Customer Reviews

The Queen of Spells

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The Queen of Spells is an undistinguished one of the many retellings of the ballad Tam Lin. Ipcar isn't particularly clever about adding new interpretations and I remained indifferent to the characters throughout. I agree with the previous reviewer-- the ending was quite confusing. On the upside, it did move along at a nice clip and managed to keep me reading; I liked it much better than Pamela Dean's dreadful Tam Lin (an exploration of life at a literary college masquerading pretentiously to be a retelling of the ballad). However, for better done retellings, try The Perilous Gard by Elizabeth Marie Pope (which contains fabulous characters and dialogue), Winter Rose by Patricia A. McKillip (the prose is simply gorgeous) or Fire and Hemlock by Diana Wynne Jones (vintage Jones; innovative and often humorous).

When I was in Elementary school I read it 5 times. It's inthrolling. The ending is hazy but the more you read it the more you get it.It was a great book, I loved it!!

I read this book twice in middle school and was strongly tempted to lift it from the school library when I moved in 9th grade. I was the only person to ever check it out and enjoy the pleasure of getting lost in a old house with small secrets, ferlies and a young woman who could handle whatever came her way. Janet is a wonderful character that enjoys the solitude of an old homestead and has the faith of a child to wait for the improbable Tom Linn. This is a book that young women will enjoy for the empowering view of a heroine who fears but does not succumb, is challenged, loses much, but gains the goal in the end. The writing is sparse and gives wide space to the imagination, which as an adult when I reread this story much of what I remembered was from the story I had developed in my imagination as a youth.

I now own my a copy and read it on occasion when I have a need to return to the home of Ettie and look at the pasted pictures on the vase, listen to the rain on the roof and rest in the shelter of the old and familiar.