No Earthly Sunne [Paperback]

Margaret Ball (Author), Newell Convers (Illustrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 1994

Music can bridge the Worlds... (This is not necessarily a good thing...)

Long ago, in an English country mansion next to a deep, dark wood, Wicket Kit Arundel devised a masque, a musical "entertainment" to be performed on the eve of Midsummer's Night 1594. It was supposed to be a quest for the perfect music, a mystic bridge to ultimate knowledge. What actually crossed the bridge was the Queen of Faerie. Entranced by his music, she has taken him away, leaving Kit's true love Eleanor bereft and mad with grief.

In 1994 lives one Ellen Ainsley, a master programmer, erstwhile musician, and a very confused woman. After collapsing in the middle of an important recital, Ellen has given up singing the music of the 16th century, given up music altogether - it makes her dizzy, makes her lose contact with the real world, makes her feel like a different person...

Then one day she is approached by a strangely beautiful young man who, almost against her will, persuades her to fly to England and there perform a masque composed by the infamous "Wicked Kit."

Every four hundred years the spheres of Earth and Faerie join together - and once again the Queen of Faerie is about to rob Eleanor of all that gives life meaning.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In an attempt to weave computer science, pagan folklore and Elizabethan poetry together, Ball (coauthor, with Anne McCaffrey, of PartnerShip) delivers an intellectually overcooked love story with a plot so contrived that by the time the main character has unlocked the so-called mystery of her buried past, the reader has long since grown bored of it. Ellen Ainsley is a Texas computer programmer who, tormented by strange visions and blackouts, has abandoned her graduate work in Renaissance vocal music until she reluctantly accepts an invitation to sing in a reenactment of a 400-year-old masque in rural England. There she uncovers her former life as a 16th-century maiden whose significant other has been kidnapped by the Queen of the faerie world. Ellen's insipid internal monologues ("she shivered in the imagined dark... almost as though she stood there now-no, not now; in some other time. As some other person.") reveal Ball's lack of originality despite an imaginative premise. Ball takes herself too seriously for someone who had to borrow pieces of verse from Sir Walter Raleigh, Thomas Campion and other period poets to "compose" the songs of her fictitious masque.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Ball's latest is a serious new version of the classic fantasy plot concerning the rescue of a mortal from the land of faerie. The mortal here is a young Englishman snatched away in 1594; his rescuer in 1994 is his reincarnated fianc{‚}ee. The romance is extremely well researched--and not only in folklore--and setting, characterization, and plot development are all carefully crafted. It is hard, though, to entirely ignore the exceedingly slow pace, not to mention Ball's self-consciousness of her own erudition, which she does, however, genuinely possess in full measure. Ball is definitely an unconventional fantasist, not likely to be exciting to all fantasy readers, yet much better than average for the genre, and growing with each book. Roland Green

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Baen (November 1, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671876333
• ISBN-13: 978-0671876333
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 4.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,472,578 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good story, but the songs are the best part!, July 5, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: No Earthly Sunne (Paperback)

"No Earthly Sunne" is really a good book. One of the best parts about it is the combination of songs with the plot. I found that I was looking forward to the next song.

You may recognize the songs from other places, as I did, but mostly they're beautiful poetry that touches your heart.

The most amazing part of the book is the end, no not the end of the story, the end of the book in which Margaret Ball tells the reader about the songs and where they actually came from. It's kind of a compendium of all the songs.

If you're looking for some great imagery of Diana with a lot of mythological background attatched, this is your best bet, in the songs.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Dead Forms and New Technology, May 4, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: No Earthly Sunne (Paperback)

Ball uses the vanished form of the masque as Kit Arundel's vehicle for combining the spheres of mortal world and Faerie. Borrowing verse from masters such as Ben Jonson and Campion, she recreates a lavish court spectacle including singing, dances, speeches, and allegory. The court masque was a demonstration of princes and courtiers, who played the chief parts. It praised the order and glory of an earthly reign by alluding to heavenly ones such as those of Jove and the Golden Age. The precision of the steps and verse was supposed to suggest harmony to the audience, who would later join in the dancing. Ball's choice of the masque as a mathematically exact form which brings the worlds together is appropriate.

Modern Ellen Ainsley is confused by memories of her past life as Eleanor Guilford, an Elizabethan woman engaged to the man known as Wicked Kit Arundel. Taking these memories as signs of madness, Ellen moves away from the music which brings them on and towards her career as a computer programmer, little realizing that the mathematical precision of both music and computer projections provides a gate to Faerie.

Ball interleaves episodes of Eleanor's life with Ellen's confusion, the faerie emissary's commissions from his queen, and Kit's attempts to follow Ellen's voice back to the real world. The characters mix practical disbelief with their magic. The writing is calm, not lofty, and the humor of certain situations is not forgotten, as when Kit finds himself at a Renaissance Faire in Texas or compared favorably to his own antique portrait. Those passages which necessarily contain Elizabethan dialogue are not overdone. Ellen's use of her laptop to convince a fey man about the relation of the real world to Faerie is particularly interesting in its suggestion, which is indeed that of the whole book, that modern science is not so far from the alchemical experiments of Elizabethans. The plot works well to convey this suggestion and to relate forgotten ideas to their modern equivalents and descendents.

5.0 out of 5 stars A really good book, February 23, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: No Earthly Sunne (Paperback)

This book has a rather slow beginning, but picks up soon after. And is it worth reading! The storyline is great, the people are believeble, and the fantasy aspect is neatly woven in. A worthwille read!