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The Cup of the World, John Dickinson
Jun. 7th, 2004 05:16 pmNo. 53 (or 54, if I count the Kage Baker novella in Asimov's which I read just before this. Not at all sure whether to count it or not!)
Wow - so impressive! I picked this up when we were in London in January, on a bit of a whim, and mostly for my younger daughter. It's Dickinson's first novel (he's the son of Peter Dickinson, which must have helped), and it just looked appealing. I don't think it's perfect, and found myself occasionally thinking it felt a bit first novelish, but only at the beginning. After that I got totally drawn into it, and just loved it. It's YA medieval fantasy, but (IMO at least), without a lot of the clichés often found in medieval fantasies, and certainly without the black-and-white morality so often found in teen fantasies (thinking of the likes of HP here, with apologies to fans).
From the cover blurb: 'Phaedra, daughter of the Warden of Trant, puts her trust in a man she has only met in dreams. He can see far, and speak far, and pass where no man should be able to pass. With him she may escape to a new beginning, as the Kingdom collapses into war.
But why should he choose to help her?
And what price has he paid for his power?'
Reading it I was at times reminded of Hexwood (the communication through what seems to be dreams), Deep Secret, (such a frightening Babylon-like scene), Paladin of Souls (the kind of sympathy with a heroine who has made/makes choices which aren't necessarily good - though very understandable ones, and the similarity of a woman trying to struggle against her own powerlessness), with The Perilous Gard (the frustration of a girl knowing that there are supernatural powers around while everyone else wants to pretend they're not there) and perhaps more strangely, with The Woman in White, where that female powerlessness is so terrifyingly shown. Oh yeah, and Sherwood Smith's Court and Crown Duet, in part because of that sense of isolation, in part because the heroine is a young girl who has learned lessons from childhood which really don't serve her well, and in part because of the frightening sense of not knowing who's a friend and who's an enemy.
I definitely thought there were a few problems - one being the sometimes Christian-seeming Church (a bishop, Easter and Lent) not always meshing with the not-particularly Christian set-up of the four Angels, which I loved. Almost as if Dickinson hadn't quite the confidence to go all out in creating a religious set-up as Bujold did in Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls, or Turner did in The Thief and Queen of Attolia. Or something. There are wonderful glimpses of what could be developed later perhaps. Because, oh yes, this book isn't a stand-alone. And what's worse, I bet anything that what happened to me with Catherine Fisher's The Oracle will happen again here: you pick up a recently printed book which gives no indication of the fact that a sequel will follow, spend the next year or so waiting eagerly for the sequel, read it avidly, only to find that the book is now going to be a trilogy (or worse, a ... quadrilogy? quadruplet? one of four). Torture, though of the nicest kind.
My BC friends are safe for a while, as I'll have to get a paperback copy (of my own) to push. And maybe you just might be safe until I see what the sequel situation is going to be - but don't count on it.
Wow - so impressive! I picked this up when we were in London in January, on a bit of a whim, and mostly for my younger daughter. It's Dickinson's first novel (he's the son of Peter Dickinson, which must have helped), and it just looked appealing. I don't think it's perfect, and found myself occasionally thinking it felt a bit first novelish, but only at the beginning. After that I got totally drawn into it, and just loved it. It's YA medieval fantasy, but (IMO at least), without a lot of the clichés often found in medieval fantasies, and certainly without the black-and-white morality so often found in teen fantasies (thinking of the likes of HP here, with apologies to fans).
From the cover blurb: 'Phaedra, daughter of the Warden of Trant, puts her trust in a man she has only met in dreams. He can see far, and speak far, and pass where no man should be able to pass. With him she may escape to a new beginning, as the Kingdom collapses into war.
But why should he choose to help her?
And what price has he paid for his power?'
Reading it I was at times reminded of Hexwood (the communication through what seems to be dreams), Deep Secret, (such a frightening Babylon-like scene), Paladin of Souls (the kind of sympathy with a heroine who has made/makes choices which aren't necessarily good - though very understandable ones, and the similarity of a woman trying to struggle against her own powerlessness), with The Perilous Gard (the frustration of a girl knowing that there are supernatural powers around while everyone else wants to pretend they're not there) and perhaps more strangely, with The Woman in White, where that female powerlessness is so terrifyingly shown. Oh yeah, and Sherwood Smith's Court and Crown Duet, in part because of that sense of isolation, in part because the heroine is a young girl who has learned lessons from childhood which really don't serve her well, and in part because of the frightening sense of not knowing who's a friend and who's an enemy.
I definitely thought there were a few problems - one being the sometimes Christian-seeming Church (a bishop, Easter and Lent) not always meshing with the not-particularly Christian set-up of the four Angels, which I loved. Almost as if Dickinson hadn't quite the confidence to go all out in creating a religious set-up as Bujold did in Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls, or Turner did in The Thief and Queen of Attolia. Or something. There are wonderful glimpses of what could be developed later perhaps. Because, oh yes, this book isn't a stand-alone. And what's worse, I bet anything that what happened to me with Catherine Fisher's The Oracle will happen again here: you pick up a recently printed book which gives no indication of the fact that a sequel will follow, spend the next year or so waiting eagerly for the sequel, read it avidly, only to find that the book is now going to be a trilogy (or worse, a ... quadrilogy? quadruplet? one of four). Torture, though of the nicest kind.
My BC friends are safe for a while, as I'll have to get a paperback copy (of my own) to push. And maybe you just might be safe until I see what the sequel situation is going to be - but don't count on it.
