#Patricia A. Mckillip

[petaltexturedskies]

I did not want to think about people. I wanted the trees, the scents and colors, the shifting shadows of the wood, which spoke a language I understood. I wished I could simply disappear in it, live like a bird or a fox through the winter, and leave the things I had glimpsed to resolve themselves without me.

Patricia A. McKillip, Winter Rose

[stingrayextraordinaire]

Literature Moodboards // Alphabet of Thorn by Patricia A. McKillip

I stand between the place you look at and the place you see. Behind what you expect to see. If you expect to see me, you do. I listen in places where no one expects me to be.

[bookcoversonly]

Title: Ombria in Shadow | Author: Patricia A. McKillip | Publisher: Ace (2003)

[the-hearth-and-the-wild]

You can weave your life so long — only so long…and then a thing in the world out of your control will tug at one vital thread and leave you patternless and subdued.

Patricia A. McKillip, The Forgotten Beasts of Eld

[haveyoureadthisfantasybook]

vote yes if you have finished the entire book.

vote no if you have not finished the entire book.

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[70sscifiart]

Kinuko Y. Craft’s 1985 cover to Patricia A. McKillip's Moon-Flash

[smalltownfae]

[ninevehsage]

[amaranth-devi1]

I am night. I am winter’s song. I am the shadow of the bloody moon and all the winds that harvest in it. I am the dead of winter.

— Patricia A. McKillip, Winter Rose

[pocketwish]

"You raven-eyed hag, some bitter bird ate your heart out so long ago you don’t even remember how to be human. I may be a fool-headed limpet with nothing left to cling to and about to be done to death for my shoes, but if I hear you’ve set your bleak eyes at harming Kyel Greve, I’ll come shoeless out of my grave to put you in my place, you ugly foul mausoleum."

— Patricia A. McKillip, Ombria in Shadow (2002),

[sixofravens-reads]

Next read!

Since I'm going to my local comic expo next week, and am of course bringing a book, I decided to read a smaller mass-market paperback that's easy to carry around. I might finish this before the expo, which means choosing another small book, but that's all right because I have quite a stockpile of them on my TBR.

[stingrayextraordinaire]

Literature Moodboards // The Changeling Sea by Patricia A. McKillip

What must I do? I belong to the sea and it will not let me in, and I cannot bear this land and it will not let me go.

[very-grownup]

Book 15, 2024

There's something about an older paperback fantasy trilogy that can feel so ballsy when considering the current state of fantasy publishing, although maybe the main thing is how they can easily fit into a jacket pocket.

Patricia A. McKillip's "The Riddle-Master of Hed" is fascinating in the reminder of what a lie the gritty adultification of the fantasy genre is (we all know the direction I am looking in).

One of those loosely Celtic fantasies, "The Riddle-Master of Hed" is much like the later works of McKillip's that I've read in that McKillip has no interest in infodumping or taking the time to explain the world to the reader. Pick it up from context clues, you're here for a /story/. Let the first line of the wikipedia plot summary act as an example:

"The titular Riddle-Master is Morgon, the Prince of Hed, a small, simple island populated by farmers and swineherds. The prince, inexplicably, has three stars on his forehead."

What's a Riddle-Master? OBVIOUSLY IT IS SOMEONE WHO IS REALLY GOOD AT RIDDLES AND KNOWS THE SORT OF THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW TO ANSWER RIDDLES. What are riddles? MOTHERFUCKER YOU KNOW WHAT RIDDLES ARE. It doesn't take long to pick up that a Riddle-Master is a highly educated scholar, a fantasy philosopher, and Morgon's a really good one. You learn that "Prince" doesn't mean "Son of a King", it's a title in and of itself that involves a spiritual connection to the land he's prince of (Hed). The stars? THEY'RE INEXPLICABLE you and Morgon know they're probably some kind of omen or mark of Chosen Oneness because you've read a book before and so has Morgon, they're just a signifier.

Before the start of the book, Morgon won a riddle-game with a curse ghost king and now has technically won the hand of the second most beautiful woman in the world but he's kind of embarrassed about the whole thing. Deth, a wandering harpist and messenger of the High One (God?), jostles Morgon into leaving Hed to pursue this and thus begins a novel that is entirely a Hero Trying to Refuse the Call. Morgon just wants to Go Home; this man has no great longing for something more than his little farm island and pigs and beer and maybe doing riddles but in a casual way, not in a inadvertently uncovering the secrets of the universe way.

There is a shipwreck, there are shapeshifters, there is amnesia and mysterious relic cities from when there were Sorcerers, people with pasts too long for their ages, foresty warrior women, dreams full of hidden knowledge, a legendary sword, an unplayable harp. It's a series of fantasy incidents that seem to only be connected by the fact that they keep happening to Morgon.

As I have also found with McKillip's writing, there's a dreamy, soft quality to everything that pulls you along gently. "The Riddle-Master of Hed" is not a page-turner, it's almost cozy.

And terrible things happen. The ending is startlingly bleak without fanfare. If you read "The Riddle-Master of Hed" as a standalone novel, it would be like playing a videogame with bad end possibilities and then leaving it there. It doesn't feel like a cliffhanger, possibly because of the quiet quality of McKillip's prose, possibly because of the fairytale elements in the style of McKillip's storytelling.

My only real complaint? One of the land rulers Morgon encounters in his journey is called the Morgol. Ms. McKillip, please, don't give me Morgon and the Morgol in the same book. Don't do that to me.

[the-hearth-and-the-wild]

Watching the day slowly bloom into night. That’s how it always seemed to me: not the fading of a withered flower, but the opening of some dark, rich blossom, with unexpected hues and heavy scents.

Patricia McKillip, Winter Rose

[haveyoureadthisfantasybook]

vote yes if you have finished the entire book.

vote no if you have not finished the entire book.

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