The Cygnet and the Firebird

Despite its uninspiring surface, I liked The Sorceress and the Cygnet for its minor details and supporting characters. Its sequel, The Cygnet and the Firebird, retains all the surface and loses all the charm.

The problem is Nyx Ro: she's a delicious character, but she's a lousy point of entry for the poor reader. She's self-absorbed and inward-focused, but The Sorceress and the Cygnet overcame her alienating aspects by making her a figure of interest, not empathy. (More conventional characters assumed the mantle of empathy in the book.) But she's the major protagonist of The Cygnet and the Firebird, and the novel makes unsuccessful stabs at softening Nyx and making her more palatable. But by forcing her into blandly placid mold, the show more novel loses a great anti-heroine without producing a good heroine.

And the story's boring, and Nyx has a dreary love-interest, and all the conflict and resolution happens at a plane far removed from the actual characters. So I didn't like it. show less

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Title: The Cygnet and the Firebird
Series: Cygnet #2
Author: Patricia McKillip
Rating: 4.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 315
Format: Digital Edition



Synopsis:

Taking place 2 weeks after the Sorceress and the Cygnet, we follow the continued adventures of Nyx Ro and Meguet Mervaine.

A magician invades Ro Holding looking for a hidden key of Chrisom's. Nyx and Meguet foil him. At the same time a magical firebird that turns everything to jewels and show more gold with its cry comes to Ro Hold. Nyx figures out it is an ensorcelled young man and in her studies he, she and Meguet all go to the land of Saphier. Where the first magician lives as well.

Saphier is ruled by the son of a magician and a dragon and he, Draken, wants ALL THE POWER. And he wants Ro Hold. It is up to Brand (the ensorcelled young man, who happens to be Draken's son), Nyx, Meguet and Rad (the first magician) to put a stop to Draken's quest to conquer all of time and space.

The dragons solve it all because the humans are annoying them.

The End.

My Thoughts:

SO MUCH BETTER THAN The Sorceress and the Cygnet. There is no Corleu. In fact, there are no stupid characters; confused, unsure and discombobulated characters, but not an idiot in sight! And that pushed this book right into traditional McKillip territory. Beautifully worded phrases, symbols and pictures with much deeper meanings, lyrical prose that you have to follow like a song. It was everything that I like about McKillip.

I found this more polished, more lyrical and more fantastical than Sorceress. Sorceress was a rough fairytale told by farmers after a tough season of haying. Firebird felt more like a courtly bard singing a story before the entire court. Obviously, with me being King Bookstooge, I prefer the latter.

I was glad to have read the duology so close together. I'm not sure I would have enjoyed Firebird so much if I didn't have the immediate taste of Sorceress still on my mental tongue.

This, along with Austen, is the kind of romance that not only can I stand but actively enjoy. It is understated but powerful, much like a current in a river. Too many authors rely on the rapids of the river for their romances and it always upsets my literary canoe and tosses me into the drink. I don't like that. But this, this is like gliding down the Mississippi on a shady day. You can't ask for much better.

★★★★ ½ show less

This review was originally posted on Hot Stuff for Cool People.

I don’t even know where to start with this review. This book is such a beautiful, frightening, vivid hallucination. After I read this book, I have weird dreams. I feel like I’m walking around in a fog because this book is so realistic, it leaves the real world looking a bit drab.

‘The Cygnet and the Firebird’, by Patricia A. McKillip, is a fantasy story about two cousins, Nyx and Meguet. The story starts with a magician thief, Rad, who comes to steal a key. He’s followed by a firebird, who turns into a man, Brand, at night. Rad and Meguet make their way across time and into Rad’s homeland, Saphier, which is mostly a big desert inhabited by the ghosts and memories show more of dragons. Meanwhile, Nyx tries to solve the problem of Brand’s encorcelling.

It doesn’t sound like much. It sounds like an fantasy story, and maybe a convoluted one, at that. But it’s so much more. The amazing thing about Patricia A. McKillip is the way she writes. Not only is her writing solid, not only does it flow, but it is nearly magical in its ability to make you see and feel exactly what the characters are feeling and seeing, until you actually believe you’re there, in the story. And, I think, in ‘The Cygnet and the Firebird,’ she shows off this talent more than in any other book. Like I said, it’s like a hallucination, a dream that feels real and leaves you wanting more when you wake up. It also has amazingly well-realized characters, and a strong, attention-grabbing plot. It’s never boring. The intelligence and emotion behind the writing are both strong and deep.

There’s a prequel to ‘The Cygnet and the Firebird,’ called ‘The Sorceress and the Cygnet.’ This prequel is good, but for me, it wasn’t as wonderful as ‘The Cygnet and the Firebird.’ I recommend you read it, but read it after ‘The Cygnet and the Firebird.’ That’s how I read them, and it works just fine. You’re only going to be missing a few minor points, none of which really have much to do with the plot of ‘The Cygnet and the Firebird.’

This is the kind of book that you just have to let wash over you. Don’t force yourself to understand everything that's going on from the first page. Just let yourself sink into it. It’s that kind of book. show less

Most reviews that I've read of Patricia McKillip's Cygnet duology seem to express a strong preference for either The Sorceress and the Cygnet or the The Cygnet and the Firebird. This should not be surprising. Despite sharing characters and a fantasy world, they have separate plot lines and widely varying tones. When you come down to it, The Cygnet and the Firebird is more a companion novel than a sequel, although without having read The Sorceress and the Cygnet first, certain things won't make sense.

I read the two books back-to-back over a weekend, and because the ending of the first book disappointed me, I was a little wary when I started the second, because at first it seemed like it might be more of the same. However, new mysteries show more and threats begin appearing in Ro Holding very quickly. First, a mage who can stop time steals into the castle searching for an ancient magical key that none of the royal family even knew existed. Not long after, a firebird appears in the sky above the castle, whose cry chills the heart and turns whatever it touches into precious stones. For a few hours each evening, he turns into a young man, but is unable to reveal anything about himself or the enchantment he is under. Nyx and Meguet, the heroines of the previous book, begin searching for answers. The mage, Rad Ilex abducts Meguet and takes her with him to his world, Saphier, which is ruled by a warlord-sorcerer named Drakken Saphier and is mostly taken up by a desert that is haunted by the memories and rumors of dragons. Nyx must find some way to get the firebird-man named Brand to tell his tale, and track Meguet into Saphier, a country that does not appear on any map she knows.

The Publishers Weekly review states that "this sequel lacks the vitality of its predecessor," but I couldn't disagree more! Instead, I find it to be an unusually fast-paced McKillip novel, and probably the closest she's come to writing a fantasy adventure since the famed Riddle-Master trilogy. Her prose may not be quite as beautiful here as it is elsewhere, mostly because she doesn't take the time to luxuriate in the language, but the plot is among her strongest. It reminds me a bit of the Axis-Kane backstory from her later novel Alphabet of Thorn, which is wonderful, because their story was my favorite part of that book.

This book has it all: Dragons! Traveling between worlds! Mages! Deserts! Firebirds! I found myself grinning quite a bit at various parts, just because my inner fantasy nerd was so satisfied, and as the climax approached I grew breathless.

Meguet and the Gatekeeper are as wonderful as ever in this book, but the real joy and surprise is Nyx, who was such a shadowy figure in the last book but here becomes human. I like the newcomers, Rad and Brand, as well. There is a beautiful scene between Nyx and Brand in an abandoned dragon's lair filled with waterfalls—well, I'll just let you read it. The ending is perfect too ... I think it's similar to what the movie Thor tried to accomplish, but McKillip does it better.

Recommended to all McKillip fans. Read Sorceress first for the background, then read Firebird for the world-building, the characters, and the rollercoaster of a story. show less

This book is an instance where the sequel is much better than the first book. It's a great story, with some of the coolest fantasy concepts I've read in quite a while (the dragons!). It's not perfect, but the very ending is lovely.

My library reading history shows that I read the first book in this series in 2005, but I have no memory of it. That said, it wasn't necessary, Meguet and Nyx came to life in this book. A firebird and a mage visit Ro Holding and the two women are drawn into their tangled relationship. They all end up in a desert country, infested by half seen dragons and guarded by powerful warrior mages. It got hard to tell who to trust and I found that a bit frustrating, as well as a few spots where the point of view would swap between short paragraphs. The magic was magical though, and I raced through it to see how things would get resolved.

Just finished this book after reading The Sorceress and the Cygnet; wow what a fabulous fantasy trip! I’d only read one other McKillip book in high school -- The Forgotten Beasts of Eld -- and can’t believe I didn’t read any others until now. I will be catching up on her works for some time to come. Strong female characters, bonds of love and friendship, and the possibility of redemption through character growth -- loved it all.