![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The Crown of Dalemark
Jul. 4th, 2020 04:51 pmLast in the Dalemark Quartet is The Crown of Dalemark. There's an interesting fact about this series that was always front of my mind when reading the last book: the first three were written in the 1970s, each two years apart. The Spellcoats did not end in anything like a definitive way, and, being a prequel, left the threads of the previous two hanging – all the North/South business, turbulent Earls, destinies of the two main characters, all waiting to be resolved. The Crown of Dalemark was finally published fifteen years later, in 1993. Imagine being a teenage fan of the first three and being so excited to find out how she was going to wrap it all up (especially after the weird tangent of The Spellcoats) and not getting to find out until you were married with kids! I, a cynic, would expect whatever came out to be something of a letdown, but while reading this I kept thinking, 'Dang, this would have been worth the wait.' I did not wait fifteen years – the book was sitting there waiting for me – so I cannot guess if the fans' reactions were the same, but as far as payoffs go, it certainly delivers.
The story starts a few months after the second book ends, with its protagonist, the revolutionary. He has been taken in by one of the northern Earls, who is not a million times better than the southern ones, and what's more, is feeling threatened by a sort of Joan-of-Arc figure who's claiming the throne that will unify the country and take power away from the feuding earldoms. So, being on the edgy side, this lad is sent off to assassinate her. As you do. On the way he meets up with the musician from the first book, and, accidentally, his target, who is really charming and gives him more than the usual misgivings about murder. So far, so rolling along like you'd expect a YA fantasy to unwind.
BUT THEN.
If you've read Howl's Moving Castle and not just seen the film, you will remember The Twist. You know, the one that's like, 'how could you make this into a movie and leave out The Twist, The Twist is what it is all about': that twist. There's one of those here. I do not want to spoil it, obviously, but that makes reviewing the book really hard because it happens about 1/4 of the way in, instead of 1/4 from the end as in Howl. It is really cool. It will make you go '??!?' and then 'wow, OK' and then the plot really gets going. But it largely revolves around The Twist, so I can't talk about it.
Instead, I can say that for all the series seems to take a bizarre left turn with The Spellcoats, it is very important that it went there, because The Crown of Dalemark relies heavily on the worldbuilding that happened in the previous book – and also there are some little references that will make you smile if you've just read it, but that's a treat on the side. Anyway, if Crown had to carry all that worldbuilding on its own, it would be topheavy with awkward exposition. It still has so much exposition of its own that there were times I felt like I'd been plunged amongst native speakers a month after I'd started learning a language, but they were later in the book and just comprehensible enough that I was only slowed down a little, not thrown. So, if you were tempted to skip The Spellcoats, or develop a yen to skip it fifty pages in, I must advise you to stick with it and see it through, because it is definitely a prerequisite for Crown and Crown is definitely worth your while. It might help, also, if you read the series straight through instead of taking a couple years off between the first and last two books, as names and places will be fresher in your memory. But even with my gap, I enjoyed Crown very much.
Part of this was down to a particular feature of The Twist enabling the author to bring the lived experience of the world more vividly to life than if she were telling it as if taken for granted. Fantasy of this ilk tends to be very rose-tinted about pre-industrial society and everyday life, but that is not a problem here. As in previous books, there's also no flinching from the yuckiness of war and, indeed, politics; e.g. when someone is murdered, it's not just a plot device, there's a body left over which will start to rot if not dealt with in time. it is both a ripping yarn, and a self-reflective ripping yarn that consciously contradicts the easiness of ripping yarns. And that is worth reading, too.
The icing on the cake is a surprisingly convincing love story. As stated above I am an old cynic, and I have never been much attracted to romance in literature, largely for personal reasons but probably a little because it's usually undertaken for plot reasons and doesn't actually feel romantic. One exception to this was Going Postal, where the illogical certainty of attraction was surprisingly well executed. The Crown of Dalemark does it too – it's not what the story is about, but it is not an unwelcome or extraneous subplot either, just a minor thread in the tapestry that grows in prominence until it pays off jubilantly at the end. (So much I can't give away!)
So yes: grossly underappreciated YA fantasy, extremely cheap used copies are available online; buy them and read them and then donate them to your local library or school so that others can share the joy. We will all be happier people.
The story starts a few months after the second book ends, with its protagonist, the revolutionary. He has been taken in by one of the northern Earls, who is not a million times better than the southern ones, and what's more, is feeling threatened by a sort of Joan-of-Arc figure who's claiming the throne that will unify the country and take power away from the feuding earldoms. So, being on the edgy side, this lad is sent off to assassinate her. As you do. On the way he meets up with the musician from the first book, and, accidentally, his target, who is really charming and gives him more than the usual misgivings about murder. So far, so rolling along like you'd expect a YA fantasy to unwind.
BUT THEN.
If you've read Howl's Moving Castle and not just seen the film, you will remember The Twist. You know, the one that's like, 'how could you make this into a movie and leave out The Twist, The Twist is what it is all about': that twist. There's one of those here. I do not want to spoil it, obviously, but that makes reviewing the book really hard because it happens about 1/4 of the way in, instead of 1/4 from the end as in Howl. It is really cool. It will make you go '??!?' and then 'wow, OK' and then the plot really gets going. But it largely revolves around The Twist, so I can't talk about it.
Instead, I can say that for all the series seems to take a bizarre left turn with The Spellcoats, it is very important that it went there, because The Crown of Dalemark relies heavily on the worldbuilding that happened in the previous book – and also there are some little references that will make you smile if you've just read it, but that's a treat on the side. Anyway, if Crown had to carry all that worldbuilding on its own, it would be topheavy with awkward exposition. It still has so much exposition of its own that there were times I felt like I'd been plunged amongst native speakers a month after I'd started learning a language, but they were later in the book and just comprehensible enough that I was only slowed down a little, not thrown. So, if you were tempted to skip The Spellcoats, or develop a yen to skip it fifty pages in, I must advise you to stick with it and see it through, because it is definitely a prerequisite for Crown and Crown is definitely worth your while. It might help, also, if you read the series straight through instead of taking a couple years off between the first and last two books, as names and places will be fresher in your memory. But even with my gap, I enjoyed Crown very much.
Part of this was down to a particular feature of The Twist enabling the author to bring the lived experience of the world more vividly to life than if she were telling it as if taken for granted. Fantasy of this ilk tends to be very rose-tinted about pre-industrial society and everyday life, but that is not a problem here. As in previous books, there's also no flinching from the yuckiness of war and, indeed, politics; e.g. when someone is murdered, it's not just a plot device, there's a body left over which will start to rot if not dealt with in time. it is both a ripping yarn, and a self-reflective ripping yarn that consciously contradicts the easiness of ripping yarns. And that is worth reading, too.
The icing on the cake is a surprisingly convincing love story. As stated above I am an old cynic, and I have never been much attracted to romance in literature, largely for personal reasons but probably a little because it's usually undertaken for plot reasons and doesn't actually feel romantic. One exception to this was Going Postal, where the illogical certainty of attraction was surprisingly well executed. The Crown of Dalemark does it too – it's not what the story is about, but it is not an unwelcome or extraneous subplot either, just a minor thread in the tapestry that grows in prominence until it pays off jubilantly at the end. (So much I can't give away!)
So yes: grossly underappreciated YA fantasy, extremely cheap used copies are available online; buy them and read them and then donate them to your local library or school so that others can share the joy. We will all be happier people.
