This site uses cookies to deliver our services, improve performance, for analytics, and (if not signed in) for advertising. By using LibraryThing you acknowledge that you have read and understand our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Your use of the site and services is subject to these policies and terms.
West and Cally, who speak different languages and come from different countries thousands of miles apart, are wrenched by catastrophe out of reality into a perilous world through which they must travel toward the sea.
Lyrical, mythological, beautifully written. I first read this years ago, and now, having re-read it, like it even more. My favorite character is Peth, an ancient insect-being who leads Westerly and Calliope with all his heart and life. If I could meet a book character, Peth is whom I'd choose. ( )
I wish I had read this when I was younger, or maybe not right in the middle of a reading frenzy. I kept waiting and reading on for when the action and excitement would finally begin, but it was only until the last chapter that I felt anything substantial. I focused too much on reading into the lines because I was so desperate to connect with the characters (which never happened, disappointingly). I don't think I'll read this one again. Maybe when I'm super old or something, if it's still floating around then.... ( )
Cally pushes herself through a mirror to escape an endless, unearthly voice. Westerly escapes his pursuers through a hidden doorway. They each find themselves in another world, where magic and thought have power beyond their imagining. This is very much a coming of age adventure story, full of chases and near-escapes, but it is told in such beautiful language that I found myself re-reading the descriptions of the countryside. ( )
This is the first time I've read Seaward. Don't know how it would have struck me when I was a teen because I turned 29 the year it was first published. It reminds me a little of George MacDonald's Lilith, but not as dark. Cally and Westerly are good people. I liked Lugan, Ryan, and Peth, too. I might have felt sorry for Lady Taranis if she didn't create her own trouble. Stonecutter was a selfish twit. The origin of the People was... fitting.
Although written for young adults, it's well worth reading for those of us adults who won't let that label stop us from enjoying a good book. If you're one of the readers who share my disappointment with the end of the Dark is Rising pentalogy or sequence), don't worry. The end of Seaward didn't disappoint.
David Wiesner is the artist for the cover which shows Lugan with the wooden box in one hand and the knotted red cloth. A golden dragon and Snake are behind him. Within his open cloak we see the sea, the white wall with the gates, and the Lady Taranis. ( )
Westerly came down the path at a long lope, sliding over the short moorland grass.
Quotations
It was a small sweet voice like singing; it flowed into their hearing so gently that they were not sure if it touched their ears or their minds. (p. 144)
... he's [Peth] the colour of rain. (p. 159)
Water and fire and air, by these we live,
By rain and sun and wind.
O sky, I am in need.
Send me the rain. (p. 157)
And so the shortest day came, and the year died
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing
To drive the dark away. They lighted candles in the winter trees,
They hung their homes with evergreen,
They burned beseeching fires all night long -- (p. 189)
Those are the travellers from your world," she [Taranis] said. 'All those who were glad to be alive, but who in your terms are dead. They pass in their thousands every day, and the crowd never grows less. But not all choose the journey to the sea. Many are so weary, after a long life and a hard one, that when it is over they wish only to sleep. So sleep is what they are granted, and their spirits drift our in peace through the gentle darkness, and lie resting on the winds that blow between the bright stars, forever." (p. 209)
... all those travelling down thee, are those who loved their lives even through the hardness of them. Lugan's folk. Those who took pleasure in the world, and gave it - who sometimes gave even their lives, for the sake of others. On that joy they travel to the edge of the sea ... (p. 210)
"It is the nature of things, Cally. Death end life, and life is renewed. My lady is bound to me, for without life how could there be death? But so too I am bound to her - as the leaves must die in winter so that the new buds may swell in the spring. In a world set within Time, there can be no beginning without an end." (p. 211)
It is the endings that make the beginnings. Sunrise, flowers in the desert, blossom on the apple trees. (p. 212-213)
Last words
The lighthouse beam swung round again, over the waves, over the sand and rocks, like a slow pulse steadily beating, like the long unending swell of the sea.
West and Cally, who speak different languages and come from different countries thousands of miles apart, are wrenched by catastrophe out of reality into a perilous world through which they must travel toward the sea.
)
)
)
Google Books — Loading...
Wikipedia in English
1