Angharad, or "Harry" as she insists on being called, is a stranger in a land that is not as strange as it should be to her. Born and raised
in the green Homeland, she has come to live at Istan, on the border of the newly-claimed lands that were once the desert nation of Damar. Damar
itself still exists, but as a mere shadow of its former self. Still, there are stories of this land and the Damarian royalty, stories of the
strange kelar magic and its effects. Outsiders scoff, but soldiers posted in Istan often come to respect the kelar and the Damarians. Harry
quickly finds that she loves the harsh, sun-baked desert, more than a Homeland-raised girl should... but does her love hint at something deeper
than she suspects?
Corlath reigns over a dying kingdom, seemingly on the verge of extinction. The problem is not the stiff-backed, ignorant, and stubborn Outlanders
who have taken so much Damar land for their own. The true threat is the Northerners, the not-quite-human tribes beyond the northern mountains,
possessors of a demonic kin to his own kelar magic. The kelar itself is weaker in today's Damarians than it was hundreds of years ago, prone to
peculiar fits and starts, and it may not be enough to hold back the tide. On a failed diplomatic trip to the Outlander outpost to seek help against
the Northerners, he spies a strange girl, a girl his kelar insists should come with him into the desert.
Neither Harry nor Corlath know what lies ahead of them, but Harry discovers that the hands of Fate - and magic - are guiding them to a far greater
destiny, and the creation of a legend as grand as the Golden Age of Damar itself.
Review
There are many references to the adventures of Aerin (told in The Hero and the Crown), as a guiding force behind Harry's transformation
from Outlander curiosity to desert hero. Without giving away spoilers from the previous book, I can't go into detail, but I thought that something
important must've been left out somewhere. Aerin's ghostly appearances seemed to counter certain events in The Hero and the Crown. In any
event, Harry's adventures are fairly exciting, but for some reason I thought it fell short of the previous book.
Incidentally, I may have the publication order wrong; according to Amazon's numbering, The Blue Sword counts as Book 1, and The Hero and
the Crown was written as a prequel. The centuries between the stories mean it doesn't matter which one is read first.
Aerin, first sol and daughter of King Arlbeth, has never fit in to the kingdom of Damar. Tall, pale, and orange-haired among the darker-skinned
brunettes, child of an ill-rumored Northern witch rather than a proper noblewoman, showing no traces of the magical Gift that marks other Damarian
bluebloods, she seems destined to live life as an outcast. When she discovers a talent for slaying dragons, she starts to wonder if her destiny is
something far greater than the Damar throne she may never inherit.
Review
This book took a while to grab me. At first, between McKinley's writing style, a barrage of names and politics, and a prolonged flashback before I
had yet established just where I was to begin with, I was a bit lost in the story. By the second part, though, I'd regained my bearings, and was on a
memorable and exciting journey with Aerin. I still felt as though I'd come in halfway through on some aspects of the tale, but all in all it was a good
read.
In a faraway country where fairies and humans live side by side and the magic's so thick it falls as a chalky dust over the land, the king
and queen give birth to a long-awaited daughter. The princess's naming day is to be quite a spectacle: representatives from every community
in the land are invited to officially welcome the babe, and in honor of her twenty-one names, she will have twenty-one fairy godparents, who
are each to bestow a magical gift. But an old rival of the royal family, the dark fairy Pernicia, determines the occasion fit to exact dark
revenge. She places a curse upon the girl's head: by her twenty-first birthday, she shall prick her finger upon the spindle of a spinning
wheel and die. The king and queen order all spinning wheel spindles to be blunted, but, in a land so steeped in magic, a fairy curse won't be
so easily thwarted.
Katriona hails from a small villiage in the swampy section of the kingdom called the Gig, a place where the magic dust falls a bit thicker and
the fairies are a bit more plentiful than in the rest of the land. A young fairy whose own powers haven't awakened yet, she was as surprised as
anyone to be chosen to travel to the royal naming-day ceremony. Once there, she inadvertently finds herself directly involved the the struggle
to save the princess from her cursed fate: Katriona somehow pierces the dark fairy's magical barriers and, with a seemingly meaningless gift of
her own, finds herself bound to carry off and hide the royal child. In the Gig, the girl she calls Rosie will have quite an unprincessly
upbringing, but - for a time - her obscurity should render her safe. As the days tick closer to her fateful birthday, however, the truth about
her heritage and possible fate cannot remain hidden for long, from Rosie or the kingdom... or the ever-waiting, ever-hateful Pernicia.
Review
Obviously a retelling of the fairy tale Sleeping Beauty, this should've been a Good book. Rosie makes a likeable heroine, her animal
friends are decently realized characters and (usually) not just cheap plot tricks, and if Katriona wasn't always the most intelligent guardian...
well, nobody's perfect, even in fairy tales. And a land where magic is so thick it dusts the shelves, where outbreaks of "baby magic" among infants
mean many children must be temporarily fostered out until they can no longer conjure phantom tigers or turn themselves into animals or plants or
something hideously else... how can a setting like that be boring? By spending half the page count on irrelevant tangents, backstories, and
sidetracks, evidently. The plot suffers under the extra weight, being little more than a vague, misty path through a great bog. I found myself
struggling to push forward until nearly the final fifth of the book. By then, I suppose McKinley had told all the side-tales she'd wanted to tell;
the climax moves at a fair clip, and it almost made up for the previous tedium. Almost. In the end, the earlier slog proved too much of an obstacle
to overcome in pursuit of the fourth star in the ratings.
