Customer Reviews

The Reindeer People

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

 

 

I have loved every one of Robin Hobb's books. So when I saw a copy of The Reindeer People, written in the 80s under (what I believe to be) her own name, I grabbed it.

The story is relatively simple: a woman in prehistoric times heads north with a "simple" son, tries to survive, and meets up with a community that's reindeer centric. It's Fantasy in kind of an earth-mother way: what the shaman does *works*, and spirit guides are more than belief systems. But most of it is simply people trying to make life work: hunt for food, find someone to love, keep warm.

The tale is very predictable, in some ways, and it will definitely make you think of Clan of the Cave Bear. Yet, The Reindeer People is well written, and within a few pages you *do* care about the characters -- particularly the relationship between the heroine and her son. It's a good story, not great; but I'll definitely look for the next book in the series, Wolf's Brother.

If you're a fan of Hobb's later work, you'll see her talent before she learned to master her writing skills. For example, this book has far more exposition than do her later novels, and she switches viewpoint characters far more often than you'll see in her more popular fantasy series. But the talent is there, and the story is enjoyable. It's worth reading... but unless you're a die-hard Hobb fan (and I think I do qualify for that role), you probably don't need to go way out of your way to read this novel.

Tillu lost her parents... in a raid and is left behind pregnant when she was a young girl. Kerlew, her son, is a strange, difficult child, humilated by most people for his strangeness, but loved by Tillu, who became a healer in the meanwhile. Carp, the vicious shaman, discovers that Kerlew has the gift of becoming a great shaman himself. He wants Kerlew, to use him to increase his own power and he wants Tillu for his bed. Tillu flees with the boy and finds the reindeer people, where she believes she is save from Carp. She struggles with her emotions for Heckram, gets threatened by cruel Joboam, who hates Kerlew...well, I don't want to spoil the book for you and so I stop here...It is a book you will love to read again and again. Also recommended is "Wolf Brother", which continues the story of Tillu and Kerlew.

The prehistoric story of Tillu, a lone woman who must struggle to try and raise her difficult son.

I don't understand why Lindholm/Hobb doesn't get more credit, nor why her books aren't easier to find. This story, set among prehistoric people who are sort of proto-Saami, certainly outshines most of the Clan of the Cave Bear doorstops.

She isn't a great sentence-level writer, nor a wildly original creator of worlds, but what she does right is to create interesting characters for whom the reader cares. I found this book harder to put down than the more literary work I was supposed to be simultaneously reading. The author has a good grasp of personality, and knows how to engage the reader's sympathies. This novel, though not wildly dramatic in plot, is free of the slow patches that mar her longer Hobb-name work. I felt that Kerlew, an autistic (?) boy who is also self-centered and essentially sinister, perhaps even evil, was a triumph of characterization; she described this type of individual vividly, without perpetuating the superstition that such handicaps make the sufferer somehow "innocent". Overall, though this is not a work of great literature, I enjoyed and recommend it.

Tillu lost her parents and got raped in a raid and is left behind pregnant when she was a young girl. Kerlew, her son, is a strange, difficult child, humilated by most people for his strangeness, but loved by Tillu, who became a healer in the meanwhile. Carp, the vicious shaman, discovers that Kerlew has the gift of becoming a great shaman himself. He wants Kerlew, to use him to increase his own power and he wants Tillu for his bed. Tillu flees with the boy and finds the reindeer people, where she believes she is save from Carp. She struggles with her emotions for Heckram, gets threatened by cruel Joboam, who hates Kerlew...well, I don't want to spoil the book for you and so I stop here...It is a book you will love to read again and again. Also recommended is "Wolf Brother", which continues the story of Tillu and Kerlew.