The Hero and the Crown

[lightreads]

The Hero and the Crown

3/5. Fantasy about Aeron, the very special king's daughter whose people don't understand her but really she's so magical and special you guys.

I deeply disappointed my wife by finding this not to my taste. Except for a section in the middle where Aerin literally spends several days lying in a river in terrible pain deciding whether to die. By pure chance, I read that segment while huddled in my living room at 2 in the morning in horrific pain and kind of wishing for sweet death. This was just five days ago, but it's already a distant, hallucinatory memory. Maybe I got flamed by a dragon. Maybe Aerin had a kidney stone and couldn't keep narcotics down.

Anyway, this book crystalized for me that I don't actually like McKinley's tell-tell-tell style, no matter how much everyone tells me I'm supposed to. Though I do give bonus points for having her bang whatshisface then run off and marry other whatshisface without a blink. Minus points for not really engaging with Aerin's sense of alienation and how it is rooted in actual alienation, in actual not-entirely-humanness. A lot of that got sublimated into the mean girl bullying, which, yawn.

Comments

[norah]

Yup. Exactly this - loved her books I read young (except Deerskin, what the FUCK) and yawned through the rest. So many authors are like that! Once you (TFV) sent me this amazing shipment of basically all your favorite YA (have I ever thanked you for that? Because I am not sure why you did it but it was the most amazing present, like, an ENTIRE BOX OF GOOD BOOKS) I liked all of it and loved some of it but I could also tell I was not having the formative experiences you had with it. There is something so magical about the worlds we glom on to early!