[nesfa-reading-group] Forgotten Beasts of Eld

[tracy at windweaver.com]

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.

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!

Tracy Marks

On 2024-05-04 09:31, cjhi newcastle2.com wrote:

> I decided to get this done since I'd come up with a theme and three 
> examples when I wasn't thinking about it.
> 
> We seem to be doing a lot of science fiction, so I'm going to suggest 3 
> fantasies from different periods:
> 
> *
> Relatively modern: Patricia McKillip, _The Forgotten Beasts of Eld_ 
> (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.)
> *
> middle period: Fletcher Pratt, _The Blue Star_ (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).  _The Well of the Unicorn_ 
> is the only other work in this line; both were selections when Lin 
> Carter was reprinting older fantasy works for Ballantine.
> *
> countering Lord Dunsany: Hope Mirrlees, _Lud-in-the-Mist_ (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.
> 
> /CHip
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