Customer Reviews

The Book of Atrix Wolfe

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(5)
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For all of those fantasy readers out there who have read fairy tale upon fairy tale, here is a familiar feeling original tale which captures all of human emotion and brings you into a dream. It has been said that a composer's power is the ability to bring the listener, unwilling, into his state of mind. And so it is here, as you are drawn in so subtly and powerfully to each moment in the story until a tension so high has built up it is impossible to rip yourself away. The language is stunning, as in all Patricia McKillip books, and yet here she seems to even surpass herself, every sentence a line of poetry, never pretentious but always full of meaning. Even though I myself have read many fairy tales, both the originals and retellings, and admire greatly such authors as Angela Carter and Anne Sexton who brings a wonderful edge and newness to the tales, I was entranced by this book both because of its originality and its homage to the form of a fairy tale or myth. The most wonderful thing, however, is that each character is human, suffering all of the emotions each of us know so well, and therefore the story is always a grounded and effective odyssey. I would highly reccomend this book to anyone who misses magic in the modern world, the sense that the Fair Folk are indeed there, watching us. The feeling that imagination, superstition and dreams are still very much a part of us, and can never truly be forgotten.

A bare outline of the plot and characters of "The Book of Atrix Wolfe" might deceive you into thinking that this book is yet another modern retelling of an old fairy tale. Here is the beautiful princess, forced into a life as a scullery maid by a powerful mage, who also turns her father into a deadly were-stag with a "black moon rising from his burning horns". Here also is the mage-prince who eventually recognizes the princess for what she is in spite of her formidable disguise, and returns her to her loving mother.

The sleeping beauty on the Kinuko Craft cover may do justice to the loveliness of the princess-turned-scullery-maid (at least prior to her transformation by the mage), but it doesn't capture her incredible will to survive after she is torn from her parents and dumped, naked and alone, into an alien universe. Yes, she ends up as a scullery maid, thought to be mute and retarded by her fellow kitchen workers. Yes, she scrubs pots from dawn to midnight. But the prince's kitchen turns out to be lively and warm, and filled with an eccentric hierarchy of cooks, sauce makers, plate washers, mincers, pluckers, boners, choppers, and spit-boys. McKillip goes into loving detail over the making and serving of food fit for a King's table, and when the princess Saro finally leaves the washing cauldron to fulfill her destiny, I for one felt a faint tinge of regret.

Who would have thought that a medieval kitchen could be a more interesting place to linger than a fairy forest where "water flowed, silver and sweet as honey among ancient roots"?

"The Book of Atrix Wolfe" stands many fairy tale truisms on their heads, including the character of the evil, all-powerful mage. In this story, the mage Atrix Wolfe creates the deadly Hunter that almost destroys the prince's family, but he does so with the intention of stopping a war. The Hunter himself is Death, but even he is not precisely evil. The prince rescues the princess, but only after she steals his book of spells in an attempt to teach herself how to read.

Patricia McKillip may have started out with a fairy tale in mind, but what she wrote was ornate, fascinating, and completely her own.

What a wonderful book! Weaving, retelling and redefining the classic faerie tale in a style at once simple and elegant, McKillip brings a sense of wonder and magic to every page, creating a world at once familiar yet unlike any other I've encountered. The author has created a haunting fiction in which a thin veil exists between the ordinary and magical, the commonplace, medieval setting of fantasy and the barely perceived kingdom of the Other. This is the realm of Faerie, the closest I have come to it, outside of traditional folklore, since reading Tolkien, yet written with an individual vision that while drawing upon the rich heritage of mythology and legend, such as the Wild Hunt and the Queen of the Wood, breathes new life into the faerie tale, until the story has a character and wonder all its own.

Lovingly and richly detailed, this is not a book to read on an empty stomach. Scenes of feasts and the kitchen abound, delightfully rendered and salivating. The descriptions of the wood captures nature in all its beauty as well as its at times its frightening indifference. The invocation of magic and the spiritual realm are crafted in a way at once wondrous and believable, and for a few hours the reader steps into a world in which he or she wishes they could linger long after the final page reaches its conclusion. Mystery abounds, and it is impossible not to become captured in the author's written spell.

This is not, however, simply a tale of wondrous places and larger than life events. As well as writing lyrically, the author invests her tale with metaphor, and a meditation on words and their relationship to identity. The duality of things perceived is as much a theme throughout the work as is the ostensible tale of magic gone awry, and, as with the characters, one needs to look closely at the nature of what is named. I can think of no other author currently writing fantasy that uses the genre as a means to explore larger existential matters, a reflection upon not only the real world but also the world of myth. This book is truly a feast, not only for the senses but the intellect as well.

One of the best works of fantasy I have ever read, at once richly acknowledging the meditative and figurative themes underlying the best traditional folklore, as well as investing the genre with intentions rarely found today in fantasy fiction, written in a style as magical and beautiful as the tale being told. Beside the wonder of this novel, my praise is but a weak and mute substitute.

"The Book of Atrix Wolfe" would function very well as a set of tapestries. The colors are rich, the setting vividly archaic, and attention to detail is meticulous: reading Patricia McKillip's work, you often feel that you are observing a series of still images linked in sequence. Talis Pelucir resettling his glasses on his nose. A winter wind streaking the dreaming gold-green of the Queen's forest with snow. Atrix Wolfe fraying from wolf to wind to human in the blink of an eye that stretches for nearly a paragraph. McKillip makes time elastic, which adds to the mixed sense of the gritty and the unreal that pervades the entire book, as does her use of words as evocations rather than as descriptions. Characters are viewed obliquely, even when the story proceeds from their point of view; it requires careful reading to understand them, and even then you are learning from the outside in: vivid, surreal, and slightly detached tapestries of action, magery, and emotion.

While "The Book of Atrix Wolfe" is not my favorite of all of McKillip's works, in several ways it reminds me of the Riddle-Master Trilogy more than her other recent works do, especially in the importance of names. One character is named Saro, which is persistently and not inaccurately misheard as "sorrow" for much of the book. Atrix Wolfe binds his book with his name, so that none of the words really say what they seem, and part of the Hunter's terror is that he seems to have no name. Similarly, a strong sense of the awakening past fills every movement of the characters' lives. All the action in the book derives from one moment twenty years in the past when Atrix Wolfe, driven to desperation by the war between Pelucir and Kardeth, created out of the nightmare chaos of war a figure known only as the Hunter (a variation on the Wild Hunt, and one which McKillip fashions without once appearing derivative) and loosed him on the battlefield. That night Atrix Wolfe disappeared in horror and shame, and both armies were utterly destroyed along with all but the last remnants of their royal families. And it didn't end that night. Twenty years later two worlds are still affected by Atrix's desperate action, and the night's terrible hunting refuses to simply vanish from memory and life; even when it seems safely buried, something stirs it alive again. The past is inescapable: nothing can erase it, and even regret and acts of redemption cannot change what has been done, only amend what exists. In many ways it's a disquieting theme around which to build a book--unusual enough warrant some appreciation on its own.

For all its scope and detail, "The Book of Atrix Wolfe" never quite achieves the full resonance demanded by its subject. It's hard to fully realize your sympathies for the characters, since they are depicted with such precise detachment that you observe more than you feel, and though Pelucir and the realm of the Queen of the Wood are painstakingly drawn there is little description of the surrounding country or, indeed, the outer world at all. One or two events are completely inexplicable, even if that's in keeping with the tone of the story; the grittily real world and the haunting visionary realm of myth and magery never quite align. But it's a good book, if not everything that a Patricia McKillip novel can be, and strong enough to leave its echoes in the reader's mind, like waking the morning after a dream.

What a treasure this book turned out to be... This book is a well crafted piece of fantasy, with its deliciously vivid descriptions and twisting plot. A breath of magic and a touch of suspense, it is a story of darkness, desperation, loss and love. I found myself hanging on every word. Tragic and very human, the characters touched me in a way very few characters do. There seemed to be a veil of mystery and as I read this book I kept thinking that there was something that I just kept missing, something that was hinted at, yet eluded me. This book was a challenge, not just some book you pick up and read and when you put it down you forget... no this is a book that will force you to think and feel as the characters do. Wow! One of my favorite books of all time. Great work from Ms. McKillip, and I can't wait for her next one!

One morning I began reading this book for the first time, over breakfast, I woke from the dream after 247 enchanting pages and felt like crying because the book was over. Then I realized I had been sitting on the couch for 7 hours without moving! I would recommend this book to anyone that remembers how they got lost in the fairytale as a child, it's beautiful!

Character development and plot take second place to the creation of a mood of magic and mystery. There are all the elements of classic fantasy: a great mage, a novice, an enchanted scullery maid, a bewitching queen. The occasional touch of humour deftly lightens the tone. I think that this book achieves what it sets out to achieve; for that reason I don't really want to criticise it for failing to engage my interest. It is simply not to my taste, rather than due to any fault of the book.

Where this book really comes alive for me is in the descriptions of the food. I would gladly eat any of the food prepared in that kitchen. If I owned this book, I would mark all those passages and re-read them often.

If atmosphere and evocative mood are what you look for in a book, give it a try; if you prefer real, well-developed characters and compelling plots, I suggest you try something else.

As other reviewers provide summaries, I will not repeat them. Ms. McKillip doesn't write as many authors of this genre do. Instead of a more plot-driven story, her writing focuses more on developing imagery through colorful descriptions. Additionally she doesn't provide a "paint-by-number" story telling. The plot, while usually fascinating and original, is almost secondary to the world she reveals in her books.
That said, when I first read this book 4 years ago, I was used to the more plot-intensive fantasy stories with or without magic and sword-wielding hero(ine)s. While I quickly fell under the spell of Ms. McKillip's story-telling, I had many questions at the end of the book. I felt some dissatisfaction because I wanted fuller descriptions/explanations about some of the characters' motivations. In fact, not much happens after the initial spell-making.
I recently picked up this book again and, this time, found it more meaningful. It was like experiencing a vivid dream while awake. I felt as if I had somehow stumbled into a slightly more sophisticated version of a fairy tale. As long as you don't expect a typical fantasy read, I strongly recommend this book to experience something different in this genre.

Whenever I read a McKillip book I feel like I did when I was a kid, and magic really exists in the world. I get sad over the next week as reality re-asserts itself around me. Like a first love, it's something I cherish, that her books can evoke these feelings of wonder in me. I've never read an author that writes like this save her. If you don't know what I'm talking about, buy ANY of her books. If you have read her before, then get this book. It's the best. I was so wrapped up in the characters, I couldn't talk for an hour after I read it the first time. Or the second and third. This is the book that convinced me to become a collector, and buy only hardcovers. They're worth reading again and again, and the artwork on the covers is something you'll want to preserve.

Fantasy readers have come to expect the highest calibre of work from Patricia McKillip, with intricate plotlines, charming characters and some of the most beautiful prose being written in fantasy today. The story and characters of "The Book of Atrix Wolfe" are a match for any other McKillip book, but the real triumph here is in the author's mastery of language. Apparently inspired by a storyline which muses on the power and mutability of words, McKillip creates a world simultaneously rich in sensory detail and drenched in dreamlike atmosphere. Only an author this gifted could take overused themes like the Wild Hunt, the Queen of Faery, and wizard's spellbooks and bring them startlingly and uniquely to life. All of McKillip's work is to be treasured; this is a prize gem in the trove.