| $@%&! level: Low “Bedroom” level: Low Violence level: Low Back Cover: “Mirasol is a beekeeper. She tends her small woodlot in an obscure corner of the Willowlands, and looks after her bees. The earth-lines speak to her, but this is not unusual; they speak to many members of the old families. The concerns of Master, Chalice, and their Circle, who govern Willowlands, are nothing to do with her, although the rumours of this Master's wildness, and his Chalice's inability to bind him with their Circle, are troubling. And then the Master and Chalice die in a fire—and Willowlands is thrown into chaos, for Master and Chalice had no declared heirs to take up their crucial work. The Circle sends at once for the Master's only living relative, who left to become a priest of Fire seven years ago. The priests reply that the new Master will come, but that anyone who has lain in Fire for seven years is no longer quite human. Mirasol hears the news and fears for the future of Willowlands, but she is preoccupied with her own difficulties: her goats are fountaining milk, and her bees are producing so much honey it is pouring out of their hives. And then the Circle comes to her cottage to tell her that she is to be the new Chalice, and it will be up to her to bind the land and its people with a Master the touch of whose hand can burn human flesh to the bone...” |
In fact, the romance is almost a side-note. The story is Mirasol trying like crazy to save her home by helping this poor man do his job. (He doesn't even remember his name, by the way, and they have to look it up and tell him, a good ways into the book. I think Robin McKinley just doesn't like naming her male characters for some reason.) It's not that he doesn't want to be a good Master (unlike his brother), but that he's physically incapable of a lot of the things he's supposed to do, while at the same time being dangerously powerful at some of the things a normal human shouldn't be able to do. He's also very, very patient and soft-spoken, which is a hallmark of McKinley's male lead characters. Really powerful, wouldn't hurt a fly—or in this case a bee.
It's a tough job for Mirasol, partly because she has practically no training, partly because she just wants to tend her bees and be her introverted self, and partly because there are a whole bunch of political jerks trying to keep her and the new Master from succeeding. (Something about wanting to give the land to one of the Prince's obsequious flunkies, which will cause wild upheavals of nature and much destruction. Because magic!)
I really like the characters here. They seem more real than many fantasy characters, or possibly just unreal but in a different direction. They're quieter than real people, for one thing. But they're allowed to be slightly clumsy at times, and socially awkward, and the most important thing about that is that it's okay! Just because he doesn't always move with cat-like grace and is frankly pretty weak physically, and she's most comfortable in the company of bees, doesn't make them any less powerful, useful, effective, or important. Between that and the message that love doesn't always have to involve stars and rainbows and choirs of angels, I call this one a win, even if the character-building does seem like the most important part, and the action is thrown in just to give them something to do while the real story happens.