The Hound and the Falcon

[bibliogramma]

Gentle reader may recall that one of my favourite fantasy writers is Judith Tarr. Although she has written some fantasy set in original worlds, some of her best work, in my opinion, is in the vein of the historical fantasy, in which she revisits a place and time in our own very real history, and retells it as if some of the myths and legends common to that time and place were also real, and had been a part of the unfolding of history.

Earlier this year I re-read Judith Tarr’s The Hound and the Falcon trilogy, her first published fantasy:

The Isle of Glass
The Golden Horn
The Hounds of God

This series is partly the kind of historical fantasy that Tarr would later excel at, and partly an alternate historical fantasy, in which history did not happen quite as it did in this world. It’s also the first of her works that I read, and hence I remembered it with great fondness, and anticipated re-reading it. And I was not disappointed.

The Hound and the Falcon is set in an Earth where elves exist, and have for a long time had relations of state with the world of man, but are now withdrawing slowly, pushed to the edges of the known world by the advance of the Catholic Church, to which they are anathema. The time corresponds to our own 13th century: there is a Richard on the throne of Anglia, and a crusade brewing. But in this Earth, there are three kingdoms in southern Britannia – Anglia, Gwynedd, and Rhiyana, and the king of Rhiyana is of the Elfkind.

The protagonist of the series is Alf, who we see first as Brother Alfred, a devout monk who, despite having lived in the monastery of St. Ruan for 60 years, and having penned a scholarly religious work that is known throughout Europe, appears to be little more than a beautiful, almost unearthly-looking boy. Alf was a foundling, his past unknown, and he has lived his entire life sheltered by the abbots and monks of St. Ruan, never having to face the question of who – or what – he is. Then, quite suddenly, Alf is thrown into the outer world of politics – both secular and churchly – and is forced to acknowledge his true self and his people in order to survive – and discover himself, and love – in a world where religious wars are raging and the Church wants nothing more than to drive whatever it considers to be heretical and evil from the sight of man and God.

The story of Alf’s search for truth, self and love, set against a turbulent time of fear, distrust, hate and catastrophic religious war, is compelling – and its conclusion leaves the reader with both joy and sorrow.

This is among the best of Tarr's many great works of fantasy.

Comments

[bibliogramma.livejournal.com]

You may as well face it - there's enough overlap in our reading tastes that if I post a positive review of something, there's a fair chance that it will sound interesting to you - and vice versa.

But this is a good story. Tarr's history is always solid - she has a PhD from Yale in medieval studies and an MA in Classics from Cambridge - and she has a very sure touch for weaving the fantasy elements into the historical settings and mindsets.

[calico-reaction.livejournal.com]

I believe it. I just wish I wasn't reading at such a slow rate right now, cause I've got so many books I want to get through (and I keep buying more, it's a horrible, SICK disease), but I've got a thesis to finish by April 10th...

Cool stuff. I plugged the first book in on Amazon and noticed it's out of stock, so I'll have to go the used-book route whenever I decide to give it a shot...

[morgan-dhu.livejournal.com]

The trilogy was republished at one point in a trade paperback omnibus volume titled The Hound and The Falcon, which my Canadian online bookseller lists as being in stock... [checks the Net] ... and apparently, Amazon has it, too.

[calico-reaction.livejournal.com]

SHINY!!!

Thank you! :)

[morgan-dhu.livejournal.com]

Oh, and about that disease of yours... I have at least 60 unread books lying about, either in the living room, or in the kitchen where the used ones are still being detoxed (which takes months, sometimes a year for the really bad ones).

It's an addiction, but somehow, I don't think I'm ever going to admit to myself that I have a problem...

[calico-reaction.livejournal.com]

At least that's less than I've got...there's at least 200 lying around here, I'm sure of it! :)

Heh, no problems here, not at all!

[morgan-dhu.livejournal.com]

Of course, I wasn't counting books that my partner brought into the relationship that I haven't read yet, but intend to - a whole library of feminist, gender, cultural and queer studies (he was finishing up a PhD in that area when I snagged him), plus some history and mainstream literature and even a few SFF books I hadn't read before. There's probably at least a couple hundred books there. ;-)

Actually, I'll likely be reading a lot of those over the next year or so - we are so much in debt after buying and renovating the house that I think we'll both have to curtail the acquisition of new books until we've managed to pay off a significant chunk of the debt.