In the Forests of Serre

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress, Blogspot & Librarything by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: In the Forests of Serre
Series: ----------
Author: Patricia McKillip
Rating: 5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 316
Format: Digital Edition

Synopsis:

Prince Ronan, the son of the heartless and one-eyed King Ferus, had his wife and child die several months ago. Now his father has arranged a marriage for him with Princess Sidonie, from a small neighboring kingdom known for its magic. Before Ronan hears of this news though, he accidentally kills a show more white chicken belonging to the witch Brume, who goes about the forests of Serre in walking house of bones. She curses Ronan and he becomes enamoured of the firebird. He begins to hunt the firebird down only to become as wild as an animal.

Sidonie meets Ronan on her way to the castle only she doesn't know it is him. She is with a wizard named Gyre who has been sent as a guardian by the powerful wizard Unciel, who fought a battle in The North and barely survived. Once at the castle Sidonie is pretty much held captive under threat of invasion of her home until Ferus can find his son. Gyre pretends to be Ronan but his magical disguise is seen through and Ferus attacks him and drives him into the forests, leaving Sidonie alone.

Gyre runs into Ronan and helps him pay back Brume. Ronan has to give Brume his heart and since it is already broken, he gladly gives it up and returns to the castle. Sidonie realizes something is wrong with Ronan and sneaks out of the castle to find Brume and bargain with her for the return of Ronan's heart. At the same time Gyre is roaming the forest looking for Brume for the heart of power that makes Serre so mysterious.

While all of this is going on, a nameless, faceless monster appears and begins terrorizing Serre. It would appear that the threat Unciel the great Wizard defeated is not truly defeated.

Turns out that Gyre stole the dead monsters heart and so it doesn't know it is dead. Sidonie gets Ronan's heart back, Ronan falls in love with Sidonie and Brume, the firebird and Gyre all figure out what is going on and destroy the monster's heart, which was Gyre's heart which merely needed to transform from a jewel into a real human heart.

I think.

My Thoughts:

This was confusing and weird and perfectly delicious. It was definitely one of the most fairytale'ish and straight forward of McKillip's tales, as there was NO misapprehension with what was going on with Brume or Ronan or Sidonie. Where things were confusing was all with Gyre, Unciel and the nameless terror. I think the firebird's egg was involved somehow, but I really didn't catch it all. I was too busy enjoying the parts I could easily understand.

It has been almost 14 years exactly since I last read this and I have to say, it has only gotten better. Despite my not understanding the nameless terror, or maybe because of it really, I am going to be adding the “Best Book of the Year” tag and put this in the running for the end of the year. Something in this book just resonated with me and while not making me jump up and down with glee, so thoroughly satisfied me that I felt like a fat little buddha statue full of literary satiation.

So far, my re-reads of McKillip have only enhanced my enjoyment of her storytelling and of her writing skill. It saddens me that more people don't love these books as much as I do and at the same time I realize that I'm not exactly a focal point for what is hot. I do hope that McKillip's books stand the test of time and survive where other fantasies simply dissolve back into the morass from which they came.

The cover is once again an amazing one by Kinuko Craft. I'll be including the full size piece of art in clickable linkiness so you can peruse as you wish. I can already tell you that this cover is probably going to win April's Cover Love hands down at the end of the month.

★★★★★ show less

First cursed by a witch and then forcibly engaged to an unknown princess, Prince Ronan of Serre caps off a bad day by following a singing firebird and vanishing into a fairy tale. As he chases the glowing bird through fantastic landscapes, his new fiancee and her guardian wizard attempt to rescue him, but at every turn, they become entangled in new commitments and betrayals.

Sometimes I find McKillip's books a tad oblique and cold, but not this one. All the traditional stylistic quirks--the random specific details, the free-floating adjectives--align perfectly with a set of compelling, complicated characters. (The mid-book conversation between Sidonie and the disguised Gyre is heart-breaking.) Beyond its style, The Forests of Serre show more echoes and parallels many of the narrative elements found in the author's other books: doubled figures with faces both ominous and innocent; the puppeteering witch-woman (The Tower at Stony Wood); the exhausted wizard (The Book of Atrix Wolfe) and his summoned monster (The Forgotten Beasts of Eld; the siren firebird (The Cygnet and the Firebird); the shifting reality of stories (The Sorceress and the Cygnet) and texts (Alphabet of Thorn). show less

This is poetry. Of all her books, this is one of the very best. Everyone is on a quest, the sort of quest where you learn about yourself, and it's marvelous.
The best and strangest thing about _In The Forests of Serre_ is that I was simultaneously reading a book about the very same fairy tale... No one else can shape words in such a way as to make you speechless with awe and yet equally rapt to watch the tale unfolding; I feel like I am watching poetry form out of the very air, not prose.

Patricia A. McKillip is my favorite living author, and this is my favorite of her novels. The book concerns an active, headstrong princess; a prince lost in grief, who succumbs to his desire to escape from the world; magicians who are both men and monsters; a firebird, who is glory, salvation, and doom wrapped up in one symbol; and a Baba-Yaga-esque witch named Brume. McKillip takes the familiar tropes of fairy tale--and the reader expectations that accompany them--and twists them into a terribly real, beautifully balanced shape. Weaving together Russian folklore and Western binaries, McKillip reveals the dialogic nature of the world: that good and evil are not two opposing forces; they are not, in fact, two separate forces at all. show more Lyrical, magical, and gorgeously written, this is one novel that pulls the reader in all the way, right through to the end. When you finally finish, it will be like waking from a dream. show less

This book is McKillip's not so much re-told, but re-imagined legend of the witch Baba Yaga and the Firebird.
Princess Sidonie is sent to wed a prince from a neighboring kingdom to form a political alliance and keep peace. But Prince Ronan is still mournng the death of his previous wife and his child, and wants nothing to do with another woman, no matter how lovely. He flees into the wild country - country known to be inhabited by the dangerous and powerful witch Brume. Ronan ends up not only grief-stricken, but cursed and bewitched. Sidonie is left, with even her escort, the wizard Gyre, mysteriously absent, to negotiate a difficult political situation in a hostile environment.
McKillip uses the familiar elements of traditional show more fairytales, but weaves them together into a complex story of very real people, each with their own emotions and motivations, moving through a tale replete with symbolism and meaning.
As with all McKillip's books, excellent. show less

My first 2010 review is about my last reading of 2009: In The Forests Of Serre by Patricia A. McKillip, another fairytale retold directed preferably to young adults.
According to my Google search there are several versions and adaptations of this Russian tale involving the firebird, but the premise is always the same: this creature beyond wonderful, with all its supreme beauty, mystery and unreachability, symbolizes, invariably a demand. But in In The Forests Of Serre there isn't only a prince, wandering through the forest trying to catch a bird of fire, while a beautiful princess makes her appearance at the end of story as the prize for the hunter and they both live happily everafter. No, in In The Forests Of Serre, we do have a prince show more wandering the forest deluded by the firebird's excellence, and its singing, but also and especially, we have a poor guy disturbed by the recent deaths both of his wife and newborn baby.
As if that wasn't enough, Ronan, the prince, is caught in the enchantment of the old witch who inhabits the forest in a hut made of human bones, and the tasks he has to do to get out of it seem unattainable. And if at the beginning Ronan had nothing to continue to live for, this meeting with Brume, the witch, will, against all odds, make him wake to life and smell the morning air, because Sidonie, the beautiful princess, enters in action.
Among other characters, I have to praise the wizard Gyre, who starts by having a neutral role, then awakens the wrath (or consent) of the reader, as that third person who threats a possible love story, only to win our good thoughts again both with his intangibility, like the firebird itself, which is always appropriate in these cases where innocent princes and princesses need help to escape from evil witches; and his pragmatism, which I dare to set as hilarious.
With an extremely beautiful, coherent, satirical and addictive writing style, McKillip is definitely a keeper. show less

For some reason I didn't find this one as compelling as Alphabet of Thorn. It was a good story... I liked way characters weren't always what they seemed... but there was something "difficult" about the story that I can't quite place... perhaps it had to do with the believability of the actions of two of the main characters... Like Alphabet, it had a sort of abrupt ending as well, though not as abrupt as Alphabet, but somehow Alphabet was still more satisfying... McKillip's writing was as beautiful as ever, though... she really has a very poetic style. I noted repetition of the phrase "In the forest of Serre..." An effective way to set a fairy-tale tone... I'm still looking forward to reading Winter Rose.