Monday, April 9, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley





  The Hero and the Crown is a classic YA/Children's fantasy novel written by Robin McKinley in 1984.  It's actually a prequel to her novel, The Blue Sword, though no prior knowledge of the first novel is necessary for this one (I haven't read The Blue Sword yet, though I reserved it after finishing this book) and the book is perfectly stand alone.  It's also fantastically joyous, even as its heroine deals with being an outcast and fighting through depression to be the hero that she wants to be.  I've had this book in my kindle library for a long time (I bought a women's SFF storybundle a while back and this was part of it) and I'm now kind of embarrassed I didn't get to it sooner.

  The Hero on the Crown is a short book (around 250 pages) made up of two parts - one part that's essentially a flashback to how the story got to where it begins in the first chapter and the second part that goes forward from there.  The book is mainly told from the perspective of its heroine, Aerin, but without warning will shift from paragraph to paragraph to sharing the thoughts of other characters as well - and despite this undoubtedly violating modern rules of writing a story, it totally works to create a delightful refreshing story.  The end result is that this book packs a lot into its short length to create a complete excellent story of a young woman who is nervous, afraid, and unsure at tunes but driven to act anyway despite all the naysayers.

  I'm just repeating myself at this point, so more after the jump where I'll try (and fail) to explain better:


---------------------------------------------------Plot Summary--------------------------------------------------
In the fantasy Kingdom of Damar, unrest has come due to an army of northerners - and it is feared that the unrest is driven by a lord infected by some form of demon's mischief.  The Kingdom is ruled by its royal family, headed by its honorable and kind King Arlbeth, all of whom possess some ability of magic.

All but one it seems, a the King's daughter by his second wife, a young woman/girl named Aerin, simply doesn't seem to have any magic.  Aerin is the first Sol, the highest ranked heiress of the King, but that doesn't stop people, particularly the other nobles, from whispering about her - and about her mother, who the story states was a Northern witch who bewitched the King.  Aerin is treated poorly by the rest of the nobles with the exceptions of her father and her cousin Tor, the first Sola (the King's top male heir) who seems to care about her...but even this care results in whispering about her bewitching him.

Aerin is hurt by this whispering, and by her insecurity due to her lack of magic, but despite this wants to do more.  This book is her story, showing how she came to be known as Aerin Dragon-Killer - a title less great than it sounds, as most dragons are little more than dangerous fire breathing beasts the size of dogs - and how she takes it upon herself to do more when the Kingdom is threatened by beings of myth, how she takes it upon herself to fight through depression and injury to find one who can help her, and how she can fight through insecurity to become more than mortal and the savior of the land.

Along the way she will discover her love for two different men - one mortal and one not - and ascend into legend.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Plot Summary above is a bit less specific than usual because this book is essentially two stories - the first part, details Aerin's childhood and past up to the present day as she decides one day to try to experiment with a formula for fireproofing oneself against dragonfire (and normal fire) that she finds in a old book as well as to experiment with riding the King's old lame horse, who she somehow manages to nurse into full health, up until she actually attempts to take on the surviving small dragons who are pests throughout the land.  Aerin is SUCH a great character - she is always nervous and anxious due to her lack of respect amongst the other nobles (and what she believes the common people think about her) but as she gets more and more into her quest to actually slay dragons, she stops caring about anything else - to the point when she's at a party for her birthday, she's beaming the entire time over having finally made the formula work to the point where she ignores even the guy who clearly loves her: 

"She smiled up at him, and without thinking, he bent his head and kissed her.  But she only hugged him absently in return, because she was already worrying whether or not she had enough of one particular herb, for it would spoil the whole morning if she had to fetch more and she'd be mad with impatience and would botch the job after all.  "A Quiet sleep to you," she said.

And lo, by the end of that first part, she has become a Dragon-Killer, though she doesn't think she's obtained the respect she craved due to the fact that Dragons are little more than pests.  And then there's the second story of this book, where she finds herself facing first a great legendary dragon, and then a force from her family's past who threatens the entire land.  In this story, she meets the immortal Luthe, with whom she falls in love and becomes more than mortal herself.  Yet again, she's forced to act despite insecurity in order to save the world, and with the minor aid of some animal friends, she's able to do that.

It's noteworthy (and I admit I cribbed this thought from reading other reviews, as I was lost for what to write on this book) that the book never develops a love triangle, despite its two love interests.  The book doesn't spend a lot of time on romance, but it still packs enough to really have the love interests still work (I thought Tor worked a lot better than Luthe as a love interest due to the age and experience disparity seeming just a little bit creepy here).

But not to get too obsessed with minutia here, the key of this book, of both parts, is how delightful it is and how great its hero is.  It's not a book about a perfect hero, or one who accomplishes all her feats by skill or wisdom - Aerin lucks her way into many of her accomplishments and it's not something the book or Aerin herself tries to deny.  And yet it works because Aerin is so damn charming no matter what she does, whether it be in her singleminded desire to rediscover the formula and old book has for protecting against fire, or in her gathering of animals to help her conquer the evil that is plaguing the land.  It's a book that constantly made me smile, and whose ending is absolutely perfect - this is the type of book with a happy ending, as opposed to a lot of books I read, and it does it incredibly well.

This review is a mess, I know - it's kind of hard for me to review a book like this, which I loved so damn much, even if it isn't perfect.  But to try to sum up this mess the best I can, this is the story of a girl/young-woman who grows up in a fantasy world and dreams and tries to fulfill those dreams, no matter how others think badly of her, and who does so in an incredibly charming and sweet/innocent way.  A woman who battles through what are essentially anxiety and depression at times to do what she wants to do, and in the process becomes a legend, both in her time and forever.  And the end result is a book that made me smile an awful lot, and reserve the other book in this world immediately from the library.  I could use a lot more books like this one.
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)