Tag: folklore

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Books Starred Recommendations

The Throme of the Erril of Sherill

Book: The Throme of the Erril of Sherill by Patricia A. McKillip
Published: 1973
Tropes: Short Story/ Novella, Knight quests, Riddles, Puns, Folktales
Readalikes: Alice in Wonderland, The Girl who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, Edward Lear

The mad King Magnus sends his knight Caerles on a quest, to look for the Throme of the Erril of Sherill. (A tongue twister, if ever there was one — and it’s not a throne, by the way). If Caerles succeeds, he gets to marry the king’s daughter, who has been locked up in the castle and has never ever laughed. The problem is: the Throme doesn’t exist. Or does it?

“You are cruel and loveless, you and your wanting.”
“I know,” Magnus Thrall whispered. “I know. The Throme is my hope. Find it for me, Caerles.”

It seems like a wild goose chase from the beginning. And poor Caerles seems to be the only sane person in the book. I was chuckling at all his dry witticisms throughout.

“… I do not know what use it is to hurry when I do not know where I am going, and when there will be nothing to find when I get there.”

The whole novella is actually poetry in the form of prose. Does that make sense? Seriously, I’m in awe of McKillip. To pack such a riddle in such lovely words, and to then blend it with humor and pun and brilliant character sketches? This was beautiful. Mesmerizing.

“The house of the King was a tall thing of great, thick stones and high towers and tiny slits of windows that gleamed at night when the King paced his hearth stones longing for the Throme. He had a daughter who sat with him and wept and embroidered pictures of the green world beyond the walls, and listened to her father think aloud to the pale sunlight or the wisps of candle-flame.”

Rating: 10 of 10. Highly recommended.

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Books Memes

If You Like: Kitsune Lore

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. This week, a very interesting theme: Books I Loved that Made Me Want More Books Like Them. So here we are, talking about some kitsune lore.

Once upon a time, I used to be obsessed with this trope — all thanks to the gorgeous Japanese anime show Kamisama Hajimemashita (lit: I Became a God), based on a manga of the same name. Unfortunately, while werewolves and dragons are all too common, the sly Fox doesn’t get much mention.

Kamisama Tomoe

I’m cheating here because I am taking these from an older post, but it’s such a fun topic!

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Books Recommendations

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.

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Art & Illustration Books Music & Poetry Starred Recommendations Watchlist

More Japanese Recs: Folklore, Haiku & Anime

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.

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Books Recommendations

Review: Thorn by Intisar Khanani

Thorn

Book: Thorn (Dauntless Path Book 1)
Author: Intisar Khanani
Published: March 2020
Trope: Goose Girl Retelling, Identity Theft with a Twist
Rating: 8 of 10 / Recommended

Thorn has been getting a lot of blogger attention lately, even though released much earlier. When I realized it was a cozy Goose Girl retelling, I knew I had to give it a try. I liked it exceedingly, but Thorn also turned out to be quite unusual.

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Books

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.

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Art & Illustration Books

Tam Lin by Jane Yolen & its Splendid Artwork

O I forbid you, maidens a’
That wear gold in your hair,
To come or go by Carterhaugh
For young Tam Lin is there.
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Books Recommendations

Shadow Spinner by Susan Fletcher: Book Review

  • Shadow Spinner by Susan Fletcher

To fully appreciate the wisdom of Shadow Spinner by Susan Fletcher, we need to first begin with the history of The Thousand and One Nights.

We know that the stories of The Thousand and One Nights are set in the Middle Ages of the Persian Empire. But these were actually compiled over several centuries, in multiple countries and languages. When the Arab Traders of 8th Century travelled worldwide, they carried these tales with them – thus, also called The Arabian Nights.

Essentially, we are talking about stories that are more than 1300 old! And all of them told over a span of 1001 nights by the wily Shahrazad to pacify the Sultan. Here is a woman who with her spine of steel and love for the written word managed to change the course of (fictional) history.

But what was Shahrazad really like? How did she survive so long, married to a mad man, desperate and afraid every day whether she would live to see the next day, and the next, for almost 3 years? We get to know this side of Shahrazad, in Shadow Spinner.

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Long Posts

Vulpes Vulpes. The Fox as Motif in Folklore, Literature, Culture. [Long Post]

The Sly Red Fox
"Cold, delicately as the dark snow,
A fox’s nose touches twig, leaf;
Two eyes serve a movement, that now
And again now, and now, and now
Sets neat prints into the snow … "
~ "The Thought Fox" by Ted Hughes

Is there a creature more cunning than the sly Fox? If we go by Slavic folklore, the Fox would have hoodwinked you many times over before you even got to say, “Wait a minute … ” Swift-footed and stealthy, the Fox never claimed it had a heart of gold to match its fur.

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