So weird that people are talking McKinley today! I was recovering from migraine-sleep last night, and I re-read "The Hero and the Crown." The copyright is '84, and it's so bizarre for me to think that I have had that book for 20 years. I have such a nostalgic attachment to the Damar books -- I think maybe because Harry was one of the first female characters in a fantasy book that wasn't a shrieking maiden or placid sex victim.

Reading them now is interesting in the manner that I monitor my reaction to the the writing -- I think about how far I have matured (duh!) in the last twenty years as far as my ability to analyze literature. I remember being in such despair reading crit when I was a freshman in college, and thinking "HOW do people THINK like that?"

Dude, I 'm one of those people! How weird is THAT?

McKinley's genre (YA) best, I think, are The Blue Sword and The Hero and the Crown, for which she won the Hugo that year. Deerskin is an older and darker book.

I also like her The Door in the Hedge, which is retold familiar fairytales. And despite its problems with tropes, I like her Beauty.

Heh. xpost with Erin, sorta.

LeGuin... her Earthsea series is well-beloved, though I haven't read them since I was a kid so I don't know how I would react to them now. (That's A Wizard of Earthsea, The Farthest Shore, The Tombs of Atuan, Tehanu, and, crap, I think there's one more that I haven't read. A lot of people dislike Tehanu--I have to confess here I haven't read it--because they find it a little too polemically feminist; it was written partly as an attempt to redress some of what LeGuin saw as problems in the first three.)

I adore Always Coming Home, but it's a fake ethnography and, er, if that's the kind of thing you like you already know it. The Left Hand of Darkness is iconic in the field, and I like it very much. In my second shameful admission of the morning, I've never read The Dispossessed, but people certain also speak highly of it. People don't talk about Lathe of Heaven much, but I have read that--albeit in high school--and remember liking it.

If you're more a short story kind of person, I've read and enjoyed the ones collected in The Wind's Twelve Quarters and The Compass Rose.

but I thought I'd ping Roger's fans, in case they wanted to play.

Oh god, thanks.

t scurries over to GWW.

Damn, I had the Door in the HEdge when I was younger and like so many of my books, t disappeared years ago. And it's out of print; I can't find it.

I liked Deerskin, but could never get into "Sherwood."

And I love, love, love the first Beauty. I feel like I should appreciate the second one more (more mature, more insightful, blah, blah, blah) but I just love the first one so much more.

The Hero and the Crown was such a lovely book, especially how Talat, the faithful war horse, was presented as a complete personality without once being anthropormorphic. I enjoy McKinley's animal characters, recognizing the affection of the pet person who wrote them.

Yes, and she's such a horse girl. And she makes her characters horse girls, too. Come to think of it, I think Sunshine is the only book of hers I've read in which an animal doesn't play a signifigant role.

Unless you cound Constantine, and I don't think so.

There was a joyousness in her books pre-Outlaws, I think, that is missing post-Outlaws. A certain lyrical quality. Maturity and self-awareness seem to have somewhat diminished her earlier freedom and joy in tale-telling.

Or I could be talking completely out of my hat. It just seems that way to me.

I think maybe because Harry was one of the first female characters in a fantasy book that wasn't a shrieking maiden or placid sex victim.

Yes, this. My visceral reaction to this and the first Tamora Pierce books was "Damn, I wish I'd had these at age 13!" Now my daughter's 13 and she doesn't like McKinley. pout

ArcaneJill, Davy in Faking It is the brother of Sophie, the protagonist of Welcome To Temptation. He calls her in the course of Faking It and buys her the bed Tilda painted.

reading crit when I was a freshman in college, and thinking "HOW do people THINK like that?"

So true.

Deerskin sounds intriguing, as does Door in the Hedge -- I'll have to look out for that one since it's OOP. And Beauty! I always wanted to read that (love fairy tales in general, esp. rewrites) and never did.

ETA: Betsy, aha! I knew I recognized that "rules of the con" bit. Can't wait to read Temptation -- both bookstores I checked were all out of it. But Faking It is much fun.