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A couple years ago, I made a lengthy Dalemark Quartet playlist!
For those of you unfamiliar with the Dalemark Quartet, they're set in a culturally and politically divided nation and are some of my favorite Diana Wynne Jones books -- I mean, okay, I have a lot of favorite DWJ books, but the Dalemark Quartet is quite different than a lot of hers books, much less madcap, and much more thoughtful and numinous and sad, with themes about war and revolution and history and storytelling and mythology woven all through it. (It is also one of the main influences on the Attolia books, so, you know, if you like those . . .)
The books in the series, which all stand alone except for the last one, are
Cart and Cwidder: the most outwardly straightforward, this one centers on Moril, the youngest member of a family of traveling musicians whose father has turned out to be harboring dangerous secrets. Eventually the three kids have to make their way alone from the South to the North, in company with a teenaged fugitive and armed with nothing but Moril's potentially magical old cwidder, his sister's sense of bravado, and his brother's emo poetry.
Drowned Ammett: this is nobody else's favorite book of the first three, but it's MY favorite book of the first three, for all the painful character development. Growing up bitter and impoverished in a city in the South, Mitt has spent his whole life training for the huge act of revolutionary terrorism he is going to commit when he turns thirteen; then the time comes for him to carry out his plans and everything goes TERRIBLY WRONG.
The Spellcoats: this is the one that everyone else I know likes best! Probably because it is the most gorgeously numinous of the lot. Tanaqui and her siblings look like the invaders who have just started attacking their people. When their oldest brother comes back from the war different, and their father doesn't come back at all, they have to flee the village and set out on a journey up the river. Which might also be their grandfather. It's complicated.
The Crown of Dalemark: This is the one that brings all the previous three books together, and complicates the setup immensely into the bargain. (Growing up in the South, the protagonists of the first two books both thought there was a binary that went South: OPPRESSED AND TERRIBLE, North: FREE AND WONDERFUL. Alas, it doesn't quite work like that.) Several characters are on a mission to campaign for a prospective queen, except none of them like or trust each other, and the prospective queen is not who she seems, and a god keeps telling her to kill all her friends, which she is naturally reluctant to do. Also, there is time travel. IT'S WONDERFUL AND I LOVE IT SO MUCH.
Anyway, the reason I am suddenly lauding these books to you now is that today
izilen emailed me unexpectedly and said, "HEY BECCA I MADE YOU COVER ART FOR YOUR DALEMARK MIX AND ALSO PUT IT IN A MEDIAFIRE FILE FOR EASY DOWNLOAD," because she is amazing.
So hey! Have a Dalemark playlist with proper gorgeous cover art which you can then click to download in convenient .zip files!
This entry is cross-posted at Livejournal from http://skygiants.dreamwidth.org/323331.html. Please feel free to comment here or there! There are currently
comments on Dreamwidth.
For those of you unfamiliar with the Dalemark Quartet, they're set in a culturally and politically divided nation and are some of my favorite Diana Wynne Jones books -- I mean, okay, I have a lot of favorite DWJ books, but the Dalemark Quartet is quite different than a lot of hers books, much less madcap, and much more thoughtful and numinous and sad, with themes about war and revolution and history and storytelling and mythology woven all through it. (It is also one of the main influences on the Attolia books, so, you know, if you like those . . .)
The books in the series, which all stand alone except for the last one, are
Cart and Cwidder: the most outwardly straightforward, this one centers on Moril, the youngest member of a family of traveling musicians whose father has turned out to be harboring dangerous secrets. Eventually the three kids have to make their way alone from the South to the North, in company with a teenaged fugitive and armed with nothing but Moril's potentially magical old cwidder, his sister's sense of bravado, and his brother's emo poetry.
Drowned Ammett: this is nobody else's favorite book of the first three, but it's MY favorite book of the first three, for all the painful character development. Growing up bitter and impoverished in a city in the South, Mitt has spent his whole life training for the huge act of revolutionary terrorism he is going to commit when he turns thirteen; then the time comes for him to carry out his plans and everything goes TERRIBLY WRONG.
The Spellcoats: this is the one that everyone else I know likes best! Probably because it is the most gorgeously numinous of the lot. Tanaqui and her siblings look like the invaders who have just started attacking their people. When their oldest brother comes back from the war different, and their father doesn't come back at all, they have to flee the village and set out on a journey up the river. Which might also be their grandfather. It's complicated.
The Crown of Dalemark: This is the one that brings all the previous three books together, and complicates the setup immensely into the bargain. (Growing up in the South, the protagonists of the first two books both thought there was a binary that went South: OPPRESSED AND TERRIBLE, North: FREE AND WONDERFUL. Alas, it doesn't quite work like that.) Several characters are on a mission to campaign for a prospective queen, except none of them like or trust each other, and the prospective queen is not who she seems, and a god keeps telling her to kill all her friends, which she is naturally reluctant to do. Also, there is time travel. IT'S WONDERFUL AND I LOVE IT SO MUCH.
Anyway, the reason I am suddenly lauding these books to you now is that today
izilen emailed me unexpectedly and said, "HEY BECCA I MADE YOU COVER ART FOR YOUR DALEMARK MIX AND ALSO PUT IT IN A MEDIAFIRE FILE FOR EASY DOWNLOAD," because she is amazing.
So hey! Have a Dalemark playlist with proper gorgeous cover art which you can then click to download in convenient .zip files!
This entry is cross-posted at Livejournal from http://skygiants.dreamwidth.org/323331.html. Please feel free to comment here or there! There are currently
comments on Dreamwidth.