This is Shinn's first novel, and a beautifully crafted one at that. The story is simple and simply told, which makes it that much more forceful: a young apprentice magician, Aubrey, is sent to a new tutor, the famous shape-changer Glyrendon, to learn transmogrification. Gifted and with great promise, Aubrey's ambitions to learn all he can from the master magician, who lives in a dark stone fortress overrun with dust and vines in the middle of the forest, clouds his eyes to the truth of Glyrendon and his wife and servants: for they are not what they seem.Aubrey's growing love for Glyrendon's wife Lilith leads him to realise the truth, but freeing Lilith from Glyrendon would mean losing her forever.This book reminded me a lot of Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock - a wonderful fantasy classic if you can get hold of it. Nature is very much a living thing, a reactive thing that can sense the evil in Glyrendon. The ivy creeping into Lilith's bedroom that can't be cut back, that she loves but her husband hates; the dust ankle-deep on the floor that can't be conquered; the bizarre servants, Arachne and Orion, whose real natures are easy to guess - indeed, for all his genius, Aubrey is a little slow in figuring it all out. Though, to be fair, one tends to believe what's in front of one's eyes - and Aubrey hasn't read all the fantasy books I've read!It's a short book but very packed. Glimpses of the true nature of people are caught here and there, like the sun suddenly and briefly peeking out from behind the clouds, lighting on some small patch of ground before vanishing again. Lilith is very much like that: brief flashes of something more, something other in her eyes give Aubrey some idea that all is not as it seems, and that Glyrendon is a horrible, horrible man.It's also an old-fashioned kind of fantasy story, told as if from the mouth of a bard: sparse and bald but with embellishment here and there. Aubrey's moral and ethical choice at the end is handled delicately, and it's amazing how much you come to care for a woman who doesn't care for anything.The book doesn't have the natural grace and ease of Shinn's later works, but is a great addition to the fantasy cannon. For serious fantasy fans, it's well worth the read.
The basic problem I had with this book--which I like well enough, but did not love--was that there was an uncomfortable disjunction between the (at least attempted) psychological realism of some of the characters--and their maturity--and the fairy-tale logic of the story. That's the thing that many fantasies, and all fairy-tale retellings (which is what this feels like, even if the fairy tale is an original one) have to wrestle with; most drag the whole story further towards realism, which allows for an internal consistency even as it loses some of the nature of the fairy tale. Two authors who keep the fairy tale (original or re-told) closer to its nature are Robin McKinley and Patricia McKillip, and I was reminded of both while reading The Shape-Changer's Wife. It did not do well in the comparison. The characters sit oddly in their story, in a way that the characters McKillip (who I read and like, but do not love) and McKinley (who I adore) do not. The comparison might not be entirely fair, as this is a first novel and McKillip, at least, had several novels under her belt before she hit on the balance of story and character that served the kind of stories she liked to tell.As I think about it--I did not realize this while I was reading--the fundamental problem may have been in the likability of the main character. Aubrey was, frankly, rather irritating--and since there was no mystery to the plot, I ended up spending two hundred pages watching a character I didn't like figure out things that had been perfectly obvious to me at first glace. I'd probably have liked it better as a short story; this somehow seemed neither fish nor fowl, with adult themes (though not content) sitting uneasily in a story that felt like it should be targeted to the younger end of the YA spectrum.
What do You think about The Shape-Changer's Wife (2003)?
I *thought* this book was part of the same series as 'The Truth-Teller's Tale' and 'The Safe-Keeper's Secret.' (I dunno, something about the title?)Anyway, it's not. Although I loved those other 2 books, I think I liked this one even more than either. I was surprised to read here that it was actually Shinn's first novel, because it didn't read like a freshman effort at all. The language was gorgeous, and the plot flowed smoothly and beautifully.A young apprentice wizard is sent by his master to study with the famed wizard Glyrenden. Glyrenden has a mixed reputation, at best, but he's also powerful and knowledgable - and the only adept to have mastered the art of shapechanging. However, he's also odd and prickly - and his household is even odder, consisting of his beautiful but strange wife, and two peculiar servants, one of whom is mute and the other of whom seems to have some kind of OCD disorder. Left alone with her at length, the young man finds himself drawn to his new teacher's wife like a moth to a flame...This isn't one of those stories where the secrets are revealed to much shock and surprise. Rather, it's a fairytale where everything unfolds just as it ought to. It's a lovely, satisfying story.Recommended for fans of Patricia McKillip, as well as Shinn's own fans, of course.
—Althea Ann
After the disappointing "Archangel", which I checked out of the library concurrently with this other book by Sharon Shinn, I was pretty wary of reading it. But the blurb by Peter S. Beagle praising it convinced me to pick it up.And hey, it was so much better. This is a short novella that's very fairy tale. I liked the hero, the story was predictable, but that's kind of the point of this kind of story. I'm not sure if Shinn was expecting that the secret of the Wife, and the two servants would be surprising to her readers, who have everything pretty much figured out by the time the hero finally puts two and two together. I kind of think she was; her readers are going to be familiar with this kind of thing. I was a little bit annoyed by the hero, who spent a lot of time thinking, "Hey, these people may not be what they seem. Nah, I'm probably just imagining it..." When the reader is yelling, "HEY, STUPID. YOU'RE LIVING WITH A WIZARD WHO IS FAMOUS FOR CHANGING THINGS INTO OTHER THINGS. HINT, HINT."It was very Last Unicorn-like at certain points, but failed to touch the brilliance of that novel. However, it was a solid effort and ultimately satisfying.
—Meredith
The settings are not fully realized, nor are the inner-lives of the main characters (who are more or less vehicles for the plot which is one of unfolding awareness and reaction), yet the pages keep turning and the story keeps moving on and the reader is rewarded. As YA, this story is likely a good one for learning how to read archetypes and discover literary devices, it is a very unapologetic, baldfaced, straightforward fantasy read. The structure is perfect, the plot unfolds methodically making reading the book like driving a familiar winding road for experienced readers or a great first curvy, hilly road for fantasy readers just getting started. This book will reward them both with a destination worth reaching.
—Natalie
