The Perilous Gard by Elizabeth Marie Pope

[rusty_halo]

I finished The Perilous Gard by Elizabeth Marie Pope. I’m not sure how this ended up on my reading list, but it must’ve been recommended by a Lymond fan–I feel fairly certain that the author must’ve been one as well. It reads like the Lymond Chronicles remixed with the Scottish ballad the Tam Lin.

The main characters are too similar to Philippa and Lymond for it to be coincidence, but it’s done very well and I didn’t feel that it was derivate in a bad way. It was written well and incorporated its various influences into a compelling and imaginative whole.

I suppose the one thing that detracted from the story was that her lead male character had many of Lymond's neuroses (he's guilt-ridden over the death of a child relative, feels like he doesn't belong in his family, was rejected by his father and is estranged from his brother, and is borderline suicidal) but because he isn't the hero, these issues aren't balanced out with feats of awesome that make you like him anyway. The author tries to give him a hint of Lymond's humor and joie de vivre, but it doesn't quite work--the wit is nowhere near Dunnett's level. (But then I feel like Dunnett's wit has ruined me for pretty much everything else!)

But, on the plus side, I liked that the protagonist was the female character. She was pretty much a dead ringer for Philippa--intelligent, witty, plain, and practical. She even serves as a Queen's Lady (Elizabeth's instead of Mary's), gets captured and taken prisoner to an alien place to save someone she cares about, is trained to blossom from ugly duckling to swan, and rescues the man she loves by pulling him out of his depression and self-absorption with her practicality and humor. Very Philippa!

I suppose I was a bit annoyed that the woman was constantly sacrificing herself to save the man (which I have problems with in the Lymond Chronicles, too). It's just written with a sort of unquestioned assumption that of course the man is special and important and should be saved. But, eh, it was okay here, because Kate was a strong, clever, no-bullshit kind of hero, and she had to have some goal to send her off on her hero's journey. And the book was way more about her than about him.

It was interesting to read this in conjunction with Gaiman's Graveyard Book. They both draw on a lot of the same bits of mythology--the dancing scenes were particularly reminiscent of each other. I thought Pope did a wonderful job of mixing characters from Mary Tudor's England with the Fairy People of older pagan stories--going in I wasn't sure how she was going to pull that off without it seeming silly. She did it by portraying the Fairy people as alien and inhuman but very specific and real. I ended up sympathizing with them more than with the humans! I suppose the one bit that made me uncomfortable was when Kate tries to convert the Fairy Queen to Christianity, but I loved that it totally backfired ("You mean if we kill your friend we'll not only get his own power but Jesus Christ's too? Cool!") And ultimately I came out of it very sad for them, for their rituals and culture being destroyed to make way for Christianity. Although the human sacrifice bit was not so sympathetic! Or the keeping of humans as slaves. But I liked that Pope didn't demonize them--they were presented as they were, alien to our understanding, but admirable according to their own code.

This is technically a childrens' book, but it was complex and interesting enough that I'd say it works just as well for adults. I definitely recommend it, and I think it would make a great gift for a kid as well.

Current Mood: pleased & pleased

Originally published at rusty-halo.com. You can comment here or there.