At Amberleaf Fair - Phyllis Ann Karr
Dec. 9th, 2022 12:59 pmThanks to ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
osprey_archer, I was able to jump on the bandwagon and read Phyllis Ann Karr's At Amberleaf Fair, a low-stakes fantasy mystery that flings you head-first into a highly detailed, esoteric fantasy society of Karr's own invention, some details of which are explored in depth— the question of how food allergies would work in a magical world where food (and non-food items) can be transformed into other kinds of food, but do eventually transform back, is key to the plot— and others are thrown out with a sense of no time for explanations! figure it out or don't, but keep up! (At one point, in an attempt to connect the dots between the heavy use of tree-based metaphors - children are called "saplings", the elderly "wear harvest colors" - and the fact it's never explicitly stated that the characters are human, I was like, are they Ents?? or otherwise tree-based beings???, BUT considering the number of references to objects carved out of wood, I really hope they aren't. Anyway, pretty sure they are human, for reasons discussed later.)
The tl;dr version of the plot is that Torin, a toymaker with latent magical abilities, finds himself at the heart of two mysteries— his wizard brother's sudden illness, and a stolen jewel— and approximately one and a half love triangles (a love pentagon?), but also everything is significantly less dramatic than that combination of things might suggest. The perspective shifts between Torin; Dilys, a storyteller involved in the love pentagon; and Alrathe, the judge (kind of a cross between a detective and an arbitrator, here) hired to solve the mystery of the missing jewel.
( Read more... )
ETA: linking to the other reviews in the book chain ofskygiants [x] —> osprey_archer [x] —> me —> chestnut_pod [x]
osprey_archer, I was able to jump on the bandwagon and read Phyllis Ann Karr's At Amberleaf Fair, a low-stakes fantasy mystery that flings you head-first into a highly detailed, esoteric fantasy society of Karr's own invention, some details of which are explored in depth— the question of how food allergies would work in a magical world where food (and non-food items) can be transformed into other kinds of food, but do eventually transform back, is key to the plot— and others are thrown out with a sense of no time for explanations! figure it out or don't, but keep up! (At one point, in an attempt to connect the dots between the heavy use of tree-based metaphors - children are called "saplings", the elderly "wear harvest colors" - and the fact it's never explicitly stated that the characters are human, I was like, are they Ents?? or otherwise tree-based beings???, BUT considering the number of references to objects carved out of wood, I really hope they aren't. Anyway, pretty sure they are human, for reasons discussed later.)The tl;dr version of the plot is that Torin, a toymaker with latent magical abilities, finds himself at the heart of two mysteries— his wizard brother's sudden illness, and a stolen jewel— and approximately one and a half love triangles (a love pentagon?), but also everything is significantly less dramatic than that combination of things might suggest. The perspective shifts between Torin; Dilys, a storyteller involved in the love pentagon; and Alrathe, the judge (kind of a cross between a detective and an arbitrator, here) hired to solve the mystery of the missing jewel.
( Read more... )
ETA: linking to the other reviews in the book chain of
skygiants [x] —> osprey_archer [x] —> me —> chestnut_pod [x]
