REVIEW: HARPIST IN THE WIND

I finally found time to finish re-reading the last book in Patricia A. McKillip's "Hed trilogy," the first two parts having been reviewed here and here. 

I'm sure that I could have found time before this, of course, given that almost a year has passed-- that is, if I really wanted to.  But time and time again, I found myself not wanting to return to McKillip's fantasy-world, which as I noted before, was too often marred by soundalike characters and tedious journeys that had all the thrills of watching someone else's home movies.

HARPIST, though, is a little better, and may be the principal reason I remembered liking the trilogy from my initial reading over 20 years ago.  The first book is devoted to setting up the hero Morgon, and the second to establishing his intended consort Raederle. Both of them encounter various supporting characters, but none of them proved memorable, and so they accomplished little beyond marking time.  However, HARPIST for the most part deals with both the passion and the tensions between the two nobles, and for that reason is much more successful than the first parts.

There's still a major problem in that the motivations of the villains-- a wizard with a long Welsh-inspired name that I choose not to type out, and a race of shapechanging creatures-- are inadequately clarified.  But in the battles of Morgon and Raederle, McKillip finally plays to her strengths: the invocation of wild faerie magics.  Tanith Lee she's not, but she has some fine moments:

The sun came out abruptly for a few moments before it drifted into night. Light glanced across the land, out of silver veins of rivers, and lakes dropped like small coin on the green earth.

For charity's sake I'll assume a typesetting error turned "coins" into "coin."

So, thanks to some strong passages in the third book, the re-read was not entirely a waste of time.  But for some time it did seem like the road to McKillip's world went ever on, and on, and on...

REVIEW: HEIR OF SEA AND FIRE

In my review of Patricia McKillip's THE RIDDLE MASTER OF HED, I wrote:

RIDDLE-MASTER is a solid effort, though on many occasions it feels too transparently like what it is, a setup-novel for the next two parts—which, my memory tells me, read much better. 

I finally slogged my way through the middle book in McKillip's trilogy, and by my choice of words it should be apparent that I didn't get a sense that the "middle book" read better than the first part.

Where the first book left off by stranding protagonist Morgon in the midst of a moderately interesting supernatural mystery, the second proceeds to keep Morgon off stage for most of the story, focusing instead on his betrothed, a woman named Raederle.  Raederle ('readerly," as in "reading riddles"?)  is frequently mentioned in RIDDLE MASTER, but never appears "on stage."  She spends most of the novel searching for Morgon and trying to learn more about the conspiracy in which he's become involved.

The most ennervating aspect of HEIR is that it communicates little beyond a sense of marking time.  Raederle is potentially a good character, but her quest to find Morgon is dull, dull, dull, too often filling up time with long scenes of how the heroine and her allies get from one place to another.  There are a few bright spots as Raederle attempts to come to terms with her burgeoning magical talents-- which she inherits from a race of wizardly shapechangers, more or less her opponents in the story.  Occasionally McKillip's poetic talents blossom, but all too often, she goes for the easy simile or metaphor.

What hurts the travel-sequences most is that old writer's enemy: the Curse of Character Sound-Alike. I've struggled with this problem not a little myself.  Still, I don't think most of McKillip's supporting characters were worked out to give them strong enough personalities.  Thus even those characters with very different backgrounds from the heroine's fail to be distinct in any other way.

Since I probably read the trilogy round about the early 1980s, my negative reaction may show a change in my own tastes regarding writing styles and characterizations.  Be that as it may, I almost don't want to reread the final book, despite my good memories of it.  But I'll probably do so, if only to reach a sense of completion on this subject.

REVIEW: THE RIDDLE-MASTER OF HED

I read Patricia McKillip’s 1976 “Hed” trilogy over twenty years ago, but my memory was basically favorable, though I didn’t recall esteeming the trilogy as highly as her 1974 stand-alone novel “The Forgotten Beasts of Eld.”  So I gave the first novel in the trilogy a re-read.

I give McKillip points for trying to find a novel approach to the “reluctant hero,” which, within the genre of modern fantasy, is practically defined by Tolkien’s Frodo.  Like Frodo McKillip’s hero Morgon lives in a quiet, bucolic territory bordered by more bellicose realms. In part Morgon wants to do no more than live out his life farming and keeping pigs.  But in Morgon McKillip paints a man at odds with his own conscious tendencies—and with a destiny signified by a unique birthmark: three star-shapes on his forehead.  Later in life, he enrolls in a college of riddle-masters, whose purpose is to decipher all of the ancient riddles left behind by the long-vanished wizards of their world.  Finally, following the death of his parents at sea, he leaves his rulership in the quiet kingdom of Hed and enters a haunted tower, where he challenges a ghost to a riddle-contest and wins.  Morgon conceals his great deed and hides his prize under his bed in a doomed effort to return to mundanity.  A visit from the harpist of the reigning High One provides a call to action, forcing Morgon to embark upon a quest to solve further riddles.

RIDDLE-MASTER is a solid effort, though on many occasions it feels too transparently like what it is, a setup-novel for the next two parts—which, my memory tells me, read much better.  McKillip creates some tantalizing mysteries but sometimes plays a little too coy in fleshing out the details of her world.  Sometimes “infodump” in a fantasy can be a good thing, at least when the alternative is leaving the reader floundering about, trying to figure out the histories of the various war-embroiled countries.  McKillip seems determined to avoid challenging Tolkien on these terms, seeking instead to focus on mundane, common activities.  Perhaps under different circumstances, her aim might have been realized.  However, you know you’re in trouble when Morgon learns shapechanging magic from two different masters of the art, and both characters sound roughly the same.

It’s my memory that she does better with her characterization in the latter two segments of the trilogy.  Time, and future reviews, will tell.