McKillip, Patricia. The Riddle-Master of Hed

In high school I read Ursula LeGuin's essay, "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie," which made the case that a fantasy book and a mainstream book should have differences beyond one having dragons and one having senators. A really good fantasy book ought to be distinguished by a certain tone, a certain voice and style. The first time I read it, I couldn't quite agree; dragons were inherently more interesting than senators, and I was fairly tone-deaf. But LeGuin does have a good point, and that's why Patricia McKillip has become my favorite fantasy writer. When you read so much as a page, you can't think for a moment that you're in Poughkeepsie.

Morgon is king of the small farm island of Hed, riddle-master at the academy, and something more than that; he is marked by three stars on his forehead. He finds a harp with three stars. He doesn't want to acknowledge it, but a certain destiny is pulling him forward on a quest, accompanied by the harpist called Deth. Shape-changers are out after his life; he wants to return home to Hed, and cannot. He does not want a place in a destiny a thousand years old, but it comes for him anyway.

The Riddle-Master trilogy is one of McKillip's first, and is much more epic and less domestic and personal than some of her more recent books. I prefer the intimacy of Winter Rose and Atrix Wolfe, but Riddle-Master has the same things that I love about McKillip: a plot that twists in slow, deliberate patterns, a style that speaks of earth and craft and domesticity, a deep sense of the human heart that's entirely different from the psychological realism you see in mainstream fiction but also much more believable and surprising than the relationship melodrama one often sees in fantasy. Flawed, slightly, by occasional moments when it recalls the clichés of epic fantasy; nevertheless, beautiful.

[Note: the book's currently in print only as a complete trilogy, but I have yet to read the last two volumes. Do get a more recent edition; the copy-editing on mine is hideous.]

When he and Hugin had searched one herd for images of the one-eyed Suth, they moved to find another in the deep forests, or beside frozen, moon-colored lakes. Finally, Morgon found a pattern of images repeating itself in the minds of one herd: the image of a vesta with one eye purple, the other white as web. He stayed with that herd, eating, sleeping with it, waiting in hope that the half-blind vesta would join it. Hugin, troubled by the same image, ranged away from the herd among the lakes and hills, searching. The moon grew round above them, dwindled and began to grow again, and Morgon grew restless himself.