Sunday, December 31, 2006

The Changeling Sea

If you loved the movie, "The Secret of Roan Inish" as much as I did, you will love this wonderful tale of sea and magic, "The Changeling Sea" by my favorite fantasy author, Patricia McKillip. It's a kind of fable that starts with the scullery girl, Periwinkle, who gets mad at the sea for taking her father and putting her mother into a deep depression.
She hexes the sea, and in so doing, finds herself embroiled in a quest to get the kings changeling son back to the sea and his mer-mother. Along the way, the reader also encounters a sorcerer named Lyo, a sea-dragon with a golden chain and many greedy fisher-folk.
As usual, McKillip's prose is gold, full of lush descriptions and fanciful side trips to metaphor. I'd read this particular book years ago, but couldn't resist a new edition with better cover art. It's a slender volume, but one that is well worth the few hours of bliss spent reading it. By the end I had a hankering for seafood and felt that I could almost hear the waves crashing on the shore.
I'm reading Rhianna, by Michele Hauf now, and as I've not read any of her work before, I can't render an opinion on the quality yet until I've finished it.
Happy New Year to all my fellow Bibliophiles, and may 2007 bring us all towering TBR stacks and lots of great reading until all hours of the night!

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