Friday, January 02, 2009

Daughter of the Forest

Daughter of the Forest (The Sevenwaters Trilogy #1) by Juliet Marillier
Read: 7/1/08-7/3/08
LibraryThing tags: Fantasy, Fairy Tale, Romance, Historical Fiction, Ireland, Medieval

Doesn't this list of tags just make your mouth water? No? Hmph. You're weird.

I can't tell you one of my favorite things about this book, because premise or not, it's not something you find out for sure until over a hundred pages in. So you'll just have to take my word for it, I guess. It's good, read it. One of my favorites, now. The prose is wonderful. Despite its length (544 pages), it feels very polished, crafted and magical.

4 comments :

Robert said...

So if Romantic Fantasy Fairy Tales set in Medieval Ireland don't make your mouth water then you're weird?!!? Yikes, you make weird sound like a BAD thing!!

Also, I'm having trouble relating length to "very polished, crafted and magical"? Even though it's short (544 pages), it's still magical? Is that it? :P

Ok, ok, even though it's long (I guess kinda...), it's still polished? I suppose now that you've written an 110 page novel, you'd know better than me how much easier it is to make an awesome (as in polished, crafted, and magical) story that's less than 500 pages, vs over 500, but still, when I pick up a short vs long novel I don't actually have ANY sort of expectation of the longer novel being less polished (unless it's Robert Jordan, heh), I assume the longer novel will have the requisite extra amount of attention required to make it polished too.

Anyways, I hope to read this one sometime vaguely soon! Sounds fun!

- Robert

Anonymous said...

Yay, I can leave comments now! You fixed it!

...um, yeah, I didn't actually have much to say except to celebrate this fact... and to be weirded out that the "word" I had to type for verification to post this is "undang." Seems like you could use that in a sentence...

Oh, and I want to read it! ...May I borrow it sometime?

Marcy said...

Oh, you're right, I do. Hmm. Maybe I should have said, "You're a bad person?"

Okay. First off, I mean "polished, crafted and magical" BEYOND WHAT ONE WOULD NORMALLY EXPECT. Of course. So by definition one would not expect a longer novel to be this polished. Having said that, every time I can remember being surprised by how especially polished something seemed, it was in a much shorter piece. Often a short story or a children's book, like The Tale of Desperaux (HTML italic tag not working, I did too close it...). So this level of polish already surprises me, whenever I encounter it, but in something of adult novel length? It stuns me. It feels like a fairy tale on every page. Or close, anyway.

So "undang" yourself, Robert? No, that doesn't work...

Um, yes, but Joi has to give it back first. Kind of appropriate, now that I think about it. But you can read it before Robert, because your comments weren't as silly. =) Oh, and I gave it to Nathan for Christmas, so maybe he'll let you borrow it. Also, I have the 2nd and 3rd books in the trilogy. But not the 4th one. I still need to borrow it, it's only out in hardback at the moment.

Parmandil said...

Now I need to borrow the second and third. And wow, you were right about me needing to read it. Two hours of sleep last night says I heartily agree with you - superb book. And yes, I love her style. Though part of loving her style was a queer, shocking observation of some kinship to my style in my NaNoWriMo novel. Kinship, but with more, you know, polish, and an awesome plot, impossible to put down. :)