I love this book, it's one of the ones I re-read at least once a year. The world is rich and lovely, the magical system at work is unlike most in fiction, and the lead character isn't driven by a romance (not that there is anything wrong with that, it's just so very common). In no way is she perf...
4.5 starsHands down my favorite McKinley. Young, untainted McKinley before she got all artsy fartsy and tried to down play and deny her appeal as a creator of likeable, pleasant, homey - hearth side heroines. There was a time she seemed to go all symbolic and archetypal and shit with her characte...
It's really hard to rate short story collections, because each individual story is different. So rather than my usual rating header, I'm going to break this down by story. There are six stories in this collection, all centered around water (sort of). Three are by Robin McKinley (woo!) and three b...
Originally reviewed on The Book Smugglers Trigger Warning: Rape, abuse, incest.Princess Lissla Lissar is the daughter of a heroic and handsome king, who won the hand of the most beautiful woman in the Seven Kingdoms. Every night, Lissar listens to her nursemaid spin the same tale - the story of ...
I've seen Robin McKinley accused of having only one plot: variations on "Beauty and the Beast." This kind of reductionism, of course, can be extended to just about any story. Some of us over a certain age even used to have test questions on this in Tenth Grade Literature: What is the plot of this...
I talk about my love for Robin McKinley's books a lot. I know everyone's read Beauty. It was her first book. It's essentially a classic of fairy tale retellings now. And I love it and will always love it for giving me a Beauty who was not beautiful and avoided mirrors at all cost and a Beast with...
A Knot in the Grain and Other Stories by Robin McKinley 4 outof 5 starsI just finished reading this collection of short stories by Robin McKinley. Within are included five tales. The first tale: Healer tells the story of Lily, a child born with the magic to heal, but without the gift of speech. L...
All four of the stories in the Door in the Hedge were wonderful. I enjoyed “The Princess and the Frog” and “The Twelve Dancing Princesses” more than the two original (“The Hunting of the Hind” and “The Stolen Princess”). Perhaps it was the familiarity, perhaps it was the way McKinley handled thos...
She scowled at her glass of orange juice. To think that she had been delighted when she first arrived here – was it only three months ago? – with the prospect of fresh orange juice every day…How do I explain the feeling I get when I read those words, the beginning sentences of this book? It is li...
This is the first time I've read this book as an adult—mostly because I love, love, love The Blue Sword and this book kind of goes out of its way to undermine expectations set by that book for Damar's past. I didn't remember much of this book—mostly just a vague sense of this not being my expecte...
It’s impressive the power a symbol can carry. Case in point: for a brief spate about three or four years ago, I was working in Beijing, which is noted for (among other things) its affection for foreign brands and its creative interpretation of copyright law. Near my apartment lay a popular clothi...
This is one of McKinley's strongest works to date, and it makes me laugh to think that she essentially wrote it on a dare. From what she's said on her website, she had no love for the sleeping beauty myth -- after all, the princess spends it completely useless and out of the action, exactly oppos...