★★★★★ Finding a home

The Blue Sword

Robin McKinley

When I was growing up my father's job kept my family moving. Mom and Dad eventually settled down, but just when they did I became an itinerant academic, moving to study and work at various research institutions. I was a 27 year old grad student at Stanford when I first read The Blue Sword and the longest I had ever lived in one place was six years. (Understand, I am not complaining -- I was and am a Happy Nomad.) There's a peculiar type of homesickness experienced by rootless people. One usually thinks of homesickness as being away from and missing a very specific place -- the place one calls home. But I had no place to call home. And yet I sometimes felt homesick -- I felt the lack of a home -- all the more because there was no home where I longed to be.

In the first few chapters of The Blue Sword I immediately recognized this feeling of rootless homesickness in Angharad (Harry) Crewe, the hero of the book. As the book begins Harry has just come from the Homeland (a thinly disguised England) to join her bother in Damar because the death of her parents left her without a home. I immediately fell in love with Harry. She is brave and clever and funny.

For me The Blue Sword is about Harry finding a home in Damar.

There is also, of course, a much more detailed story, involving a war and kelar (which is what they call magic in Damar) and -- you guessed it -- a blue sword. (Point of order -- the sword is not literally blue, being made of metal, as swords typically are. It bears a blue gem on the hilt.) It's a good, exciting story.

Because of The Blue Sword, McKinley became (and remains) one of my favorite authors. I have reread The Blue Sword many times, most recently in 2011.

Amazon review

Goodreads review

Comments

SuzyQSeptember 11, 2022 at 8:07 PM
I first found this book when I was only a little bit older than Harry, and it remains one of my most beloved books. So nice to read your appreciation.
ReplyDelete
Replies

Add comment

★★☆☆☆ A story about a stupid liar who tells a stupid lie

The Lie T.C. Boyle ** spoiler alert ** Two days ago I started a local community college course called "Writing Short Stories". As an example the first week's material had a video of author T. Coraghessan Boyle reading his story The Lie aloud. The story in summary is that the protagonist (certainly not a hero), who is a lazy guy, doesn't want to go to work one morning, so he calls his boss and tells him a really stupid lie. The next day he skips work again and he doubles down on the lie. Eventually he gets caught by his wife. There are a lot of stories of stupid people acting stupid. There are so many that I have to assume some people like these stories. I am not one of them. The Lie on Amazon Goodreads review

★★★★☆ Granny Weatherwax gets headologized

Witches Abroad Terry Pratchett Witches Abroad is the twelfth novel in Terry Pratchett 's Discworld series, and the third in the Witches subseries, after Equal Rites and Wyrd Sisters , which introduced Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg, and the unfortunate Magrat Garlick. They are the central figures of Witches Abroad , but the first three witches we meet are not Magrat, Granny, and Nanny. One of these first three is Desiderata Hollow, who is about to die. but has unfinished business left. She needs to get Magrat, Granny, and Nanny to take care of it, so she uses headology. Got to be all three. And that ain’t easy, with people like them. Got to use headology. Got to make ’em send ’emselves. Tell Esme Weatherwax she’s got to go somewhere and she won’t go out of contrariness, so tell her she’s not to go and she’ll run there over broken glass. "There" is the distant city of Genua, where the third of the first three witches has cast hers...

★★★☆☆ A blacker shade of Noir

White Butterfly Walter Mosley White Butterfly is the third novel in Walter Mosley 's classic Easy Rawlins mystery series. While the first two, Devil in a Blue Dress and A Red Death are brilliant expositions of life for a black man in 1950s Los Angeles, they are, to be completely frank, not great story-telling. (It should go without saying that I'm expressing personal opinions, and that yours may differ. It should go without saying, but it doesn't always, so there, I just said it.) There's just too much going on, too many characters. As mysteries, they failed for me, because I could barely follow the story. White Butterfly is better. The story was engaging, comparatively straightforward, and there was even a good plot twist near the end that took me by surprise. I've been reading fiction for 65 years, so a plot twist that takes me by surprise is an unusual achievement. As detective fiction, Easy Rawlins ...

★★★★☆ Myrtle's cold case

Cold-Blooded Myrtle Elizabeth C. Bunce The title of the third Mrytle HardCastle mystery is, as usual, a pun exploiting the assonance of Myrtle and murder. (This HAS to be the reason Elizabeth C. Bunce chose the name Myrtle, right?) This one is odd, though, because "cold-blooded" is the one thing that our Myrtle is NOT! Our Myrtle is keen as a hound on a scent. She's a brilliant, nosy kid who can't be persuaded, ever, to mind her own business. She is not put off by blood and poison and viscera, which sounds like she might be cold-blooded, except that she's not -- she's positively enthusiastic about murder, even ghoulish. And we love it! Or at least, I do. For Cold-Blooded Myrtle , we don't take any trips or go anywhere exotic. The action takes place entirely in Myrtle's home town of Swinburne and the neighboring Schofield College. Schofield College, it turns out, is where Myrtle's mother studied many years ago, before Myrtle herself was thought...

★★★★☆ What are these people?

Red Side Story Jasper Fforde When I reviewed Shades of Grey , the first novel in Jasper Fforde 's Shades of Grey series, I asked Although I referred to Eddie as a young man, it is not clear to me what the people of the Collective are. I think they are more-or-less human. ... However, in some ways they behave like automata. These are puzzles that I hope Jasper Fforde will clear up in subsequent novels in the Shades of Grey series. Now I'm patting myself on the back, because that is indeed what Red Side Story is about. Or so say I. You might think it is about other things -- a love story, a fight to survive, a battle for justice, a cycle race -- and you would not be wrong. Red Side Story contains multitudes. Shades of Grey ended in a flurry of revelations about the Collective. Eddie, Jane and Courtland Gamboge visited the abandoned town of High Saffron, where Jane revealed that all the people supposedly sent to Reboot were in fact sen...

★★★★☆ Go, Team Weird!

Premeditated Myrtle Elizabeth C. Bunce Probably when you were a kid there were times when you felt you were not like other kids. (I may be wrong, but I'm guessing this is a universal human experience.) Myrtle Hardcastle (the hero of Elizabeth C. Bunce 's Myrtle Hardcastle series is a precocious 12-year-old girl, the daughter of Prosecutor Arthur Hardcastle. His position is something like that of a District Attorney in the modern US legal system -- a government lawyer whose job is to prosecute criminals in court. As Elizabeth C. Bunce explains in an Author's Note, such Prosecutors were a relatively new thing in England in 1893. Myrtle is motherless -- her mother, who studied to be a physician, died of cancer some years ago. Myrtle's ambition is to be a detective or prosecutor or something like that. (She probably knows precisely what she wants -- that would be like Myrtle, but she was not entirely explicit about her plans, hence my vagueness.) To this end sh...

★★★★★ Enjoyable guide to vegan nutrition

Laurel's Kitchen Laurel Robertson, Carol Lee Flinders, Bronwen Godfrey I do not cook, I don't want to cook, I don't plan to cook. (Very happy to buy my whole wheat bread from the bakery at my big box grocery store thank-you-very-much.) I have never tried a recipe from Laurel's Kitchen , and I never will. So why, you ask, am I reviewing a cookbook? Because I read it with pleasure, and I am here to tell you that it is worth reading, even if you don't cook. I was a grad student in Biochemistry at Stanford when I read Laurel's Kitchen , probably around 1980, not many years after it was published. Many of my friends were dance and drama students. This was very much the astrology and granola crowd. (I was the token hard scientist of the bunch.) They alerted me to the existence of Laurel's Kitchen . Laurel's Kitchen was a surprisingly good read. It was as entertaining as a novel, indeed, more entertaining than many novels I have read (looking at you, Fifty...

★★★☆☆ Good fairy stories, dreary ruin stories, and a John Hughes movie

Patreon Year 3 Seanan McGuire I will begin by clarifying what I am reviewing here. Seanan McGuire has a Patreon Creator page. Patreon is a website where artists can share their work with subscribers. Subscribers pay a certain amount (usually monthly, but that varies from artist to artist), and in return get access to things ("rewards" in Patreon-speak) that the artist posts on Patreon. "Things" can mean images, videos, or (most relevantly in this case) eBooks. Typically there are multiple reward tiers -- the more you pay, the more you get. McGuire set up her Patreon page in June 2016 and has posted a story every month since then, which makes 63 now (August 2021, when I am writing this), plus a few one-time extras. These "stories" can be pretty substantial literary works. For instance, the reward for July 2021 was a short novel. The way Patreon works, if you subscribe to a tier, you typically get access to everything that was posted for that tier at any...

★★★★☆ It's in the blood

Murder of Crows Anne Bishop Murder of Crows , the second novel in Anne Bishop 's The Others series, begins with Meg kicking Simon out of her bed. That doesn't mean what you probably think it means. Simon wakes Meg up from a scary dream, and in her sudden fright, she literally kicks him. But what was Simon doing in Meg's bed? He was sleeping. Yes, Simon and Meg are sleeping with each other. But that, while literally true, doesn't mean what the phrase usually means. Near the end of Written in Red , Meg was attacked by a team of kidnappers/murderers and almost killed. In Murder of Crows she's still working through some post-traumatic stress. Having a warm, friendly, scary-safe wolf in bed with her makes it easier for her to sleep. Simon and Meg are not romantically involved with each other, but their relationship was an important plot thread of Written in Red , continues to be important in Murder of Crows , and, I confidently predict, will be...

Search This Blog