how to express how much I love Patricia McKillip and her books, how much her stories move me, how they slowly and invisibly transform from enthralling fairy tale to a genuinely emotional experience? how to describe the prose: so refined and elegant, so expressive, so light and delicate, so deep and beautiful, and yet often so simple? just so: her arrangements are perfect, my own kind of perfect. how to describe all of that, to make into something as plodding as a book review? love is a subjectiv...

The Forgotten Beasts of Eld is one of my all-time favorite fantasy novels. It's a total comfort read, poetry in prose combined with an appealing story, some great symbolism, and an examination of people and their motives and how our desires and fears can make or undo us. It's one of the fantasy books I repeatedly recommend to friends. I finished this off yesterday in one day, as part of a buddy read with the Buddies, Books and Baubles group. It's probably my third or fourth read of it, but it's

What a magical book!! Just what I needed! Happy Reading!Mel 🖤🐶🐺🐾

A guy was born in a remote village who could talk to animals and call them to him. He build himself a hermit hut and called some exotic and legendary animals, including a ballad-singing boar (my imagination miserably fails at trying to imaging it in the act), and of cause a treasure-hoarding dragon. His son continued his father collection, but his only heir was a girl named Sybel - a heroine of the story. As much as she was trying to avoid any interaction with other humans, the Big Politics caug...

This book gave me chills. Still does. I went in knowing nothing about it. I mean, I did skim some of the reviews, so I knew it was highly rated and people seemed to love, but other than that, I had no idea what it's about or what to expect, and I had never read Patricia McKillip before.And that was the best way to approach because the writing blew me away. It is simply SO GOOD and has a beautiful fluidity to it that makes it so easy to fall into. What impresses me most is that the prose is neith...

"When Myk went out of himself forever, sitting silent in the moonlight, his son Ogam continued the collection." I'm convinced this is the most hauntingly beautiful description of death I have ever encountered in literature.

What made this novel really amazing is how excellent Patricia A. McKillip wrote this. The author used her skill to write majestic words to describe each character and places, as well as breathtaking prose to narrate the story. If I'm not mistaken, this book was first published four decades ago and that it also won the World Fantasy Award for Novel in 1975. It wouldn't be winning an award if it's not good, right? McKillip utilized her eloquence that made the story of Sybel, Tam, Coren, and of the...

A dramatic, lyrical ballad locked into simple prose. Obscure, seemingly effortless, magical and breathtaking. I don't think I have ever come across a book like this before in the fantasy genre. If I were to tell you what the story is about, it would not amount to much and there is hardly any worldbuilding, but the writing is so compelling, so powerful, so seductive and beautiful that I just cannot shake the effect it has had on me.The music I kept hearing in my head while reading was the musical...

This is my favorite book of all time. If I had to pick a desert island book, it would be this one.There is something about the way this book flows that is actually literary magic. It's about magic, and riddles, and all sort of other legendary things but it's like fractal mathematics: beautiful, impossible for an ordinary human to understand, and yet hypnotic. Just the opening paragraph is chilling, and thrilling, and all sort of other trilling llls in a row. I can't describe this book, because i...

One day Patricia A. McKillip will write a bad book and that'll be the first sign of the impending apocalypse. I have no idea how I went through so many years of my life without having read her books. Actually, that would probably be because there are no Portuguese translations and I have to buy the originals from the UK. The Forgotten Beasts of Eld is, in a word, delightful. Like all of McKillip's books the reader is lost in her magical worlds from the very first page. She writes things and they...

See this review and more like it on www.bookbastion.netThis year when I started book review blogging, I realized that I was reading an awful lot of brand new books that were garnering a lot of hype. Not that that's a bad thing, but I decided along the way that when the opportunity presented itself I also wanted to better acquaint myself with older books. Stories that had been around for a lot longer are often written in a different way than the books of today. There's less focus on continuous ac...

Patricia A. Mckillip is one of my favourite fantasy writers. At the risk of sounding politically incorrect in a PC world, I find her voice uniquely feminine. Her prose is both rhythmical and intoxicating. In this novel of isolation and seclusion, Sybil is brought up by her father on Eld mountain. Her sole companions are animals, which her father calls to the area. When Sybil's father passes away, isolated Sybil - still with only her beasts for company- studies magic to evolve into a powerful sor...

Originally reviewed at Bookwraiths.The Forgotten Beasts of Eld is a wonderfully written, richly textured, high fantasy from Patricia A. McKillip. Even though it is quite limited in length, it is still filled with insightful moments and fascinating insights; all of it set in beautifully rendered fairy tale world.Sybel is a young, powerful sorceress, who has spent her life in isolation, her interaction with humans nonexistent. She knows nothing outside of her mountain home, nor does she really wis...

“The giant Grof was hit in one eye by a stone, and that eye turned inward so that it looked into his mind and he died of what he saw there.” Spoilers follow, as well as as a discussion of sexual violence.So What's It About?The young sorceress Sybel lives alone on her mountain, surrounded by the marvelous, ancient beasts of legend that her father called to him. She is content to tend to the animals and gather secrets, but one night a strange young man comes to the mountain with a baby in his arms...

I both liked and disliked this book... Took me ages to get invested in it (about half the book...), but then it got interesting. I feel like it's because midway, the book changes quite drastically. It starts involving FEELINGS. Love, revenge. Before that? I knew as much as you do what was going on.There are reasons why I dislike high fantasy (or at least high-ish) fantasy, but I still keep trying... I should stop. I am not comfortable with a crucial thing most high fantasies do, and that's dropp...

Somehow, from the midst of feeling dreadful because of this cold, I realised that what I really wanted to read was something by Patricia McKillip. It’s so strange how I disliked the first book of hers I read; I feel like I appreciate her work more with each book I do read. And this one… it’s fairytale-like, mythic — a review on GR said ‘parable like’, and yes: that too. It’s full of epic fantasy elements but the real struggle is between taking revenge and being true to who you really are and tho...

See my full review of this book on my blog along with others at: foalsfictionandfiligree.com.I received an ARC of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you! All included quotes have been taken from an ARC and may not match the finished publication. Released today! “I need you to forgive me. And then perhaps I can begin to forgive myself. There is no one but you who can do that either.” A book like this is intimidating to pick up. Not because it is mundane, nor becaus...

It's a strange and interesting book. A strange structure but with cool animals and some interesting magic. It also made me think quite a bit about Circe.A bit unfair, but it's definitely one of those books where there sure appear to be a lot of servants and masses in the background. By the end I really felt the strange focus on these elite kings and princes and wizards and their self absorbed feelings over all the people who appeared to be working and dying for them.Anyway the language is lovely...

Somehow I have managed to live my life without reading this masterpiece of high fantasy. Somehow....Now that I have I wish I can time travel to 5 days ago when I haven't read it and read it again for the first time.Isn't that always the wish when we read a book that moves us?"I do not want to choose which one of you I must love or hate. Here, I am free to do neither. I want no part of your bitterness."The prose was simple, yet so amazingly lyrical. The language used was evocative, emotional. Thi...

I know I've read this before but so long ago that I only got brief glimpses/memories of scenes as I read them. Which is just as well because I doubt very much that I could have appreciated the depth of this story when I read it all those years ago.This story has a kind of oral/bardic beginning that sets the tone for the lyrical beauty of the rest of the prose. It's part style, part choice of imagery that gives it a kind of mythic flavor that might have been off-putting if the underlying story we...

4.5 Stars. Goodness, this was a great story! Sybel has grown up mostly in isolation. The daughter of a wizard, she is immensely powerful. Her mountain home is surrounded by a beautiful garden in which reside legendary magical beasts whom she controls with her powers. Her situation makes her emotionally isolated and selfish, but change soon comes in the form of an orphaned infant boy, brought to her by Coren, a soldier. Coren asks her to love and protect the child, Tam, and she agrees. With the h...

Patricia McKillip is one of those authors that I’ve always intended to read. I bought a used omnibus of her Riddle-Master of Hed trilogy during my first year of college, which was more than a decade ago. Yet for some reason, I’ve never quite gotten around to reading it, anything else by her. After having now read The Forgotten Beasts of Eld, my interest in her work has been rekindled. This little standalone was a lovely reading experience. And as it referenced her Riddle-Master series multiple t...

Rating: 3.5* of fiveI read this book in 1975. It was impressive to my teenaged self, but was the beginning of the end for me and fantasy as a primary reading genre. Beautifully written, richly textured, full of those lovely small moments that demonstrate deft and economical world-building. Also larded through with moments of profound insight for my inexperienced self:What do you think love is—a thing to startle from the heart like a bird at every shout or blow? You can fly from me, high as you c...

I may be an odd reader for this book, but it captured my imagination best in the first half of the book and less so in the second.That being said, I thought it was a well-written, sometimes mildly poetical romance with all the old, familiar fantasy tropes. Mythical creatures are really mostly a side-issue. It's really about hearts. Big surprise, right? It is a romance. :)All said, I enjoyed it well as a mild entertainment. Maybe my jaded reading eyes have just seen too much like this to get over...

***Note: I received a copy curtesy of Netgalley and Tachyon Publications in exchange for an honest review.Even if, as I understand, it is targeted at young adults (?), I think adults are the ones that will truly understand and glean from it, as much is hidden between the lines. It is a story about love, in its basic and simplest form, and loss, about the desire for power, the cost of revenge, foregivness, written in magical and lyrical words - maybe a tad too lyrical and cryptic for my taste.. 3...

I feel this should have touched me more than it did. I found Sybel hard to get behind.

5 stars--it was amazing.A story about this book: I first read it when I was 11 or 12. My local library at the time didn't have a YA section (in fact, I'm not sure the concept of YA fiction existed at the time, though that would change soon--by the time I was in high school, the library had a separate section for teens). The library's juvenile book section was arranged with picture books on one side of the room, middle-reader chapter books in the middle of the room, and one free-standing shelf of...

I love fairy tales, especially stories about loneliness and anger and coming to terms with the dark places within ourselves. Forgotten Beasts is a beautiful example of this genre. The storytelling style was perfect for story, flowing along with the slight distance of myth. The characters are all figures of legend, rather than flesh-and-blood people (or animals, as case may be), but that works for me in this kind of fairy tale, giving it a feeling of history and place within some broader landscap...

This tale teeters on the brink of that enchantment that won me over to Patricia A. McKillip's writing. At times, I was afraid it would keel over and shatter. But in the end, it soared.Also, as I read through my notes, I realize it has lent its magic to a great miracle in my own life. When I wrote the first note, I was beginning to look into adopting a child. As I finish writing them, a child and her mother have begun taking me in.But that's another story and will be told another time. ;) Now foc...

“The giant Grof was hit in one eye by a stone, and that eye turned inward so that it looked into his mind, and he died of what he saw there." I love beautiful things. I surround myself with beautiful objects, and lately I've been filling my head with the beautiful words of others. And this, without doubt, is one of the most beautiful stories I have ever experienced. I am not one to mark and scribble over my precious books, but I had to resist the urge to highlight every single page of