Book Log: The City in the Lake

[penmage]

The City in the Lake by Rachel Neumeier

The Kingdom's heart is the City. The City's heart is the King. The King's heart is the Prince. And the Prince is missing--stolen, vanished, gone. And ever since he vanished, nothing has been right in the Kingdom. New life is stillborn, and there is a shadow that lies across everything. Everyone in the Kingdom can feel it.

Timou, in her remote village, can feel it too. Solemn, strange Timou, daughter of the mage Kapoen, has trained at her father's side for her entire life, and she can feel the wrongness pressing in on her like invisible eyes on her back. When her father travels to the Kingdom to investigate and doesn't return, Timou knows that she has to seek out the truth--even if it means leaving behind everything she loves and understands. Even if it means confronting terrifying truths about her heritage.

This book is stunning. No real words can do it justice. Let me just say that up front. It reminds me of Robin McKinley's Deerskin and The Blue Sword, or of some of Patricia McKillip's work. It's lush and dreamy and gorgeous, but never so lush that it bores you with description.

I'm a speed-reader, which means that most of the time I auto-skim books. This book made me slow down and savor every word.

I love Timou. She's a wonderful protagonist--she's different, and powerful, but never Mary-Sue-ish about it. And I love even more Lord Neill, the Bastard, who manages to break my heart in just a few short chapters. Rachel Neumeier, you are a genius and I applaud you.

I love the sparseness of the prose. The way it says so much with so few words. There are scenes that are mere paragraphs, but I had to read them over and over again because of the weight of emotion that they carried. There were moments that made my breath catch in my chest. There were moments, in this slim little book, that I felt the fear and terror of the moment so much I could barely turn the page.

I love the ideas in this book. I love how they are interwoven so gracefully with the plot--they don't leap out at you, shouting and yelling, "here I am--look how clever I am!"--they're subtle and fascinating and take root in your mind, so that you can't help but turn them over and over again.

This is the kind of book I have always wanted to write, and the kind of book that I have, for as long as I can remember, always wanted to read. From the opening paragraphs to the last scene, I loved everything about this book. It still haunts me, the Kingdom and the City and its stone tigers.

I think this book will haunt me for a long, long time.

Comments

[charlotteslibrary.blogspot.com (from livejournal.com)]

I had the same problem with my library, so I became a member (ultimately president) of the Friends of the Library, raised lots of money with book sales, and used a good part of it to buy books I wanted for the library, and got to read them before they disappeared in the cataloging room...Nothing beats spending money that isn't your own on good books!