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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Haunting Tale of Unrequited Love and the Curse of the Past, 6 Nov 2000
By A Customer
This haunting tale, both literally and figuratively, marks another wonderful entry into Patricia McKillip's world of Faerie. In this tale the Otherworld wears a darker mask, casting a spell that lures the participants away from their own world and into a realm that despite its beauty hides a cold and indifferent heart. The key to this realm is a curse, a spectre of the past that threatens the characters to reenact an earlier tragedy. As much a story about ghosts as fantasy, unrequited love as magic, this tale is woven with all the marvelous skill and wonder found in earlier McKillip works, and with an emotional intensity that perhaps sets it apart, and with a tone and mystery reminiscent of works such as "Wuthering Heights" or "The Turn of the Screw, though placed in a faerie tale setting.McKillip's style of writing also sets her apart from most other fantasists, a prose at once both direct and elegant, with an ability to recast the natural and personal world into a realm vibrating with an urgency of beauty unseen, spirits barely glimpsed, recalling the sense of wonder we once had looking at the world as a child. Something is always stirring just beyond our sight, and in McKillip's stories it is not only the magical worlds of imagination, but hidden insights as well into human nature and the world we create around us in our minds. While these stories can be read simply for their narrative power and imagination, there are elements throughout the text that if glimpsed will provoke thought and reconsideration of what we accept as truth. These themes and metaphoric insights are guised in a manner similar to the author's etheric spirits, a face peering out of the leaves, a figure briefly seen, then gone, though barely glimpsed, haunting and not forgotten. If you are not provoked into thought, then you need a closer reading. While I enjoyed this work, and will read it again, I did not find it as tightly focused or resolved as some of her other work, such as "The Book of Atrix Wolfe." At times the author stretched for similes or understandings that for me remained only partly conveyed. Perhaps I myself need to take a closer look. It was for this reason I only awarded it four stars. However, this qualification is meant only to refer to McKillip's other work--compared to other authors this book qualifies as a solid five stars. Those of you who haven't read the author's books don't know what you are missing.
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by Patricia A. McKillip
by Patricia A. McKillip
by Patricia A. McKillip
by Patricia A. McKillip
by Patricia A. McKillip
