The Bards of Bone Plain

By -

I do think this is an awfully good title.  It just begs to be picked up and read!  This is only the second Patricia McKillip book I've read in my life (the other one was The Bell at Sealey Head), and I've liked both pretty well.  I do find the cover a bit amusing; a lot of McKillip books have this kind of cover and it's very pretty.  It's also a little much, though, and a bit ironic for this book given that the heroine spends all her time in working clothes.  It's sure pretty though!

Belden is a modernizing kingdom -- I imagine it rather Edwardian -- and the capital contains the ancient and prestigious bardic college.  It's also got an active archaeology program!  Phelan, a talented but unenthusiastic student, is about to graduate, but he has to write a final paper.  Beatrice, the youngest daughter of the king, is a very enthusiastic archaeology student under Phelan's talented but very eccentric father, Jonah.  A suspiciously charismatic bard shows up, and triggers a contest for the next royal bard...

Meanwhile, in alternating chapters, we go back in time to the earliest days of the bardic college and even earlier, to the runaway pig-keeper Nairn, who wants to learn all the music in the world -- but gets drafted into a war instead.  After the war, he tries to avoid the new college, but eventually ends up there, and a mysterious bard shows up and triggers a contest for the next royal bard...

The stories intertwine, and eventually Phelan and Beatrice, along with some friends, solve the mystery.  I was expecting something different, so that was fun.  I really enjoyed this one, and will be reading more McKillip.


Comments

Post a Comment

I'd love to know what you think, so please comment!

Popular posts from this blog

The Four Ages of Poetry

By -
Image
  "The Four Ages of Poetry," by Thomas Love Peacock I am becoming fond of Thomas Love Peacock.  Besides his unbeatable name, he was a lot of fun.  Peacock was a minor literary figure of the early 19th century; he tried his hand at poetry but mainly succeeded in satire.  I read his short novel Nightmare Abbey last year, but at the time I didn't know that the young hero of the story, Scythrop, was modeled on Peacock's good friend Percy Shelley.  He and Shelley were quite close and Peacock was the executor of Shelley's will. Thomas Love Peacock Percy Bysshe Shelley "The Four Ages of Poetry," a tongue-in-cheek essay on the history and development of poetry, was published in 1820 in a new magazine called Literary Miscellany , which promptly died.  It would probably have been completely obscure and unknown--it nearly is anyway--but for Shelley.  Peacock sent a copy to his friend, who I guess didn't really have much of a sense of...
Read more

A few short stories in Urdu

By -
Image
 Back in August, I got hold of a book of Urdu short stories translated into English.  It's a large book, so I wanted to read just the women authors for WIT, and that would still be a good amount.  August got away from me, and I only read one or two stories back then, but I've continued reading them since.  I've now finished all the short stories in the book that were written by women (luckily for me, there are short biographies in an appendix, since I could only tell from the name about half the time).  I'll just highlight a couple: "The Wagon," by Khalida Asghar, is a hallucinatory, apocalyptic story.  The narrator meets three strange men who are watching the evening sky and point out that it has become red.  No one had noticed until they said so, but the sky is now strangely red.  Then a smell arrives, so offensive and sickening that it causes real pain -- but only once it's pointed out.  And finally, a mysterious wagon, which may be the s...
Read more

Faerie Queen Readalong I: Redcrosse, the Knight of Holiness

By -
Image
I did it, I read all of Book I!  My minimum requirement was two cantos a day, but I managed three a couple of times.  I'm hoping to read ahead, because I'll be gone for two weeks in the middle of this event and I'd like to be able to prep a post ahead of time...but the schedule is already pretty demanding.  The reading is not terribly difficult, but it is slow.  I keep thinking that I've read a large chunk, only to look back and realize that in fact I have read six verses.  So here we go with analysis... Each book in the Faerie Queene features a knight, and a story, about a particular virtue.  The Redcrosse Knight, to be known as St. George after he accomplishes his feats, is all about Holinesse .  This does not mean that Redcrosse already exemplifies holiness; he doesn't.  Holiness is what he's working towards and struggling with.  His foes symbolize various forms of unholiness, and he falls into their clutches at least as often as he ...
Read more