Cygnet by Patricia McKillip

[meganbmoore]

Cygnet is actually a reprint of two McKillip books, The Sorceress and the Cygnet and The Cygnet and the Firebird. The duology focuses on Nyx Ro, an eccentric sorceress who lives in the bog instead of her mother's vast holding by choice, and her relative, Meguet Vervaine, a swordswoman who serves Holder Ro.  

In the first book, a Wayfarer (gypsy equivalent) named Corleu, who has distinctive white hair and a love for stories, is separated from his people, and then his True Love.  His quest to find her leads him to the bog where Nyx lives, and she decides to aid him, despite Meguet's entreaties that she return to Ro Holding.  In the second, the kinswomen get caught up in the affairs of a mage from another world, a search for dragons, and a young prince who is trpped in the form of a firebird.

My McKillip experiences seem to range from "very enjoyable, but I didn't retain much" (The Book of Atrix Wolfe, Harrowing the Dragon)  to near mad love for (Ombria in Shadow, In the Forests of Serre, Od Magic) with the few others Ive read ranging in between, with Cygnet falling somewhere in the middle.  I really liked Meguet and Nyx, and meguet's relationship with the Gatekeeper, and I liked how the enigmatic, charismatic rule was a woman who indulged her oddball, sorceress daughter, and how the pensive, committed, stoic warrior was a woman.  It was also  interesting to see elements that show up in other McKillip books all combined into one place:  the bog witch, the important animals, the vengeful mother seeking a lost child, the prince trapped in another form, the other worlds, the time travel, etc.  Despite the fairy tale set-up of most (all?) of her worlds, a lot of these elements seem to usually be kept distinct.

Comments

[salimbol.livejournal.com]

Now I have a mad hankering to re-read these two books. They can go high on the to-do list for October.
And I think that it's Nakama Yukie I'm being reminded of when I imagine Nyx! It must be that long dark hair. We watched the first Trick mystery yesterday and various seasons of Gokusen have been floating around recently, so that's probably why I have her on the brain *grin*.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

HAH! Well, Nakama Yukie actually is playing the kind of character I was talking about in those 2, just as the main character!

[salimbol.livejournal.com]

Ha - exactly! Yeah, the more I think about it the more I think she'd make a great Nyx in some hypothetical live action adaptation (like that'd ever happen).