Treasure at the Heart of the Tanglewood by Meredith Ann Pierce

[meganbmoore]

Hannah has always lived in the Tanglewood, a place where nothing ever changes, in service to her master, a magician who requires her to make a draught for him from the flowers that grow in her hair. Though she reaches out to the peasants who come to her for aid and tells them she doesn’t need their offerings, her approaches are always fearfully rejected. Hannah doesn’t begin to understand why this is until one day she realizes that though she herself remains unchanged, an elderly woman was once a young girl who came to her for aid, many years ago.

Meanwhile, many knights have come to the Tanglewood to fight a giant golden boar who lives there, and win his treasure. All the knights die and one day, she speaks to one of the knights, who tells her that he, and the others, are on a quest to reclaim their queen’s treasure from the boar. Later she finds him wounded and tends to the knight, who she names Foxkith after learning he has no memories, neglecting her master in the process Eventually, she defends Foxkith against her master, causing her to be ejected from her home, beginning a quest to learn both Foxkith’s past, and her own origins, constantly changing as she goes.

I found this book to be a lot like Patricia McKillip’s The Book of Atrix Wolfe, in terms of my response to it: it kept me reading and has everything for me to love it, and I vastly enjoyed it as I was reading, but I didn’t retain a lot of it. It is a good book, though, and I think I’ll hunt down more of Pierce’s books. Also, if you read it, pay a lot of attention to Hannah’s hair.

Comments

[the_rck]

I've read some of Pierce's other books. I loved Darkangel and Gathering of Gargoyles. The third book in that series, Pearl at the Soul of the World, wasn't as good, especially given that we had to wait more than a decade for it. Darkangel stands perfectly well on its own, however.

The Woman Who Loved Reindeer was well written, but I seem to remember being a bit squicked by it. My memories are very, very vague, however, and I might be mixing it up with another book. My view of it may also have suffered from the fact that it came out between Gathering of Gargoyles and Pearl at the Soul of the World. I was cranky that it was a different story in an different world.

The trilogy that starts with Birth of the Firebringer has twice defeated my attempts to read it. I've gotten through the first book twice (years apart) but no further. It's interesting in that the characters are unicorns. Pierce doesn't forget that they don't have hands.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

So she's kind of hit and miss?

I think I'm curious about what may have been squicky.

[the_rck]

Bear in mind that it's been more than fifteen years since I read the book, so I may be misremembering hugely. I'd say that this counts as spoilery, so highlight to read (assuming I pull it off right...).

As I recall, the woman's sister has an affair with a nature spirit, a reindeer. The sister has a baby, and the woman gets stuck raising him, including nursing him. When the child grows, he goes back to the reindeer but also has sex with the woman who raised him.

[shadawyn.livejournal.com]

I remember liking the Darkangel trilogy a whole lot and it being something of a comfort book (my then boyfriend who moved away shortly thereafter (and I never saw him again) had introduced me to the books and we used the main characters names as our BBS handles), but I was also 15 at the time and I don't know how well it would enchant me nearly 15 years later. I just keep it on memory tap as silly teenage nostalgia.

*queen of unhelpful opinions*

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

One of the things I was thinking as I was reading and enjoying was that I would have been head over heals in love with it as a teen.

oh, the darkangel

[calledinvain.livejournal.com]

A totally different take on the vampire myth, that's for certain. I loved the first two, deeply and madly and just wanted to drink in Pierce's words - the third, is a bit of an anticlimax- you can kind of see where the ending is going, so it's not a total heart-slicer when it does happen, but on the other hand....I think, in my late twenties, I can finally make my peace with it, but when I first read it in my teens, I was just so appalled.

I'm just happy that they decided to republish it. I still have very fond memories of discovering the hardcover (with its gorgeous, gorgeous cover painting) at my local library 10+ years ago. I wish they'd re-release that one.

Re: oh, the darkangel

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Was it repblished as an omnibus?

Re: oh, the darkangel

[calledinvain.livejournal.com]

no, three large trade size paperbacks with generic photographs artfully tweaked in photoshop, possibly to snag in the new generation who got caught by the Twilight Phenomenon.

The Dark Angel by the way, is a million worlds better than Twilight.

[lisan.livejournal.com]

The Darkangel remains one of my favorite ever books -- lovely language and the new version of the vampyre/icarus was quite interesting, as was the world-building. I would have been happier not to have read the two other books in the series, though, especially the last one, which was quite a letdown as we waited so long to be able to read it.

The Woman Who Loved Reindeer was not horrible, but not incredible either. There were many instances when it read to me more like a travelogue and I kept flashing back to the Auel books. re: the squicky, possibly because technically reindeer was only seven or so years old and Caribou was the one brought him up? (He was her brother's wife's son.) Also, the romantic aspect of that relationship just didn't work for me, wasn't convincing to me at all.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the Reindeer one sounds like it'll be a bit too much.

[crumpeteer.livejournal.com]

Would you believe I'm reading this book too? Or at least am about to as it needs to go back to the library soon.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Nice timing. It's a good-if fairly light-read.