Jane Yolen

Such a great way of re-telling the many facets of Merlin within the Arthurian legend! Jane Yolen has crafted her wit and abilities in a way i've never seen before.

Each chapter tells of a character in Merlin's legend: Merlin as an infant, a wild child, a young boy seeking his way in the world. Then there are chapters that tell of other characters in the cycle, such as Gwenhyfar, Arthur, Lancelot, Sir Kay, with Merlin serving as a character behind the scenes. Geoffrey of Monmouth or Mallory is the heading in each chapter, which then tells a tale Merlin's birth while scribing the last words from Father Blaise, or capturing the thoughts of a wild boy as he lives a year in the wild, or the birth of a white child called Gwynhfar that the Old One knows is destined to unite a kingdom.

In the telling of Elaine's tale, Guenevere is called Veree; her true name of Gwyneth is not revealed until the end when Merlin comes to take the sword from her on the Isle of Women. Or he is doddering old Master Linn, seemingly everywhere, and bringing young Artos to a cave where he can learn from a dragon.

The final story is more present-day, and involve the archeological dig that uncovers a skeleton from the early Bronze Age in the fens that could, just maybe, be that of Merlin. It's told from the POV of a trio of journalists present at the unveiling, complete with the Crown Prince of England who helped direct the archeological dig.

Reading the many versions of the Arthurian myth has got my interest back to reading and re-reading all the many books I have about King Arthur. It points out, in its slim volumed way, that there is no one true version of the Arthurian cycle.… (mais)

Having not particularly enjooyed any of Yolen's work previously, I picked up this volume with some doubt, but in fact found her short fiction works a lot better than her novels.

In this collection there are a large number of stories, some inspired by traditional tales, folktales or fairy tales, such as Cinderella or Pinnocchio, and others perhaps based on less well known international tales but a lot with beginnings like 'Not so very long ago, a sow, a mare and a cow were friends' or 'In a time when the rivers ran crystal clear all the way down to the sea ....' Others are extracts from what became her novels 'Cards of Grief' or the second in the White Jenna series - that story is recognisably a sequence from near the end of the second book but has changes (even without going back to the novel to check) such as the chief villain being present in the dungeon scene instead of one of his henchmen. Still others are longer stories which could be material for a novel, such as the one about the boy who steals and rears a baby dragon on a planet where dragons are used to fight in an arena and can win freedom for their owners.

With such a varied collection there should be some which please the reader - some were dark, some I wasn't so keen on, but the collection as a whole balanced out into a solid 3 star read.… (mais)

Firstly, the 'Cards' of the title do not appear until the very end of the story which is set on a planet where the whole culture is centred around the idea of "grief" but really mourning, as in commemorating the dead. The culture is matriarchial due to the peculiar biology of the race, or rather the two races who can interbreed, wherein the men are only fertile for about five years maximum in early adulthood. They are ruled by a Queen from the Royal race who turn out to have some odd biological properties, but the Queen is aging and has produced only sons.

A young woman who is taller than those around her and is therefore probably a child who is half Royal - the young men are sent out for a year when first mature to 'sow' their seed as widely as possible to try to produce more Royals - has a gift for creating poems-songs (the arts are very closely associated) for the dead or 'grieven' as they are called and is recognised as such by Prince B'oremos who is nearing the end of his wandering year.

The girl, called Linna-Lania, from the line of Lania, but hereafter called the Grey Wanderer because of the character in her early poem - or just Grey by the Royals - is brought to court and becomes the Queen's Own Griever after accelerated training. One sinister, to our viewpoint, development of the grieving cult is that people routinely take 'the Cup' - a painless poison - when either they are terminally ill and suffering, or else just because they have disappointed others in some way. For example there is a throw away remark at one point about a servant who is responsible for a curtain not hanging right who will probably have to choose between dismissal (which might lead to a life of penury in this culture) or suicide via the Cup. Similarly, Grey's own innocence leads her to make a remark which has fatal repercussions for a family member.

Into this rather static and possibly stagnating society comes a human mission who at first study the population via hidden recording machines but who eventually intervene directly to initiate first contact. This we're told leads to the trivialising of the grief cult by the end of the story - yet there were already signs that the whole thing was a rote observance in the sections where Grey is discovered. There is a more immediate and personal impact on Grey herself however.

The story is told in a disjointed fashion via transcripts of the recordings made by the humans and therefore darts about in the history further complicated by the fact that for some reason, unexplained unless I missed it, shipboard time passes far more slowly than on the planet so that five years goes by there while 50 planetary years go by. I found this a bit distancing, and it was difficult to really engage with the characters. I also found the set up of the two races, so fundamentally different physically yet able to interbreed - and also to do so with humans - a bit difficult to accept and couldn't imagine any evolutionary pressure which would have resulted in males being fertile for only five years, given the far less onerous burden of fertility on men than women. So although superficially the book is science fiction, it comes across as being rather more of a fantasy - though in my opinion even fantasy should have internal consistency and believability. Therefore for me the story rates a 2-star rating but because of the quality of the writing, I have raised this to 3 stars overall.


This is a strange book. It is filled with interesting ideas but it always feels distant and disconnected, not because of the "recordings" format, but because of something else missing. I never felt drawn to any of the characters.… (mais)