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.”
