#evilrat

The author of this book, Aleksey Toltsoy, just decided to write his own version of Pinocchio, the book is russian and Buratino (the russian equivalent to Pinocchio in the book) is very popular in russia. I couldn’t find an easy way to get an english copy of the book so i just found a pdf of the original russian and google translated it and when the translation looked weird i looked up the individual words a bit.

The Golden Key starts off very similiar to The Adventures Of Pinocchio for the first few chapters  but then after Buratino is rescued from being hung the plot completely deviates from the original. The Golden Key is not a coming of age or a moral lesson like Pinocchio is, instead this is about action adventure, a more fun exciting fairy tale where theres actually a plot with villains and goals. There is a part at the beginning which tries to be like Pinocchio and tell a moral lesson, Buratino is attacked by an ‘evil rat’ while looking for food, Papa Carlo (Gepetto) says this is a consequence of his frivolity/mischief, this just isn’t true, its not his fault he was attacked by a literal EVIL RAT, spoilers: they even end up killing the rat at the end of the book. the main characters are: Karabas Barabas (magiafuecoco): he is the director of the theatre and also a doctor of puppet science, he wants to find the golden key Pierrot: a commedia dell arte characte(sad clown)r, in this he’s a puppet from the theatre who performs a play where he gets slapped and wails about his lost fiancee. He also says lots of poetry Malvina (The Blue Fairy): Pierrot’s fiancee, another puppet from the theatre, she lives in the woods with the animals who do everything for her, most strangely caterpillars who make their toothpaste. Artemon (medoro): a poodle dog who doesn’t have much going for him really, he’s just a dog, he does dog things including brutally murdering a rat Buratino (Pinocchio): wooden boy whose dad happens to have the door for The Golden Key, otherwise Buratino doesn’t do much except go the places that the story requires.

Theres also some other new characters like the turtle who guards the key, and Duremar the leech salesman who follows Karabas about, and theres some of the characters from Pinocchio like the police dogs and of course the fox and the cat who have names.