Book Review: The Grey King
Apr. 13th, 2024 01:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerYears ago, when I was in college, my friend Dorothea recommended The Dark Is Rising sequence to me. “The first book is a slog,” she assured me, “but it starts getting better when Will shows up, and then it gets really good when Bran arrives.”
It is perhaps just as well that I didn’t read the books till after college, because this is almost the opposite of my experience. I enjoyed the first book, where the plucky Drews stumble into a magical adventure while on holiday in Cornwall. Then I slogged through the second book, politely waiting for Will to become even slightly interesting. Then we returned to Cornwall and the Drews and the atmospheric presence of the Greenwitch, so intense that even Will’s dullness couldn’t spoil it! (Sorry, Will.)
Then in The Grey King we lose the Drews again! Fortunatelylittlerhymes and I are on the same page that the plucky Drews are where it’s at, and throughout The Grey King we pined for them together.
For all that, I do enjoy this book more than The Dark Is Rising. Bran not only goes some way to counteract Will, but he actually makes Will interesting in spots. I love their meeting on the hillside, when Will at once recognizes Bran as the raven boy, and Bran in return knows Will as an Old One.
This is because Merriman told Bran about Will, but it’s still quite a magical meet-cute, and although I don’t ship it, I can see why Dorothea did. Their friendship is compelling, even more so because of the implied contrast with Bran’s isolation before Will came, which is all the more powerful for being lightly sketched. This makes it especially devastating when Caradog Pritchard shoots Bran’s dog Cafall. His only friend, until Will came! Shot, in part because of the forces that Will’s arrival awakened!
No wonder Bran tells Will to go away afterward, not least because Will’s Old One idea of comfort is to assure Bran that Cafall died in the cause of the Light. And Will is never more human than in the moment when he is trying to catch up with Bran on a hillside, then stops in exasperation: there’s no point chasing the lad if Bran doesn’t want to talk to him.
Just as compelling are Cooper’s landscape descriptions. She is so good at evoking the mood of a place, so that you feel like you’ve been there even if you never have, and at molding the magic of the story to suit the setting. The magic of Wales feels different than the magic of Cornwall.
littlerhymes and I have propounded the theory that there’s a specifically British subgenre of children’s fantasy where the magic is deeply rooted in a very specific locality. Practitioners include Susan Cooper, Alan Garner, Jenny Nimmo—perhaps David Almond? It’s been ages since I read Almond’s books, but I remember Skellig and Kit’s Wilderness both having that intensely local quality, which I liked but didn’t fully understand because at eleven I didn’t really grasp that there are different regions within Great Britain that are quite culturally distinct from each other, actually.
And now onward to Silver on the Tree!
It is perhaps just as well that I didn’t read the books till after college, because this is almost the opposite of my experience. I enjoyed the first book, where the plucky Drews stumble into a magical adventure while on holiday in Cornwall. Then I slogged through the second book, politely waiting for Will to become even slightly interesting. Then we returned to Cornwall and the Drews and the atmospheric presence of the Greenwitch, so intense that even Will’s dullness couldn’t spoil it! (Sorry, Will.)
Then in The Grey King we lose the Drews again! Fortunately
littlerhymes and I are on the same page that the plucky Drews are where it’s at, and throughout The Grey King we pined for them together.For all that, I do enjoy this book more than The Dark Is Rising. Bran not only goes some way to counteract Will, but he actually makes Will interesting in spots. I love their meeting on the hillside, when Will at once recognizes Bran as the raven boy, and Bran in return knows Will as an Old One.
This is because Merriman told Bran about Will, but it’s still quite a magical meet-cute, and although I don’t ship it, I can see why Dorothea did. Their friendship is compelling, even more so because of the implied contrast with Bran’s isolation before Will came, which is all the more powerful for being lightly sketched. This makes it especially devastating when Caradog Pritchard shoots Bran’s dog Cafall. His only friend, until Will came! Shot, in part because of the forces that Will’s arrival awakened!
No wonder Bran tells Will to go away afterward, not least because Will’s Old One idea of comfort is to assure Bran that Cafall died in the cause of the Light. And Will is never more human than in the moment when he is trying to catch up with Bran on a hillside, then stops in exasperation: there’s no point chasing the lad if Bran doesn’t want to talk to him.
Just as compelling are Cooper’s landscape descriptions. She is so good at evoking the mood of a place, so that you feel like you’ve been there even if you never have, and at molding the magic of the story to suit the setting. The magic of Wales feels different than the magic of Cornwall.
littlerhymes and I have propounded the theory that there’s a specifically British subgenre of children’s fantasy where the magic is deeply rooted in a very specific locality. Practitioners include Susan Cooper, Alan Garner, Jenny Nimmo—perhaps David Almond? It’s been ages since I read Almond’s books, but I remember Skellig and Kit’s Wilderness both having that intensely local quality, which I liked but didn’t fully understand because at eleven I didn’t really grasp that there are different regions within Great Britain that are quite culturally distinct from each other, actually.And now onward to Silver on the Tree!
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