Christopher Booker’s ‘The Seven Basic Plots’ suggest that the more different archetypal narratives a novel includes the richer it becomes (Booker admires ‘The Lord of the Rings’ for this), and on this basis Croggon’s Pellinor series must be rich indeed. ‘The Riddle’ includes the themes of the Que...
The Naming is the beginning of Alison Croggon's well received Books of the Pellinor, a young adult fantasy trilogy centered around the land of Edil-Amarandh. Reading through the appendices reveals that Edil-Amarandh precedes Atlantis as a mythical continent that simply disappeared (presumably, of...
Although it was yet early in the year, it was an unpleasant journey: the heat was excessive, and a storm was building. On the final day of my journey, bruise-colored clouds began to pile in the sky, and the air became ever closer and more sultry, so that the sweat trickled down my back underneath...
She rinsed out her soiled clothes, fending off Larla, who insisted that she should do it. After some argument, Larla gave her a wooden tub and heated some water, and had to be content with instructing Selmana on how best to scrub woollens. Selmana listened with half an ear, squeezing the fabric u...
The room was filled with a quiet hum of industrious activity and a delicious smell of linseed oil and leather. Maerad sniffed appreciatively. Indik glanced up when they entered and, despite himself, smiled broadly. He was a stern-looking, stocky man, the severity of his fa...
At last, thinking she had probably gone ahead of him to the Ernan, he wandered moodily back to the palace.The city lay deserted under the crushing heat, and the flags of the awnings in the marketplace hung sad and limp, rags of former joy. Ire had disappeared on one of his mysterious forays, prob...
Indik confined himself to pitiless witticisms on her martial stupidity, although by the third day Maerad no longer dropped her sword when she tried to parry his thrusts, and once almost made it through his defense. On that occasion, he merely doubled his sarcasm, and Maerad’s lips set in a grim l...
You just took it out of the box and laid it on the table, and held the question in your mind as you opened it. There was no ritual or ceremony, but it was important to be respectful, both to the question and to the Book, and to have a clear and open mind. Some questions were more significant than...