Customer Reviews
Five excellent stories, previously hard to get - By: Michele L. Worley, 25 Nov 2006 
"The Healer" - First appearedin Terri Windling's ELSEWHERE, volume 2. Set on the Damarian continent. Lily, eldest of a large family, was born voiceless, though she & those who loved her learned to communicate by setting meanings to the birdsong she could whistle. The birds themselves came only to Lily's hands, though, & it wasin Lily's presence that fevers broke & animals quieted while giving birth. So Lily apprenticed to Jolin, the healer serving Rhungill & the villages round about, & only one person cared that Lily couldn't talk - Lily herself. So when a chance-met stranger on the road answered Lily's thoughts with mindspeech, seeking an inn thereabouts, Lily brought him to the spare room at Jolin's, where travellers always put up, & hoped he might stay awhile.
Sahath, too, is sorely wounded by the lack of something - a mage who lost the greater part of his mage-strength years ago, when it drained away on a battlefield as armies lay dying at his feet. He's been wandering without a destination ever since. Has he found safe harbour at Jolin's? Are Lily & Jolin right to trust him? Can he or Lily find a way to regain what he lost & she never had?
"The Stagman" - First appearedin ELSEWHERE, volume 3. Set on the Damarian continent. Ruen grew upin her uncle's unkindly shadow after her parents died, leaving him as her Regent. He kept her isolated, & as uneducated as he dared, longing to take the thronein his own right but not wishing to make a martyr of her with murder. Soin the days leading up to Ruen's eighteenth nameday, when she should have come into her queenship, the Regent uses his self-taught magery to create false signs & portents that will give him an excuse to do away with her. Then a *real* portent appears, & the monster he proposes to sacrifice Ruen to turns out to be something unexpected.
I'm quite fond of this story, which explores the problem of how a princess would really react who was duty-bound to rule a country that would have seen her murdered by her uncle without a second thought, & duty-bound to marry a 'proper' husband who doesn't really care about her as a person. Ruen is quiet but strong; as Luthe says of her later, when discussing the Regent, "Only a real queen would describe that poison-worm as only 'not entirely honourable.'"
"Touk's House" - First appearedin the anthology FAERY!, edited by Terri Windling. May be set on the Damarian continent, but possibly not. At first, the story may sound like a retelling of Rapunzel, but it isn't. The local leech, who isn't very good, recommends a certain herb to cure the fever of a certain woodcutter's youngest daughter, so the woodcutter tries to steal it from the herb garden of a witchin the forest. When the witch, Maugie, catches him & questions him, she gives him the herb he *really* needs, but at a price: his next daughter is to be brought to her, to be raised as her apprentice.
Maugie always wanted a daughter & someone to teach her herb lore to, & Erana is a fine daughter, but she doesn't have Maugie's 'green fingers'. She grows up happy with her adopted family: not only Maugie, but Maugie's son, Touk. Maugie's late husband was a northern troll, so Touk lives alonein & around a poolin the forest rather thanin Maugie's own house. (Erana likes to badger him about that.) For Erana's fifteenth birthday, Touk presents her with a stick, to be laid as the first log of his new house, now that he finally not only wants one, but wants to build one.
"Buttercups" - Set on the Damarian continent, though no mages, princesses, or dragons appear. The person whose heart is caughtin a spell of winter is Pos, an elderly farmer whose heartbreak on the death of his wife many years ago never really healed. His heart finally begins to thaw when one day he meets Coral, whose odd family is new to the village. (Each actually notices the other's horse before noticing the rider - Coral's horse is an unusually fine animal.) But Pos worries about why such a vibrant young woman would take notice of an old grumbler - or rather, if an old grumbler can keep her if he wins her handin marriage.
"A Knotin the Grain" - Setin this world. Annabelle's parents, now that she's the only child left at home, have been plotting their retirement for the last couple of years, with a target of moving to a smaller house upstate by the time she's 16, so she'll have at least two yearsin her new school. (They got the house for a song: "Not even a song. A sort of warm-up exercise, like Czerny before you tackle the Beethoven sonata." "The Beethoven sonata is what it'll cost us to fix it up." But their family likes challenges, as a rule.)
Annabelle takes her time about finding OK things about the move, while nursing her sorrow at leaving all her friends. An excuse to break up with her tiresome old boyfriend was actually one of the OK things. So is the view from her new attic room. While tracing the woodgrain of one of the beams, trying not to cry after getting a letter from her best friend, she finds something her eyes didn't detect: a trapdoor, leading to another attic, with several odd things about it...
A knot in the grain - By: Mrs. S. B. Potter, 03 Dec 2002 
Not McKinley's best stuff & a bit pale against books like Hero & the Crown etc . Stories are very much the same & left me feeling abit disappointed . Ok for bath reading if you have 5 minutes & want something quick & shallow.
VERY GOOD!!!!!!!!!!!! - By: , 21 Oct 1999 
This is a book of five short stories. The first four take placein McKinley's magical land of Damar. They are sweet & you even get a glimpse of Luthe, before & after he comes into contact with Aerin. One is a repunzel like story, another is about a princess lockedin a cave by her wicked uncle, there is a story about a healer who can't speak & meets a worn out mage, & the story Buttercups deals with just that. The 5th story is setin modern times & doesn't seem to set well with the other storiesin the book. I found it out of place & rather confusing, but the other four stories are definatly worth the read.
