Probably like most college graduate students, summer is my reading-for-fun time. Even though I work 40 hours a week, go out with my friends and take care of family responsibilities on top of all of that, I always make time to read every summer night before bed. Reading relaxes me and it allows me to escape the mundane of every day life (because, let’s face it, every day life can get a little boring sometimes!) into time periods lost to history, or into different worlds filled with the fantastical.
I’m the type of summer reader who likes to devote her time and energy to one book at a time. However, since I belong to two book clubs this summer I’ve had to adapt—and I’ve done so very willingly! Right now I’m reading Bleak House by Charles Dickens with one group (there are six of us) and with the other (there are only two of us) I’m reading Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte. I haven’t started Agnes Grey yet (it’s coming in the mail!) but I have started Bleak House and I love it! It’s Dickens’s best work. If you haven’t read it I highly suggest picking it up, or if it’s too daunting for you, I recommend watching Bleak House the BBC mini series starring Gillian Anderson as Lady Dedlock. The mini series is what got me completely hooked into the intricate mystery of Bleak House—not surprising, since the screenplay is written by the genius Andrew Davies (he’s the one who wrote screenplay for the beloved Colin Firth version of Pride and Prejudice) so you will not be disappointed I promise!
In addition to these two books I’m reading for my book clubs, I’m also reading a historical fiction novel called Here Be Dragons by Sharon Kay Penman and The Witches of Eileanan fantasy series by Kate Forsyth. Kate is an Australian author and even though this series was first published back in the 1990s I’ve just discovered it this year. I’ve been searching and searching for a new fantasy series to cherish as much as I cherish The Dragonriders of Pern by Anne McCaffrey and Melanie Rawn’s Dragon Prince and Dragon Star trilogies. I remember browsing Barnes and Noble a few years back, scouring the book shelves for another fantasy series that wasn’t cliché, and suddenly came across one of Kate’s novels called The Tower of Ravens. The cover depicted a blue-black, horned, winged mare flying over wild, mountainous terrain with a bold, young woman riding on her back, a bow and a quiver of arrows slung over her shoulder. Now, I’ve always loved horses, and as a young one I loved stories about pegasuses (pegasi?) and unicorns, and of course that love has carried over into my adult life, so I picked it up, read the back, thought it seemed promising, and bought it.
As is the way of the world, life happened and I forgot about The Tower of Ravens until I came across it on my bookshelf last semester. So I picked it up…and couldn’t put it down! Kate has created the world I’ve been searching for: Eileanan, a fantastical land that mingles both the eastern and western cultures, a land that is overflowing with Celtic, Scottish and Indian lore, magic, dragons, winged horses, satyrcorns, witches, warlocks, merpeople and fantasy creatures I hadn’t even imagined until reading this series. All of characters are three-dimensional, the main plot and subplots are woven together with such finesse, and rather than just telling me her story, Kate shows it to me using detailed descriptions and allowing me to see into the intriguing minds of her characters. There are nine books in the series (Dragonclaw, The Pool of Two Moons, The Cursed Towers, The Forbidden Land, The Skull of the World, The Fathomless Caves, The Tower of Ravens, The Shining City and The Heart of Stars). The Tower of Ravens, The Shining City and The Heart of Stars actually take place after the first six, and when I realized this I went back to Barnes and Noble to start at the very beginning like I should have done so in the first place—but found out that the first six were out of print here in America! So I made a mad dash to a used bookstore in Fullerton and couldn’t find them there, or even on ebay. Amazon had a couple of them for sale starting at $15.00 and I wasn’t about to pay that much for a used paperback no matter how much I wanted to read it. So I waited. Bided my time for weeks on end—and my patience finally paid off this week because I found all six novels being sold by the same person on Amazon for $2.00 each and I snatched them up before anyone else could!
My friends, Kate’s rare novels are USPSing their way to me as I write this and I’m so excited! As much as I love reading classic literature, there will always be a part of me that adores well-written and thought-provoking fantasy novels just as much. I’m very happy to be reading both genres this summer.
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