The Hero and the Crown
Robin McKinley
Puffin
Fiction, YA Fantasy
****+
DESCRIPTION: Aerin, first sol and daughter of King Arlbeth, has never fit in to the kingdom of Damar. Tall, pale, and orange-haired among the darker-skinned brunettes, child of an ill-rumored Northern witch rather than a proper noblewoman, showing no traces of the magical Gift that marks other Damarian bluebloods, she seems destined to live life as an outcast. When she discovers a talent for slaying dragons, she starts to wonder if her destiny is something far greater than the Damar throne she may never inherit.
REVIEW: This book took a while to grab me. At first, between McKinley's writing style, a barrage of names and politics, and a prolonged flashback before I had yet established just where I was to begin with, I was a bit lost in the story. By the second part, though, I'd regained my bearings, and was on a memorable and exciting journey with Aerin. I still felt as though I'd come in halfway through on some aspects of the tale, but all in all it was a good read.
You might also enjoy:
The Throwaway Princess (Elinor Busby, YA Fiction - Passed over for the crown because of a physical defect, a princess must set out on a quest to save her realm)
The Dragonslayer's Apprentice (David Calder, YA Fiction - A girl is determined to become a dragonslayer)
Dragon's Keep (Janet Lee Carey, YA Fiction - A princess born with a dragon-claw finger must confront the malevolent dragons raiding her lands)
The Dragonslayers (Bruce Coville, YA Fiction - A trio of unlikely heroes fight a deadly dragon)
Bitterwood (James Maxey, Fiction - After dragons have conquered and enslaved humanity, one dragonslayer's resistance might help free them... or make matters that much worse)
The Song of the Lioness quartet (Tamora Pierce, YA Fiction - In the magical land of Tortall, the girl Alanna poses as a boy to fulfill her dream of becoming a knight)
The Protector of the Small quartet (Tamora Pierce, YA Fiction - Many years after Alanna broke the gender barrier in Tortall, young Keladry is the first girl to attempt knighthood under the new laws)
Dragonheart (Charles Edward Pogue, Fiction - An embittered dragonslayer must team up with the last living dragon to defeat an evil king)
Here, There be Dragons (Jane Yolen, YA Fictions - An anthology of tales about cunning dragons)
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The Blue Sword
(Sequel to The Hero and the Crown)
Robin McKinley
Puffin
Fiction, YA Fantasy
****
DESCRIPTION: Angharad, or "Harry" as she insists on being called, is a stranger in a land that is not as strange as it should be to her. Born and raised in the green
Homeland, she has come to live at Istan, on the border of the newly-claimed lands that were once the desert nation of Damar. Damar itself still exists, but as a mere shadow of
its former self. Still, there are stories of this land and the Damarian royalty, stories of the strange kelar magic and its effects. Outsiders scoff, but soldiers posted in Istan
often come to respect the kelar and the Damarians. Harry quickly finds that she loves the harsh, sun-baked desert, more than a Homeland-raised girl should... but does her love
hint at something deeper than she suspects?
Corlath reigns over a dying kingdom, seemingly on the verge of extinction. The problem is not the stiff-backed, ignorant, and stubborn Outlanders who have taken so much Damar
land for their own. The true threat is the Northerners, the not-quite-human tribes beyond the northern mountains, possessors of a demonic kin to his own kelar magic. The kelar
itself is weaker in today's Damarians than it was hundreds of years ago, prone to peculiar fits and starts, and it may not be enough to hold back the tide. On a failed diplomatic
trip to the Outlander outpost to seek help against the Northerners, he spies a strange girl, a girl his kelar insists should come with him into the desert.
Neither Harry nor Corlath know what lies ahead of them, but Harry discovers that the hands of Fate - and magic - are guiding them to a far greater destiny, and the creation of a
legend as grand as the Golden Age of Damar itself.
REVIEW: There are many references to the adventures of Aerin (told in The Hero and the Crown), as a guiding force behind Harry's transformation from Outlander
curiosity to desert hero. Without giving away spoilers from the previous book, I can't go into detail, but I thought that something important must've been left out somewhere.
Aerin's ghostly appearances seemed to counter certain events in The Hero and the Crown. In any event, Harry's adventures are fairly exciting, but for some reason I
thought it fell short of the previous book.
Incidentally, I may have the publication order wrong; it's possible that this book came first, and The Hero and the Crown was written as a prequel. The centuries between
the stories mean it doesn't matter which one is read first.
You might also enjoy:
The Sword and the Cross (Fergus Fleming, Nonfiction - The harrowing true-life story of two Frenchmen setting out to tame the harsh northern Sahara and its people in colonial Algiers)
Dune (Frank Herbert, Fiction - The heir to an interstellar dynasty travels to the harsh desert world of Arrakis, home of the potent spice-drug melange)
The Song of the Lioness quartet (Tamora Pierce, YA Fiction - In the magical land of Tortall, the girl Alanna poses as a boy to fulfill her dream of becoming a knight)
The Protector of the Small quartet (Tamora Pierce, YA Fiction - Many years after Alanna broke the gender barrier in Tortall, young Keladry is the first girl to attempt knighthood under the new laws)
The Sword-Dancer Saga (Jennifer Roberson, Fiction - A sword-dancer of the Southron deserts meets a hard-hearted fighter from the North who has bent her entire life towards one act of vengeance)
The Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn trilogy (Tad Williams, Fiction - In an epic fantasy tale, the kingdom of Osten Ard's fate rests on the finding of three magical swords)
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Spindle's End
Robin McKinley
Ace
Fiction, YA Fantasy
***
DESCRIPTION: In a faraway country where fairies and humans live side by side and the magic's so thick it falls as a chalky dust over the land, a king and a
queen give birth to a long-awaited daughter. The princess's naming day is to be quite a spectacle: representatives from every community in the land are invited to
officially welcome the babe, and in honor of her twenty-one names, she will have twenty-one fairy godparents, who are each to bestow a magical gift. But an old rival
of the royal family, the dark fairy Pernicia, determines the occasion fit to exact dark revenge. She places a curse upon the girl's head: by her twenty-first birthday,
she shall prick her finger upon the spindle of a spinning wheel and die. The king and queen order all spinning wheel spindles to be blunted, but in a land so steeped in
magic a curse isn't going to be so easily thwarted.
Katriona hails from a small villiage in the swampy section of the kingdom called the Gig, a place where the magic dust falls a bit thicker and the fairies are a bit
more plentiful than in the rest of the land. A young fairy whose own powers haven't awakened yet, she was as surprised as anyone to be chosen to travel to the royal
naming-day ceremony. Once there, she inadvertently finds herself directly involved the the struggle to save the princess from her cursed fate: Katriona somehow pierces
the dark fairy's magical barriers and, with a seemingly meaningless gift of her own, finds herself bound to carry off and hide the royal child. In the Gig, the girl
she calls Rosie will have quite an unprincessly upbringing, but - for a time - her obscurity should render her safe. As the days tick closer to her fateful birthday,
however, the truth about her heritage and possible fate cannot remain hidden for long, from Rosie or the kingdom... or the ever-waiting, ever-hateful Pernicia.
REVIEW: Obviously a retelling of the fairy tale Sleeping Beauty, this should've been a Good book. Rosie makes a likeable heroine, her animal friends are decently realized characters and (usually) not just cheap plot tricks, and if Katriona wasn't always the most intelligent guardian... well, nobody's perfect, even in fairy tales. And a land where magic is so thick it dusts the shelves, where outbreaks of "baby magic" among infants mean many children must be temporarily fostered out until they can no longer conjure phantom tigers or turn themselves into animals or plants or something hideously else... how can a setting like that be boring? By spending half the page count on irrelevant tangents, backstories, and sidetracks, evidently. The plot suffers under the extra weight, being little more than a vague, misty path through a great bog. I found myself struggling to push forward until nearly the final fifth of the book. By then, I suppose McKinley had told all the side- tales she'd wanted to tell; the climax moves at a fair clip, and it almost made up for the previous tedium. Almost. In the end, the earlier slog proved too much of an obstacle to overcome in pursuit of the fourth star in the ratings.
You might also enjoy:
Bright Shadow (Avi, YA Fiction - A dying wizard gives a serving girl five wishes that work, a powerful gift with a deep cost)
Faerie Wars (Herbie Brennan, YA Fiction - A boy finds a faerie prince in the garden)
Magic Kingdom For Sale - Sold! (Terry Brooks, Fiction - A lawyer buys a magic kingdom through a catalog, only to find that the land is dying and its kings tend to be short-lived)
The Sisters Grimm series (Michael Buckley, YA Fiction - Two sisters learn that the "fairy tales" of their ancestors, the Brothers Grimm, were actually case files)
Lion Boy (Zizou Corder, YA Fiction - A boy who can speak Cat sets out to find his kidnapped parents)
The Coldfire trilogy (C. S. Friedman, Fiction - A colony world on the rim of the galaxy has a natural force which physically manifests subconscious fears and desires)
Stardust (Neil Gaiman, Fiction - A young man crosses the border into Faerie to find a fallen star)
Firebird (Mercedes Lackey, Fiction - The Russian tale of the immortal Firebird and the young tsar's son Ivan)
The Fire Rose (Mercedes Lackey, Fiction - A retelling of "Beauty and the Beast," set in turn-of-the-century California)
The Serpent's Shadow (Mercedes Lackey, Fiction - A retelling of "Snow White," set in turn-of-the-century London)
Ella Enchanted (Gail Carson Levine, YA Fiction - A girl sets out to find a cure for a fairy's botched christening gift of total obedience)
Fairest (Gail Carson Levine, YA Fiction - Based on "Snow White," a homely girl with a beautiful voice meets a vain queen and handsome prince)
The Unhandsome Prince (John Moore, Fiction - A humorous take on "The Frog Prince," exploring what happens when a determined girl decides that the ensorcelled prince isn't handsome enough to marry)
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