Lirael
Lirael is a Clayr without The Sight. She can’t see into the future. The Clayr are a people of ‘Seers’ who live under a glacier far to the north. Basically near the North Pole, it seems. Lirael is an outsider among them. When she’s grown up, and still hasn’t had her ‘Sight’, she finds work in the great library.
The library is an enormous place, filled with locked rooms and chambers that aren’t safe to go into. It’s been created over generations and not every librarian even remembers every single room in it, or the safeguards placed on their doors.
Here is an example of how huge and dangerous the place is: when Lirael first begins to work in the library, she’s given a whistle, so she can call for help if she needs to.
Quite soon after beginning her work there, Lirael finds a small figurine of a dog. It has the unusual characteristic of being able to come alive – at full dog size. The dog tells Lirael her name is ‘the Disreputable Dog’.
She becomes Lirael’s only friend, and helps her explore the vast library, after hours. That part of the book is sort of an adventure of its own.
Then one day, Lirael learns her true destiny. Not until then does the reader find out her connection to Sabriel.
Lirael has to leave her home and travel far away to help stop a great evil from spreading. There she finally finds out what her true calling is.
Her quest takes her beyond the boundaries of life itself.
This story is very dark and frightening. You’ll encounter many ‘living dead’ and several of the characters are in grave danger.
Like the first book in the series about Sabriel, Lirael is very well written, exciting and scary. I immediately liked Lirael and to some extent identified with her. I haven’t found my place in life either. Not that I think I’ll ever find my ‘destiny’, like Lirael did, but it makes it easier to understand her situation, despite the obvious differences.
I liked the mysterious and even ominous library and most of all ‘the Disreputable Dog’. A very good companion for such a dangerous quest.
If you liked Sabriel, I’m sure you’ll like Lirael too.
Sabriel
I’m really glad I discovered the book Sabriel by the Australian author Garth Nix. After I’d read that, there was a sequel – Lirael and by then I was keeping my fingers crossed the next book in the trilogy would be out soon. I don’t remember how long I had to wait, but it wasn’t too long, I think.
All three books are fantastic. Well written, imaginative and filled with detail. I especially love the maps and the culture. The world Sabriel comes from is credible and even in a way realistic.
I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this before, but I’m beginning to get a little tired of the typical ‘sword and sorcery’ fake-medieval setting in fantasy stories. That doesn’t mean I can’t be hooked by an exceptionally well written story if it happens to be like that.
It’s just that if there is another well written story with a kind of late 18, early 19 century setting, I generally prefer it. I also like 20th and 21th century settings in fantasy books. Some of those might come across as a sort of mix between science fiction and fantasy. Normally I’m not too keen on modern SF, but this sort of thing usually works for me.
Back to Sabriel. In the first book, she’s a young girl, who’s still at boarding school – boarding school, because her father is the Abhorsen – a sort of good necromancer – in any case a man with strong magical powers. He lives in a sort of magic world that – literally – exists next to the ‘modern’ world – in this case a sort of early 20th century one. When I say literally, I mean that there’s a border – a real border – you can cross to enter the world of magic. The borderland between modern and magic is sort of special.
Technology doesn’t work very well, so the soldiers watching the border can’t use their rifles there. Instead they use bayonets and other blades. Depending on how the wind blows, strange, dangerous creatures can cross into the ‘modern’ world and the soldiers are there to prevent them from doing so.
Sabriel herself has entered the kingdom of the dead learning necromancy from her father. At least she’s gone beyond the first gates. Further on, it gets trickier. She can – in theory – wake the dead or at least call back their spirits, but she’s not supposed to do that. It’s too dangerous.
Still, when a rabbit belonging to a little girl from Sabriel’s school, is hit by a car, Sabriel can’t resist bringing it back. No danger follows on that, but soon enough danger seeks out Sabriel anyway.
She’s studying ‘ordinary’ magic at her school, which isn’t too far from the border. Her teacher is called ‘magistrix’ which to me sounds like a cool title. Only the older girls are allowed to take magic, but naturally, Sabriel is already skilled in various types of magic.
When danger comes to seek her out, she has to return beyond the border and try to stop the evil that has crossed over from another dimension. A strange cat creature helps her. It’s really a demon that’s been trapped by an earlier Abhorsen. He’s quite reluctant to help, but is bound to obey the Abhorsen or the Abhorsen-in-training.
There are plenty of ‘undead’ – something that I’m not too keen on – a mysterious sleeping person, swords and bells and all kinds of magic in this story. I won’t tell you too many details about the actual plot, but it’s certainly not for very young children. Certain parts of the story scared me and I was relatively grown up when I read it.
Sabriel is a heroine to my taste. She’s tough, but not cruel and she has integrity. It’s clear that she’s made of the ‘right stuff’ to succeed her father when that day comes.
If you think you’d like a slightly different fantasy world, go on. Read Sabriel. If you like the first book, I’m sure you’ll like the two sequels.
Eccentric Circles by Rebecca Lickiss
The fantasy book Eccentric Circles is one I can really recommend. The author – Rebecca Lickiss – is relatively new. I only know of one other book by her. It’s called Never After. They’re both fun, interesting and well written, but I think Eccentric Circles is a little better.
That might be because it’s about a girl who has a bit in common with me. Not the funny, but totally weird hippie family, but her situation in general. She’s a single girl, who is also an unpublished writer. Unfortunately, that’s where the likeness ends. Or maybe I shouldn’t saying unfortunately. All kinds of things happen to her that I wouldn’t want happening in my life.
At the beginning of the book, her great-grandmother (I think it’s the greatgreandmother, but when I reread the book, I got the impression it was her grandmother, but I think she’s three generations older, she was over a hundred years old). Piper (that’s the name of the main character) inherits her relative’s house, because she’s so good at books…
Her job will be to clean out the house and categorize all the books her older relative has collected. While doing that, her wacky family, who is driving her crazy – personally I don’t get why, they seem like a lot of fun – get her a job in a bookstore. Lucky girl!
While she’s getting the house in order, she finds out a few odd things about it. For one, there’s far more space behind the house than there should be, more specifically the world of Faerie. She also meets an incredibly gorgeous elf – who’s a bard or something – he calls himself a wordsmith. There’s also a genuine dwarf, who has his own cave where he mines jems and a grumpy old wizard, who lives in a tower, and several really irritating pixies who fly around playing tricks on people, sometimes quite nasty ones.
Soon Piper learns that her grandmother (or greatgrandmother) was murdered and she has to find out who did it. But the plot is a bit more complex than that. Besides the murder, it’s about how our literature affects and changes Faerie.
One example is that an elf used to be considered a little goblin, who could be found squatting on a toadstool. After Tolkien monumental work, the elves are now considered to be tall, beautiful and poetic.
This is quite a unique concept in fantasy literature.
In any case, Piper falls in love with Aelveron (the sexy elf) but isn’t sure if she can trust him. After a while, she uncovers clues that seem to indicate he seduced and murdered her greatgrandmother. To make things even more confusing, Piper also finds clues that point to other Faerie creatures. On top of that, the pixies keept terrorizing her and as always, her family irritates her enormously.
For instance, it seems that while I (and most readers, I assume) find it amusing, it drives her crazy that her family accepts Aelveron without any surprise. When Piper protests a family member points out that at least he has more reason than most to believe himself to be an elf – he looks like one. Piper’s younger brother hisses that she has to keep that hot guy far away from his girlfriend.
In the end, Piper solves the murder, saves Faerie and her own world and manages to exorcise her grandmother’s ghost. Not bad for an unemployed writer! And after all that, she still has access to Faerie through her own backyard, and her job in the bookstore.
Read the book, you’ll like it. It’s funny, exciting, interesting and romantic.
The Invisible Ring by Anne Bishop
Here’s the next book in my series about my favorite books. The Invisible Ring by Anne Bishop. It’s set in a world the author has written about before, in a series of books. I haven’t read them yet, for various reasons. This book that isn’t part of the series is well worth reading.’
The world it’s set in, comes across as pretty dark. There are two ‘species’ of people. Blood – that lives for a very long time, at least several centuries – and ‘ordinary’ people. If I understood the book correctly, both types can have magical powers.
There’s a whole interesting ‘mythology’ – or something – about this world. A young woman needs to have something called a virgin night – when she loses her virginity to a more experienced man, who preferably should be of a higher magical level than she is. It helps him ‘hold her back’ somehow. That might sound a bit anti-feminist, but actually it isn’t. After her virgin night, the young woman has achieved her true adult magical level, usually higher than the man who helped her.
If this man, who’s supposed to help a young woman, makes a mistake and fails to hold her back properly, she might end up being ‘broken’. Her entire life is ruined and her magical powers are weakened. This might be done purposely by ruthless men.
Those with magical powers have a sort of ‘inventory’ – a way to carry around things invisibly – something that computer game players will recognize.
The book starts out with a young man being sold as a slave at an auction. It’s supposed to be a sort of punishment for him. Ten years ago, he was trapped by an evil, but sexy woman and turned into a pleasure slave – a sort of sex slave. She put a ring on him (guess where…), which forced him to obey her.
Finally, he had enough of the humiliation his owner and her lover put him through and he killed them. That means he’s about to be sold to a new owner.
He’s bought by a notorious witch, who buys up slaves and takes them through the wilderness back to her own land. All those slaves then vanish without a trace and it’s assumed they are killed in some gruesome way. As soon as she pickes out the main character, she removes his slave ring, which is capaple of inflicting horrible pain, and replaces it with another one, this time invisible. That’s the ring from the title.
But the witch is neither the person he thinks she is, or evil. There is however another witch, who definitely is evil. She’s got a pleasure slave of her own, who is Blood, which means he lives for a very long time. He’s called the Sadist, because he hates women (aristocratic women, like his owner, not servants and other slaves). Actually, he’s a healer – some sort of doctor. He too wears a slave ring, in the same place the main character does. His owner is the enemy of the other characters and she chases after them throughout the whole book.
This other pleasure slave comes into the plot a little later, but from the start you know that he and the main character know each other. The one who’s Blood has trained the other guy, so that he’d be able to put up with the life of a pleasure slave.
The witch who has bought the pleasure slave, has bought other slaves too and they all set out together to get to her country, through the dangerous wilderness. Throughout this journey, the main characters find out many things. Among other things, he falls in love with the witch, who isn’t as old as he thought she was. Apparently, witches can disguise themselves to look younger and more beautiful.
Like I mentioned earlier, she’s not evil at all. She just wants to save as many slaves and animals as possible.
If you’ve read my blog before, you’ll see that I like this world a lot, even though it can be a bit dark. I won’t go into what happens next, but there are many dangers threatening the main characters on their way through the wilderness.
This is an interesting, but at times, quite gruesome book, with many memorable characters. Read it, but only if you like this type of fantasy. If you like the same old type of story, with girls being raped and enslaved, you might as well forget it.
Ursula Le Guin 2
I thought I’d get round to commenting on Ursula LeGuin’s other three books in the Earthsea series. For years no one thought that there would be any more. The Farthest Shore seemed to end the way you’d expect a ‘final book’ in a series would end. No particular loose ends left.
Still, many years later suddenly there was another book in the series – Tehanu. That time around, it was supposed to be the very last book in the series. In this book, as I mentioned before, the question of the women’s position in Earthsea society is addressed in more detail.
Tenar from The Tombs of Atuan appears in this book again. Now she’s older and as a widow she’s more or less invisible. She is thrown out of her house by her son who returns unexpectedly after many years of absence at sea. An old wizard has left her his house so she moves there to live on her own.
She’s learned from this wizard so she’s quite a good healer and one day she’s called out to see to a little girl who’s been badly burnt. It turns out she’s also been sexually assaulted and abandoned by her family. Actually, the men who assaulted her seem to have been members of her family, but really, her origins are quite different.
Tehanu – the little girl – survives and stays with Tenar, but is very shy and quiet.
I realize that I don’t remember the whole story very well. It’s been a while since I last read it. I do know that Tenar is cursed and so is Ged, who comes to live with her, after he’s lost his powers. Unfortunately, that means he can’t help Tenar.
Help comes from an unexpected source. In the end, Tenar and Ged learn about Tehanu’s true nature.
The next book – Tales from Earthsea – is a collection of stories, as the name implies. One story is longer than the others and it’s about a girl who wants to break the male monopoly for studies in magic. She’s not allowed to, but by then, everything in the world seems to have changed drastically. You get the impression more is to come. A major revolution.
That’s what you get in the very last book – The Other Wind. There you get an explanation of where the dragons went – though there were at least some when Ged became a Dragon Master, meaning someone the dragons will talk to.
As I mentioned before, Ged’s culture is based on magic – other cultures may be too, in Earthsea, but theirs is special in one important way. It’s connected to their gruesome afterlife. A long time ago, a pact was made, but now that isn’t working anymore. Besides, who would want to face that sort of afterlife?
I’m not going to get into many details about this book. Read it yourself. What I can tell you is that this one is even darker and more ‘grownup’ than the other books put together, with the exception of Tehanu. I can’t imagine reading that at the age of 11 or so. Six-year-old girls raped because they’re different… It’s the stuff that nightmares are made of, and this book is pretty nightmarish too.
Like I mentioned before, even Ged is afraid of the afterlife. This time, he doesn’t have any hopes of getting out alive or even with his soul intact.
I can tell you that I hate books with unhappy endings and I can recommend this book, so draw your own conclusions. 🙂
Normally, when a series gets to be long – more than three or four books – I tend to be very suspicious. Fortunately, my fears were not realized. I definitely don’t regret reading this series of books, and I know I will keep re-reading it over the years. Anyone who likes well written fantasy should be able to appreciate the Earthsea series.
Just a word of warning. As I’ve mentioned a few times, some of the books are really dark and tragic. Despite that, I wouldn’t say they’re depressing.
I couldn’t stop reading, because I cared so much about Ged and Tenar and Tehanu and wanted to know what happened to them. Ursula LeGuin can be very happy about her achievement. I know I would be if it had been me. If you haven’t read these books yet, you have something to look forward to. Go on. I envy you. 🙂
Ursula Le Guin
One summer when I was a child, I was on the Swedish island Öland, in the Baltic sea. Being the voracious reader that I’ve always been and still am, I had to go to a library. It was a small library in a very small place, and it probably doesn’t exist anymore. In any case, there was a man, who might have been a librarian, or a teacher and he began to ask me about what books I usually liked to read. I told him, then he walked across to one of the bookshelves and picked out a few books.
They were part of the Earthsea trilogy (now there are a few more books in the series). It was almost like magic. That man had found books that suited me perfectly.
Soon, I bought the whole trilogy. I just had to own the books myself and I also wanted to read the first one, which must have been missing that day in the library.
Ursula LeGuin has created a fascinating world. She must have put a lot of work into it, because the whole world is so evolved.It’s easy to visualize the different islands with their diverse cultures.
The first book, A Wizard of Earthsea, is about a little goatherding boy, Ged, whose mother died when he was very young. Ged turns out to have a talent for magic and ends up helping the village witch. One day, enemies attack Ged’s island and with a mixture of cunning and a little magic he manages to save his village. This eventually leads to his being sent away to become the apprentice of a wizard.
There Ged meets a girl, who he tries to impress, and so ends up in trouble. The wizard he was apprenticed to sends him to Roke, the School of Magic. But the shadow Ged has released follows him everywhere. The rest of the book is about how Ged finally manages to ban the evil he set free, in his youthful folly.
The second book, The Tombs of Atuan, is about a young nameless priestess. She serves some nameless gods and leads a dull and somewhat frightening life. One day a man shows up. Until now, she’s only encountered eunuchs and seen the King’s warriors from afar. The priestess is immediately drawn to the stranger who has dared to penetrate into their sanctum.
She’s supposed to kill him, but finds herself reluctant to do so. Instead, she can’t resist going to see him and talk to him, though that’s the last thing she should do. Arha – the Eaten one – can’t forget him and eventually, it leads to a major change in her life. Ged – because it’s Ged who has shown up again, now as the Arch Mage of Roke – gives her back her name and takes her away from the Tombs where she’s spent all her life, at least as much as she can remember.
Ged was on a quest and he was able to conclude it sucessfully., while helping Tenar – the former Eaten One.
You get the impression Tenar has fallen in love with Ged, but a wizard has to be celibate, so he leaves her. She ends up in a relatively good situation, but overall women don’t count for much in Earthsea.
The third book, The Farthest Shore, is more mature and considerably darker. The magic is beginning to run out, in Earthsea. Since everything is based on magic, nothing else works very well in their society. Ged is accompanied by a young prince, who’s trying to save his realm. It doesn’t take very long for Ged to realize that what is happening, isn’t an accident. Someone’s caused the crisis. The trail leads him all the way into death. It’s a horrifying world, where mothers don’t care about their children and everything is barren and dusty. An endless torment. Even a wizard fears death.
Since there will be more books in the series, you might be able to guess that Ged somehow survives. He doesn’t escape unscathed though. At the end of it all, his hair is grey and he’s lost all his powers. The young prince emerges as a new kind of ruler – the Mage King.
Ged is taken unconscious, to Tenar’s home. By now, she’s been married and had children and is now a widow. Since Ged’s lost his powers, he’s allowed to love a woman.
I’ll comment on the rest of the books in the series later.
If you like evolved fantasy worlds with an entire mythology and history and – an important detail – maps, I think you’ll appreciate Ursula LeGuin’s Earthsea series. The characters are memorable and easy to like.
The first book, A Wizard of Earthsea, is in many ways more of a book for children than the others.
The second book, The Tombs of Atuan, is among other things, a love story, very romantic and sad, but if you don’t like that, you’ll find many different layers to the story.
The third book is more grownup and, as I mentioned before, dark. Here, the fear of death is a constant subtext. You begin to understand what’s waiting for Ged and everyone else – but not Tenar – she’s from another culture, and for some reason it means she doesn’t have to fear the bitter afterlife.
It’s easy to get swept up in this world and be fascinated by the islands with their varied cultures. There’s even a people who live their entire lives on the open sea. It’s all described skillfully and vividly by LeGuin.
Perhaps I should mention something I see as negative.The entire world is rather mysgynist – a patriarchal world. Everything of value is owned by men. Women hardly count, except as bearers of heirs and as an unpaid workforce. To begin with the author doesn’t remark on this in any way. You get the impression that she takes it for granted. Perhaps it isn’t too surprising. She was born in the 1920’s.
Later in the series, it seems as if that problem’s caught her attention. You get some insight into the situation, from Tenar’s point of view and in a way, some comments on it. There will be more in the books I’ll go into later on.
This series of books belongs to my very favorites, so I can really recommend it. I hope you’re going to enjoy it as much as I have and as much as i still do.
