(no subject)
Apr. 16th, 2009 11:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsOkay, so it is no secret that I have an irrational love for Pamela Dean's prose, and that her Tam Lin is a Formative Book for me that I will love forever and ever regardless of flaws. And that her Hidden Country trilogy is a set of books that I think anyone who has ever narratively RPed should read, once again regardless of flaws. And that her style was enough to make me enjoy reading Juniper, Gentian and Rosemary despite a number of other issues I had with the plot. AND ANYWAY I am getting off topic here, because I am not actually talking about any of these books, I am talking about The Dubious Hills, which I think is the last one she has written that I had not read. And which is AMAZING.
Um, it would be very easy to describe the book as "The Giver! WITH WEREWOLVES!", and it is tempting for me to do so because that is a hilarious plot summary, but it would also be completely dishonest. Because much as it has in common with The Giver, and existent as the werewolves are, it has a completely different feel and message (or lack thereof - this is not an easy-answers book) from The Giver, and the werewolves do not fill any of the traditional genre werewolf roles, with the possible exception of the original fairy-tale Wolf - you know, the Little Red Riding Hood one, who urges you to stray from the path and explore and discover exciting new things. For a cost, of course. (Isn't it nice to know a lot? And a little bit not.)
Arry, the protagonist, is a fourteen-year-old girl with two younger siblings whose parents have vanished. She also lives in a community that works in a completely different way from ours; in this land, everyone comes into a particular set of knowledge as they grow into adulthood, and the only way to be absolutely sure of any piece of information is to consult that person. There is a woman who knows people's personalities, there is a man who knows exactly the right way to teach children, there is a boy who knows what is ugly and what is beautiful; Arry's particular specialty is knowing and feeling pain, and it's her job to inform people when they are experiencing it, so they can go to the person who knows about things that are broken and how to fix them. The village has worked in this way for centuries, due to a set of spells that have been placed on the area, and for the most part people are perfectly content with it - but eventually people start poking at the limits of their knowledge, and the balance of the commnity enters into a dangerous flux. Werewolves, as mentioned above, are involved.
I don't actually want to say that much about the plot, because the slow unfolding of it, is, I think, part of the beauty of the book - this is not one of the many Pamela Deans where she indulges her taste for long, leisurely character explorations with an explosion of plot in twenty pages at the end. This book actually has tension and a central problem and conflict all the way through, without losing any of the character development and interactions and charm that is one of the reasons that I love her writing. And she does an incredible job at writing within the perspective of someone whose mind works in a completely different and almost alien way, while still making her human and identifiable - a much better job than the vast majority of people I have seen trying to write within the perspective of actual aliens, come to that. (Mary Doria Russel, I'm looking at you!)
Honestly, though Tam Lin and the Hidden Country books may always have first place in my heart for early imprinting and plot-related reasons, I think this may be the best thing Pamela Dean's written. But now I think I am out of Pamela Dean books for real, and that fills me with sorrow! On the other hand, I understand that she has a joint sequel to the Hidden Land books and The Dubious Hills coming sometime in the hopefully-soon future, and that fills me with more joy than I can express.
Um, it would be very easy to describe the book as "The Giver! WITH WEREWOLVES!", and it is tempting for me to do so because that is a hilarious plot summary, but it would also be completely dishonest. Because much as it has in common with The Giver, and existent as the werewolves are, it has a completely different feel and message (or lack thereof - this is not an easy-answers book) from The Giver, and the werewolves do not fill any of the traditional genre werewolf roles, with the possible exception of the original fairy-tale Wolf - you know, the Little Red Riding Hood one, who urges you to stray from the path and explore and discover exciting new things. For a cost, of course. (Isn't it nice to know a lot? And a little bit not.)
Arry, the protagonist, is a fourteen-year-old girl with two younger siblings whose parents have vanished. She also lives in a community that works in a completely different way from ours; in this land, everyone comes into a particular set of knowledge as they grow into adulthood, and the only way to be absolutely sure of any piece of information is to consult that person. There is a woman who knows people's personalities, there is a man who knows exactly the right way to teach children, there is a boy who knows what is ugly and what is beautiful; Arry's particular specialty is knowing and feeling pain, and it's her job to inform people when they are experiencing it, so they can go to the person who knows about things that are broken and how to fix them. The village has worked in this way for centuries, due to a set of spells that have been placed on the area, and for the most part people are perfectly content with it - but eventually people start poking at the limits of their knowledge, and the balance of the commnity enters into a dangerous flux. Werewolves, as mentioned above, are involved.
I don't actually want to say that much about the plot, because the slow unfolding of it, is, I think, part of the beauty of the book - this is not one of the many Pamela Deans where she indulges her taste for long, leisurely character explorations with an explosion of plot in twenty pages at the end. This book actually has tension and a central problem and conflict all the way through, without losing any of the character development and interactions and charm that is one of the reasons that I love her writing. And she does an incredible job at writing within the perspective of someone whose mind works in a completely different and almost alien way, while still making her human and identifiable - a much better job than the vast majority of people I have seen trying to write within the perspective of actual aliens, come to that. (Mary Doria Russel, I'm looking at you!)
Honestly, though Tam Lin and the Hidden Country books may always have first place in my heart for early imprinting and plot-related reasons, I think this may be the best thing Pamela Dean's written. But now I think I am out of Pamela Dean books for real, and that fills me with sorrow! On the other hand, I understand that she has a joint sequel to the Hidden Land books and The Dubious Hills coming sometime in the hopefully-soon future, and that fills me with more joy than I can express.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-04-16 05:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-16 05:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-18 03:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-18 03:53 am (UTC)