The Ill-Made Mute (The Bitterbynde, Book 1) [Hardcover]

Cecilia Dart-Thornton (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 23, 2001 | Series: Bitterbynde, Bk 1 (Book 1)

In a world where creatures of legend haunt the lands of men, and to be caught outside after dark means almost certain death, the inhabitants of Isse Tower are amazed when a mute, starving foundling is discovered outside their gates. With no recollection of her name or past, the girl soon realizes that her only hope of happiness lies in distant Caermalor, where a wise woman might be able to restore her memories.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This first novel by Australian writer Cecilia Dart-Thornton begins the Bitterbynde series, the saga of a young woman's search for her past as well as her destiny. An orphaned refugee taken in as a servant of powerful Isse Tower, a prominent Relay Station in the world's communications network, the main character is a nameless, badly scarred mute with little hope for better--until he escapes by stowing away on a magical Windship and is befriended by cheerful Sianadh, a self-professed madman and adventurer. Sianadh gives his companion two precious gifts: a name, Imrhien, and the knowledge that he is really she, raised as a boy to protect her from even worse treatment. Together, the two journey into the deep green heart of a great forest, defeat the tricky magics of various eldritch wights, and discover a vast treasure that will change their lives forever. When Imrhien learns of Maeve One-Eye, a healer who may be able to repair her scars and restore her memory, the girl is determined to seek her out. On the dangerous trip west, Imrhien meets and falls in love with the Dainnan ranger Thorn, but doubts he could ever return her affections. While this novel doesn't stand well alone, readers who crave long and detailed journeys through fantastic lands filled with magical creatures will enjoy Imrhien's travels. Dart-Thornton's world takes many traditional elements of epic fantasy and manages to stir them into something charming and new. --Charlene Brusso

From Publishers Weekly

The world of Erith, a strange, wild land filled with humans and fey creatures called wights, has its charms, but unfortunately a lack of underlying depth weakens this first novel from Australian Dart-Thornton. To Erith comes a poor unidentified soul who cannot speak and has lost all sense of self, including all memories of a past. This creature without a life has also become shunned by all after being horribly disfigured by an encounter with a poisonous plant. As the plot slowly, disjointedly spins out, the creature acquires a name Imrhien and a new identity. Her story is full of little adventures and unrelated incidents, but the author provides almost no foreshadowing or any real idea why Imrhien has lost her voice and her looks. The girl's travels, which carry her from one end of Erith to the other, include encounters with wights, which can be "seelie" (mostly not harmful) and "unseelie" (evil), and with Sianadh, a friendly man who gives her not only her name but the chance to seek pirate treasure. Later Imrhien and Sianadh's niece try to find Maeve One-Eye, a carlin who might help her recover her memory. Nasty folk try to thwart her, but their motives are never explained. Hopefully future installments will supply more background, but this initial volume makes a decidedly shallow start. (May 23)Forecast: With a blurb from Andre Norton likening this book to Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring, as well as a plug from Elizabeth Hand, this novel may attract a lot of initial attention, but the sequel is going to have to be stronger to sustain interest.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 448 pages
• Publisher: Aspect; First Edition edition (May 23, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0446528323
• ISBN-13: 978-0446528320
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.1 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (166 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,230,144 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Cecilia was discovered, as a baby, in a wooden lifeboat that washed ashore on the rugged coastline of a remote isle in the southern oceans, between Australia and Antarctica. She spent her early years on Si-Sique Island, raised with the family of the lighthouse-keeper, Albert Ross, who found and adopted her.
Her origins could not be traced. Who were her parents? Had they been drowned in a boating accident? Where had she come from? Was she of noble blood? Alas, no answers could be found.
Cecilia flourished like a rare orchid, even on that windswept isle,in the rough-and-tumble company of her seven stepbrothers. They taught her fencing, archery and equestrian skills, at which she excelled. Her favourite hobby, however, was writing stories.
Recently, at the age of sixteen, she was 'discovered' on the Internet when she posted some of her work to an Online Writing Workshop. An editor contacted her by email, and within a few weeks Time Warner U.S.A. had signed Cecilia in a six-figure deal. They published her first trilogy, THE BITTERBYNDE, in hardcover - the first time they have ever done so with a new author.
Cecilia packed her mascara and departed from Si-Sique isle - to the sorrow of her seven handsome stepbrothers, who were all achingly in love with her.
THE BITTERBYNDE series has now been translated into four languages and is distributed throughout more than seventy countries.
Cecilia's life alternates between seen and unseen worlds of vivid strangeness, beauty, peril and passion.
It is a little-known fact that most authors actually write their own biographies. Some might say that for Cecilia the boundaries between virtuality and reality are blurred. It is for the reader to decide whether this is a completely implausible fairytale or whether it contains a grain of truth...

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Worthy of all the high praise, June 24, 2001

By 

Ian Nguyen (Florida) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Ill-Made Mute (The Bitterbynde, Book 1) (Hardcover)

Sometimes when a book gets a lot of very good reviews, your expectations get so high that you are disappointed when you finally get to read it. This was not the case when I read The Ill-Made Mute. It exceeded my expectations.

I have read a lot of fantasy and never have I come across a writer who can create a whole nother world with so much detail, as well as a complicated plot, believeable characters and a style that blew me away.

It's kind of hard to review a book when it's the first of three, and you know the story is far from complete. I get the feeling there are a lot of questions raised in this book which the author has deliberately left unanswered until the next two, so I don't want to make any assumptions about the plot. I can only say, I'm hanging out for the sequels. I've had a long thirst for a real Tolkien-style story and this book slaked it.

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book is worth any trouble it takes to buy and read!, June 4, 2001

By 

Darcy A. Calhoun (Nara, Japan) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Ill-Made Mute (The Bitterbynde, Book 1) (Hardcover)

THE ILL-MADE MUTE is worthy of something long and eloquent, but I fear I'll have to leave you with only a few modest observations. Firstly, the author's world is deftly wrought. It's atmosphere is so powerful that it permeates every page of her book, and I think that is why so many people are comparing it with Tolkien's work. Her characters are truly of their world, and just as skillfully constructed. Dart-Thornton sidesteps the over-used conventions and cliches of fantasy to bring something refreshingly new to the genre-- while tipping her cap to the myths, legends, and folklore that inspired her. Don't pass this one by!

22 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Buried in Mucky Prose, July 1, 2002

By 

E. T. Young (Roanoke, VA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Ill-Made Mute (The Bitterbynde, Book 1) (Mass Market Paperback)

To start off, I know people are going to disagree with my review. It's my opinion, and I hope readers like me will find it useful. That said, this is not a terrible book, but from my point of view, it is one with many flaws.

Cecilia Dart-Thornton has created a nonstandard fantasy novel in every sense of the word. The plot doesn't follow any easily determinable path, meandering its way around the countryside at the pace of a snail and picking up a tapestry of details from its surroundings. It's an amazing tapestry, to be sure, with a unique and engrossing mythology and bestiary, but it's also a fairly uninteresting tapestry, with very little going on. Most of the actual events in the book are glossed over; characters and plot take a second seat to the realm's lore and legends.

From that, you can probably understand why I don't like this book. While I despise fantasy of a purely formulaic nature, I do politely request that there be some elements of formula in a book's construction, and here there were practically none, especially in terms of plot. The author could have just written a reference book on this land's lore and skipped the story element and I would barely have known the difference.

Of course, the lack of strong plot is only part of my unenthusiastic response. The other part is the book's prose. Yes, poetic language is all good and fine, but when it starts to sidetrack other elements, I get annoyed. Here that distraction took the form of lists of descriptive words. List after list after list... It got to the point where I was banging my head on the table, trying to figure out why the author couldn't phrase things more concisely. At times she seemed to be groping through a thesaurus, unable to find that one word to fit the situation and putting five other words down instead. These lists derailed action sequences and dialogue and left me with a vague feeling, especially when I was able to skip whole paragraphs and not feel like I was missing something.

Many people out there seem to have enjoyed this book a great deal, which is fine. This book will appeal to many readers with its richness and depth. It just really wasn't the right book for me. My suggestion: read a few chapters before you buy it. Notice how very little seems to happen in the first chapters, and understand that it doesn't change the further on you read. If you enjoy that style of writing, by all means, continue! I think vision of this kind deserves some reward. If you don't enjoy it, move on and find another book. You won't be missing much.