Customer Reviews

The Curse of the Raven Mocker

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4 star:		(1)
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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.

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.

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.

Mary Youmans has created a beautiful fantasy world with a distinct american voice. Not a thee or thou in the whole book! The fast moving plot, palpable excitement and frightening (but bravely meet) situations faced by our heroine Adanta all make for a fun, thrilling book that is written in a manner far better than is typical.

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.