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I don't even know how many times I've read this book, but it's still one of my favorites from childhood, and it still holds up very well.

Reread it after the Lymond Chronicles (and because reccing it to [livejournal.com profile] minnow1212 made me want to read it again), and now I keep wanting to call Kate Sutton "Kate Somerville." She is certainly quite like the Somervilles though.

I love The Perilous Gard because of Kate and her stubborn, practical, resolute self. She may have been one of the first heroines I read who felt distinctly anti-heroine -- she wasn't romantic, she constantly poked holes in the dashing and angsty Christopher's dashing and angsty nature, and she said things that I often thought while reading this kind of book. She seems to be the kind of person in a horror movie who would actually remember to turn on the lights in the basement.

I also love how distinctly anti-Romantic this book is, despite its grounding in the Tam Lin ballad. Christopher's big dream, despite his angstiness, is to drain and mulch a manor. And I think the way Pope has the two of them fall in love has forever made me sort of snort at the more romantic and epic type love. They talk, and they listen to each other.

I just sort of realized that the creature from the Well was basically talking Christopher into suicide, which is a rather frightening thought.

And on a small, fun note, Christopher's proposal goes down with Mr. Darcy's (the first one) and Lymond's as some of the worst ways to propose ever.

[livejournal.com profile] minnow1212 has just posted on it as well ^_^.
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Finally read The Sherwood Ring, by Elizabeth Marie Pope, which has been sitting around for the past year or so. For some reason, when I first got it from Amazon, I just wasn't in the right mood to read it, but recently I really want historical stuff and it was just right. Bought it because Pope had also written The Perilous Gard, one of my favorite books from childhood/adolescence.

Spoilers )

Now I really want to reread The Perilous Gard, which is not really a retelling of Tam Lin so much as a melody in the same key. Mostly I want a nice, chewy historical novel with some fantasy or mythology thrown in. Borrown Delia Sherman's The Porcelain Dove from the library, which is on France in the 1700s (I think), Jane Eyre (to compare with Jenna Starborn), LeGuin's Tales from Earthsea (need to find Other Wind), and Patricia A. McKillip's The Cygnet and the Firebird, which I tried to read once many years ago and could never make my way through... same with the Riddlemaster series. I should try those again some time.

Links:
- [livejournal.com profile] minnow1212's review

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