is, once again, a kidnapping victim, this time snatched when she keeps her promise to come back to Erik's body when he dies. Sheesh, he uses a lot of chloroform on this poor girl. Not to mention laudanum. It's a wonder she survives long enough to get loaded onto the boat. 

Chapter 6

And off they go on a boat to New Orleans!

Pettengill's version of the character is presented as a basically good man who, as a result of a long pattern of abuse, had a moment of madness and did things that he then reversed when coming to his senses. It’s very much apologism, especially since the author contorts to use this as an excuse for why he did bad things (like killing and kidnapping people, which wasn’t his fault somehow) but also why he did good things she wants to walk back (like letting Christine go, which obviously he would only do if not in his right mind and now has to fix by re-kidnapping her). 

Christine's character remains gratifyingly strong here as she calls Erik on all of his shit. Being tricked, manipulated, and kidnapped is not on her general to-do list, particularly when she'd trusted him to give up his stalking ways. Page 42 is a treat to read as she reams him out for it, and it reinforces her as a strong character. Erik's surprise at the situation - he didn't think she was "strong enough" to get so pissed - is also entertaining. 

In possibly the most amazing revelation in this or any other book, we discover that Erik's been using morphine to treat his blueballs. Incredible. 

Erik's internal monologues are frustrating throughout most of the ocean voyage. While it is in character for the original Erik to ignore Christine's wishes (there's still a marked feeling that she'll "come around" and that her wish to escape is temporary), it is not in character for him to do so after his redemption at the end of Leroux's novel. We are Missing the Point. Even more annoyingly, he has an epiphany onboard and realizes that, oh noes! If she just hates him, kidnapping her to be his love is pointless! Yeah, you THINK?

Again, this is territory already covered in Leroux's work, and Pettengill seems, bizarrely, to be including the Phantom's release of Christine in with his "moment of madness" that started the whole messy final scene. He also complains that Christine sounds like "a spoiled child" when she demands her freedom. Yeah, how dare she have feelings and wants! 

Despite all this, I do like that Erik is finding out the hard way that this simply isn't going to work; while he wised up and realized that before the point of no return in the original book, it's fun to take a look at how his original plan wouldn't have succeeded if he hadn't given it up. 

Once Christine finally gets Erik to let her into the salon (because she wants to socialize, dammit, and he's already told everyone on board that she's his mad wife, which cuts down on mingling opportunities), Erik confesses that he has never danced before and doesn't know how. That’s kind of hard to swallow, considering that Pettengill has him self-educating on every topic under the sun and he was in an opera house where dance was a major art form. While I appreciate that he apparently feels a bit "deathly" here (though I'm not sure how that goes with his "firm, warm" body from a few chapters ago), the entire scene, in which Erik and Christine dance about for hours in the night, existing in some kind of cocoon of blissful romance, is beyond silly. I wanted Rex Harrison and Audrey Hepburn to come in and do "I Could Have Danced All Night". 

I'm very unimpressed by Erik's sudden realization that he "owes her honesty"... followed immediately by telling her all about Raoul's perfidy but failing, somehow, to mention that he almost strangled the guy to death on top of his torture chamber shenanigans. Selective honesty. He owes her selective honesty. 

Erik is again given a new last name in this novel: Devereaux. While he makes a point of telling us in the beginning that it's an assumed name he uses for his surname when it's necessary for him to have one, he proceeds to refer to himself with it in internal monologues, and other events pretty firmly entrench it as his permanent last name within a few more chapters. It’s a common name in French Louisiana, so at least he’ll fit in!

Chapter 7:

On page 97, much to my confusion and disbelief, Erik has an epiphany and realizes that he loves Christine. 

...what? You just now figured that out? True, the original Erik's relationship with Christine was more one of obsession than love, but it always seemed that he believed in his own emotions, even if the reader could tell that many of them were less than healthy. The simplicity of his sudden realization doesn't do him any favors when it comes to making him look like he has any idea what's going on. 

Upon arrival in the United States, Christine's language barrier is mentioned (i.e., she only speaks French); however, there isn't a peep about Erik, who seems to speak English just fine. That's okay with me if there is justification, but there was never any explanation of where he learned English, or why, or how. Even better, Christine apparently magically learns English at some point in the ensuing chapters, but I have no idea when since I didn't have any warning before she was suddenly conversing with the locals. 

Page 102, on which Erik realizes that love should include selflessness and he would let Christine go and put her on a boat back to France, is meant to be touching and showcase his emotional growth as a character. But we already DID that scene at the end of Leroux’s novel, so it falls flat and the reader just doesn’t believe him, because he didn’t mean it last time, so why should we assume he does this time? 

I wouldn't think that I'd find Christine's torn feelings believable here what with all the kidnapping shenanigans and all, but I find that I do in spite of myself. While Erik's emotional epiphanies over the course of the sea voyage have been pretty silly, Christine's gradual acceptance of her situation and ability to make the best of it convince me that she really is somewhat torn between returning to her fiance and staying here in the new life she's building. Unlike most authors who try to use a romanticized “Stockholm Syndrome” as an excuse for their heroines' questionable choices, this (a month-long voyage with a person who intentionally treats her as well as possible despite her captivity) is a situation where it feels believable for the character to identify with her captor. Of course, Pettengill doesn’t actually try to use that justification, though, because if Christine were attached to the Phantom because of the captivity, it would mar the romance she wants to build, so somehow we’re still no better off. 

However, while I believe in her torn feelings, I do not believe in her decision to stay in the Americas with Erik. Her explanation that she has now "seen Erik's sensitive side" sounds ridiculous, particularly when she doesn't elaborate, and her brush-off of Raoul, desperately searching for her in France even now, is too easy and pat. The original Christine had a very strong, Catholic moral center, and I somehow can't see her blowing her fiance off without a shred of explanation and deciding to live in sin with the terrorizer who has drugged and kidnapped her personally and definitely kills other people instead, even if he was nice to her and kept her from getting hurt during a storm at sea (which she would never have experienced if he hadn't, you know, kidnapped her. Again). I know Pettengill wants to establish that their connection is too strong to be broken, but she doesn't actually do it. She just waves her hands and says “see?” and assumes we will. 

Christine tells Erik that things "weren't easy" for her and Raoul after the events of Leroux's novel, but refuses to explain why. That’s way more interesting than this romance, but we won’t get to hear about what she means for CHAPTERS. 

Chapter 8

It’s more than a little bit funny that Pettengill stresses that Raoul and Christine were never married or intimate so much. By which I mean sad, because the only reason the author is doing it is because if Christine weren’t an unmarried virgin, she wouldn’t be Pure and Good. Sigh. I'm still not sure, yet, if I'm dreading the inevitable Erik/Christine sex scenes... but with three hundred pages still to go, I am sure that I'm dreading the possibility of Raoul appearing as some kind of avenging villain. Luckily, this doesn't really happen until the very end of the book, and isn't as bad as it could have been. 

Pettengill doesn’t really seem to know what to do with the characters now that they’ve gotten to New Orleans, seesawing between anxious breakdowns at the idea of going to a salon and manful badassery as Erik tells people off and defends Christine's honor. Christine is believably traumatized by Erik's ability to disarm and almost strangle a man to death in a few seconds flat, but somehow this does not impact her decision to live with him because she’s seen his “sensitive side”. 

Chapter 9

Interestingly enough, Pettengill provides us a believable explanation for Erik's childish scrawl from the notes in Leroux's novel; many authors have difficulty juxtaposing this quirk with a character that they envision as a sort of genius gentleman, and I've remarked in other works on how it seems to be glossed over or omitted as a result. This Erik, instead, is left-handed, and was apparently severely and repeatedly punished for this as a child because of the left hand's association with the devil (tough luck for a kid who already looks that bad). As a response to this punishment, he stubbornly refused to learn proper handwriting or to use his other hand, resulting in some very terrible handwriting. It's well explained without interrupting the narrative too much, and I really liked the thought put into it. 

But it's now time for things that I don't like... at all. Out of the blue, Pettengill suddenly begins writing out the dialogue of all the African-American cast members in her book as a phonetic dialect. This is unfortunate; not because there wouldn't be a certain dialect in late nineteenth-century Louisiana, but because Pettengill fails to write out anyone else's dialogue, even when she makes a big deal in the narrative about their accents. Does Christine ever get written in dialect, despite her French accent? No. Does Villaincourt, Erik's lawyer, ever get written in dialect, despite the fact that he is described as having a thick, almost impenetrable Southern drawl? No. But when the black servants come in, suddenly it's all "Yassah, this way, suh, wait heah, suh," and hoo boy, that is an actual quote. Fucking yikes.

I have no problem with nineteenth-century characters being racist; in fact, I expect them to be. But the inclusion of an altered speech pattern ONLY for the lower-class black people of the novel makes Pettengill look racist rather than her characters, because she’s singling them out to be scripted that way when other characters are not, and because the almost cartoonish way she does it plays into centuries of really ugly racial stereotypes of African-American people. And she WON’T STOP, so the WHOLE BOOK is like that, with every new African-American character speaking in sub-vocalized sentence fragments while new white characters such as Erik's chess-playing friend are written out perfectly normally. 

And while I'm whining about dialogue, Villaincourt, Erik's lawyer, has consistently over-the-top dialogue that detracts from the proceedings and distracts me by making him seem more like a caricature than an actual character (and since he's going to be somewhat important later in the book, that's not something that should be happening). I just want him to shut up, and the warm fuzzies I'm supposed to get from his acceptance of Erik do not materialize. 

Erik, still owner of a raging hard-on for Christine, starts talking to her frankly about sex and sort of borderline groping her on a streetcorner, none of which is a good idea. Great, I was just wondering if this Phantom was going to be a molester like so many of the others, and here he is to confirm it.