Wyrd & Wonder is a super cool reading challenge for May 2021, hosted at There’s Always Room for One More.
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Wyrd & Wonder 2021
Tag: fantasy-fiction
“Can a magician kill a man by magic?” Lord Wellington asked Strange.
Strange frowned. He seemed to dislike the question. “I suppose a magician might,” he admitted, “but a gentleman never could.”
Ironically, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke is the exact reverse of this contemplation. It is the downhill path that a magician’s ambition must inevitably take him. If you are looking for a finger-biting adventure into the hearts of men, look no further.
The book is based on an alternative history of England, when magicians once used to rule the land. The most illustrious of these was John Uskglass, or the Raven King. For some unknown reason, Raven King wrapped up his Faerie courts one day and vanished. With him, magic disappeared from England for centuries.
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Winter Rose by Patricia McKillip
Book: Winter Rose by Patricia McKillip
Published: 1997
Book Trope: Tam Lin
Rating: 8.5 of 10
The Plot:
Rois is the herb-woman of the village, knowing the woods in-and-out. Her elder sister Laurel is the practical one, caring for the family. Come spring, she will marry her childhood sweetheart. But autumn is here first. It brings back Corbet, the long-forgotten heir to the Lynn estate bordering the woods. A disastrous love affair follows: both sisters fall for Corbet, who seems to be under a generations-long curse.
My Thoughts:
Trust McKillip to take the old Tam Lin legend, and turn it on its heel, give it a makeover unlike any other version! Almost, almost, the suspense is unbearable. In fact, it’s a choke-hold: What is the true nature of Corbet’s curse? Why is he back? Which sister does he really love? Can Rois save Corbet? Will she want to save him, even if he doesn’t love her back and has literally destroyed her family? There were moments I grew to hate Corbet. Corbet is helpless against the tide of the curse, against the pull of the fey woods. I understood that, and I pitied him, but I also hated him.
The other thing that McKillip does so well is to mix these supernatural elements with the daily ordinary, so that it all becomes entirely too possible. It’s possible to fall into an other world and think it a dream. It’s possible to find odd marks on the grassfloor and think it the pawprints of a magical creature. It’s possible to lose your way in the forest and call it sleepwalking. You will never know the whole answer, and it will keep you wondering long after the riddle is forgotten.
That’s McKillip for you.
The wood darkened; the winds poured from every direction, not wintry yet, still carrying scents of ripe apple, blackberry, warm earth. But they sang of storm and bare branches and cold, shriveled days. They were the harvest winds; they came to carry away the dying, sweep the earth for the dead. I had never heard them so clearly before; they seemed to have their separate voices, each wind its separate shape. I huddled in the leaves beside the well, watching the world darken, the moon rise slowly above the trees, leaves flying like flocks of birds across it.
Books 1 & 2: Goblin Moon / Hobgoblin Night by Teresa Edgerton
Genres / Tropes: 18th Century Alternative History, Fantasy, Alchemy, Search for Atlantis and Philosopher’s Stone, Zorro-like Vigilantes
Published: 1991 / 2015
Similar Books: Sorcery & Cecilia by Caroline Stevermer and Patricia Wrede, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke, Books by Georgette Heyer, Half a Soul by Olivia Atwater, The Death of the Necromancer by Martha Wells, The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens, The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy
Rating: 10 of 10. Highly Recommended.
The Plot:
Two alchemists try to raise a dead magician who may know how to make the Seramarias Stone. Two women try to flee a vengeful fairie halfling and her troll minions. A secret glassmakers guild plans to raise a submerged Atlantis-like island. A half-mad, sleepdust-addicted Zorro-like vigilante risks all to expose black magic cartels and the slavers’ trade. And no one can make sense of the homunculus and the golem out in the world. Clearly, a lot happens!
This is the final month for the Japanese Literature Reading Challenge, so I really had to hurry up with this one. I had two main recommendations for this month: Once and Forever: The Tales of Kenji Miyazawa, and an anthology of Japanese Haiku poetry compiled by Yamamoto and Addiss. And although not “literature”, also the superbly mind-bending scifi anime, Paprika.
Tamsyn Muir is better known for her Gideon the Ninth, winner of the 2020 for Best First Novel. Princess Floralinda & the Forty-Flight Tower is a novella in a very different universe, and is just absolutely wonderful.
A witch has locked up Princess Floralinda on the 40th floor of a tower. Floralinda now just has to sit there patiently till a prince comes along to rescue her. Except to do that, he has to battle out a monster on each of the 39 intervening floors, starting with the diamond-scaled dragon on Flight One. Floralinda agrees to wait.
And waits. And waits …
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The Lord of Dreams by C.J. Brightley
A human girl gets translocated to the Fae world for mysterious reasons. There, she meets the Nightmare King, who sets her a task to help rout the Unseelie invaders. Not an easy task! The rules of the Fae world are strange, and Claire has very little to guide her. Even the Nightmare King, once the Lord of Dreams, seems to oscillate between villainy and madness. Can Claire be the hero she always wanted to be, in The Lord of Dreams?
Six words to describe this book: gentle, folkloric, dream-like, odd, confusing, hypnotic.
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Echo North by Joanna Ruth Meyer
Echo North is the latest retelling of the East of the Sun and West of the Moon folk tale. To give it a new twist, Meyer has added in elements of Beauty & the Beast, and Tam Lin (one of my favorites).
Echo is forced to make a bargain with the White Wolf in order to save her dying father. As part of the bargain, she must live in a strange, magical house with the Wolf for one year. But Echo soon realizes that the Wolf is not a wolf (as you do) and to save him, she must challenge the wicked Queen of the woods.
Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by Jana over at That Artsy Reader Girl. Every Tuesday, you pick ten books on that week’s topic. And this week, we spotlight our favorite books of 2020.
This is a necessary ritual for wrapping up the year, and so here are my top ten reads for 2020.