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Title: In the Forests of Serre by Patricia A. McKillip ISBN: 0-441-01011-3 Publisher: Ace Books Pub. Date: 03 June, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.64 (11 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: "... where nothing is predictable."
Comment: Patricia McKillip has gained a reputation as one of the few truly original fantasy authors out there. With her exquisitely ethereal prose and haunting stories, she is on top form in "In the Forests of Serre." Princes, princesses, witches and wizards, firebirds and black jewels are all spun together by a master.
Prince Ronan of Serre lost his wife and child, and now he tries to die by going off to fight in wars for his tyrant father. When returning from a battle, he accidently kills a chicken belonging to the witch Brume; the old woman curses him, but Ronan doesn't take it seriously. Yet when he returns home, his father reveals that he's betrothed Ronan (the only heir) to Princess Sidonie of Dacia, a small but magical kingdom. While Ronan broods about this, he sees a beautiful firebird pass by the castle, and is enspelled by it.
Princess Sidonie is no happier about being married off in a barbaric land, but she has to marry Ronan to keep Dacia from being invaded. She travels to Serre with a wizard, and encounters Ronan wandering in the forest without knowing who he is. When she comes to Serre, she finds that her future husband has vanished -- Ronan is searching for the firebird, because he can't find his way home until he gives it to Brume. But things have become more complicated -- because a wizard has taken Ronan's identity...
Like all McKillip's books, this novel is deceptively simple and intriguingly written. She uses simple concepts (witch, wizards, scribe, prince, princess, firebird, a country's magic, and talking animals) and spins her unique prose around them. This is not a book for people who like all the usual elements used in the same old way.
McKillip's prose is detailed and lush, bringing to mind the best of medieval tapestries and Loreena McKennitt music; when Ronan is in the woods, McKillip describes moths clinging to him, and spiderwebs covering rips in his clothes. The dialogue is more flowing and natural than in some of her other books; the sentences are longer and less flowery. At the same time, her descriptions of things like transformation into a firebird are exquisite.
Ronan is a slightly less vivid character at the beginning, compared to his faded mother and half-nuts father; he becomes more interesting as he stops moping and starts obsessing on the firebird. Princess Sidonie is a likable heroine, not gung-ho but very interesting and determined. The wizard Gyre adds an element of mystery to the plot, while the witch Brume will creep you out.
Venture into "Forests of Serre," where "nothing is predictable." It's haunting, beautiful and magical, not just for fans of fantasy.
Rating: 5
Summary: The Firebird and the Crone
Comment: Reading "In the Forests of Serre" is like walking into someone else's dream. You enter a rich forest of metaphor, sometimes only partially glimpsed but always beautiful. A standard fairy-tale plot is overgrown with jeweled birds and foxes with little golden crowns--Kinuko Y. Craft's cover art is a perfect match for McKillip's writing--but the story's end might still come as a surprise.
The prince and princess both have some growing up to do through the labyrinthine course of the book. I picked the wrong villain, someone very like the villain in McKillip's "Song for a Basilisk" but who is redeemed in this book by his love for the kingdom of Serre.
Speaking of villains, see if you can guess whose heart was enclosed in a casket inside the ribcage of a dragon---you also need guess where it went after the wizards Gyre and Unciel opened the casket. Many hearts go missing throughout the story and not all of them are returned to their true owners.
The Baba Yaga-like witch, Brume and her walking hovel, and her chickens, and her stewpot full of human bones form a striking counterpoint to the beautiful firebird-woman who flies through the Forest of Serre and steals men's hearts with her song. Are either or both of them evil? Are they two faces of the same wild magic? McKillip doesn't give a direct answer to these questions (at least none that I could discern) so you'll have to decide for yourself as you read her story. Both Prince Ronan and Princess Sidonie have to face their own worst fears in Brume's hut, and they are different people when they finally emerge.
The firebird seems to enter and escape the Crone's hut at will--another of McKillip's symbols for death and rebirth, or change?
Incidentally, only the men in this story are seduced by the nameless firebird.
"In the Forests of Serre" is one of McKillip's loveliest and most mysterious fantasies. Even if you don't care for all of that la-de-da love-lost-and-found stuff, or for the book's dense symbolism, you might still enjoy the goings-on of the Wizard Unciel and his bumbling-but-honest scribe Euan Ash. None of this author's characters do quite what you expect of them.
I'm not even sure there was a villain.
Rating: 5
Summary: Fantastic fairy tale fabulation, with a Russianesque flavor
Comment: Never exactly borrowing her plot elements and characters from Russian and Slavic myth and legend (but oh! so closely sometimes!), McKillip is the absolute mistress of her literate, adult, and realistic style. There are the usual wonderful extended metaphors, the droll, yet humane humor, and the rich characterizations that pervade her growing oeurve. While readers would also enjoy the Adult Fairy Tale series, edited by Terri Windling, and the Fairy Tales for Adults anthologies from Windling and Datlow (to which I believe McKillip contributes), no other author does it as well at McKillip. Virtuoso reading!
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Title: Alphabet of Thorn by Patricia A. McKillip ISBN: 0441011306 Publisher: Ace Books Pub. Date: 03 February, 2004 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
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Title: The Changeling Sea by Patricia A. McKillip ISBN: 0141312629 Publisher: Puffin Books Pub. Date: 01 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $5.99 |
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Title: Ombria in Shadow by Patricia A. McKillip ISBN: 0441010164 Publisher: Ace Books Pub. Date: 04 February, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Sunshine by Robin McKinley ISBN: 0425191788 Publisher: Berkley Publishing Group Pub. Date: 30 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $23.95 |
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Title: The Tower at Stony Wood by Patricia A. McKillip ISBN: 0441008291 Publisher: Ace Books Pub. Date: 01 May, 2001 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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