Alphabet of Thorn -- Final Impressions - Spoilers

[[deleted user]]

Silly me. I forgot to add the most obvious topic, the one that every book gets from this club. So, what do you think of it?

[LaTrica]

I loved it. I thought the writing was beautiful. This made the slow start easier to bear.

I found myself unable to fully predict what would happen. Maybe it's just the books I read but the victor and villain are normally pretty obvious, the outcome foretold from Chapter 3. Yet here I was kept guessing until the end.

[Jon]

I enjoyed it immensely. I'm also glad that in addition to purchasing this book from Amazon, I snagged three or four other McKillip novels in the same batch so I can enjoy more of her beautiful prose.

[Zen]

After slogging through the beginning, which I found a tad confusing, I'm beginning to love this book. I'm not reading more than a chapter an evening - it's becoming one of those books I like to savor.

[JuliAnna]

I definitely enjoyed this book. Does anybody know how it compares to other McKillip novels or have specific recommendations for those of us who liked this one?

[Dana]

I'm going to end up double-posting about my final impressions, because I've read it before, and I want to compare my remembered final impressions from the first time with what I end up with when I finish my re-read.

The first time I read the book, I remember being hugely excited because it was 1) a new Patricia McKillip book, and 2) about books and translation, two of my favorite subjects. However, I felt a bit let down at the end, because this book ended up feeling less satisfyingly cohesive to me than most of her other works. Which isn't to say that I disliked it, just that it didn't live up to the extremely high expectations I had going into it.

JuliAnna, I recall really enjoying Ombria in Shadow, In The Forests Of Serre, and The Tower at Stony Wood, amongst others. Many of her books are stand alone, so you can pick them up in any order.

[Kathy]

I think the triumph of a mother's love says it all. This book was a pretty good read. If I didn't have so many others on my to read list, I would definitely pick it up again.

I think that my final impressions were tainted a bit, though. I ended up reading a review for the book online to see if it was something I could get through for the book club in a timely fashion, and the stinkin' review had SPOILERS!!!! So I had a general idea what happened in the book before I even turned to page 1. However, the journey to get to the end was well worth the read. I can see, however, why this was in the YA section of the library. It is a bit more simplistic than a lot of the books I have been reading lately. Simplistic, but effective and mostly well-written.

[Dana]

Okay, I've finished reading it through for the second time, and I have to say that I think this time through was much better, largely because this time I was reading the story for what it was, not what I was expecting it to be. The time travel elements and the somewhat abrupt end of the story didn't seem as jarring this time. I am inspired to go read some of my other McKillip now, though, to confirm my previous impression that her other books were even better.

[JuliAnna]

Dana, thanks for the recommendations. I also enjoyed the double posting. It is always interesting to me how different the experience of reading a book can be from one time to another.

[Kathy]

I can't believe that it's March 10 and people are about done posting about this book...

[[deleted user]]

Well, it is a pretty quick read. Goodreads shows 19 people who are still reading it, but most readers don't post; so you may be right about the end of this discussion. I guess I could post my opinion on a couple of topics.

I liked the ending. It was a surprise, but not a shock. Like a lot of McKillip stuff, it's never really explained. I'm ok with that, though. I really like the notion that Axis didn't have to be fought, prayed about, or rebelled against. They just ignored him until he went home. It reminds me of an anarchist manifesto I once read. Definitely escapism.

[Libby]

I certainly enjoyed the book and gave it a positive review. I thought it was an entertaining read, nice plot, and great use of language. But it wasn't a book that lent itself to a lot of discussion. It's really one to enjoy not dissect so I'm not surprised the discussion is pretty light. I look forward to the next fantasy selection. Maybe there will be more to "talk" about.

I know this is the wrong discussion for this but has anyone read the other selection for the month and is it worth picking up?

[Zen]

I read both selections at the same time and have enjoyed both, Libby.

Otherwise, my final impression of this work is that it was a very soothing experience with good tension points. Does that even make sense?... but that's the final feeling for me! lol :)

[Adam]

This certainly wasn't the best book I'd ever read. At the same time, I'm glad to have read it. It's a very different experience than the standard 7000 page long fantasy epic that I'm normally in to. I'm definitely glad this was a BotM and enjoyed the change in tempo.

[Robin]

When I first started I thought .... man this is a slow read. I was not "captured" by the characters and the plot seemed barely present. The writing however was very lyrical and poetic and I appreciated that portion.

As some point (maybe 1/2 way) I got more interested in the story and really liked the jumps between various settings/characters. By the end I was in the "wanting" to read it where early on I was "making" myself read it.

All in all I liked the book - I won't say I loved it because I was ambivialent through the first part but am definitely glad I was introduced to a book I would not have normally picked up and an author I'll probably look to again.

-- Robin (8 days until Avempartha)

[Kate]

I definately agree with you Robin--at first I had to push myself to keep on reading, and in the end I couldn't read fast enough to get to the end. Though it was a little hard to understand at first, I liked the style of writing. The only complaint I have is the anticlimatic ending that came so abrubtly.

[Stuart]

I was really gripped by the story as well, and ended up reading the whole book in a single sitting because I just couldn't wait to see how it ended. Perhaps because it was so unpredictable for me - the author seemed to deliberately set up obvious plot developments, and each time then flipped things in a completely different direction.

[Robin]

Stuart wrote: "I was really gripped by the story as well, and ended up reading the whole book in a single sitting because I just couldn't wait to see how it ended. Perhaps because it was so unpredictable for me -..."

That's intersting Stuart - could you elaborate a bit? Because I really didn't feel that. There were some things that I felt that way about but I was pretty sure, for instance, that she was Kane's child as soon as I found Kane pregnant.

[[deleted user]]

Thanks to everyone who contributed to March's discussion. And also to everyone who stopped by to read it! I'm happy to see we've inspired at least a couple of people to check out a fine author.

[Stuart]

Robin wrote: "That's intersting Stuart - could you elaborate a bit? Because I really didn't feel that. There were some things that I felt that way about but I was pretty sure, for instance, that she was Kane's child as soon as I found Kane pregnant."

I haven't read anything by Patricia McKillip before, and knew absolutely nothing about her, but when I started on the book there were a lot of recognizable plot elements, so I kind of type-cast the story within the first few pages, and then kept having pleasant surprises when an idea that I recognized was developed in a different direction than I had anticipated.

I assumed that it would be like Guy Gavriel Kay (intrigue and mythic archetypes), so my built-in plot analyzer malfunctioned when it turned out that it was more, hmm, Ursula Le Guin, lyrical, and less hard edged than most current fantasy.

[Libby]

Interesting - so it was more that you applied preconceived notions re character archetypes to the book. I can see where that could be a pitfall for those of us who read lots of Fantasy. Glad you found the book a pleasant surprising.

[Stuart]

Libby wrote: "Interesting - so it was more that you applied preconceived notions re character archetypes to the book. I can see where that could be a pitfall for those of us who read lots of Fantasy. Glad you f..."

Yes, perhaps it was just that the book belongs to a style of fantasy that I'm not so familiar with, so it seemed fresher to me than it did to other people here.

[Jen]

This book was incredible, I loved it. A perfect fantasy novel, just a beautiful, stunning story. I think this was my first book by the author, will definitely have to check out more.

[Hank]

Sorry, nobody jumped in with you in 2020. I meant to but I got jammed with the usual....life. Glad you liked it! I will have to get to it next year.

[Jen]

It just kinda called to me - which is perfect for this story. Get to it when it calls you..

[Ian]

Jen wrote: "This book was incredible, I loved it. A perfect fantasy novel, just a beautiful, stunning story. I think this was my first book by the author, will definitely have to check out more."

A good place to start would be from her early works, the Riddle-Master trilogy, which had a tremendous impact on fantasy fans on its first appearance. (I know -- I was editing a fanzine at the time, and I heard nothing but praise for it from early readers; well, except for complaints about the wait for the next volume.)

Unfortunately, the original separate volumes, "The Riddle-Master of Hed," "Heir of Sea and Fire," and "Harpist in the Wind" (1976-1979) were out of print for years.

Fortunately, they are now available in a reasonably priced omnibus (including a very inexpensive Kindle edition) as Riddle-Master, with a new introduction by the author.

[Bonnie]

70% through:
Chapter 17 the worst.
No rules, no limits? Walls and doors and giants and plants and thorns, wave your hand there, blow there. Oh, now Tessa is super brave and is holding a sword. Now a giant appears. Now Mage Vevay appears - There is no sense to it, just random fairy tale quests. WHY give the thorns sun -- she is supposed to beware thorns, not help them.

Did Nepenthe have no one else at the library who noticed she had disappeared? How about the boss or other friends besides Ladiel, the little guy obsessed with her? What happened to Oriel?

[Bonnie]

This reminded me very much of the The Last Unicorn by Peter Beagle. A tale in a dream-like, magical world.

Plus:
-Libraries, magic schools, palace by the sea, world with a history.
-Giving yourself as a wedding present
-Axis and Kane's secret life, with the veils and mysterious hidden disfigurement.
-Time travel to the future to do some more conquering!


Minus:
-The world did not make sense enough for me to really care about it. If they were always worried about princes rebelling, how could a war-ready society afford fancy libraries and magic schools with no to little security? (Weak portrayal compared to libaries and institutions like wizard school in A Wizard of Earthsea , Harper Hall music school in Dragonsinger , The University and Archives in The Name of the Wind .)
-Magic seemed completely random. Just throw some coins, wave your hands, dream a bit and ~some stuff~ might happen.
-Multiple POVs could have been good, except then left with wanting more backstory for some of those characters. Borne seemed a nice guy, but pretty bland. Tessara sort of a cipher.
-Teen Translator! 16/17-year-old transcriptor is the best this huge famous library can offer? Where were the librarians organizing all this information and scrolls? How did she learn enough linguistics to be the best? Could have shown interesting language things with the alphabets or the scripts, but instead she "magically?" translates even without dictionaries or Rosetta stones or comparable scripts to work from.

[Midiain]

I started reading this yesterday and I'm up to chapter 12 now. The prose is beautiful and there are numerous, intriguing threads of story, but I still don't feel like I know what's going on in any of them. It's like fairy tales within a fairy tale, lovely, but the meaning half lost to time. Hopefully, it will all come together and make sense in the end. I do kind of like that there are both very young characters and aging characters. The different perspectives are interesting but they seem so removed from each other.

[Kaia]

I finished this one last night. While it started slow for me, I'm really glad I stuck with it. I like what a previous poster said about the end - they didn't have to do anything to defeat Axis except hide and ignore him until he went away. I was not expecting that. Like this unexpected twist, I appreciated that the story did not go in the typical fantasy / fairy tale directions, and I liked that characters were allowed to play to their strengths and didn't have to unlock some new power in order to succeed.

This was my first book by McKillip, and I look forward to checking out more of her books.