skygiants

genarti lent me her copy of Patricia McKillip's Cygnet like a year ago, which I have finally gotten around to reading.

I can't tell whether Cygnet is more McKillip-y than most McKillip or just a totally standard amount of McKillip, because I can never remember anything that happens in McKillips for more than a month or two after I've read the McKillip in question. The last time I read McKillip was in - according to my records -- 2010, when I reread the entire Riddle-Master of Hed trilogy. That was at least my second time reading the trilogy, probably my third, and I carefully documented the plot on DW, and I still have no idea what actually happens in Riddle-Master of Hed except that there are a lot of riddles in it and the main character comes from Hed.

Cygnet is actually two books -- The Sorceress and the Cygnet and The Cygnet and the Firebird, and HOLY WOW, I just got distracted by the 80s-ness of the cover in that first Goodreads link. That's ... beautiful.

For the record, the sorceress Nyx probably does not look like the cover of that book, nor is she possessed of a giant pet flamingo. Nyx is, however, a fantastic character -- the cool-headed, knowledge-obsessed, semi-amoral heir to a Holding who starts out the books living in a swamp dissecting small birds in pursuit of KNOWLEDGE and POWER and earning incredibly dubious looks from everybody she knows.

Nyx is one of the protagonists of the duology; the other is her cousin Meguet, a loyal and taciturn warrior who learns over the course of the story that she has mythologically convenient powers. However, it takes a little while to realize this because The Sorceress and the Cygnet starts out with a decoy protagonist named Corleu who accidentally becomes entrapped in a complex mythological plot engineered by sinister star constellations which Meguet's mythologically convenient powers are destined to stop, or else bring to fruition? It's very beautiful and numinous and also VERY UNCLEAR.

Then in the second trip everyone (except Corleu, because he was only a first-book decoy protagonist) goes on a field trip with dragons which are also mythologically destined to mythologically threaten the mythological powers of Nyx and Meguet's family somehow even though they live many thousands of miles away and possibly in an entirely different time period, ALSO UNCLEAR. An enchanted firebird turns up and eventually explains that he's there because he was drawn to Nyx for her combination of power and ethics and innate goodness, to which Nyx responds 'I SPENT THE LAST YEAR DISSECTING SMALL BIRDS.' The climax of this one makes slightly more sense to me, although Meguet's choice to pick up a rose at the beginning of The Cygnet and the Firebird was apparently the most deeply significant thing she did in the whole book and I still don't actually understand why.

However, Nyx and Meguet were both great! So is their entire family of royal women, including Nyx's constantly-fuming mother and her mysterious and dreamy library sister and her long-suffering practical-minded sister who does her best to be patient with the fact that everyone else she knows is driven by overwhelming numinous mythological forces. (Unsurprisingly, she was my favorite.) I enjoyed the book tremendously. I expect it will stay in my head for at least two weeks.

I think I've mentioned before that I have this problem with Patricia McKillip books where they fade completely out of my head about a month after I've read them. This problem is especially pronounced for the Riddle-Master of Hed trilogy, which were the first McKillip books I ever read. I thought I had at least vague memories of them, and then I visited rymenhild last year during Yuletide Madness, and she kept trying to bounce Riddle-Master fic ideas off of me and I was like ". . . who's Deth? Who's Raederle? I'm - I'm pretty sure there were riddles in there somewhere . . ." So finally I got Riddle of Stars, the one-volume trilogy compilation, out of the library to refresh my memory. Because having a one-volume trilogy compilation means I can count it all as one book for my reading quotas. >.> (Sidenote: I love terrible 1970's fantasy-novel covers so much. *_* Look at this fabulousness! The pants! The creepy alien children! THE PANTS!)

The Riddle-Master of Hed, the first book in the trilogy, is actually my favorite of the three - it has the best blend of the dreamlike/fantastical and the mundane that is one of the things I love in McKillip. Morgon is the Prince of Hed, a tiny island known for hard-headed farmers and very little else. His duties mostly include organizing shipments of wheat and fixing the roofs of his pig-herders, which is why everyone is a bit startled to find out that he won an ancient crown in a riddle-contest with a ghost and is keeping it under his bed until he can figure out what to do with it. Morgon is eventually dragged on a journey to claim his Preordained Destiny, complaining all the way about how he really has to get back for the potato harvest and is not interested in magic harps or magic prophecies or magic swords (especially not magic swords.)

Heir of Sea and Fire I like almost as much as Riddle-Master. The premise is kind of awesome: Raederle, the princess whose hand Morgon is entitled to claim (thanks to winning the riddle-contest) is sick and tired of waiting around for him to come back from his quest. So she picks herself up and goes looking with him, along with Lyra, the warrior princess of a neighboring kingdom, and Tristan, Morgon's cranky and determined younger sister. Three princesses questing after a missing prince! How is this not awesome? Along the way, Raederle figures out she has mysterious powers heritage etc. of her own.

Harpist in the Wind, the conclusion, I actually did not like as much - not to say it is not a strong and epic conclusion, because it is, but pretty much the whole book was one epic dreamlike battle sequence/chase sequence after another without the grounding bits of sanity I liked so much from Riddle-Master. I had a hard time keeping track of what was going on some of the time, although that may partly have been because I was zonked out while I read it. The complicated multilayered secret identities did not help.

We'll see how long it takes me to forget the entire plot this time around!