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<p>I just finished Forgotten Beasts of Eld an hour ago, which I read for the Boston Ladies' Fantasy Bookclub meetup discussion this Tuesday night, and love the book - probably the best of half a dozen McKillip fantasies that I've read!!! I was frustrated by the first chapter - too many names to remember initially, but after that I was hooked. McKillip is such a lyrical writer and the book - very short - only gets better with each page.</p>
<p>I don't know if I'll be at the next meeting (I'm dealing with a longterm incapacitating illness, and can't functioon many hours a day, and have to work online part-time), but if I can "register" my vote for it, please count it!</p>
<p>Tracy Marks</p>
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<p id="reply-intro">On 2024-05-04 09:31, cjhi newcastle2.com wrote:</p>
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<div class="v1elementToProof" style="font-family: Aptos, Aptos_EmbeddedFont, Aptos_MSFontService, Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; color: #000000;">I decided to get this done since I'd come up with a theme and three examples when I wasn't thinking about it.</div>
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<div class="v1elementToProof" style="font-family: Aptos, Aptos_EmbeddedFont, Aptos_MSFontService, Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; color: #000000;">We seem to be doing a lot of science fiction, so I'm going to suggest 3 fantasies from different periods:</div>
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<div class="v1elementToProof" style="font-family: Aptos, Aptos_EmbeddedFont, Aptos_MSFontService, Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; color: #000000;">Relatively modern: Patricia McKillip, <em>The Forgotten Beasts of Eld</em> (1974). This is her first adult book after a couple of juveniles (and was called a juvenile in her obit (by someone who should have known better), possibly because that was the original publisher's focus); it won her the first World Fantasy Award for Best Novel, much to the surprise of the oldpharts who organized the awards. It's also one of the first modern fantasies to completely ignore the heroic model of everyone from Tolkien to Terry Brooks, without the grunge that some writers think is obligatory these days; the main character is a 3rd-generation wizard who lives quietly on a mountaintop, occasionally using her research to call another unusual sentient animal to her as her predecessors did. Then someone comes panting up the mountain in the midst of lowland chaos to hand her a baby; some years later (when the child is mostly-grown) she gets caught up in the results of that chaos (whose kid is it really?) and has to make difficult choices. McKillip was a brilliant, moderate-speed writer (a book every couple of years for ~50 years); this is a bit more accessible than some of her later work, so it's a good intro for anyone who hasn't read her. (IMO everyone should read at least something of hers.)</div>
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<div class="v1elementToProof" style="font-family: Aptos, Aptos_EmbeddedFont, Aptos_MSFontService, Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; color: #000000;">middle period: Fletcher Pratt, <em>The Blue Star</em> (1952). Very unlike the comic fantasies he wrote alone and with de Camp. Magic passes from mother to daughter when the daughter loses her virginity; the man responsible inherits the eponymous jewel, which keeps her in touch with him and enables him to tell when someone is untruthful. (This is a bald description of mechanics, which the book isn't about.) The main character is on the fringes of a revolutionary cabal, assigned to get one of these jewels; he finds that both carrying the jewel and seeing the revolution through are not at all what he expected. (The revolution has aspects of Orwell about it, and of the French revolution, but isn't nearly as bleak, violent, or foregrounded). <em>The Well of the Unicorn</em> is the only other work in this line; both were selections when Lin Carter was reprinting older fantasy works for Ballantine.</div>
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<div class="v1elementToProof" style="font-family: Aptos, Aptos_EmbeddedFont, Aptos_MSFontService, Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; color: #000000;">countering Lord Dunsany: Hope Mirrlees, <em>Lud-in-the-Mist</em> (1926). The titular town is also near Faery, and is occasionally aware of danger (the narcotic Faery fruit that comes down the river occasionally), but the lead is a middle-class mayor who is trying to cope rather than a prince with his head full of nonsense. The prose is not dull but it is more matter-of-fact than pompous/overblown/repetitive/.... This is Mirrlees's only fantasy.</div>
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