CLOVEN HOOVES

Rating:
Summary: Where's the happy ending?
Review: All right, all romances don't have to have happy endings. But 'Cloven Hooves' goes beyond 'not happy' into 'downright miserable'. Everything goes wrong with the main character: she doesn't fit in as a child; when she finally grows up and has a family of her own, her inlaws despise her, and her son is killed in a farm accident. And despite what looks like a happy occurrence -- her childhood friend, a faun/satyr, comes back into her life -- that's doomed to misery as well.

I simply can't recommend this book, unless a reader likes to see a character always unhappy.

Rating:
Summary: Poignant and Distressing
Review: I would recommend this book; I have never forgetten it, but I will never read it again, it is so sad. It is well written, like all of her books: I would say it is about reality and fantasy, and reality loses. My favorite book of Lindholm's is Wizard of the Pigeons. Thank you Amazon: I didn't know she was Robin Hobb and learned it from a review. The reviews on Amazon are a delight. Love.

Rating:
Summary: Poignant and Distressing
Review: I would recommend this book; I have never forgetten it, but I will never read it again, it is so sad. It is well written, like all of her books: I would say it is about reality and fantasy, and reality loses. My favorite book of Lindholm's is Wizard of the Pigeons. Thank you Amazon: I didn't know she was Robin Hobb and learned it from a review. The reviews on Amazon are a delight. Love.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant, magical, enlightening
Review: Megan Lindholm taps the root of teen angst and the pain of being different while struggling against societal norms for a young woman. Her prose and timing are brilliant and the enlightenment almost heart breaking. Her characters shine with life. She employs a technique of jumping back and forth between young woman/mother and child teen from chapter to chapter. I've rarely seen this used successfully, but Lindholm makes it seem ideal.

Even as a man, I felt and perhaps began to understand the agony a teenage girl/young woman can feel when she refuses to or can't "fit in". The character of Pan just feels right and adds to the magic of childhood, motherhood, and the struggle for independent thought. The story would have worked well even without the mythic side turning out to be "real", but throughout is original and uncontrived.

Only someone who refuses to read literature that asks us to grow and insists on only cheery stories could fail to see the brilliance of Cloven Hooves. From beginning to end it is unique, balanced, and extraordinary. I recommend it at the highest level.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful, magical, poignant.
Review: Megan Lindholm writes a moving story about a misfit, a woman who feels more comfortable in the wilderness of the cold north than with other humans, who loses her son in a tragic accident and her husband in its destructive wake, and who retreats to the forest with a childhood friend -- a faun.

If you like "crossover fantasy" where the present day reality mixes seamlessly with other realms, you'll enjoy this and her earlier book "Wizard of the Pigeons." Also highly recommended is her Farseer series (beginning with "Assassin's Apprentice"), under the pen name of Robin Hobb.