The Hero and the Crown, Robin McKinley
This book astounds me. I’ve read it four, five times now—probably more considering my thesis—and I keep coming back to it and I’m just amazed. It’s not so much the story itself (though there is that) but so much of why I love it is in how it’s told. McKinley injects a wryness and almost sly first person into her third person telling, with Aerin reflecting along her adventure in a way that makes us remember that no matter what happens to Aerin, she is unquestionably vulnerable and human. I mean, she’s climbing to face her transforming test (she’s about to face the main bad guy, in other words) and she’s incredibly itchy. She says to herself, “This is typical. On my way to gods know what unspeakable doom, and I break out in a rash.” I mean, that’s awesome! Amazing in the context of 1984.
If you’ve never been introduced to YA Fantasy (I must modify that: heroic/fairy tale fantasy with a female protagonist), you must read The Hero and the Crown and The Blue Sword, both by Robin McKinley. Oh, my God.
I just realized today that I’ve loved those books since 2000, when I discovered them, and I’ve never read any more of McKinley’s critically acclaimed fiction, including Beauty, Rose Daughter, The Outlaws of Sherwood, and Spindle’s End. She’s written more than that, but those are the short list I need to buy immediately. It’ll be my reading of the next month. I scorned them growing up because I wanted “original” fiction, not fiction based on fairy tales or retellings of them. (Hence the Damar-based worlds of The Hero and the Crown and The Blue Sword.) I’ve since enjoyed quite a few (Ella Enchanted, The Goose Girl, etc.) and I think I ought to take a look at them.
What’s difficult about this story, though, is its potential readership. Who’s going to read this book today? Girls, mainly; those who are good readers (it’s a tough book, easily high school level for full comprehension — the language is half as complex as the way she constructs it, especially Part I; it took me 2 reads to get fully wrap my head around its linear plot); those who love fairy tales and gravitate to stories about heroes and kings and dragons. It’s richly evocative of tales of Camelot and the high middle ages. It’s a lovely book. So, so lovely. But not very realistic for many of the kids in my tenth grade English class to read, let alone even know about. Sigh. It’s lovely.
