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

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.