I read this book on the strong recommendation of my friend Lori, who made me a delightfully long list of books to read whilst we were together in England. There was this one morning when we were walking ten miles from some village into Winchester, and as we walked she told me all about this book because the landscape was bringing it so much to mind and she was so excited to read it very first thing when she got home. I was worried when I sat down to read it, because the writing style didn't seem to be quite my thing--I was worried it would turn out to be like Megan Whalen Turner or Patricia McKillip, whose stories are fascinating and whose books I always want to love but then somehow their style of telling them just doesn't quite click with my brain. This is a thing I struggle with. But then luckily I turned out to not have that problem at all--I think it was just a bit of a slow start perhaps, but once things got going I was fully invested.
Kate Sutton is a maid of honor to Princess Elizabeth, during the reign of Queen Mary, when things were really dicey. Kate is mistakenly blamed for some idiot thing her idiot sister did which offended the queen, and thus is sent as like a minimum security prisoner to Perilous Gard, a castle type place in Derbyshire [unfortunately we coached right through Derbyshire, or I'm sure that THAT is where Lori would have been sent into Perilous Gard raptures:)]*. Almost immediately there are "Hm this place is weird" markers, and sure enough, there are weird things afoot! "Weird" in this case meaning that there are Fairy Folk tramping around everywhere demanding human tributes, and when the half-wit minstrel starts babbling Tam Lin ballads, you can see pretty clearly where things are headed. Which was totally great in my opinion, because I doubt I will ever tire of Tam Lin-based novels. Seriously, Fire and Hemlock by Dianne Wynne Jones? An Earthly Knight by Janet McNaughton? These books are good times, and now Perilous Gard can go next to them on the shelf.
*Did you see how I just totally disregarded the rules of "([{" progression? Do you think that this is an appropriate way of sidestepping the awkwardness of the emoticon-in-parenthesis debacle? In most situations I simply restrain myself from emoticon usage but in this case I just could not help but express my smile at the idea of Lori being sent into raptures. She's just not the rapturing sort, you know?
I have to agree with your assessment of the book--and I wish I knwe Lori to understand the joy of her emotion. since you left the book on my bed, I had no trouble getting right into it. although, I must admit I thought for a minute that I was going to b e reading another Young Queen Bess type of book. which would ahve been ok, but I'm glad it was not!
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