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Damar #2
The Hero and the Crown
Robin McKinley's mesmerizing history of Damar is the stuff that legends are made of. The Hero and the Crown is a dazzling "prequel" to The Blue Sword.
Aerin is the only child of the king of Damar, and should be his rightful heir. But she is also the daughter of a witchwoman of the North, who died when she was born, and the Damarians cannot trust her.
But Aerin's destiny is greater than her father's people know, for it leads her to battle with Maur, the Black Dragon, and into the wilder Damarian Hills, where she meets the wizard Luthe. It is he who at last tells her the truth about her mother, and he also gives over to her hand the Blue Sword, Gonturan. But such gifts as these bear a great price, a price Aerin only begins to realize when she faces the evil mage, Agsded, who has seized the Hero's Crown, greatest treasure and secret strength of Damar.
Aerin is the only child of the king of Damar, and should be his rightful heir. But she is also the daughter of a witchwoman of the North, who died when she was born, and the Damarians cannot trust her.
But Aerin's destiny is greater than her father's people know, for it leads her to battle with Maur, the Black Dragon, and into the wilder Damarian Hills, where she meets the wizard Luthe. It is he who at last tells her the truth about her mother, and he also gives over to her hand the Blue Sword, Gonturan. But such gifts as these bear a great price, a price Aerin only begins to realize when she faces the evil mage, Agsded, who has seized the Hero's Crown, greatest treasure and secret strength of Damar.
246 pages, Hardcover
First published October 15, 1984
1239 people are currently reading
26852 people want to read
About the author
Robin McKinley
43 books7,270 followersBorn in her mother's hometown of Warren, Ohio, Robin McKinley grew up an only child with a father in the United States Navy. She moved around frequently as a child and read copiously; she credits this background with the inspiration for her stories.
Her passion for reading was one of the most constant things in her childhood, so she began to remember events, places, and time periods by what books she read where. For example, she read Andrew Lang's Blue Fairy Book for the first time in California; The Chronicles of Narnia for the first time in New York; The Lord of the Rings for the first time in Japan; The Once and Future King for the first time in Maine. She still uses books to keep track of her life.
McKinley attended Gould Academy, a preparatory school in Bethel, Maine, and Dickinson College in 1970-1972. In 1975, she was graduated summa cum laude from Bowdoin College. In 1978, her first novel, Beauty, was accepted by the first publisher she sent it to, and she began her writing career, at age 26. At the time she was living in Brunswick, Maine. Since then she has lived in Boston, on a horse farm in Eastern Massachusetts, in New York City, in Blue Hill, Maine, and now in Hampshire, England, with her husband Peter Dickinson (also a writer, and with whom she co-wrote Water: Tales of Elemental Spirits in 2001) and two lurchers (crossbred sighthounds).
Over the years she has worked as an editor and transcriber (1972-73), research assistant (1976-77), bookstore clerk (1978), teacher and counselor (1978-79), editorial assistant (1979-81), barn manager (1981-82), free-lance editor (1982-85), and full-time writer. Other than writing and reading books, she divides her time mainly between walking her "hellhounds," gardening, cooking, playing the piano, homeopathy, change ringing, and keeping her blog.
Her passion for reading was one of the most constant things in her childhood, so she began to remember events, places, and time periods by what books she read where. For example, she read Andrew Lang's Blue Fairy Book for the first time in California; The Chronicles of Narnia for the first time in New York; The Lord of the Rings for the first time in Japan; The Once and Future King for the first time in Maine. She still uses books to keep track of her life.
McKinley attended Gould Academy, a preparatory school in Bethel, Maine, and Dickinson College in 1970-1972. In 1975, she was graduated summa cum laude from Bowdoin College. In 1978, her first novel, Beauty, was accepted by the first publisher she sent it to, and she began her writing career, at age 26. At the time she was living in Brunswick, Maine. Since then she has lived in Boston, on a horse farm in Eastern Massachusetts, in New York City, in Blue Hill, Maine, and now in Hampshire, England, with her husband Peter Dickinson (also a writer, and with whom she co-wrote Water: Tales of Elemental Spirits in 2001) and two lurchers (crossbred sighthounds).
Over the years she has worked as an editor and transcriber (1972-73), research assistant (1976-77), bookstore clerk (1978), teacher and counselor (1978-79), editorial assistant (1979-81), barn manager (1981-82), free-lance editor (1982-85), and full-time writer. Other than writing and reading books, she divides her time mainly between walking her "hellhounds," gardening, cooking, playing the piano, homeopathy, change ringing, and keeping her blog.
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June 12, 2014
First wave feminist novel The Hero and the Crown recognizes the intrinsic right for protagonist Aerin to have a say in the destiny of her country, regardless of her gender.
Second wave feminist novel The Hero and the Crown illustrates how Aerin is the equal of any man in the patriarchal land of Damar - indeed, she is the equal of any man, anywhere.
Third wave feminist novel The Hero and the Crown celebrates Aerin's sexuality, her ability to move beyond prescribed, essentialist notions of gender roles and to make decisions based on her own personal, individual needs and desires.
Standpoint feminist novel The Hero and the Crown understands that many of the issues that confront Aerin are intimately related to Aerin's mixed-race and mixed-class status - and the ways that gender and race and class always intersect.
Post-feminist novel The Hero and the Crown maintains that Aerin's struggle is not necessarily even a feminist struggle, that she has already achieved her- oh never mind. ugh, post-feminism. the stirring, highly enjoyable novel The Hero and the Crown rejects post-feminism. and hey, so do I.
Second wave feminist novel The Hero and the Crown illustrates how Aerin is the equal of any man in the patriarchal land of Damar - indeed, she is the equal of any man, anywhere.
Third wave feminist novel The Hero and the Crown celebrates Aerin's sexuality, her ability to move beyond prescribed, essentialist notions of gender roles and to make decisions based on her own personal, individual needs and desires.
Standpoint feminist novel The Hero and the Crown understands that many of the issues that confront Aerin are intimately related to Aerin's mixed-race and mixed-class status - and the ways that gender and race and class always intersect.
October 15, 2022
All the stars! The Hero and the Crown is one of those YA fantasies I have loved so deeply and for so long that I'm totally unable to view or rate it objectively. So you'll have to put up with some fangirling here. It won the Newbery Award in 1985.
Aerin is a king's daughter, the heir and only child of the king of Damar. But her mother, who died in childbirth, was reputed to be a witch, and when Aerin grows up not looking or acting like anyone else in the kingdom (the Damarians all have dark hair and eyes; Aerin has fiery red hair with much paler skin; they all have magical abilities while she has none), she grows up teased and rejected. Her only friend is Tor, a royal who's a few years older than her.
In the aftermath of a long illness, Aerin manages to befriend a warhorse, Talat. She decides that if she can't make her place as a normal princess, she'll take up killing dragons. (YES!) Most dragons are dog-sized and (once Aerin and Talat figure out what they're doing) can be dispatched without too much danger, but then news that the last of great dragons, Maur, has reappeared after many years and is terrorizing the countryside. And Maur is HUGE.
It's a lovely and thoughtful coming-of-age story, with dragons, magic, danger and adventure, plus a little dash of romance. Also, it's a prequel to The Blue Sword, set several hundred years later. Do yourself a favor and grab both, if you enjoy YA fantasy.
Read count: Too many times to even say.
Aerin is a king's daughter, the heir and only child of the king of Damar. But her mother, who died in childbirth, was reputed to be a witch, and when Aerin grows up not looking or acting like anyone else in the kingdom (the Damarians all have dark hair and eyes; Aerin has fiery red hair with much paler skin; they all have magical abilities while she has none), she grows up teased and rejected. Her only friend is Tor, a royal who's a few years older than her.
In the aftermath of a long illness, Aerin manages to befriend a warhorse, Talat. She decides that if she can't make her place as a normal princess, she'll take up killing dragons. (YES!) Most dragons are dog-sized and (once Aerin and Talat figure out what they're doing) can be dispatched without too much danger, but then news that the last of great dragons, Maur, has reappeared after many years and is terrorizing the countryside. And Maur is HUGE.
It's a lovely and thoughtful coming-of-age story, with dragons, magic, danger and adventure, plus a little dash of romance. Also, it's a prequel to The Blue Sword, set several hundred years later. Do yourself a favor and grab both, if you enjoy YA fantasy.
Read count: Too many times to even say.
June 20, 2007
When I was a kid, I frequented two areas of the library: the children's section and the adult fiction section. The young adult shelves and the nonfiction shelves might as well have been made of glass for all I noticed them.
One year when I was in my early teens, the family was getting ready to go on the dreaded yearly camping trip. "Dreaded" because it meant a week in the outdoors, with no books. Well, almost no books: Mom's rule was that we each could take two—only two??—so we spent hours dawdling at the library making our choices. It was important to pick the perfect books, ones that could stand up to repeated readings, since we would almost certainly finish them for the first time on the ride up the canyon.
I looked all over the library for mine, or at least the part of the library I knew, and I couldn't find anything that had that coveted mix of exciting newness and safe, comfortable familiarity. In desperation, I finally walked over to the young adult section. And there it was: Robin McKinley's The Hero and the Crown, screaming, "Read me! Take me! Pick me!" And I did pick it, and I fell in love with it, and have loved it ever since.
Now, as anyone who has read Robin McKinley knows, this is actually the prequel to The Blue Sword, but when I finally read that book a few years later I was so disappointed that it wasn't The Hero and the Crown all over again that it took me a long while to really warm up to it. But it's good, too, though in a different way.
One year when I was in my early teens, the family was getting ready to go on the dreaded yearly camping trip. "Dreaded" because it meant a week in the outdoors, with no books. Well, almost no books: Mom's rule was that we each could take two—only two??—so we spent hours dawdling at the library making our choices. It was important to pick the perfect books, ones that could stand up to repeated readings, since we would almost certainly finish them for the first time on the ride up the canyon.
I looked all over the library for mine, or at least the part of the library I knew, and I couldn't find anything that had that coveted mix of exciting newness and safe, comfortable familiarity. In desperation, I finally walked over to the young adult section. And there it was: Robin McKinley's The Hero and the Crown, screaming, "Read me! Take me! Pick me!" And I did pick it, and I fell in love with it, and have loved it ever since.
Now, as anyone who has read Robin McKinley knows, this is actually the prequel to The Blue Sword, but when I finally read that book a few years later I was so disappointed that it wasn't The Hero and the Crown all over again that it took me a long while to really warm up to it. But it's good, too, though in a different way.
Read
March 21, 2008This one isn't rated for a reason...
I don't really know what to rate it overall, and wish I could rate it in parts. I suppose I could average it out and give it three stars, but that doesn't seem to fit.
So I'll rate it in my review, which is very long and rambling.
The First Half: *****
I really liked it. The characters were likeable (or unlikeable if that's what they were meant to be) and everything flowed nicely. I really liked the main character, Aerin. She had spunk, for lack of a better way to describe her. She was different from everyone else, and it bothered her, but she didn't let it mess up her life. She took pride in herself. She had a short temper that got her in some minor trouble, and that made her more interesting as far as princesses go.
She handled the incident with the magic plant (can't remember the name of it) well. Drawing on her stubborn nature and desire to prove she was more than people thought she was, she recovered completely. I love how she identified with her father's injured war horse during this and helped him recover too. (Talat was a pretty cool horse too.)
She also took on a job that was far from glamorous because she knew she could do it better than anyone else, and she worked hard to get to that point.
She was cool, and the story was nicely building around her ability to make the best of what she had to work with.
Then came her battle with the Maur...
The battle itself was fine, and the immediate aftermath was too. It's when she gets home that I draw the line between the first half of the book and the second half, even though it might not be right in the middle of the book.
The Second Half *
Perhaps the reason the rest of this book made me so mad, is because the first part was really good. I felt cheated.
I'll start where I left off, when Aerin gets home from her battle with the big dragon. Her personality totally changed after that. She became all mopey and whiny and depressed. I think that was supposed to have something to do with the dragon's evil taint or something, but why did it wait for her to recover before it kicked in? She was nearly dead after the battle, but she managed get home, and then she recovered to the point where she could walk around without assistance, and her hair all grew back and she didn't even have any noticeable scars... THEN she started getting all depressed-to-death. And even after Luthe dunked her in his magic pond to cure her of the dragon's taint (or whatever) she was mopey. She even frets about her hair several times during her boss battle.
Then there's Luthe himself. I know he's in some of McKinley's other books, so maybe there's more to him than what you get in this one, but he just came across as such a jerk in this book. He'd been watching her all her life, but after he healed her and taught to use he magic he said he should have stepped in sooner but he figured she would have realized her ability to use magic before and used that on Maur... despite the fact that she had never used magic at all before and didn't know she could. He constantly bashes her country and her family, especially Tor, who was always kind to her and loved her. He even bashes her horse. He has so much contempt for everyone that he just comes across as the most arrogant guy on the face of the planet. He even sounds condescending when he talks to Aerin, remarking constantly about how simple she is and how he feels terrible about sending her to fight Whatshisbucket when she is but a child, when even he doesn't stand a chance.
That brings me to Whatshisbucket. Her evil uncle who is somehow the most evil bad guy in the whole land, yet she's never heard of him. He was never even mentioned earlier in the book, yet suddenly he's the main cause for all the trouble. If you walked up to someone in Middle Earth and asked if they'd heard of Sauron, they'd say the Middle Earth equivalent of "well duh, who hasn't?" and look at you like you were some kind of idiot. Everyone in the wizarding world in Harry Potter had heard of Voldemort. Everyone in Narnia knows about the White Witch. How the heck does Whatshisbucket manage to be the ultimate bad guy anonymously?
And how does she defeat the ultimate bad guy? She accidentally throws a magic rock at him. She wasn't even trying to throw it, and she didn't know it was magic anyway. She had no clue what it was! She was just carrying it around because it was an interesting shiny red rock she found after she killed the dragon. What kind of climax is that? The hero accidently kills the anonymous ultimate bad guy with a magic rock they just happened to pick up because it was pretty. Hurray for deus ex machina!
Then Luthe shows up and informs her that she's actually taken a few hundred years to battle Whatshisbucket and he's come to take her back to her own time so she can end the war that's raging in her kingdom... but not far enough back to prevent the war and stop her father and countless others from being killed. But there's no rush, so they spend a few days strolling along through the woods together, making out, and sleeping under the stars. They whisper sweet nothings to each other and are all kinds of mushy, and it really irritated me. Why the heck did she fall in love with him? Was it his arrogance? The condescending way he talked to her? The way he was constantly dissing her family and homeland and the nice guy back home who had always treated her like the princess she was? Or maybe it was the way he sent her off to battle a super powerful bad guy and then showed up after the battle was over to walk her home? It's hard to choose, they're all such charming things.
So she goes home and uses a magic crown (which was lost for centuries) that she got from Whatshisbucket to help win the war. And she marries Tor, even though she loves Luthe and looks forward to the day when she can go back to him.
What do we learn kids?
Don't suddenly introduce a villain nobody has ever heard of and expect him to have an impact on the story.
Don't introduce time travel for absolutely no reason other than to show off someone's ability to do it.
Don't make your heroine fall in love with a total jerk, especially when there's a perfectly awesome guy back home that she could fall in love with.
Deus ex machina is not a good thing.
I don't really know what to rate it overall, and wish I could rate it in parts. I suppose I could average it out and give it three stars, but that doesn't seem to fit.
So I'll rate it in my review, which is very long and rambling.
The First Half: *****
I really liked it. The characters were likeable (or unlikeable if that's what they were meant to be) and everything flowed nicely. I really liked the main character, Aerin. She had spunk, for lack of a better way to describe her. She was different from everyone else, and it bothered her, but she didn't let it mess up her life. She took pride in herself. She had a short temper that got her in some minor trouble, and that made her more interesting as far as princesses go.
She handled the incident with the magic plant (can't remember the name of it) well. Drawing on her stubborn nature and desire to prove she was more than people thought she was, she recovered completely. I love how she identified with her father's injured war horse during this and helped him recover too. (Talat was a pretty cool horse too.)
She also took on a job that was far from glamorous because she knew she could do it better than anyone else, and she worked hard to get to that point.
She was cool, and the story was nicely building around her ability to make the best of what she had to work with.
Then came her battle with the Maur...
The battle itself was fine, and the immediate aftermath was too. It's when she gets home that I draw the line between the first half of the book and the second half, even though it might not be right in the middle of the book.
The Second Half *
Perhaps the reason the rest of this book made me so mad, is because the first part was really good. I felt cheated.
I'll start where I left off, when Aerin gets home from her battle with the big dragon. Her personality totally changed after that. She became all mopey and whiny and depressed. I think that was supposed to have something to do with the dragon's evil taint or something, but why did it wait for her to recover before it kicked in? She was nearly dead after the battle, but she managed get home, and then she recovered to the point where she could walk around without assistance, and her hair all grew back and she didn't even have any noticeable scars... THEN she started getting all depressed-to-death. And even after Luthe dunked her in his magic pond to cure her of the dragon's taint (or whatever) she was mopey. She even frets about her hair several times during her boss battle.
Then there's Luthe himself. I know he's in some of McKinley's other books, so maybe there's more to him than what you get in this one, but he just came across as such a jerk in this book. He'd been watching her all her life, but after he healed her and taught to use he magic he said he should have stepped in sooner but he figured she would have realized her ability to use magic before and used that on Maur... despite the fact that she had never used magic at all before and didn't know she could. He constantly bashes her country and her family, especially Tor, who was always kind to her and loved her. He even bashes her horse. He has so much contempt for everyone that he just comes across as the most arrogant guy on the face of the planet. He even sounds condescending when he talks to Aerin, remarking constantly about how simple she is and how he feels terrible about sending her to fight Whatshisbucket when she is but a child, when even he doesn't stand a chance.
That brings me to Whatshisbucket. Her evil uncle who is somehow the most evil bad guy in the whole land, yet she's never heard of him. He was never even mentioned earlier in the book, yet suddenly he's the main cause for all the trouble. If you walked up to someone in Middle Earth and asked if they'd heard of Sauron, they'd say the Middle Earth equivalent of "well duh, who hasn't?" and look at you like you were some kind of idiot. Everyone in the wizarding world in Harry Potter had heard of Voldemort. Everyone in Narnia knows about the White Witch. How the heck does Whatshisbucket manage to be the ultimate bad guy anonymously?
And how does she defeat the ultimate bad guy? She accidentally throws a magic rock at him. She wasn't even trying to throw it, and she didn't know it was magic anyway. She had no clue what it was! She was just carrying it around because it was an interesting shiny red rock she found after she killed the dragon. What kind of climax is that? The hero accidently kills the anonymous ultimate bad guy with a magic rock they just happened to pick up because it was pretty. Hurray for deus ex machina!
Then Luthe shows up and informs her that she's actually taken a few hundred years to battle Whatshisbucket and he's come to take her back to her own time so she can end the war that's raging in her kingdom... but not far enough back to prevent the war and stop her father and countless others from being killed. But there's no rush, so they spend a few days strolling along through the woods together, making out, and sleeping under the stars. They whisper sweet nothings to each other and are all kinds of mushy, and it really irritated me. Why the heck did she fall in love with him? Was it his arrogance? The condescending way he talked to her? The way he was constantly dissing her family and homeland and the nice guy back home who had always treated her like the princess she was? Or maybe it was the way he sent her off to battle a super powerful bad guy and then showed up after the battle was over to walk her home? It's hard to choose, they're all such charming things.
So she goes home and uses a magic crown (which was lost for centuries) that she got from Whatshisbucket to help win the war. And she marries Tor, even though she loves Luthe and looks forward to the day when she can go back to him.
What do we learn kids?
Don't suddenly introduce a villain nobody has ever heard of and expect him to have an impact on the story.
Don't introduce time travel for absolutely no reason other than to show off someone's ability to do it.
Don't make your heroine fall in love with a total jerk, especially when there's a perfectly awesome guy back home that she could fall in love with.
Deus ex machina is not a good thing.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 19, 2018
Like most of Robin McKinley’s work, The Hero and the Crown is very hard to classify. Its surface is high fantasy—cliché high fantasy, even—but it’s written like psychologically-driven realistic fiction.
Our setting is the rather desolate kingdom of Damar, about which we know little except:
1). The heirs to the throne are called sola (male) or sol (female). It should really be the other way around, or at least that would make it easier to follow for those of us who speak Latin.
2). The Damarians have occasionally suffered dragon infestation. Dragons in this world are unreasoning beasts. Forget about bonding with one and riding it.
3). They don’t like witches in this land, or people from the North, and people from the North are often suspected of witchcraft without cause.
One suspected witch was the dead second wife of King Arlbeth, who gave up on life after being delivered of a daughter, Aerin.
Princess Aerin’s parentage is not the only strike against her. She also is the only young member of the royal family whose magical Gift has never manifest. Everyone in Damar is bronzed and black-haired except our tall, awkward, fair-skinned, redheaded heroine. She feels terribly alienated at court, with no friends save her cousin Tor, the heir to the throne (girls cannot inherit in this kingdom). Tor is in love with her, but she’s too immature to figure it out.
Aerin took a dare from a mean female cousin to consume a plant that would supposedly kill anyone but a member of the royal family, and this made her sick for months. While laid up, she discovered a book on dragon-slaying that included a recipe for a balm that warded against dragon-fire.
Once she recovers, Aerin spends most of her time training, and bonding with, an old lamed war horse named Talat, who becomes her loyal steed when she finally tests out the dragon-proof balm against a minor worm in a small village.
Word of their first victory spreads, in spite of dragon-slaying not being a proper occupation for a princess, and soon every village wants Aerin to deal with their scaly pests.
Meanwhile, their Northern neighbors declare war on Damar, and just when the whole army has marched out, a great dragon, the dread Maur, reawakes from a hundred year slumber or sulk. Only Aerin is left to deal with him…but he proves almost beyond her nascent skill…and she only kills the Worm at great cost to herself.
While recovering from great injury, a mysterious man begins to contact her in dreams. She realizes that something has changed for good inside her, and seeks him, as he is probably the only person who knows what that is.
Content Advisory
Violence: Lots of dragons burning people. People get hurt, but there is little graphic description of killing or wounding.
Sex: The book makes it clear that Aerin gave her virginity to Luthe, without ever stating as much. There is no love scene. We only see them kiss, and it’s not written in a racy way. There is no innuendo outside of a line about not getting enough sleep, which may or may not go over a kid’s head—but the cover said “Ages 10 and up” and it won the Newbery, which are usually G-rated.
This plot development is even weirder because she
Language: Nothing but “hells” which is always plural.
Substance Abuse: The surka leaves gave Aerin scary hallucinations, but no one uses them for recreation.
Anything Else: It’s implied that an evil spirit lingers in the skull of the dragon Maur, and that this demon contaminated the city when the army insisted on bringing the skull back as a trophy.
Conclusion
Robin McKinley has two great strengths as a writer. The first is the consistent magnificence of her prose. The second is her character development.
Her heroines tend to blend together—they’re all self-sufficient and a bit misanthropic, with a strong sense of justice and racing, random thoughts. This is a trait they all share with the author herself—I have never seen so many parentheses and brackets and ellipses and dashes on a blog before—and as someone with ADD I find it very relatable.
The men in her books are wonderful too, always kind and gentle and devoted to the heroine. Unfortunately this brings us to the major flaw of the book.
You can’t have a love triangle where both rivals win. That’s just cheap.
Love triangles have certainly been overused in YA fiction since Twilight, but sometimes—and this is one of those times—there’s enough contrast between the suitors, or what those suitors represent, that it’s permissible. It’s not the mere presence of the love triangle that bothers me, it’s that this book resolved it in a way that struck me as cheap. If you disagree, let me know why in the comments (please be nice). For what it’s worth, both this and Tamora Pierce’s Song of the Lioness series feature love triangles, and they predate Twilight by twenty years.
Aerin has two suitors: Tor, her cousin and childhood friend, who is kind and understanding but a different manner of creature from her; and Luthe, the mage of the mountains, who comes from the same Gifted stock as Aerin’s dead mother and is, like Aerin herself, semi-immortal and ageless.
During Aerin’s long illness at the castle, , Tor tends anxiously to his beloved cousin, but Luthe appears in her mirrors, her cups of water, her dreams, whispering to her. Gosh, what does this remind me of?
Nor is Luthe the only handsome, blond magician-hero to appear during this era:
And yes, they are all riffs on Hades and Persephone, and Luthe, being a McKinley male lead, is the nicest and least creepy of the four.
Unfortunately there is no mention of him for the first half of the book. Tor is a major presence during those chapters, and there is no hint of any rival, so when Luthe first appeared I was startled—even though I knew from the imagery and tropes used that he would be Aerin’s suitor, and
The book does have some excellent qualities, the best of which is probably Aerin’s relationship with Talat the horse. And as I said earlier, I enjoy McKinley’s prose and the internal monologues of her awkward, brilliant, frustrated heroines.
Unlike many people here, though, I actually think she got better with age. This book was good overall—even though the solution to the love triangle was utterly stupid and the sexual subplot, while discreet, was unnecessary. But Beauty: A Retelling of the Story of Beauty and the Beast and Chalice are much better. I still want to read The Blue Sword .
Our setting is the rather desolate kingdom of Damar, about which we know little except:
1). The heirs to the throne are called sola (male) or sol (female). It should really be the other way around, or at least that would make it easier to follow for those of us who speak Latin.
2). The Damarians have occasionally suffered dragon infestation. Dragons in this world are unreasoning beasts. Forget about bonding with one and riding it.
3). They don’t like witches in this land, or people from the North, and people from the North are often suspected of witchcraft without cause.
One suspected witch was the dead second wife of King Arlbeth, who gave up on life after being delivered of a daughter, Aerin.
Princess Aerin’s parentage is not the only strike against her. She also is the only young member of the royal family whose magical Gift has never manifest. Everyone in Damar is bronzed and black-haired except our tall, awkward, fair-skinned, redheaded heroine. She feels terribly alienated at court, with no friends save her cousin Tor, the heir to the throne (girls cannot inherit in this kingdom). Tor is in love with her, but she’s too immature to figure it out.
Aerin took a dare from a mean female cousin to consume a plant that would supposedly kill anyone but a member of the royal family, and this made her sick for months. While laid up, she discovered a book on dragon-slaying that included a recipe for a balm that warded against dragon-fire.
Once she recovers, Aerin spends most of her time training, and bonding with, an old lamed war horse named Talat, who becomes her loyal steed when she finally tests out the dragon-proof balm against a minor worm in a small village.
Word of their first victory spreads, in spite of dragon-slaying not being a proper occupation for a princess, and soon every village wants Aerin to deal with their scaly pests.
Meanwhile, their Northern neighbors declare war on Damar, and just when the whole army has marched out, a great dragon, the dread Maur, reawakes from a hundred year slumber or sulk. Only Aerin is left to deal with him…but he proves almost beyond her nascent skill…and she only kills the Worm at great cost to herself.
While recovering from great injury, a mysterious man begins to contact her in dreams. She realizes that something has changed for good inside her, and seeks him, as he is probably the only person who knows what that is.
Content Advisory
Violence: Lots of dragons burning people. People get hurt, but there is little graphic description of killing or wounding.
Sex: The book makes it clear that Aerin gave her virginity to Luthe, without ever stating as much. There is no love scene. We only see them kiss, and it’s not written in a racy way. There is no innuendo outside of a line about not getting enough sleep, which may or may not go over a kid’s head—but the cover said “Ages 10 and up” and it won the Newbery, which are usually G-rated.
This plot development is even weirder because she
Language: Nothing but “hells” which is always plural.
Substance Abuse: The surka leaves gave Aerin scary hallucinations, but no one uses them for recreation.
Anything Else: It’s implied that an evil spirit lingers in the skull of the dragon Maur, and that this demon contaminated the city when the army insisted on bringing the skull back as a trophy.
Conclusion
Robin McKinley has two great strengths as a writer. The first is the consistent magnificence of her prose. The second is her character development.
Her heroines tend to blend together—they’re all self-sufficient and a bit misanthropic, with a strong sense of justice and racing, random thoughts. This is a trait they all share with the author herself—I have never seen so many parentheses and brackets and ellipses and dashes on a blog before—and as someone with ADD I find it very relatable.
The men in her books are wonderful too, always kind and gentle and devoted to the heroine. Unfortunately this brings us to the major flaw of the book.
You can’t have a love triangle where both rivals win. That’s just cheap.
Love triangles have certainly been overused in YA fiction since Twilight, but sometimes—and this is one of those times—there’s enough contrast between the suitors, or what those suitors represent, that it’s permissible. It’s not the mere presence of the love triangle that bothers me, it’s that this book resolved it in a way that struck me as cheap. If you disagree, let me know why in the comments (please be nice). For what it’s worth, both this and Tamora Pierce’s Song of the Lioness series feature love triangles, and they predate Twilight by twenty years.
Aerin has two suitors: Tor, her cousin and childhood friend, who is kind and understanding but a different manner of creature from her; and Luthe, the mage of the mountains, who comes from the same Gifted stock as Aerin’s dead mother and is, like Aerin herself, semi-immortal and ageless.
During Aerin’s long illness at the castle, , Tor tends anxiously to his beloved cousin, but Luthe appears in her mirrors, her cups of water, her dreams, whispering to her. Gosh, what does this remind me of?
Nor is Luthe the only handsome, blond magician-hero to appear during this era:
And yes, they are all riffs on Hades and Persephone, and Luthe, being a McKinley male lead, is the nicest and least creepy of the four.
Unfortunately there is no mention of him for the first half of the book. Tor is a major presence during those chapters, and there is no hint of any rival, so when Luthe first appeared I was startled—even though I knew from the imagery and tropes used that he would be Aerin’s suitor, and
The book does have some excellent qualities, the best of which is probably Aerin’s relationship with Talat the horse. And as I said earlier, I enjoy McKinley’s prose and the internal monologues of her awkward, brilliant, frustrated heroines.
Unlike many people here, though, I actually think she got better with age. This book was good overall—even though the solution to the love triangle was utterly stupid and the sexual subplot, while discreet, was unnecessary. But Beauty: A Retelling of the Story of Beauty and the Beast and Chalice are much better. I still want to read The Blue Sword .
November 8, 2010
This is the third Robin McKinley book I've read, and I've come to the conclusion that I just don't like her. I feel like this makes me a bad person--I mean, nobody doesn't like Robin McKinley--but although she writes beautifully about richly imagined worlds, I never like her characters.
The Hero and the Crown was no exception. Actually I loved the first half of this book, with the story of the princess Aerin who has never felt like she fit in with the royal court. She's determined to find her place, though, and despite having little inborn talent or natural brilliance, she buckles down and applies herself to learning swordplay, horseback riding and herb lore, eventually becoming a famous dragon-killer, all with the support of her best friend Tor, the future king, who's secretly in love with her. Good story, right?
It's the second half where it falls apart for me, taking the story in a new and (in my opinion) less interesting direction. Our heroine becomes immortal and is trained as a mage by a mysterious man who has a thing for her, in the same way he had a thing for her mother. It's in the second half that lack of good characterization really kills the book for me. Luthe, our mysterious man, is never really given much character or color, other than being a bit of a creeper, and then suddenly he becomes the romantic interest, and it's meant to be tragic that he and Aerin can't be together yet. But if I'm never given enough characterization to understand Luthe, how am I supposed to care about him? The second half says less and less about Aerin's mind and character as well, until at the end I can't figure out why she does anything she does and why I should care. In the end, I only finished because I wondered what would happen with Tor, the only character that I cared about. And even he doesn't get a fabulous ending, because Aerin is waiting for him to die so she can get back to Luthe. I suppose McKinley was trying to pull away from the fantasy cliche of finding your one true love and riding off into the sunset together, but if I'm reading a fantasy book, it's probably safe to say that I'm comfortable with fantasy cliches.
The Hero and the Crown was no exception. Actually I loved the first half of this book, with the story of the princess Aerin who has never felt like she fit in with the royal court. She's determined to find her place, though, and despite having little inborn talent or natural brilliance, she buckles down and applies herself to learning swordplay, horseback riding and herb lore, eventually becoming a famous dragon-killer, all with the support of her best friend Tor, the future king, who's secretly in love with her. Good story, right?
It's the second half where it falls apart for me, taking the story in a new and (in my opinion) less interesting direction. Our heroine becomes immortal and is trained as a mage by a mysterious man who has a thing for her, in the same way he had a thing for her mother. It's in the second half that lack of good characterization really kills the book for me. Luthe, our mysterious man, is never really given much character or color, other than being a bit of a creeper, and then suddenly he becomes the romantic interest, and it's meant to be tragic that he and Aerin can't be together yet. But if I'm never given enough characterization to understand Luthe, how am I supposed to care about him? The second half says less and less about Aerin's mind and character as well, until at the end I can't figure out why she does anything she does and why I should care. In the end, I only finished because I wondered what would happen with Tor, the only character that I cared about. And even he doesn't get a fabulous ending, because Aerin is waiting for him to die so she can get back to Luthe. I suppose McKinley was trying to pull away from the fantasy cliche of finding your one true love and riding off into the sunset together, but if I'm reading a fantasy book, it's probably safe to say that I'm comfortable with fantasy cliches.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 16, 2011
I read this when I was young and disgruntled, reading two or three books a day to avoid talking to my classmates. It was basically the perfect time to read this story, which tells the tale of a young woman who is not understood by her people and is deeply unhappy about it. And when I read this, it was one of very few books that spoke to me in a voice I could actually empathize with. All the other fantasy I was reading featured boys tramping across pseudo-English countryside before being crowned as kings--and instead, here was an awkward, stubborn, hard-working girl who wanted to be able to value herself and prove her worth.
Aerin grows up knowing that unlike her royal family, she's ugly, has no magic, and is distrusted by the people they rule. She inherited her low-born mother's looks but not her rumored witching power: the worst of both worlds. When we first meet her, she recently cut off a spiteful cousin's luxurious eyelashes. She tricks another cousin into teaching her swordplay, then spends hours upon hours practicing, knowing that she has no natural talent for it but refusing to give up. She spends three years experimenting with potions until she finds one that protects against flame. And then she goes out into the world to kill dragons. But in this kingdom, dragons aren't monstrous beasts--they're vermin. Killing dragons is considered a bit like catching rats. When she's called Dragon-Killer, it's as much a taunt as a title. Needless to say, tween-me adored Aerin.
Reading it now, after an extra decade of socializing and reading other fantasy books, Aerin and her lifelong quest to be a good and useful person is still wonderful, but less of a revelation. I love how much of her success is due to sheer hard work and determination, an indomitable drive to prove herself that overcomes her innate flaws. But although her early victories are her own stubborn will, her final victory seems like she lucked into it. She literally wins by accident. It's frustrating! That said, I can see where McKinley subverts fantasy tropes more clearly now. It's Aerin's perseverance and hard work, not what she's born with, that make her a hero. The most beautiful girl in the kingdom has dark hair and skin. The heroine loves two people at once, and no one thinks it weird or wrong. There's infrastructure to rebuild after the climactic battle. Instead of showing how foppish and out of touch the court is, their council meetings about provisions and treaties are actually important. etc.
And the writing is, at times, truly fantastic. The descriptions of Maur, so huge he is indistinguishable from his mountain, so malevolent that even keeping his skull as a trophy brings despair to the kingdom, stuck with me all this time. Aerin's relationship with her nurse/maid, Teka, always feels real. The battles with the dragons kept my eyes glued to the page.
I only wish that McKinley had let herself write more of this book. Time and time again, summaries of what Aerin learns or does are provided in place of the action. Aerin's education and love affair with Luthe seem to take place in 10 pages, when they could be 100. This book is only 227 pages long; if it were twice as long, it would only be better.
Aerin grows up knowing that unlike her royal family, she's ugly, has no magic, and is distrusted by the people they rule. She inherited her low-born mother's looks but not her rumored witching power: the worst of both worlds. When we first meet her, she recently cut off a spiteful cousin's luxurious eyelashes. She tricks another cousin into teaching her swordplay, then spends hours upon hours practicing, knowing that she has no natural talent for it but refusing to give up. She spends three years experimenting with potions until she finds one that protects against flame. And then she goes out into the world to kill dragons. But in this kingdom, dragons aren't monstrous beasts--they're vermin. Killing dragons is considered a bit like catching rats. When she's called Dragon-Killer, it's as much a taunt as a title. Needless to say, tween-me adored Aerin.
Reading it now, after an extra decade of socializing and reading other fantasy books, Aerin and her lifelong quest to be a good and useful person is still wonderful, but less of a revelation. I love how much of her success is due to sheer hard work and determination, an indomitable drive to prove herself that overcomes her innate flaws. But although her early victories are her own stubborn will, her final victory seems like she lucked into it. She literally wins by accident. It's frustrating! That said, I can see where McKinley subverts fantasy tropes more clearly now. It's Aerin's perseverance and hard work, not what she's born with, that make her a hero. The most beautiful girl in the kingdom has dark hair and skin. The heroine loves two people at once, and no one thinks it weird or wrong. There's infrastructure to rebuild after the climactic battle. Instead of showing how foppish and out of touch the court is, their council meetings about provisions and treaties are actually important. etc.
And the writing is, at times, truly fantastic. The descriptions of Maur, so huge he is indistinguishable from his mountain, so malevolent that even keeping his skull as a trophy brings despair to the kingdom, stuck with me all this time. Aerin's relationship with her nurse/maid, Teka, always feels real. The battles with the dragons kept my eyes glued to the page.
I only wish that McKinley had let herself write more of this book. Time and time again, summaries of what Aerin learns or does are provided in place of the action. Aerin's education and love affair with Luthe seem to take place in 10 pages, when they could be 100. This book is only 227 pages long; if it were twice as long, it would only be better.
January 23, 2015
I got this book when it was first published, in hardcover.
At the time, 'The Blue Sword' (to which this is a prequel) was one of my most-beloved books - and, I have to admit, that at the time, I didn't feel the 'The Hero and the Crown' quite measured up. I liked it - but just not quite as much. (It's not like I didn't read it several times, though.)
Re-reading, years later, I understand why I felt the way I did - but I also kind of disagree with my youthful opinion. This is a wonderful book.
It's a classic quest/hero's journey tale, but it also incorporates some unusual elements very effectively.
In 'The Blue Sword,' Aerin is a legend of history, a dragon slayer and wielder of a sword of magical powers. In 'The Hero and the Crown' we meet Aerin and discover how she became a hero.
The first half of the book is very self-contained. It introduces the half-foreign, distrusted and ill-used (but still quite privileged and royal) Aerin, a tomboy who insists on practicing swordplay. I very much enjoyed how, in her country, dragons are small creatures, certainly pestilent, but just vermin to be exterminated. Killing them brings no prestige - it's just something that has to be done. Aerin's doggedness and use of the scientific method in figuring out how to eliminate them more efficiently is a rare and appreciated example of the value of methodical persistence in order to accomplish anything. I also very much liked how, for all her efforts, she is consistently underappreciated - but the value of her accomplishments stands on its own. The big showdown with the dragon Maur is at once utterly realistic in detail and gloriously emotional - it brought me to tears.
The second half of the book is where, when I was younger, it lost my attention a bit. It addresses: what happens after one's most heroic act. It takes someone completely outside Aerin's social circle to recognize her true value. The mage Luthe calls her, and thus begins the classic 'magical studies' part of the plot. Aerin grows and matures, but at the same time begins to feel a little bit more elevated and less accessible to the reader.
However, the ending was rich and deeply satisfying. It's rare that a story so successfully depicts how one person can love different people in different ways, with each love enhancing one's life in a deep and meaningful way.
Many thanks to NetGalley and Open Road Media for the opportunity to read the ebook version of this title.
At the time, 'The Blue Sword' (to which this is a prequel) was one of my most-beloved books - and, I have to admit, that at the time, I didn't feel the 'The Hero and the Crown' quite measured up. I liked it - but just not quite as much. (It's not like I didn't read it several times, though.)
Re-reading, years later, I understand why I felt the way I did - but I also kind of disagree with my youthful opinion. This is a wonderful book.
It's a classic quest/hero's journey tale, but it also incorporates some unusual elements very effectively.
In 'The Blue Sword,' Aerin is a legend of history, a dragon slayer and wielder of a sword of magical powers. In 'The Hero and the Crown' we meet Aerin and discover how she became a hero.
The first half of the book is very self-contained. It introduces the half-foreign, distrusted and ill-used (but still quite privileged and royal) Aerin, a tomboy who insists on practicing swordplay. I very much enjoyed how, in her country, dragons are small creatures, certainly pestilent, but just vermin to be exterminated. Killing them brings no prestige - it's just something that has to be done. Aerin's doggedness and use of the scientific method in figuring out how to eliminate them more efficiently is a rare and appreciated example of the value of methodical persistence in order to accomplish anything. I also very much liked how, for all her efforts, she is consistently underappreciated - but the value of her accomplishments stands on its own. The big showdown with the dragon Maur is at once utterly realistic in detail and gloriously emotional - it brought me to tears.
The second half of the book is where, when I was younger, it lost my attention a bit. It addresses: what happens after one's most heroic act. It takes someone completely outside Aerin's social circle to recognize her true value. The mage Luthe calls her, and thus begins the classic 'magical studies' part of the plot. Aerin grows and matures, but at the same time begins to feel a little bit more elevated and less accessible to the reader.
However, the ending was rich and deeply satisfying. It's rare that a story so successfully depicts how one person can love different people in different ways, with each love enhancing one's life in a deep and meaningful way.
Many thanks to NetGalley and Open Road Media for the opportunity to read the ebook version of this title.
August 29, 2019
This is the first time I've read this book as an adult—mostly because I love, love, love The Blue Sword and this book kind of goes out of its way to undermine expectations set by that book for Damar's past. I didn't remember much of this book—mostly just a vague sense of this not being my expected Damar, really (because my memory really sucks, not because the book isn't memorable).
So I was gratified that the book holds up so well. Better, really, because I came away from it not only renewing my love for Aerin, but also feeling better about her fate than my previous vague unease. McKinley goes way out of her way to play against expectations raised by The Blue Sword, even starting out with a warning up front that even the climate is different than you might expect it to be. Aerin's Damar is courtly and well settled with a traditional structure of royalty and fealty that is very different than in Harry and Corlath's day.
Even more surprisingly, Aerin is a social outcast. Daughter of the king, true, but the offspring of a suspect, foreign, mother and held in polite aversion when not actively hated. Knowing that she will become the symbol of her people’s strength and universally loved only intensifies my sympathy with her as she goes through the suspicion and open mistrust that even her loving father has to sometimes accommodate. I have a hard time with this part of the novel, though the disconnect between my expectations and the story is only part of the reason why. In addition, Aerin is kind of passive for this first part. She has no aspiration, is withdrawn, and spends as much of her time alone as she possibly can—even avoiding those who love her and wish to help if only they could think of how.
And the pacing is slow to start, almost pastoral, really. This isn't helped by the narrative taking a really large time jump so early in the novel. We see Aerin steeling herself to request to accompany her father on his campaign against a rebel baron and then take a jump back three (or was it six?) years. We don't get back to that request for most of the rest of that section (I didn't count, but it was a goodly chunk—60 pages? 1/8th of the book? Sizeable at any rate). I'm not sure what McKinley wanted to accomplish with such a large interval, but I don't think it really worked—at least not for me.
Anyway, Once Aerin starts taking charge of her own destiny, the book really picks up. I already liked her for her quiet good sense and determination. As she begins forging her own path, she clinches my sympathy and desire for her to succeed. It's here that we begin to see that there is more to her than we have suspected. What in the later part of the book is flagged as her dual nature (both of-Damar and not-of-Damar) becomes more visible even as her solitude becomes more pronounced (solitude despite Tor's obvious desire to be more a part of her life).
And here's where the spoilers begin. I'll still flag it, though, because even though practically everybody I know has read the book, it's just plain courtesy to do so.
So by the end of the novel, I'm more or less reconciled to Aerin as a solitary hero (even though she ends up happily married). I love her dearly and very much enjoyed seeing the beginning of many of the traditions that play such vivid roles in The Blue Sword. And I have to accede McKinley's point in illustrating a character who overcomes by bridging her dual nature and synthesizing a whole that has to be acknowledged successful even by her strictest critics.
So I was gratified that the book holds up so well. Better, really, because I came away from it not only renewing my love for Aerin, but also feeling better about her fate than my previous vague unease. McKinley goes way out of her way to play against expectations raised by The Blue Sword, even starting out with a warning up front that even the climate is different than you might expect it to be. Aerin's Damar is courtly and well settled with a traditional structure of royalty and fealty that is very different than in Harry and Corlath's day.
Even more surprisingly, Aerin is a social outcast. Daughter of the king, true, but the offspring of a suspect, foreign, mother and held in polite aversion when not actively hated. Knowing that she will become the symbol of her people’s strength and universally loved only intensifies my sympathy with her as she goes through the suspicion and open mistrust that even her loving father has to sometimes accommodate. I have a hard time with this part of the novel, though the disconnect between my expectations and the story is only part of the reason why. In addition, Aerin is kind of passive for this first part. She has no aspiration, is withdrawn, and spends as much of her time alone as she possibly can—even avoiding those who love her and wish to help if only they could think of how.
And the pacing is slow to start, almost pastoral, really. This isn't helped by the narrative taking a really large time jump so early in the novel. We see Aerin steeling herself to request to accompany her father on his campaign against a rebel baron and then take a jump back three (or was it six?) years. We don't get back to that request for most of the rest of that section (I didn't count, but it was a goodly chunk—60 pages? 1/8th of the book? Sizeable at any rate). I'm not sure what McKinley wanted to accomplish with such a large interval, but I don't think it really worked—at least not for me.
Anyway, Once Aerin starts taking charge of her own destiny, the book really picks up. I already liked her for her quiet good sense and determination. As she begins forging her own path, she clinches my sympathy and desire for her to succeed. It's here that we begin to see that there is more to her than we have suspected. What in the later part of the book is flagged as her dual nature (both of-Damar and not-of-Damar) becomes more visible even as her solitude becomes more pronounced (solitude despite Tor's obvious desire to be more a part of her life).
And here's where the spoilers begin. I'll still flag it, though, because even though practically everybody I know has read the book, it's just plain courtesy to do so.
So by the end of the novel, I'm more or less reconciled to Aerin as a solitary hero (even though she ends up happily married). I love her dearly and very much enjoyed seeing the beginning of many of the traditions that play such vivid roles in The Blue Sword. And I have to accede McKinley's point in illustrating a character who overcomes by bridging her dual nature and synthesizing a whole that has to be acknowledged successful even by her strictest critics.
July 18, 2010
The Hero and the Crown is a sort of distant prequel to Robin McKinley's Newberry Honor winner The Blue Sword. For some unknown to me reason, this prequel received more critical recognition, specifically, the book was a 1985 Newberry Medal winner. IMO, this novel is weaker.
Aerin is the only daughter of the king of Damar. The problem is, she is also an offspring of a woman who was accused of being a witch and an enemy of the country. Even more, unlike all members of the royal family, Aerin possesses no special magic powers. This, once again, brands her as an insignificant person unworthy of the status of the heir to the throne in the eyes of the Damarians. Left to her own devices to prove her worth, Aerin dedicates her time to training herself to become a dragon slayer. This occupation takes her on a path of discovering and awakening her dormant powers...
First of all, I admire McKinley's writing style. There is no doubt she has a great command of English language. Her writing is sophisticated to such a degree that I can hardly imagine young children (and The Hero and the Crown is in fact classified as a children's book) being able to properly comprehend it.
The world of Damar is described in rich detail. I couldn't help myself thinking that McKinley has much more story left to tell about this country.
I am also quite fond of the way the author portrays animals in her books. She definitely has a lot of love for horses and knows them well.
What I do not appreciate about this book, and maybe it's just a personal pet peeve of mine, is the romantic story line. I-love-two-men-at-the-same-time theme just doesn't jive well with me. I guess I am old-fashioned that way, but I do not approve of a heroine who is in love with an immortal guy and has sex (!) with him, then days later marries the second (who she also loves!) with a plan to go back to the first once the second mortal one is dead. I have absolutely no idea why Luthe was even placed as a love interest in this book.
Another thing, I agree with those reviewers who have said that the story loses some ground in Part 2. This is where a lot of magical stuff happens that is not always fully explained. The magic and the heroine's "destiny" take away from her personal development.
Nevertheless, The Hero and the Crown is a worthy contribution to YA fantasy literature and is one of a few books that portray strong heroines whose lives are not directed and defined by their hot brooding boyfriends but motivated by love for their country and loyalty to their people. What a relief!
Aerin is the only daughter of the king of Damar. The problem is, she is also an offspring of a woman who was accused of being a witch and an enemy of the country. Even more, unlike all members of the royal family, Aerin possesses no special magic powers. This, once again, brands her as an insignificant person unworthy of the status of the heir to the throne in the eyes of the Damarians. Left to her own devices to prove her worth, Aerin dedicates her time to training herself to become a dragon slayer. This occupation takes her on a path of discovering and awakening her dormant powers...
First of all, I admire McKinley's writing style. There is no doubt she has a great command of English language. Her writing is sophisticated to such a degree that I can hardly imagine young children (and The Hero and the Crown is in fact classified as a children's book) being able to properly comprehend it.
The world of Damar is described in rich detail. I couldn't help myself thinking that McKinley has much more story left to tell about this country.
I am also quite fond of the way the author portrays animals in her books. She definitely has a lot of love for horses and knows them well.
What I do not appreciate about this book, and maybe it's just a personal pet peeve of mine, is the romantic story line. I-love-two-men-at-the-same-time theme just doesn't jive well with me. I guess I am old-fashioned that way, but I do not approve of a heroine who is in love with an immortal guy and has sex (!) with him, then days later marries the second (who she also loves!) with a plan to go back to the first once the second mortal one is dead. I have absolutely no idea why Luthe was even placed as a love interest in this book.
Another thing, I agree with those reviewers who have said that the story loses some ground in Part 2. This is where a lot of magical stuff happens that is not always fully explained. The magic and the heroine's "destiny" take away from her personal development.
Nevertheless, The Hero and the Crown is a worthy contribution to YA fantasy literature and is one of a few books that portray strong heroines whose lives are not directed and defined by their hot brooding boyfriends but motivated by love for their country and loyalty to their people. What a relief!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 10, 2018
“Her destiny, like her love, like her heritage, was double.”
Damar is a precarious duology in that the second book in the series is actually a prequel to the events described in the Blue Sword. Like its predecessor, The Hero and the Crown is a novel about a girl with a special horse and a magic sword. After the horrors I already endured, I expected the worst. As it is, the book is not that bad. Which unfortunately doesn’t to mean that it is worth reading.
Once again, we have a typical YA setting: a kingdom in a need of salvation and a girl in need ofhappiness fame and glory. The book is divided into two parts; the first one being a retrospection giving the background on important events in Aerin life, whereas in the second the proper story unfolds. Consequently, the former entails a lot of sulking and brooding and angsting over being the only redhead (curly at that!) in a land full of cinnamon-skinned brunettes (the drama…) and the latter is a short manual how to save the world single-handedly.
It is so very tedious. Also, a little bit boring.
By this point, you might have noticed that I don’t really like the main heroine.
Obviously the reader is meant to root for Aerin. But the way it has been written is beyond lazy and into the realm of propaganda. I mean, the girl is nice, but the only other female figure Aerin could be pitched against is vain and slightly malicious. Juxtaposed with somebody like that, Aerin shines like a pearl in the gutter. But what would have happened should another decent female protagonist appeared? One that doesn’t drown in anguish is not inherently insecure and does not feel constantly victimised?
We will never know because the book is solely focused on Aerin and other people exist only to give her a proper background. This is again achieved by having her distanced from everybody else. The mistrust of the people, so frequently repeated, is not credible (in fact, it does not make sense at all) and full of contradictions. Her father supports her and does not merit the mixture of fear and mental withdrawal he receives in return. Her best friend and mentor is always there for her (something that cannot be said about Aerin who is a rather selfish or at least self-centred creature) and all that earns is an instrumental payback at the end. Even the way Aerin proceeds to save the world is self-centred. She needs to do this alone, you see. It is all about her, and the rest be damned. She is the hero after all.
Upon finishing the book, I have debated whether I am simply not 20 years too old to read it. But it doesn’t seem to be the case with other YA and even middle grade books I have read and adore. I guess my main problem is with the unhappy heroine herself. The main source of Aerin’s unhappiness is the fact that… well, actually I still do not know what was at the root of her angsty behaviour. She is pretty, healthy and wealthy. Her life is devoid of hardships and problems; many exceptions have been made to accommodate her whims and, whether she acknowledged it or not, she was treated like a special case with the allowances like swordplay and her other more eccentric pastimes (there are many of those). She has a good father whom she treats in a way that he never deserved and a good friend whom she treats abominably. In all this, duplicity is her worst trait, which is particularly visible in the (anti)romance she indulges in.
That was, so to speak, the last stroke (that broke the hero’s back.
Even if I am too old to fully enjoy this novel, Aerin is definitely not a role model I’d respect and not somebody I’d like to introduce my daughter to. In fact, when she comes around, I’d much prefer her to make friends with Sabriel or Emily or Sophie.
----
The story continues in:
The Blue Sword ★☆☆☆☆
Damar is a precarious duology in that the second book in the series is actually a prequel to the events described in the Blue Sword. Like its predecessor, The Hero and the Crown is a novel about a girl with a special horse and a magic sword. After the horrors I already endured, I expected the worst. As it is, the book is not that bad. Which unfortunately doesn’t to mean that it is worth reading.
Once again, we have a typical YA setting: a kingdom in a need of salvation and a girl in need of
It is so very tedious. Also, a little bit boring.
By this point, you might have noticed that I don’t really like the main heroine.
Obviously the reader is meant to root for Aerin. But the way it has been written is beyond lazy and into the realm of propaganda. I mean, the girl is nice, but the only other female figure Aerin could be pitched against is vain and slightly malicious. Juxtaposed with somebody like that, Aerin shines like a pearl in the gutter. But what would have happened should another decent female protagonist appeared? One that doesn’t drown in anguish is not inherently insecure and does not feel constantly victimised?
We will never know because the book is solely focused on Aerin and other people exist only to give her a proper background. This is again achieved by having her distanced from everybody else. The mistrust of the people, so frequently repeated, is not credible (in fact, it does not make sense at all) and full of contradictions. Her father supports her and does not merit the mixture of fear and mental withdrawal he receives in return. Her best friend and mentor is always there for her (something that cannot be said about Aerin who is a rather selfish or at least self-centred creature) and all that earns is an instrumental payback at the end. Even the way Aerin proceeds to save the world is self-centred. She needs to do this alone, you see. It is all about her, and the rest be damned. She is the hero after all.
Upon finishing the book, I have debated whether I am simply not 20 years too old to read it. But it doesn’t seem to be the case with other YA and even middle grade books I have read and adore. I guess my main problem is with the unhappy heroine herself. The main source of Aerin’s unhappiness is the fact that… well, actually I still do not know what was at the root of her angsty behaviour. She is pretty, healthy and wealthy. Her life is devoid of hardships and problems; many exceptions have been made to accommodate her whims and, whether she acknowledged it or not, she was treated like a special case with the allowances like swordplay and her other more eccentric pastimes (there are many of those). She has a good father whom she treats in a way that he never deserved and a good friend whom she treats abominably. In all this, duplicity is her worst trait, which is particularly visible in the (anti)romance she indulges in.
That was, so to speak, the last stroke (that broke the hero’s back.
Even if I am too old to fully enjoy this novel, Aerin is definitely not a role model I’d respect and not somebody I’d like to introduce my daughter to. In fact, when she comes around, I’d much prefer her to make friends with Sabriel or Emily or Sophie.
----
The story continues in:
The Blue Sword ★☆☆☆☆
September 29, 2018
Robin McKinley no es una autora para todo el mundo.
En su día leí 'Chalice', otra de sus novelas, y tuve sensaciones similares... Sus historias de fantasía son intimistas, con poca acción y pocos personajes pero con un gran desarrollo de los mismos. Su estilo es una de las cosas que más me gustan, (es realmente poético) pero también es lo que más me cuesta a la hora de leer sus novelas, porque mi nivel de inglés da para lo que da.
'The hero and the crown' es la precuela de otro de sus libros que pretendo leer más adelante, 'The blue sword' (aunque por lo que he escuchado están bastante distanciados en el tiempo), a mi me ha recordado a una especie de El señor de los anillos mezclado con Juliet Marillier, pero en realidad es algo totalmente distinto.
Es el camino del héroe típico, es la pelea con dragones y es la lucha con el maligno archienemigo, pero todo parece dado la vuelta, el héroe es una heroína, una princesa sí, pero cuya madre se ganó el despreció de la corte y se sospecha que hechizó al Rey para casarse con él. Así que nuestra protagonista no es muy querida, tiene pocos amigos y la relación con su padre es distante.. la vemos crecer y tratar desesperadamente de destacar y hacer algo por sí misma para finalmente encontrar su lugar.
Me encanta Robin McKinley porque no tiene miedo de hacer sufrir a sus personajes y mostrarnos las consecuencias de todos sus actos, durante una gran parte del libro la protagonista está enferma e incluso sufre una depresión... ¿En cuántos libros de fantasía podemos ver algo así?
Es una novela de fantasía diferente, con una magia de cuentos de hadas pero muy asentada en la realidad, con una atmósfera fascinante y un trasfondo muy sólido.
Hay cosas que quizás hubiera preferido de otra manera, y alguna laguna en la que me perdí por culpa de mi inglés, pero en general me parece una historia enormemente original dentro del género tratando todos los tópicos de una manera diferente.
***Ojalá ALGUIEN se anime a traducir sus libros, y por favor que pongan un buen traductor, porque la prosa de McKinley se las trae
En su día leí 'Chalice', otra de sus novelas, y tuve sensaciones similares... Sus historias de fantasía son intimistas, con poca acción y pocos personajes pero con un gran desarrollo de los mismos. Su estilo es una de las cosas que más me gustan, (es realmente poético) pero también es lo que más me cuesta a la hora de leer sus novelas, porque mi nivel de inglés da para lo que da.
'The hero and the crown' es la precuela de otro de sus libros que pretendo leer más adelante, 'The blue sword' (aunque por lo que he escuchado están bastante distanciados en el tiempo), a mi me ha recordado a una especie de El señor de los anillos mezclado con Juliet Marillier, pero en realidad es algo totalmente distinto.
Es el camino del héroe típico, es la pelea con dragones y es la lucha con el maligno archienemigo, pero todo parece dado la vuelta, el héroe es una heroína, una princesa sí, pero cuya madre se ganó el despreció de la corte y se sospecha que hechizó al Rey para casarse con él. Así que nuestra protagonista no es muy querida, tiene pocos amigos y la relación con su padre es distante.. la vemos crecer y tratar desesperadamente de destacar y hacer algo por sí misma para finalmente encontrar su lugar.
Me encanta Robin McKinley porque no tiene miedo de hacer sufrir a sus personajes y mostrarnos las consecuencias de todos sus actos, durante una gran parte del libro la protagonista está enferma e incluso sufre una depresión... ¿En cuántos libros de fantasía podemos ver algo así?
Es una novela de fantasía diferente, con una magia de cuentos de hadas pero muy asentada en la realidad, con una atmósfera fascinante y un trasfondo muy sólido.
Hay cosas que quizás hubiera preferido de otra manera, y alguna laguna en la que me perdí por culpa de mi inglés, pero en general me parece una historia enormemente original dentro del género tratando todos los tópicos de una manera diferente.
***Ojalá ALGUIEN se anime a traducir sus libros, y por favor que pongan un buen traductor, porque la prosa de McKinley se las trae
January 9, 2010
A reader might well leave this Damar prequel feeling dazed and uncertain of what to make of the jumble of rises and falls and meandering sidestories and climaxes, but a vigorous shake of the head will allow the book to be seen as two distinct halves: Part 1) The fantastic set-up. Part 2) The frustratingly sloppy, nonsensical, disappointing end/end? Until the story's first climax, McKinley gives us everything: a relatable, charismatic, admirable heroine who's so scrappy and determined we can't help but root for her all the way; a mystery; adversity; a worthy love interest; looming doom; etc. And then she throws it all away and in our faces. Our heroine trades scrappy for serene, mystery and adversity find their basis in random coincidence and are explained away as "it's magic!", the love interest is forsaken in favor of some Mary Sue new guy who we're supposed accept suddenly as her soul mate, and there's a thrown-together magical solution for every evil force for which there was utterly no planning or foreshadowing. It's so disappointing! The messages I left with were 1) Gee it's nice that the heroine was so gung-ho and hard-working even though she was just a vessel for Fate and the Force of Good and 2) The nice thing about being immortal is you can wait for your mortal husband to die and then go enjoy your immortal one. I was not swept off my feet by this one.
October 7, 2019
Found this random gem in my used bookstore.
The Hero and the Crown is a fantasy story from 1984. It won the Newbery Medal. It is supposed to be the prequel to "The Blue Sword" and tells the "origin" story for the legendary "Aerin Fire-Hair" or "Aerin Dragon-Killer".
There is much to like about Aerin. Though she is the King's daughter, her mother was assumed to be a witch. She grows up humble and kind, without a touch of the arrogance that is native to the nobles of her land. But she is intelligent and a hard worker. I appreciate that she doesn't just wake up one day and become super-ninja-warrior and archmagus and most powerful character ever, as is the common trope nowadays. No, we see Aerin learn the hard (real) way- years of practice and training. From learning the art of swordplay from Tor to finding the correct method to create the fire-proof salve.
I also appreciate that Aerin makes mistakes and does pay a severe price for her achievements. Her ability to appreciate and her obvious love for animals also made her a very likable character. As to the story? It's a very enjoyable romp through a fantasy world. The villains range from Maur the great black dragon to the dark mage Asgded. While this is never a dark fantasy, it never devolves into a kid's tale either.
A fun, enjoyable read with good characters. Who could ask for anything more?
The Hero and the Crown is a fantasy story from 1984. It won the Newbery Medal. It is supposed to be the prequel to "The Blue Sword" and tells the "origin" story for the legendary "Aerin Fire-Hair" or "Aerin Dragon-Killer".
There is much to like about Aerin. Though she is the King's daughter, her mother was assumed to be a witch. She grows up humble and kind, without a touch of the arrogance that is native to the nobles of her land. But she is intelligent and a hard worker. I appreciate that she doesn't just wake up one day and become super-ninja-warrior and archmagus and most powerful character ever, as is the common trope nowadays. No, we see Aerin learn the hard (real) way- years of practice and training. From learning the art of swordplay from Tor to finding the correct method to create the fire-proof salve.
I also appreciate that Aerin makes mistakes and does pay a severe price for her achievements. Her ability to appreciate and her obvious love for animals also made her a very likable character. As to the story? It's a very enjoyable romp through a fantasy world. The villains range from Maur the great black dragon to the dark mage Asgded. While this is never a dark fantasy, it never devolves into a kid's tale either.
A fun, enjoyable read with good characters. Who could ask for anything more?
April 9, 2016
I got a copy of this in 6th or 7th grade. I've read it so many times that it is being held together by a rubber band. I enjoyed it because it was the first real fantasy book I read where the hero is a young woman. She's not just the sidekick, but the hero. She's also flawed and not supergirl or ravishing beautiful. It's a wonderful book because of that. In many ways, it is the perfect book for any quiet girl simply because a loner, an outcast proves herself needed. Perhaps the success of the book among girls is tied to that facet of the story.
July 12, 2014
I loved this book as a kid and I love it still as an adult. It's one of those books that's so much a part of my life that it's hard for me to believe that not everyone has read it. Maur still creeps me out, Talat still makes me teary, and Aerin's surka rash as she climbs the tower remains the best thing ever.
November 22, 2014
Wow, I don't know why I didn't really like The Hero and the Crown very much on the first go round. It's full of all the kinds of things I love: love stories that aren't just simple love-at-first-sight or we-grew-up-together-and-now-we're-in-love, but something more complicated that that; a world with a history and a future, outside of what we've got; a heroine who works through flaws and barriers to become a hero. And the last sentences -- ach! Lovely.
It's not some straightforward children's story in which a heroine goes forth and slays a dragon. That happens, but it happens as part of a longer journey: the dragon isn't the end, but only really the beginning of Aerin's journey. It doesn't solve all her issues and let her go home unscathed, unchanged, to a court that's suddenly ready to accept her. Aerin's story is harder than that.
Looking at my old review/notes on this, I was disappointed by the worldbuilding -- which I think is funny, because though it's subtle, there's plenty here. The surka, the crown, old heroes, Luthe's background, why the animals follow Aerin: there's so much that doesn't get elucidated, but remains there for you to turn over and wonder at. McKinley doesn't give you all the answers about her world in one go, and I doubt that The Blue Sword will answer all of it either. Maybe you have to do a little more work to really appreciate the history of the world, because McKinley does nothing so clumsy as sit you in a history lesson with Aerin to learn about it.
Overall, given the subtlety of parts of this and the wistfulness of the love stories, I'm not entirely sure how I'd have taken this as a child. It may be a prime example of a story that works on two levels: Aerin waving her sword around for younger readers, winning the day with her prowess, while the older readers might taste more of the bittersweetness of her immortality and her twin-nature.
It's not some straightforward children's story in which a heroine goes forth and slays a dragon. That happens, but it happens as part of a longer journey: the dragon isn't the end, but only really the beginning of Aerin's journey. It doesn't solve all her issues and let her go home unscathed, unchanged, to a court that's suddenly ready to accept her. Aerin's story is harder than that.
Looking at my old review/notes on this, I was disappointed by the worldbuilding -- which I think is funny, because though it's subtle, there's plenty here. The surka, the crown, old heroes, Luthe's background, why the animals follow Aerin: there's so much that doesn't get elucidated, but remains there for you to turn over and wonder at. McKinley doesn't give you all the answers about her world in one go, and I doubt that The Blue Sword will answer all of it either. Maybe you have to do a little more work to really appreciate the history of the world, because McKinley does nothing so clumsy as sit you in a history lesson with Aerin to learn about it.
Overall, given the subtlety of parts of this and the wistfulness of the love stories, I'm not entirely sure how I'd have taken this as a child. It may be a prime example of a story that works on two levels: Aerin waving her sword around for younger readers, winning the day with her prowess, while the older readers might taste more of the bittersweetness of her immortality and her twin-nature.
August 26, 2008
young princess who feels like a misfit, teaches herself to fight dragons, befriends animals left&right, finds love twice, overcomes a villain from her family's past, follows her known duty rather than pursue unknown emotion...it's really not as dry as I'm summarizing.
beautifully and dreamily written. I remember reading this and wanting to fight dragons. a big surprise when I re-read years later and still enjoyed it, still found the heroine a sympathetic character. good messages about not taking anyone's crap and actively working to make things happen for yourself instead of waiting around.
i just finished reading Twilight and what a contrast - weak, whiny, undone by selfishness portrayed as strength - HatC is better by far.
beautifully and dreamily written. I remember reading this and wanting to fight dragons. a big surprise when I re-read years later and still enjoyed it, still found the heroine a sympathetic character. good messages about not taking anyone's crap and actively working to make things happen for yourself instead of waiting around.
i just finished reading Twilight and what a contrast - weak, whiny, undone by selfishness portrayed as strength - HatC is better by far.
August 4, 2016
The book that made me say, I want to do that, I want to be her (both Aerin, the Hero, and Robin, the Author). This is the book that made me love fantasy, dragons, everything.
![Profile Image for laurel [the suspected bibliophile].](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.gr-assets.com%2Fimages%2FS%2Fcompressed.photo.goodreads.com%2Fusers%2F1645808644i%2F7494844._UX200_CR0%2C6%2C200%2C200_.jpg&w=128&q=75)
October 27, 2022
I can't believe it's been 10 years since I reread this.
It's a masterpiece, plain and simple. The way McKinley subverted so many fantasy tropes and the epic fantasy genre itself, and created such a vast and expansive world all under 250 pages, is remarkable.
Anywho. There are dragons, big and small. There are big dogs and bigger cats. There's a truly remarkable old warhorse. There's an evil wizard on a mountain tower. There's a good wizard on another mountain (but not a tower). There are magical lakes, magical crowns, magical swords, magical prophecies, magical poison ivy, fights between humans and demons. There's the hero's journey and the hero's return and the hero's coming of age. There is a very intense rash.
The writing is not the style familiar in today's YA: it is dense and tangled and stubborn, just like Aerin and her journey.
It's a masterpiece, plain and simple. The way McKinley subverted so many fantasy tropes and the epic fantasy genre itself, and created such a vast and expansive world all under 250 pages, is remarkable.
Anywho. There are dragons, big and small. There are big dogs and bigger cats. There's a truly remarkable old warhorse. There's an evil wizard on a mountain tower. There's a good wizard on another mountain (but not a tower). There are magical lakes, magical crowns, magical swords, magical prophecies, magical poison ivy, fights between humans and demons. There's the hero's journey and the hero's return and the hero's coming of age. There is a very intense rash.
The writing is not the style familiar in today's YA: it is dense and tangled and stubborn, just like Aerin and her journey.
March 28, 2013
I LOVED the first 2/3 of this book. Then, it started to drag and I had a hard time finishing it.
Aerin is a princess in the city of Damar. Her father is a good, righteous king and her mother died shortly after giving birth to Aerin. The people love her father, but they believe her mother was a witch and they don't trust her daughter. As a result, Aerin becomes a bit of a loner, her only real friend is Tor, the boy who will inherit the throne. All members of the royal family should develop magical powers at a young age. As Aerin gets older, she doesn't develop these powers and decides to start hunting dragons in order to make herself useful. This leads to an adventure to find the mystical Hero Crown in order to save her family and kingdom.
I'm not a big fantasy-genre person, which is why I liked the first portion but not the second. The first part of the book (up until she kills her first major dragon) is fun. It's a perfect blend on real life elements (cousins who fight a lot, a girl who feels alone, a bit of romance) with some interesting fantasy twists (look at their magical powers, when will she develop hers, dragons are nearby). But then it becomes too fantasy-genre and suddenly, it's not Earth with a blend of magic. It's some other world where there are multiple moons and weird songs and hybrid creatures and it's not relatable at all. By the end, I just wanted the story to be over.
Aerin is a princess in the city of Damar. Her father is a good, righteous king and her mother died shortly after giving birth to Aerin. The people love her father, but they believe her mother was a witch and they don't trust her daughter. As a result, Aerin becomes a bit of a loner, her only real friend is Tor, the boy who will inherit the throne. All members of the royal family should develop magical powers at a young age. As Aerin gets older, she doesn't develop these powers and decides to start hunting dragons in order to make herself useful. This leads to an adventure to find the mystical Hero Crown in order to save her family and kingdom.
I'm not a big fantasy-genre person, which is why I liked the first portion but not the second. The first part of the book (up until she kills her first major dragon) is fun. It's a perfect blend on real life elements (cousins who fight a lot, a girl who feels alone, a bit of romance) with some interesting fantasy twists (look at their magical powers, when will she develop hers, dragons are nearby). But then it becomes too fantasy-genre and suddenly, it's not Earth with a blend of magic. It's some other world where there are multiple moons and weird songs and hybrid creatures and it's not relatable at all. By the end, I just wanted the story to be over.
April 29, 2025
A great little all-ages fantasy book that I sadly managed to miss as a kid, despite loving the companion novel, The Blue Sword. It’s short but not the fastest read, as it’s written in a mythical style that adds gravitas to the story of an always-out-of-place young woman fighting to defend her country and establish her place in the world.
Now over 40 years old, Aerin’s story must have been influential on subsequent writers, because all the characters and most of the plot points fit extremely recognizable tropes… and yet it still works. The characters are written with a level of texture and feeling quite unlike the shorthand many current authors use, and in a way that avoids pitfalls that became common later. For instance, while Aerin seems like a prototype of the Not Like Other Girls trope that we’re all very tired of, she’s written in a way that does not demean or diminish femininity, nor is the Mean Girl (you know there is one) portrayed as representative of a “typical” woman.
Meanwhile, the plot can be predictable but doesn’t depend on surprise, and there were aspects that did surprise me. In particular, fight scenes are often short but the recovery afterwards long. McKinley knows how to be concise, saying a lot in a few well-chosen words—a skill many of her successors sadly lack.
Overall, a strong choice that holds up well today. While I’m sorry not to have discovered it younger, it’s still easy to appreciate as an adult. The Damar books are perhaps best compared to Earthsea in both quality and style, but I enjoyed them much more than early Earthsea.
Now over 40 years old, Aerin’s story must have been influential on subsequent writers, because all the characters and most of the plot points fit extremely recognizable tropes… and yet it still works. The characters are written with a level of texture and feeling quite unlike the shorthand many current authors use, and in a way that avoids pitfalls that became common later. For instance, while Aerin seems like a prototype of the Not Like Other Girls trope that we’re all very tired of, she’s written in a way that does not demean or diminish femininity, nor is the Mean Girl (you know there is one) portrayed as representative of a “typical” woman.
Meanwhile, the plot can be predictable but doesn’t depend on surprise, and there were aspects that did surprise me. In particular, fight scenes are often short but the recovery afterwards long. McKinley knows how to be concise, saying a lot in a few well-chosen words—a skill many of her successors sadly lack.
Overall, a strong choice that holds up well today. While I’m sorry not to have discovered it younger, it’s still easy to appreciate as an adult. The Damar books are perhaps best compared to Earthsea in both quality and style, but I enjoyed them much more than early Earthsea.
July 30, 2011
I cannot be impartial.
There are many reasons why I love this book, not least among them being the fact that it was actually the first Robin McKinley book I ever read, back in the days when I browsed library shelves at random and begged my parents into buying books for me, before I knew much about what I was really doing, and I count myself eternally lucky to have stumbled upon this book because it is, it really is, writing as art. It is not writing for money, as some books targeted at my age group are these days; nor is it writing for thrills, or for fame. It is not even a particularly engrossing story but for the fact that it is beautiful, both in content and in style. Reading this story evokes that wide-eyed feeling of being a child and listening to some adult who possessed the magical power of turning books into words, back before you could do it yourself, and it combines that feeling with one of sitting around a camp fire in the long-ago past and listening to an old man or woman recite legends in the oral tradition, sing-song things they memorized to share.
Aerin is so painfully isolated that any quiet child, I think, will see themselves in her, although magnified a hundredfold. She is the epitome of loneliness, to the point that it is self-reinforcing, and no doubt many an adult reading this book finds it difficult to relate. I personally have no such problem, because I was young and shy and awkward just a few years ago, and so I sympathize with Aerin and wish fervently for her success. Succeed she does, of course, because she's the Hero of the title, but it takes a lot of hard work and pain and suffering for her to get that far. I love it when heroes have to actually sweat and bleed and weep before they achieve their goals. I love seeing them suffer as ordinary human beings would, because then they become celebrations of the strength of real people, instead of caricatures of all the good qualities of humanity in quantities which are wholly unrealistic.
The best and worst part of this book, for me, is how well it illuminates the richness of Damar. I fell in love with this land and its people the first time I read it, which is what led me to The Blue Sword, and I still consider it a tragedy that only those two books and a short story in the Water: Tales of Elemental Spirits collection are set in it. It is a place of wild beauty and one that I wish it was possible to explore further, because clearly there are more stories here to tell. Ms. McKinley, if you ever read this, please write another Damar book - about anything at all. (Though if you're taking suggestions, maybe something about Luthe's backstory?)
As this was published after The Blue Sword, it is easy to imagine that these legends of Aerin are the ones Corlath told Harry over and over and over again, and it's hard to fault her for wanting to hear them so many times.
There are many reasons why I love this book, not least among them being the fact that it was actually the first Robin McKinley book I ever read, back in the days when I browsed library shelves at random and begged my parents into buying books for me, before I knew much about what I was really doing, and I count myself eternally lucky to have stumbled upon this book because it is, it really is, writing as art. It is not writing for money, as some books targeted at my age group are these days; nor is it writing for thrills, or for fame. It is not even a particularly engrossing story but for the fact that it is beautiful, both in content and in style. Reading this story evokes that wide-eyed feeling of being a child and listening to some adult who possessed the magical power of turning books into words, back before you could do it yourself, and it combines that feeling with one of sitting around a camp fire in the long-ago past and listening to an old man or woman recite legends in the oral tradition, sing-song things they memorized to share.
Aerin is so painfully isolated that any quiet child, I think, will see themselves in her, although magnified a hundredfold. She is the epitome of loneliness, to the point that it is self-reinforcing, and no doubt many an adult reading this book finds it difficult to relate. I personally have no such problem, because I was young and shy and awkward just a few years ago, and so I sympathize with Aerin and wish fervently for her success. Succeed she does, of course, because she's the Hero of the title, but it takes a lot of hard work and pain and suffering for her to get that far. I love it when heroes have to actually sweat and bleed and weep before they achieve their goals. I love seeing them suffer as ordinary human beings would, because then they become celebrations of the strength of real people, instead of caricatures of all the good qualities of humanity in quantities which are wholly unrealistic.
The best and worst part of this book, for me, is how well it illuminates the richness of Damar. I fell in love with this land and its people the first time I read it, which is what led me to The Blue Sword, and I still consider it a tragedy that only those two books and a short story in the Water: Tales of Elemental Spirits collection are set in it. It is a place of wild beauty and one that I wish it was possible to explore further, because clearly there are more stories here to tell. Ms. McKinley, if you ever read this, please write another Damar book - about anything at all. (Though if you're taking suggestions, maybe something about Luthe's backstory?)
As this was published after The Blue Sword, it is easy to imagine that these legends of Aerin are the ones Corlath told Harry over and over and over again, and it's hard to fault her for wanting to hear them so many times.
August 26, 2012
I really enjoyed the first half. Someone had recommended it in part because the heroine gets the prince and the wizard as lovers. Though the wizard isn't in the first half, the world created in this coming-of-age tale and the characters who people it are interesting and likeable. There's a bit much girl-and-her-pony stuff for my interest, but I wanted to know what would become of these characters. The growing love that Tor feels for Aerin is infused with the right amounts of sweetness and forbidden love torment. Aerin's dragon-slaying is interesting and exciting. Then, the story started going off the rails a bit. Places, problems, and enemies are introduced that seemed to be wholly disconnected with the first half. Luthe and their love are half-realized even by YA standards. It was as if the author felt the conflicts introduced in the first half weren't enough (they were), and created a second story to resolve it. I got bored and even the YA pace seemed too plodding, so I skimmed the last. The ending had the right amount of bittersweet sadness and I am curious what the first book, for which this serves as the prequel, might have to say.
October 22, 2016
Mmm. This is a confusing story, many times I didn't know what was going on. There were other occasions when it was unclear whose POV (Point of View) I was hearing, it chopped and changed suddenly.
There could have been more character development and also more relationship development between characters.
For me this story had no sparkle, and it could have been really great. Mind you this is only my opinion and from other reviews I see I am not in the majority about this story.
There could have been more character development and also more relationship development between characters.
For me this story had no sparkle, and it could have been really great. Mind you this is only my opinion and from other reviews I see I am not in the majority about this story.
May 13, 2025
Idk how Robin McKinley’s work evaded me for 33 years, but now that it’s found me, it’s here to stay.
BRILLIANT
BRILLIANT
May 8, 2022
I did not love this. I don’t even have more than the vaguest sense of why, and in a way that lack of clarity typifies my impressions of this novel: I was more interested in the shadows of the story it doesn’t tell.
I wanted more about Aerin’s gift and Damarian ignorance, which was glossed over so easily by Luthe in favor of learning some other magic which didn’t seem to be relevant; I wanted more of the kitchen-brewery dedication which helped her discover the kenet recipe instead of Luthe’s “third-rate” dismissal of it; I wanted a more consistent character in line with the woman who stuck with her project until she solved it, rather than the one who hid and who also fought with her cousin in spectacular ways.
I think what I’m saying is, I did not like Luthe, or the character Aerin was with Luthe, or Luthe’s approach to any of the conflicts in this story. I didn’t like his introduction as someone who insulted Aerin into seeking him (or that Aerin found him by - dowsing? How did she find him?), or his leaving Aerin alone to confront something he feared, or his casual “you’ll go marry Tor now, but don’t worry, you’re not mortal”.
I liked the dragons. I liked the idea of dragons as pests and of a giant, terrifying, more formidable foe still sleeping. The human antagonists were much less compelling: both the lord from the North who barely appeared and the mage who seemed an inevitable victory.
Aerin’s story, in a way, seemed overly inevitable: there is fate here, and she only needs to find it, and her magic sword, and be memorialized forever. Her father was a more developed character - one who struggled to balance his duty and his love, one who was weighed down by a force no one understood or expected but persisted anyway, one who wouldn’t kill his horse.
So. I was much more interested in the stories at the margins. That left me not all that enamored of this one.
I wanted more about Aerin’s gift and Damarian ignorance, which was glossed over so easily by Luthe in favor of learning some other magic which didn’t seem to be relevant; I wanted more of the kitchen-brewery dedication which helped her discover the kenet recipe instead of Luthe’s “third-rate” dismissal of it; I wanted a more consistent character in line with the woman who stuck with her project until she solved it, rather than the one who hid and who also fought with her cousin in spectacular ways.
I think what I’m saying is, I did not like Luthe, or the character Aerin was with Luthe, or Luthe’s approach to any of the conflicts in this story. I didn’t like his introduction as someone who insulted Aerin into seeking him (or that Aerin found him by - dowsing? How did she find him?), or his leaving Aerin alone to confront something he feared, or his casual “you’ll go marry Tor now, but don’t worry, you’re not mortal”.
I liked the dragons. I liked the idea of dragons as pests and of a giant, terrifying, more formidable foe still sleeping. The human antagonists were much less compelling: both the lord from the North who barely appeared and the mage who seemed an inevitable victory.
Aerin’s story, in a way, seemed overly inevitable: there is fate here, and she only needs to find it, and her magic sword, and be memorialized forever. Her father was a more developed character - one who struggled to balance his duty and his love, one who was weighed down by a force no one understood or expected but persisted anyway, one who wouldn’t kill his horse.
So. I was much more interested in the stories at the margins. That left me not all that enamored of this one.
April 24, 2022
In Damar once there was a princess called Aerin who was pitifully out of place, for she was the daughter of a woman who had long been branded a witch. With a vague sense that her destiny lay elsewhere compared to where a princess’s destiny generally lies, she set out to become the best dragon slayer the realm had seen, no matter that killing dragons was a thankless and ignoble task. But it turns out her destiny was far greater than that.
I remember I got a free copy of this book from Barnes and Noble when I was little, for participating in some reading program, and I read it so many times in my early adolescence that the back cover came quite off. For twelve-year-old Pooja, this book had a mysterious magic.
It still holds up quite well as an adult. Aerin is an easy heroine to root for, faced with difficult circumstances but still wry and hard-working, and her journey to become a dragon-killer and beyond is an engaging one. I also love her relationship with Talat – it’s a hallmark of McKinley’s, these human-animal bonds, but I think it was done best here.
The parts that I did not like so much remained unliked now though. I am no fan of Luthe, who I found boring then and a little suspect now. The face-off in the five-sided room is also too reliant on luck to really be enjoyable. However, everything looks up by the end with the final battle and the reunion with Tor, which is extremely satisfying.
Now onto The Blue Sword, the prequel which I read only once and recall very little of alas.
I remember I got a free copy of this book from Barnes and Noble when I was little, for participating in some reading program, and I read it so many times in my early adolescence that the back cover came quite off. For twelve-year-old Pooja, this book had a mysterious magic.
It still holds up quite well as an adult. Aerin is an easy heroine to root for, faced with difficult circumstances but still wry and hard-working, and her journey to become a dragon-killer and beyond is an engaging one. I also love her relationship with Talat – it’s a hallmark of McKinley’s, these human-animal bonds, but I think it was done best here.
The parts that I did not like so much remained unliked now though. I am no fan of Luthe, who I found boring then and a little suspect now. The face-off in the five-sided room is also too reliant on luck to really be enjoyable. However, everything looks up by the end with the final battle and the reunion with Tor, which is extremely satisfying.
Now onto The Blue Sword, the prequel which I read only once and recall very little of alas.
August 11, 2017
Basic Plot: Aerin is the mostly-left-to-her-own-devices, unconventional daughter of the king. After discovering a secret formula that can make her fireproof, she begins hunting dragons, which takes her on a journey to save the kingdom.
I bought a paperback of this book when I was in elementary school through one of those school book order programs (I was ADDICTED to them), and it was the first Robin McKinley book I ever read. It is now so battered and worn that I have actually been thinking about buying a new hardcover of it. I seriously think I've read it at least 50 times. The world of Damar is developed very well, and I positively loved the main character. I can't say I identify with her completely, as I'm a very different person, but there are aspects of her personality (read: stubbornness and attitude) that are very like me, and so I loved the character. I have to say that Aerin probably inspired most of my tom-boyish activities as a child, and certainly helped to spawn my life-long love of fantasy, magic, and swords. Every time I go to the bookstore I search for new McKinley books first, and it's all because of this novel.
It's theoretically a pre-quel (to The Blue Sword), and it reads like a dreamy fable. There's a haunting, dream-like quality to a lot of the events of the book. The writing is excellent (probably why the book is an award-winner). Overall, I would highly recommend this book to anyone, young or old as an epic high fantasy novel.
I downloaded this book to my Nook, as I had been wanting to reread it for awhile. It still holds the same magic for me at near 40 as it did when I was small.
I bought a paperback of this book when I was in elementary school through one of those school book order programs (I was ADDICTED to them), and it was the first Robin McKinley book I ever read. It is now so battered and worn that I have actually been thinking about buying a new hardcover of it. I seriously think I've read it at least 50 times. The world of Damar is developed very well, and I positively loved the main character. I can't say I identify with her completely, as I'm a very different person, but there are aspects of her personality (read: stubbornness and attitude) that are very like me, and so I loved the character. I have to say that Aerin probably inspired most of my tom-boyish activities as a child, and certainly helped to spawn my life-long love of fantasy, magic, and swords. Every time I go to the bookstore I search for new McKinley books first, and it's all because of this novel.
It's theoretically a pre-quel (to The Blue Sword), and it reads like a dreamy fable. There's a haunting, dream-like quality to a lot of the events of the book. The writing is excellent (probably why the book is an award-winner). Overall, I would highly recommend this book to anyone, young or old as an epic high fantasy novel.
I downloaded this book to my Nook, as I had been wanting to reread it for awhile. It still holds the same magic for me at near 40 as it did when I was small.
January 12, 2021
The Hero and the Crown is the quintessential tale of dragonslaying, as good as but far more traditional in its iconography than The Hobbit, and less whimsical than Farmer Giles of Ham. The high court of Damar, as seen through the eyes of an ugly-duckling princess, is delightfully portrayed; and the posthumous influence of the Great Dragon, Maur, lends the tale depth and meaning beyond the simple sword-and-sorcery quest structure. To succeed in facing down such a monster, McKinley suggests, is not enough; happily-ever-after cannot be realized until one has also dealt with who one becomes in order to achieve that victory.
Where McKinley falters a bit is with that part of the story taking place between Maur's deaths, in which our hero Aerin learns a bit of magic and goes to confront her uncle, the sorcerer who wakened Maur from eight centuries' sleep and is actively working to destroy Damar. This section of the book happens too quickly, too ethereally (the rest of the story is told very concretely), and with oddly too little foreshadowing. Don't get me wrong - I love this book, this is my second time reading it - but I wish it could have been made long enough or otherwise altered to complement itself a little better.
Where McKinley falters a bit is with that part of the story taking place between Maur's deaths, in which our hero Aerin learns a bit of magic and goes to confront her uncle, the sorcerer who wakened Maur from eight centuries' sleep and is actively working to destroy Damar. This section of the book happens too quickly, too ethereally (the rest of the story is told very concretely), and with oddly too little foreshadowing. Don't get me wrong - I love this book, this is my second time reading it - but I wish it could have been made long enough or otherwise altered to complement itself a little better.
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