The Valley that young Tilja Urlasdaughter lives in has not always been the peaceful place that she is used to. Several generations back her beloved Valley was plagued by wild tribesmen attacking from the North and soldiers from the Empire attacking from the South. Finally four young people, two Urlasdaughters and two Ortahlsons journey away from home to find the famed magician, Asarta, and plead for her to help them protect their home. She helps them one last time and leads them to another magician, named Faheel, with a ring that he had been trying to steal from the old woman for years. After receiving this gift and knowing that the old woman had passed on, Faheel decides to help the four young people of the Valley and seals off the Northern pass by an ice dragon and the South by unicorns that give off a magic that will allow no men to pass through the woods surrounding the border. From every year on, one member of the Ortahlson family would sing to the dragon, and one from the Urlasdaughter family would sing to the unicorns. When this magic starts wearing off, Tilja, her grandmother, and two members of the Otahlson family set off on that very same journey that their ancestors had taken so many years ago. Along the way, Tilja, who was brokenhearted about not having the unicorn magic, finds that she has a special power all of her own and comes into herself during the long journey. They eventually meet a young magician along the way that calls himself the Ropemaker and Faheel eventually passes on the ring to him and it is then the Ropemaker’s duty to protect the Valley for the next twenty generations.I absolutely was enchanted by this book. Peter Dickenson must be a really good crafter of imagination because I never found that this book was lacking in that department. What I loved was that he didn't let the reader know the secrets of the ice dragon and unicorns before Tilja found out for herself. We could have make assumptions or guessed about what creatures were living in the woods, but I thought I was able to grow closer to Tilja as a character because I knew the same things she knew, as she found them out for herself. That way we were able to grow with her as she did on her journey. Another thing I loved about this book was the concept of magic. At this point in my life I have read a lot of books about wizards or magicians and all of their powers usually vary in one way or another. My favorite kind of magic is the kind that needs balance and actually takes something out of you when you use too much. In this case Tilja has the power to cover up and absorb the magic, masking it or making it disappear completely. Also, even though Faheel had tried so hard to steal that ring from Asarta so long ago, he realizes at the end of his life how important it is for it to be passed on to be used as a force of good, someone who would battle the evil ones, called the Watchers, to protect the Empire and Valley. Magic in this story is also tied close to Tilja’s coming of age and coming to accept herself. Overall this book is so hard to put down and has a story line that draws you in and allows you to become close to the characters.
Yet another book from childhood, I know why I kept this one. It's good. Butit's weird too. and kind of confusing.In one sense, the world building is great. You read about the Empire and the detail is incredible. The premise of the story is well thought out and well set up. In the other sense - the magic sense - the world building falls short. (We've spoken before about how I don't like lazy explanations of the magical) There's also an incredible amount of the journey.When the hero heads off on their quest, the journey is how they get to the object of their quest. It's often long and well done (think the Lord of the Rings), as well as exciting. The journey these heroes go on, however, is kind of boring. It's a long road, and two of them are old so that's hard. Also they have an ornery horse.This goes on for quite a while.So that part gets a little bit redundant, but also not, because things still happen. And I like the main girl, Tilja. Even if I don't like her name. She's got a special sort of magic and I like it.I haven't read the second book, which is kind of surprising because truthfully my main thought about this one is that it doesn't seem like a stand alone. I really think it belongs in a series, where it could be fleshed out and wonderful. Instead, I'm left vaguely confused by the whole thing, even if I did enjoy it.If you like fantasy and you like young adult fiction, this could be a good book for you. Maybe you'll be a more discerning reader than I am, and you won't be confused at all! And confused is a bad word, because it's not like I don't understand it. It's just that things aren't always well explained or they're spoken about once and then never come back or you just have to piece things together based on context clues. So it's kind of muddled.
What do You think about The Ropemaker (2003)?
This book was a short fairytale padded and padded and padded out into a 300+ page novel. The story plodded along in a fairytale fashion--and then, and then, and then--and the magic was vague undefined fairytale magic with only the most basic vaguely-defined magic-system underlying it all. Tilja and Tahl and their grandparents meet people. They get saved. They meet more people. People tell them things. They go. They meet more people. They get told more things. They travel more. Etc.The main characters do have some character and personality, but everything is distant. It feels like yes, they are real people, but you just don't get to know them all that well or even really care about them beyond the immediacy of the story, which is not very immediate and therefore I don't care about them very much.The plot has as much plot as a fairytale: We have a problem, so we go to the magic person to solve it, and must follow the magic person's peculiar unexplained inexplicable directions to the letter, and then all will be well. Hooray. And there's some Ropemaker guy who, despite being the titular character, is barely in the story and mostly deus ex machinas all the troubles the main four run into.The Ropemaker would have been much better condensed and tightened into a 100-page story rather than endless descriptions of walking along a road prodding a recalcitrant horse and getting long paragraphs of exposition from random people about what to do next.
—Alz
It was interesting to contrast this enjoyable, well-written YA fantasy book with Ursula LeGuin's "Voices," which I read recently. Both deal with a pair of young people from a remote, isolated valley, and their families.While both situation and family are, in LeGuin's view, unrelentingly negative, to Dickinson, this situation is just positive as positive can be... as a matter of fact, the whole point of the book is that the young people and their grandparents must go on a quest to find a magician to preserve the spells that keep their valley isolated, cut off from the larger, socially and politically oppressive empire beyond....LeGuin took the opposite view altogether, where the young people had to attempt to escape the oppressiveness of the backwards, backwater valley and get out to the wider world to grow...As I said, however, Dickinson's writing was fun and the story enjoyable - but I did find myself questioning some of his situations.... probably because it's a YA book, and he didn't want to really get into them. But having a young teen boy and girl who obviously like each other go on a long trip together - and have NO sexual tension develop was unrealistic. And, having two very elderly people experience a magical spell that makes them both teens again, to have them fall in love - and then to have them voluntarily give that up and choose to become old again, without a whole lot of agony, is also totally unrealistic.
—Althea Ann
This book sat sitting on my shelf for the longest of times. I kept telling myself that I would pick it up and read it and yet I always ended up reading something else instead. When I finally got around to reading it I was exceptionally surprised.The book itself was much better than I’d been expecting. Whilst there were some predictable moments the storyline did manage to keep me hooked from start to end, without my mind running off at different angles as I questioned whether it would do me better to be reading something else. The characters are easy to fall in love with, the book is well written and well-paced – as a whole it is well worth a read instead of letting it gather dust on a shelf!
—Siobhan
