Customer Reviews

Wind in the Stone

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

 

 

The Valley has always been a blessed place touched by magic that leaves a serene, safe locale. That pleasant environment changes when the teaching Magi of the Place of Learning fails to comprehend the threat posed by the seemingly pathetic student, Irasmus. However, through trickery and theft, Irasmus soon becomes more powerful than his instructors and soon moves into the Tower in Styrmer. Irasmus has broken the convent of noninterference shared by all the magical forces to avoid a second deadly war.

To enhance his powers, Irasmus insures that a Valley gal births a son for him. Irasmus raises the lad Fogar as his apprentice who will augment the evil sorcerer's strengths. Meanwhile, Irasmus tossed out Fogar's twin sister Falice, who is raised by the native Sasqua and the Wind as the hopeful counterbalance to her male relatives.

America had not entered World War II when Andre Norton was already a highly regarded author. Now sixty years have gone by and the great writer shows she still is one of the shining lights in the fantasy genre. WIND IN THE STONE is a well written, entertaining, by the book (that is "Norton's anthology") tale that will please genre fans , especially those of this great talent. The characters are fully developed, but it's the non-human sentient beings that seem so genuine that turns this story into another triumphant tale by the lifetime achievement award winning wrier(SF and fantasy) Ms. Norton.

This is not one of Andre Norton's best novels. The dialogue goes into long speeches in a style that loses your attention. The story appears to start in the middle of something, and gives the readers a feeling that they may have missed a previous book. It is a complex fantasy that skips back and forth between characters, and there is one large jump forward in time. Overall, it is a somewhat interesting tale of an evil mage aspiring to power, but the story drags, and it is hard to identify a central character.

I have LITERALLY read everything that Ms. Norton has written and I can count the number of times I've been less than delighted on the fingers of one hand. Well, this is one of those times. She delivered such a gem in A SCENT OF MAGIC that my expectations were high for this one. But a WIND IN THE STONE is a disjointed mishmash of a story with characters you spend too little time with to get to know. Skip this one, especially in hard cover, and read the paperback if you absolutely must.

I have read the rest of the reviews impatiently .Wind in the Stone is a perfectly good book.True ,it begins slow ,true Norton did put some pointless stuff in it ,but overall it was good.At first I thought it would be horendous as the previously written book ,Scent of Magic,but it was fine.As I always do when I read one of Norton's best ,I enjoyed the creatures that Norton invented .Especially the Sasqua and the gobbes.Her villain is hateable ,her characters loveable,the plot enchanting .Here is the plot :Irasmus ,the evil magician assaults the valley with his gobbes.The Dark was driven out long ago by the Wind (in this book Wind is a powerful substance)but now it has returned .Irasmus brutally attacks a family with a woman with two twins,one boy one girl .Irasmus catches the boy but not the girl .The girl ,Falice flees into the wood with her Mother .Her Mother dies but she lives and is adopted by the Sasqua,the inhabitants of the wood .When she grows into a young woman ,the Wind tells her that she must overthrow Irasmus and free her brother.

Wind in the Stone is a fairly typical high fantasy with Norton's usual strengths and weaknesses. It pales beside her earlier and much more distinguished Scent of Magic.

As far as strengths go, Wind in the Stone has an unusual premise; however, the enigmatic Wind and Sasqua could have used a bit more explanation. It also had an interesting contrast between the two settings-- the wild forest and a farming village. And lastly, it has a gorgeous Kinuko Craft cover.

On the down side, the characters (which are never Norton's strong point) are extremely sketchy and are only given the briefest of motives. The reader never really connects with any of them, and most of them are present for only about half of an already short book. The story started out reminding me a little of Patricia A. McKillip's The Book of Atrix Wolfe, but went downhill quickly. It's unpleasantly and unnecessarily dark, and altogether not very fun to read.

The cover's not quite the best thing about it, but it comes close. Read Scent of Magic, The Shadow of Albion, or The Book of Atrix Wolfe before this one.

Wind in the Stone is the first novel I have read by Andre Norton of her apparent 100 or so novels, and I enjoyed it though with some hesitation to quickly recommend the novel to others.
It is quite wordy and unexplanitive in some parts in which we are used to and the phrasing can quickly become distracting, although effective to create a fairytale effect. It took me some time to get around the way the shortish novel (280 pgs) was written, but after this I quite enjoyed it. The plot is realatively simple and leaves gaps in which the reader must fill with their own imagination, but this I don't mind at all. - If you want to read a book that throws all the details in your face , this book will not do. It is neither cheesy, nor epic but a tale of Good VS Evil.

The narrative follows various stereotypical characters: a twisted mage turned from Light to Darkness,the lives of simple people living in a village in which the Wind still abounds unlike the rest of the world, from which the Wind has left alone for many years. The two twins that are meant to be main characters are only introduced past halfway through the book and are rather shallowly developed. But as I said, the story is told in a kind of Renaissance style of writing, not ovely descriptive in character development but instead focuses on other areas.

Recommended to those who are at least marginally sick of modern fantasy writers trying desperatly to be different, and want a enjoyable, descriptive and simple storyline. The book has sparked in me an intrest to track down Norton's other books.

Time to even out the odds against all the negative reviews. I say this because I used to be one of them. This was my first Andre Norton book, and at the time I read it, I was going through a phase of shunning anything that smacked of "typical" fantasy, to the point where the very mention of "mages" or the like would elicit a groan and much eye-rolling. But the book stayed in my mind for years and I now realize it's quite original for dealing with such tried-and-true motifs as good vs. evil. I agree with some reviewers that the old-fashioned writing style throws you for a loop at first, as does the abundance of main characters, but the writing is at least very good and more characters always make things more fun.

Don't believe me? Revisit your old homeboy J.R.R. Tolkien. Tell me Wind in the Stone isn't a pleasure to read after the dense style of LOTR and the endless speeches from every overblown elf full of himself, while us hobbits wonder who the heck they are and just when Aragorn met them in the first place. Please don't misconstrue, I like Lord of the Rings well enough, but the point is if you can digest all of that, you shouldn't have trouble with Norton. I resume.

What makes Wind in the Stone a memorable experience are the characters. There are a lot of them and no two are exactly alike. Here are woodland sasquatches reminiscent of wookies, stolid peasants not afraid to revolt against a cruel lord, mages of astounding ineptitude; Cerlyn, a brave peasant girl determined to win her people's freedom; Falice, a shy woodland girl attuned to nature; Theeosa, anthropomorphized spirit of the forest; Fogar, the sorcerer's adopted son and twin to Falice.

Arguably the most interesting is Irasmus himself, one of the more sympathetic evil wizards standard fantasy has to offer. He's not out to "take over the world"--not yet, anyway. He has a troubled past and a psychological need to stand out. He assumes rule over what is essentially an unguarded and poverty-stricken village. The tragedy here is not so much that the mage school let him loose but that he might have been a decent lord to the peasants if he didn't keep mucking things up through his delusions of grandeur and lust for power. I myself was rooting for the guy even though I knew he was doomed.

Norton isn't afraid to address some weighty adult themes in a non-graphic tasteful way, and for those mature enough to handle them, they enrich the work. Though it begs the question: Irasmus came to the village a young man and--as Norton describes him--one who is rather easy on the eyes. Why engineer the rape of a girl by another villager through supernatural means? It seems really chancy to me. If he wanted an heir that bad I'm sure he could've found a gold-digger peasant gal who'd only be too glad to move into the bloomin' castle with him. :P Okay, maybe not in a book like this. We must still keep up some semblance of the good vs. evil dichotomy here.

To wrap things up, READ this book if:

1. You enjoy Good vs. Evil standard fantasy fare...
2. ...and would like to see a new spin on it.
3. Can handle the fact that ravishment happens in fantasy worlds too.
4. Won't go into shock over the fact that evil wizards (and good mages!) have sick, sick minds.
5. Can appreciate and giggle over the uselessness of mages who take themselves far too seriously.
6. You have a strange fixation with the Dark Side of the Force.
7. You love Chewbacca and will happily christen the woodland characters after said worthy.

This is a treasure of a book. Soak in the subtleties, but learn also to poke fun of the things you like. If the mages slow down the pace, giggle over their ineptitude. You'll have so much fun you'll end up liking them after all. Please just read it. :D

I bought this book based on the summary in the back cover. I've never read any other books by Andre Norton, so I was untainted by great expectations.
The book is a disaster. The plot is nearly incoherent: many scenes simply don't fit in with the general narrative and only serve to confuse the reader. Often a scene will show some action being performed, only to have it be completely ignored for the rest of the book. Also, the book tends to repetition (how many times do we *really* need to hear the venerable old mages sighing hopelessly and/or saying that everything hinges on the twins?). Many important plot points were left completely unexplained, characters are introduced abruptly and for no good reason (*cough* Cerlyn *cough*), and too many things happen by happy happenstance. For example, the heroes will often acquire various magical objects, but their nature and manner of acquisition is often completely unexplained (in some cases these objects are simply lying on the ground waiting to be picked up!).
As for the writing style: it bordered on purple prose, in many cases crossing the line. There is hardly a single page without mention of some "He who this" or "She who that" (e.g. "Her who waited for them there"), and the author often gets the capitalization wrong. The grammar could be improved in some places--most noticeably, comments are often placed in inappropriate places.
In general, the characters didn't win my sympathy, and the conflict between Dark and Light wasn't convincing. "Dark" was simply too stereotypical to be believed.

I recommend to readers who want to read *real* fantasy the "Fortress" series by C.J. Cherryh. Her writing style in those books bears some resemblance to Norton's, but Cherryh carries it off, while Norton fails.

Though this is the third book I've read by Norton, I do agree that it could have used a little help. It did start off slow and there were times when you were totally confused. However, Norton redeems herself as the book progress by the sheer imagination that exist inside of her. The characters were a little hard to understand at first. That's in part one of the book but in part two, they all seem to come together. Whereas I am a loyal fan to Norton, I would still read all of her books and feel lucky to be part of that crowd that knows good fiction when she's see it.

I've enjoyed several of Norton's other works and was full of expectations for her new book. I was very disappointed! This book was completely confusing, I never came to care for any characters and the world, well, it wasn't well defined. She gave us a hint of their society and beliefs and we had to fill in the blanks. Try Scent of Magic, a much better book.