18th out of 24 books
—
20 voters
The Prodigal Troll
This is a fantasy tale of a human child raised by a band of mythological creatures, who must later face the challenges of rediscovering the complex and capricious world of humankind.
Paperback, 374 pages
Published
by Pyr
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This book deserves its comparisons to Kipling's Mowgli or Burroughs' Tarzan. The plot is familiar is that sense: baby lost in the wilderness, against nature is raised by animals. In this case, the boy is raised by trolls who act a lot like lowland gorillas. The trolls are fascinating, their society intriguing and really they are the whole are a lot more interesting than the humans, whose machinations are utterly confusing. The beginning with the intermarriage/named heirs/empress/eunuchs who are ...more
So, I had to read this book no matter what simply because the title is so utterly fantastic. Turns out it was a good book too, so I lucked out.
The story is essentially a Tarzan variation. A baby is abandoned at a very young age and adopted by a troll mother who has just lost her own baby. The kid is raised by trolls, who in this novel are primitive but not unintelligent, though certainly not as smart as humans. They're brutal, but it's an understandable brutality--a kind of natural s...more
The story is essentially a Tarzan variation. A baby is abandoned at a very young age and adopted by a troll mother who has just lost her own baby. The kid is raised by trolls, who in this novel are primitive but not unintelligent, though certainly not as smart as humans. They're brutal, but it's an understandable brutality--a kind of natural s...more
In a world not of our own, the babe of a Baron is whisked away into the night by his nursemaid and a knight. As they flee, the castle they called home burns, over run with soldiers of the enemy. Nothing matters anymore but the safety of the child.
They fail and succeed a the same time.
Both adults meet their demise, however the baby is taken up by a female troll who has just lost her own infant. It is here Claye, known by trolls as Maggot, is suckled, then raised as a troll. Th...more
They fail and succeed a the same time.
Both adults meet their demise, however the baby is taken up by a female troll who has just lost her own infant. It is here Claye, known by trolls as Maggot, is suckled, then raised as a troll. Th...more
The central character is a boy brought up by trolls, à la Tarzan or Mowgli, who then seeks his destiny among his own kind; he wanders into a human war between subsistence pastoralists and settled agriculturalists (Native Americans vs European feudal settlers seeming to be the paradigm) and eventually, in an ending that came rather abruptly though did at least fit with what we had seen before, chooses his own way.
I was a bit dubious about the sexual politics of the book. The story is al...more
I was a bit dubious about the sexual politics of the book. The story is al...more
A great twist on the usual Tarzan trope, and a fun story in its own right.
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