Review: Chalice

There's no wind up to reading Chalice by Robin McKinley. No soft start, no easing into the world. McKinley just starts.

Beekeeper Marisol has been chosen as the new Chalice, destined to stand beside the Master and mix the ceremonial brews that hold the Willowlands together. But the relationship between Chalice and Master has always been tumultuous, and the new Master is unlike any before him.

There's not much action to this book. There's more atmosphere than anything else. It was good, but something about it left me cold.

Maybe, and it pains me to say this, maybe I just don't know about Robin McKinley anymore. Her books are all different - different worlds, characters, plots - so why do I sometimes I feel like I've just read the same book again? I think it's McKinley's voice. She has a really strong voice, clear and concise, that carries through everything I've read by her. I've written about this before, actually, but I don't know why it bugged me reading Chalice.

Other bloggers (including Presenting Lenore and bookshelves of doom) really enjoyed this book. Maybe its all about having the right frame of mind.

Buy Chalice on Amazon.

Review: Water: Tales of Elemental Spirits

Water: Tales of Elemental Spirits is a book of short stories, half by Robin McKinley (author of The Hero and The Crown, etc) and half by Peter Dickinson (author of Eva). The stories are linked in that they are all about water and about fantastical creatures that live in water. The stories were otherwise, though, not related to one another and were stylistically different. I could tell without even looking, though, which ones were McKinley's, as I think she has a very strong voice (I've mentioned this before, in my review of Sunshine).

Mermaid Song by Peter Dickinson: Great little story about a Puritanical village whose women have been keeping a secret for generations. Sad, but has an ultimately hopeful ending.

The Sea-King's Son by Robin McKinley: A fairy tale about a young woman who falls in love.

Sea Serpent by Peter Dickinson: My least favorite of the stories, as I just didn't quite get what was going on, to be honest.

Water Horse by Robin McKinley: A girl is apprenticed to learn how to be Guardian, one who keeps her island home from being taken back by the water. Reminded me, for some reason, of Ursula LeGuin's Earthsea books.

Kraken by Peter Dickinson: Loved the dual nature of this story, about young lovers and the mermaid who helps them.

A Pool in the Desert by Robin McKinley: Fans will be pleased to note that this story takes place in Damar, home of Aerin and Harry (although neither of them appear).

Buy Water: Tales of Elemental Spirits on Amazon.

Review: Sunshine

Let me warn you up front: this review for Sunshine by Robin McKinley is going to have spoilers. I usually try very hard not to do this, but a) the book has been out for 5-6 years and b) there are some things I want to discuss that necessitate spoilers.


Sunshine is not really a vampire story - it is a Robin McKinley story about a young woman with magic who has to fight vampires. It is told in first person by the woman, Rae Seddon, aka Sunshine, but the voice is, to me, unmistakably McKinley's. Even though the plot and setting were very different, the tone and language felt very similar to The Hero and the Crown and The Blue Sword. This, despite the fact that Sunshine is decidedly not YA (even though my library had this shelved in the teen section. Somebody clearly did not read the graphic sex scene on page 249, much less the buckets of blood fight scenes, before deciding where to shelve it). For example, the stilted way Sunshine and Con, the "good" vampire, talk to each other reminded me so much of Harry and Corlath talking at the end of The Blue Sword. And the way Sunshine fights the big bad vampire reminded me very much of the way Aerin defeats Agsded at the end of The Hero and the Crown

This isn't so much a criticism as an observation. All this means that if you like McKinley's voice, I think you'll like this book. But maybe not. Because, I'll be honest, there's stuff to love in it, but there are some really clunky moments that grated on my nerves.

Here's one example: Carthaginian. It's a pretty unusual word. (It refers to the city Rome defeated during the Punic Wars. A Carthaginian peace is "any brutal peace treaty demanding total subjugation of the defeated side." [via Wikipedia]) It's one of those words that's unusual enough that it's going to stick out. So use it once. Or if you want to use it more than that, only let one character use it, that way it seems like a quirk. Don't use it multiple times by multiple characters, like McKinley does in Sunshine. It's like a nail sticking up in a floor - I kept tripping over it.

Comparisons to Buffy the Vampire Slayer aside (blond girl fights vampire, yada yada yada), I think Sunshine is very different from all the other urban fantasy out there. As I said above, this wasn't really a vampire story, in that the vampire fighting wasn't the focus. The story is very much about Rae's inner life - how she accepts who she is and who her family is, and learns to use the gifts given to her, both in magic and in baking. Plus, avid readers and fellow book bloggers will appreciate Sunshine's hobbies before becoming a magic-handler - combing used book stores to add to "one of the hip-high pile of books to be read next" (pg 174) and reading.

This is just all to say that there's good and bad in this book and some readers will like it a lot, and some will be less impressed. Me? I'm somewhere in the middle.

Buy Sunshine on Amazon.

Book Review: Blue Sword

As a follow-up note to my previous review of The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley, I thought I would also write about the book's prequel, The Blue Sword.

The Blue Sword takes place generations after the events of Hero; Aerin is a legend and the former land of Damar is part of the Homeland empire. After her father dies, Harry Crewe is sent there to live with her soldier brother. She is drawn to the hills and to the free-folk who live there, and their king, Corlath, is in return drawn to her. He abducts her, trains her, and she becomes Harimad-sol, the first woman since Aerin to wield the blue sword.

This is a fun book to read -- the story is interesting and the people and places feel real. Unlike my experience with Hero, however, I first read this book as teenager, not as a kid. I think that may be why I couldn't get past Corlath kidnapping Harry, which is a very pivotal plot point. While I enjoyed the book, this event colored my opinion of the characters and because of it, I had a hard time with the ending. Maybe some authors can gloss over difficult subjects in their books for younger readers, but Robin McKinley is generally good about confronting them head on and I thought this was a bit of a cop out. None of this is to say that I don't think its a good book; it is and I recommend it to any young adult reader. I just think it could have been better.

As a side note, the question may come up of which book should you read first -- Hero, since its first chronologically or Sword, as it was written first? This is probably my bias since this is how I read them, but I would suggest reading Hero first, especially for younger readers. Both books stand alone pretty well, though, so its fine either way.

Buy The Blue Sword on Amazon.

Book Review: The Hero and The Crown

I was at Border's yesterday and they were having a book drive for the Alameda Boy's & Girl's Club. Out of the stack of books they had as suggestions for donations, The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley caught my eye -- I had to buy it for them, because I wanted to make sure those kids had the opportunity to read this fantastic book. I first read this book in the 8th grade, when a sympathetic teacher gave me a copy. Since then, this has continued to be one of my "comfort food" books -- a book I pick off the shelf and cuddle up with once a year.

Aerin, the book's heroine, is a familiar character -- the outsider in a crowd, the girl who doesn't fit in. (Yeah, its something a pre-teen girl could relate to.) Despite being the king's daughter, she is struggling to find her place in the kingdom. Instead of following the usual path a princess (or sola, in Damar) should take, Aerin follows her own course and becomes the hero the kingdom didn't know they needed. I highly recommend this book for young adult readers, whether they are young or not.

Buy The Hero and the Crown on Amazon.