Spanners: The Fountain of Youth

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I came to this after watching the movie “Spanners.” The movie and the book sharply diverge from each other, although some of the same characters - Adam, Phage, Mayflie and Gereon - are common to the two books.

In the book, the immortal Juan Ponce de Leon is freed from burial in the swamps of Florida. It seems that Juan, as he is known in this book, discovered the Fountain of Youth and the secret of immortality, which he then bestowed on his fellow adventurers. The Fountain turned out to be an immortal Arawak girl. Juan murdered a lot of Arawaks to get to the Fountain, which caused his trusted lieutenant, Balthasar to decide that Juan was best entombed. Five hundred years later, Balthasar has come to regret his decision. Balthasar frees Juan, who re-embarks on his mission to control the Fountain and rule the world.

It turns out that Juan and Balthasar are “spanners.” A spanner is anyone with an unusual life span, something which is defined to include not only the immortal but anyone with any kind of mutant power. Each spanner belongs in a class with its own power and weekness. Mayflies, for example, are super-smart but live for only six months. Phagge class spanners are immortal but have no immune system and are eternally sick and carriers of sickness. Phoenix class spanners resurrect life after life but almost always have a bad love affair which causes them to self-immolate.

And on and on.

This story fits best under the “urban fantasy” label. An urban fantasy is a story set in our time and world where creatures of fantasy inhabit the fringes of our culture. The problem that I had with this book is that there were so many spanners that I had to wonder how they could possibly remain on the fringe. Also, there were so many classes with such a wide divergence of powers that this element seemed ad hoc.

In addition, the story moved from urban fantasy into epic fantasy when the characters entered the “badlands,” a place where disturbing and dangerous spanners go. But where was this land? Not on this world certainly. It is here that the story turns something like a battle from Lord of the Rings.

The writing was journeyman. The plot was basically a quest story. I think my biggest problem was that there was so much backstory imagined by the author. So, many classes, so many characters, so many elements ranging from immortal Arawaks to immortal Vikings to eternally-sick immortals and a Fountain of Youth that had to be divided into two people. The story needed to be pruned in order to make it more intelligible and smooth the flow of the story.