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sophia_sol) wrote2023-03-15 02:30 pm
sophia_sol) wrote2023-03-15 02:30 pm
The Perilous Gard, by Elizabeth Marie Pope
After having seen multiple enthusiastic reviews for this children's book from 50 years ago (thank you melannen and cahn), I had to get my hands on it myself, and it was well worth it! Such a good book.
It's historical fantasy set during the time when Mary Tudor was queen of England, which is not an era I see getting a lot of attention from fantasy novels, and it's well grounded in its particular time in history. The book is about a young woman, Kate, who is exiled to a place that has a lot of dismissed-as-superstition rumours about unsettling connection to magic and Faerie.
And this too is great, the writing is wonderfully evocative, and the fairies of the book are appropriately Other while still managing to be sympathetic in some ways. I loved the Lady, and Kate's feelings of sympathy for her in the end even while the Lady would desire absolutely no such sympathy at all. And Gwenhyfar who comes to eventually admire the human Kate but of course in ways that are still very condescending! The way the weight of being underhill presses down upon humans who end up there! (and how Christopher finds that feeling reassuring, after what he goes through with the guardian of the well!)
And I adored how Kate and Christopher bond over their intensely detailed arguments over estate management, in complete darkness imprisoned by fairies and with each other as their only real connection to anything better. One of the ways this book was pitched to me is that the digging of drainage ditches is plot relevant, and this is not the way I expected that plot point to go at all and I love it. (I was expecting something more like the estate management content in Heyer's A Civil Contract, I think?) Though I do have some feelings about how draining fens to improve farmland means destroying unique and important ecosystems! But that's not how these things were thought of in that time.
I love Kate too, her solidness and her insistence on seeing what's actually there and on speaking the truth - and how she's felt in her beautiful and charismatic and naive sister's shadow all her life and doesn't know how to recognize her own good qualities. And I'm fascinated by how Kate's learning to move and walk like a fairy during her time underhill makes her sometimes seem other to her fellows once she returns to the sunlit lands, and I'm curious how this will affect her going forward.
Anyway. Excellent book, love this for me, highly recommended to others for whom this kind of thing is your thing as well. Oh and it's a Newbery award winner too!
melannen and cahn), I had to get my hands on it myself, and it was well worth it! Such a good book. It's historical fantasy set during the time when Mary Tudor was queen of England, which is not an era I see getting a lot of attention from fantasy novels, and it's well grounded in its particular time in history. The book is about a young woman, Kate, who is exiled to a place that has a lot of dismissed-as-superstition rumours about unsettling connection to magic and Faerie.
And this too is great, the writing is wonderfully evocative, and the fairies of the book are appropriately Other while still managing to be sympathetic in some ways. I loved the Lady, and Kate's feelings of sympathy for her in the end even while the Lady would desire absolutely no such sympathy at all. And Gwenhyfar who comes to eventually admire the human Kate but of course in ways that are still very condescending! The way the weight of being underhill presses down upon humans who end up there! (and how Christopher finds that feeling reassuring, after what he goes through with the guardian of the well!)
And I adored how Kate and Christopher bond over their intensely detailed arguments over estate management, in complete darkness imprisoned by fairies and with each other as their only real connection to anything better. One of the ways this book was pitched to me is that the digging of drainage ditches is plot relevant, and this is not the way I expected that plot point to go at all and I love it. (I was expecting something more like the estate management content in Heyer's A Civil Contract, I think?) Though I do have some feelings about how draining fens to improve farmland means destroying unique and important ecosystems! But that's not how these things were thought of in that time.
I love Kate too, her solidness and her insistence on seeing what's actually there and on speaking the truth - and how she's felt in her beautiful and charismatic and naive sister's shadow all her life and doesn't know how to recognize her own good qualities. And I'm fascinated by how Kate's learning to move and walk like a fairy during her time underhill makes her sometimes seem other to her fellows once she returns to the sunlit lands, and I'm curious how this will affect her going forward.
Anyway. Excellent book, love this for me, highly recommended to others for whom this kind of thing is your thing as well. Oh and it's a Newbery award winner too!
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I think about that aspect of the book every time I'm in some kind of subterranean setting!
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One of the ways this book was pitched to me is that the digging of drainage ditches is plot relevant, and this is not the way I expected that plot point to go at all and I love it.
:D Isn't it AWESOME? :D
My absolute favorite is how Kate saves Christopher by making a not-very-complimentary observation about him that only she would ever make! :DD
Though I do have some feelings about how draining fens to improve farmland means destroying unique and important ecosystems! But that's not how these things were thought of in that time.
yes fair! Which I must admit I did not know anything about until doing research for Yuletide last year, and my beta and I were, in the alpha stages, batting around ideas for making a story about that, but I could not get my act together to write it! Maybe someday :)
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I would love to read a fic about the issues with draining the fens, if you do get around to it someday!
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