The Curse of the Raven Mocker [Hardcover]

Marly Youmans (Author)

Book Description

Age Level: 10 and up | Grade Level: 5 and up

A chilling fantasy based on Cherokee myth

It’s been weeks since Adanta’s sick father left on a quest to find the healing lake mentioned in the lore of the Cherokee. Since then a visitor has arrived, a man Adanta doesn't like – James, or, as she's styled him, the Lean One. One day, after witnessing him make a frightening incantation, Adanta finds that her mother has fallen under the Lean One's spell, and she is lured away from the cottage. Left alone in a remote area of the Smoky Mountains, Adanta has no choice but to venture forth into the wilderness, in the hope of finding both her parents. To accomplish this, she must journey to Adantis, the secret home of the Hidden People deep in the mountains.

On her quest, Adanta finds many friends, but she also encounters untold dangers, including the threat of the Raven Mockers – humans who take the form of birds and steal the remaining life from those who are hurt or ill. To protect herself, and potentially save her mother and be reunited with her father, will require all the strength and courage she can muster.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 6-8-A complex fantasy that has its inspiration in the Cherokee culture of western North Carolina. When Adanta's sick father goes on a quest to find a healing lake, a visitor, the Lean One, comes to their home and lures her mother away, where she may have fallen prey to Raven Mockers, who steal a victim's heart and eat it. Alone, Adanta sets out to try to find her parents, journeying from her cottage to Adantis, a secret home of the Hidden People, who are a mixture of Irish, Scots, and Cherokee. The book follows Adanta through trials as she meets a variety of characters who have special powers of transformation from one form to another as well as people living in the depths of the Great Smoky Mountains where cultures blend and the lines of reality and fantasy blur. Among them is Pony Boy, who travels with Adanta some of the time; her grandmother; and families she meets in the hidden world of Adantis. There are a lot of good, exciting characters and events-people being stolen, men changed into other creatures-but the intricate plot has many side steps that can be difficult to keep straight, and it will take an excellent reader to keep them all sorted out. In the end, the story cannot quite stand up to the weight of all the characters and all that is going on in it.
Jane G. Connor, South Carolina State Library, Columbia
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Gr. 5-8. Set in the Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee, this fantasy draws on Cherokee legends and the culture of the region's European settlers. After young Adanta's father falls ill, he leaves their solitary cottage to search for Atagahi, the secret, sacred healing lake of legend. Seven weeks later, Adanta's mother is enchanted and lured into the Smoky Mountain home of the Adantans, the Hidden People of mixed Irish, Scots, and Cherokee ancestry. Adanta's quest to save her parents leads her deep into the mountains, where she finds a land she had known only through her father's tales. She encounters shape-shifting witches and wizards called raven mockers, fairylike little people, and the powerful Immortals as well as a number of memorable human characters. In a detailed glossary, Youmans explains unfamiliar terms and concepts. Genre fans who have lamented the lack of high fantasy with a truly American setting will welcome this original, imaginative story with its well-researched background. Carolyn Phelan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 10 and up
  
• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR); 1st edition (September 16, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374316678
• ISBN-13: 978-0374316679
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,759,236 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

http://www.marlyyoumans.com/
http://www.thepalaceat2.blogspot.com/
http://youtube/user/marlyoumans/

Marly Youmans is the author of four novels: LITTLE JORDAN (David R. Godine, Publisher, 1995); CATHERWOOD (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1996); THE WOLF PIT (FSG, 2001, The Michael Shaara Award); and VAL/ORSON (UK: P. S. Publishing, 2009). In addition, she has published two Appalachian fantasies for young adults, THE CURSE OF THE RAVEN MOCKER (FSG, 2003) and INGLEDOVE (FSG, 2005). Her poetry collections are THE THRONE OF PSYCHE (Mercer University Press, 2011) and CLAIRE(Louisiana State University, 2003). Forthcoming poetry books are The Foliate Head (UK: Stanza Press) and THALIAD, a post-apocalyptic epic poem in blank verse (Montreal: PHOENICIA PUBLISHING, 2011.) She also has three novels due out in the near future: GLIMMERGLASS and MAZE OF BLOOD from P. S. Publishing and A DEATH AT THE WHITE CAMELLIA ORPHANAGE, winner of the first annual Ferrol Sams Award for Fiction (Mercer University Press, 2012). She is a native of the Carolinas currently living in a snowbank in Cooperstown, New York with her husband and three children.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars When a Curse is a Blessing, November 11, 2003

By 

Jack King (Esperance, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Curse of the Raven Mocker (Hardcover)

Marly Youman's latest book, The Curse of the Raven Mocker is a perfect introduction to literary writing for the younger reader, so finely worked and that adult readers can fall through the page, forget reading, and watch the story. As in her Catherwood, Ms Youman's descriptions of landscapes and local color is like a mother describing her child or Shackleton describing the cold.
The dearness of the values of family love, acceptance of grave personal purpose, and the courage to muster over again against what is terrible, shown especially in the young as she weaves her story, gives today's readers more than a book to bequeath to our children. This is a minor masterpiece of a handbook on how to live with open-eyed love in an often incomprehensibly dangerous world.
Even with all of that, much of value of The Curse of the Raven Mocker is a born teacher's easy stimulation of a reader's curiosity to need more of the rich background the author respectfully serves. There is plenty of convenient, graspable and interesting material related to Cherokee culture just waiting to be appreciated by Ms Youman's post-Mocker readers.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Americans have fantasies too, January 14, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: The Curse of the Raven Mocker (Hardcover)

When one thinks of the fantasy genre one usually pictures the well worn paths of dragons, sword and sorcerer, medievil speak, etc. There is an overwhelming sense of Tolkien wannabe (See Eragon). As an American it is refreshing to read a fantasy not limited by that mind set. The story line is a classic child on a quest, but the language, imagination, landscape, imagery, and beauty of thought behind Raven Mocker makes it an outstanding read.

4.0 out of 5 stars An excellent and original American YA fantasy, September 19, 2010

By 

David "I read science fiction and fantasy, bu... (LAUREL, MD, United States) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Curse of the Raven Mocker (Paperback)

This is a unique YA fantasy novel, set in America, with a rich overlay of Appalachian and Cherokee mythology rather than the usual creatures from European myth and legend. Adanta, a young girl whose parents have disappeared, must venture into Adantis, the land of the Hidden People, to find them. In some ways, this novel reminded me of Stephen King's The Talisman (a young protagonist on a fantastic quest to save a parent), but Youmans's writing is very different from King's. It's descriptive but still very much aimed at younger readers; it has a dark tone at times, but it's safely PG-rated. The only drawback was that, as in many "quest" novels, there were significant stretches of time where not much happened except that Adanta goes somewhere, meets new people, is shocked/surprised/tricked/scared, and then goes somewhere else.

Note that Youmans wrote a "sequel" to this novel (not really a sequel, but set in the same world) called Ingledove, which I think is actually better.