The Sorceress and the Cygnet

Rating:
Summary: Rich and Lyrical
Review: McKillip weaves a complex web of magic and desire in this book. What a shame it's out of print! I rate McKillip right up there with my all-time favorite authors, right up there with Tolkien and Le Guin. The stars come down to manipulate the future of humanity, stories take on reality, and love and desire meet. Places shift: houses fly, rooms move from place to place as they explore their own memories, and a maze at the root of a castle hold slips through time. Delightful! I liked the Riddle-Master trilogy, but this was even richer, more literary. I want to read everything by this author.

Rating:
Summary: My absolute favorite book of all time!!!
Review: Other people have written som e wonderful reviews, and I agree that it's a shame that it's out of print--I had to pay an atrocious price for my copy. I think that another Cygnet book would be great, for there are a lot of loose ends in The Cygnet and the Firebird that need to be tied up, and I've noticed that McKillip only seems to be doing stand-alones now, good as they are. I, too, buy everything she writes, not for the plot, necessarily, but for the beauty of the images she evokes. Try Winter Rose, that is just as bitter and strange and lovely. I agree that the ending of the Sorceress and the Cygnet was very hard to understand, and I've read it a million times, seeking to understand. Does anyone know what happened?

Rating:
Summary: My absolute favorite book of all time!!!
Review: Other people have written som e wonderful reviews, and I agree that it's a shame that it's out of print--I had to pay an atrocious price for my copy. I think that another Cygnet book would be great, for there are a lot of loose ends in The Cygnet and the Firebird that need to be tied up, and I've noticed that McKillip only seems to be doing stand-alones now, good as they are. I, too, buy everything she writes, not for the plot, necessarily, but for the beauty of the images she evokes. Try Winter Rose, that is just as bitter and strange and lovely. I agree that the ending of the Sorceress and the Cygnet was very hard to understand, and I've read it a million times, seeking to understand. Does anyone know what happened?

Rating:
Summary: Surreal!
Review: This book is one of my all-time favorites, and it established my habit of buying whatever Patricia McKillip writes. I know of no other who creates such beautiful, yet entirely believable, surrealistic images.

If you don't like this novel, you probably won't like the others. I like it most because it's different from other fantasy stories that rely on heavy description and creating new systems of magic with it's own lingo.

Rating:
Summary: Surreal!
Review: This book is utterly incomprehensible and however much poetry and flowery words it is overflowing with, remains daft.
What am I trying to say? A moment to order my thoughts. That book ought to have taken similar. The author does not seem to have taken a moment or even longer, to order hers. How can you get drawn into a story when you really can't understand what the heck is going on? veiled references to folklore we don't know, it's like a nightmare-dream where the book just ISN"T MAKING SENSE.

I can understand how an author could do that, leave you with just a hazy notion that it's all interesting and exciting, but they must at leave you with enough of a feeling of familiararity or attachement to the characters to keep on reading. I got to page 48 and stopped (feeling herioc to have gotten this far). Now normally I'm a trojan reader, can read anything, dictionaries to poetry blah blah blah However I had no desire to keep reading this book and THAT in my opinion, says a great deal about the book.
This is my very biased review of the book and there must be a lot of people who disagree, as this author is very popular. Stephen Donaldson gives a recommendation - & I greatly admire him. But I couldn't get into it. I may try again, one day.

Rating:
Summary: why bother?
Review: This book is utterly incomprehensible and however much poetry and flowery words it is overflowing with, remains daft.
What am I trying to say? A moment to order my thoughts. That book ought to have taken similar. The author does not seem to have taken a moment or even longer, to order hers. How can you get drawn into a story when you really can't understand what the heck is going on? veiled references to folklore we don't know, it's like a nightmare-dream where the book just ISN"T MAKING SENSE.

I can understand how an author could do that, leave you with just a hazy notion that it's all interesting and exciting, but they must at leave you with enough of a feeling of familiararity or attachement to the characters to keep on reading. I got to page 48 and stopped (feeling herioc to have gotten this far). Now normally I'm a trojan reader, can read anything, dictionaries to poetry blah blah blah However I had no desire to keep reading this book and THAT in my opinion, says a great deal about the book.
This is my very biased review of the book and there must be a lot of people who disagree, as this author is very popular. Stephen Donaldson gives a recommendation - & I greatly admire him. But I couldn't get into it. I may try again, one day.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderfully Lyrical
Review: This is an absolutely wonderful book, the one that got me hooked on Patricia McKillip in the first place. A young man finds himself trapped in a story of magic and gods, used as a pawn to find the heart of the Cygnet. Wading through myths come to life, he finds himself drawn to his bloodkin and trapped in a story that began with them long ago.

It remains to this day one of my all-time favorite novels and I recommend it to anyone.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderfully Lyrical
Review: This is an absolutely wonderful book, the one that got me hooked on Patricia McKillip in the first place. A young man finds himself trapped in a story of magic and gods, used as a pawn to find the heart of the Cygnet. Wading through myths come to life, he finds himself drawn to his bloodkin and trapped in a story that began with them long ago.

It remains to this day one of my all-time favorite novels and I recommend it to anyone.

Rating:
Summary: Intriguing characters, beautiful writing, evocative fantasy.
Review: This is my favorite of McKillip's works -- I'm sorry and surprised to see it's out of print. Patricia McKillip draws from the standard toolbox of recent American fantasy -- a re-imagined Europeanish background, simple folk and nobles, magicians and sorceresses, and magical creatures. I thought the plot pretty good -- a young man is magically kidnapped by a power that he knew as a territorial symbol, and used to trick the sorceress, daughter of the ruling family, into searching for something that may kill her and destroy the current power structure. McKillip's superiority to so much that uses the same toolbox is in three things. Her language is beautiful. Her characters are more deeply and truly imagined than most. And her magic is more psychologically resonant. She draws upon old fairy tale imagery, but also reminds me of surrealism. Perhaps the reason McKillip is not better read (not to say she's unknown!) is that she straddles genres, those genres being pop-fantasy and more literary fantasy. Genre crossers can be hard to market, I hear.

Rating:
Summary: A brilliantly painted masterpiece of myth and drama.
Review: This is the first book by Patricia McKillip I've read. I wanted to hurry to the end of the book so I could read more of her works, but I didn't want to leave the gorgeous fantasy landscape Ms. McKillip created. The author's idea of making familiar constellations come to life was brilliant. The book's rhythm is perfect and the imagery is flawless. I felt like I really was in Nyx's rambling, shape-shifting mansion or the dank depths of Ro Hold. I was dismayed to see that this book is out of print, because every fantasy lover must read it!