Medieval Magic and Mystery
> shape-shifting
> sorcery
> witchcraft
> telepathy
> the Fair Folk
> the Old Ones
> standing stones and an ancient burial mound
Medieval Outsiders
> a girl brought up alone on the wild Kerry coast by her sorcerer father
> a travelling boy who visits Kerry each summer and is in love with the girl
> a man who is half swan, one of whose arms is a great white swan's wing; he lives alone by a lake in the forest
This book, like the second in the trilogy, does not stand alone, and should not be read unless or until you have read the first two. And it is very much the same as them. When it opens, Fainne, the daughter of Niamh of Sevenwaters and Ciarán the sorcerer, is living with her father in a home among the caves in a cliff on the remote south-west coast of Ireland. Niamh died when she was small, and she does not remember her at all. All Fainne knows in the life she shares with her father, an intensely serious and reserved man, as he trains her in the arts of sorcery - and a few days each summer when the travelling folk come and among them her only friend, the boy Darragh, who loves horses and plays the pipes and is a wonderful swimmer.
It is Fainne's story, and like Sorcha in the first book (Daughter of the Forest) and Liadan in the second (Son of the Shadows), she has a task to fulfill which is nigh on impossible and can only be accomplished in the greatest secrecy with everyone believing the worst of her. Enough to say that Lady Oonagh, the evil sorceress (who is of course Ciarán's mother and Fainne's grandmother), sets out to complete the destruction of Fainne's mother's family, using Fainne as her brainwashed and helpless tool.
The descriptions of Ciarán teaching Fainne sorcery when she is still a little girl are amazing. For example, here he is showing her for the first time, how to use the Glamour:
'Time to begin,' said Father, regarding me rather severely. 'This will be serious work, Fainne. It may be necessary to curtail your freedom this summer.'
'I yes, Father.'
'Good.' He gave a nod. 'Stand here by me. Look into the mirror. Watch my face.'
The surface was bronze, polished to a bright reflective sheen. Our images showed side by side; the same face with subtle alterations. The dark red curls; the fierce eyes, dark as ripe berries; the pale unfreckled skin. My father's countenance was handsome enough, I thought, if somewhat forbidding in expression. Mine was a child's, unformed, plain, a little pudding of a face. I scowled at my reflection, and glanced back at my father in the mirror. I sucked in my breath.
My father's face was changing. The nose grew hooked, the deep red hair frosted with white, the skin wrinkled and blotched like an ancient apple left too long in store. I stared, aghast. He raised a hand. It was an old man's hand, gnarled and knotted, with nails like the claws of some feral creature. I could not tear my eyes away from the mirrored image.
'Now look at me,' he said quietly.
Like the first two books, it starts so slowly you don't know how you're going to keep reading it, but then suddenly you don't know how you're going to be able to stop reading it, how you're going to be able to live in a world other than this one, a world without these people.
Another wonderful novel.
JM
