the night is Halloween, lady

[timeripple]

the morn is Hallowday

For me, Halloween is always the time of Tam Lin books. By which I mean The Perilous Gard, though there is also Tam Lin and An Earthly Knight. Tam Lin I rather resent, somehow, and I found An Earthly Knight not as compelling as I'd hoped. Tithe I like quite a lot, though

Comments

[echoindarkness]

popping in to second Grey King, although I'm so swamped in steampunk research I'm barely aware it IS Samhain today.

I am a terrible DiR fan. And Bran/Will fangirl

[timeripple]

But steampunk research is an excellent thing to be swamped in!

[idiosyncreant]

I quite agree!

Actually about all three of the Tam Lin themed books and your statements of them, except for that I expected to An Earthly Knight to be not as well written as it was. Tam Lin seemed disorganized, though I understand why so many of my acquaintance adore it as a retelling...

[timeripple]

I think part most of my problem with Tam Lin is irrational and purely personal. I read it a year or two after a difficult and unhappy first year in college, so I think I resent Janet's intellectually glorious first year. There were wonderful things about my first year, but intellectually glorious it was not. It is a very, very good thing I did not encounter this book before starting college, because entertaining any such expectations would have utterly broken my heart.

Things got better after I made friends and decided to major in Classics, but I read the book right after a semester in which Herodotus and I did not get along very well. The scene where Janet happily translates an unknown Herodotus passage on sight for her final exam sent me into paroxysms of rage.

I do have a secret desire to go chalk the Iliad on a wall somewhere, though. Reunion!

[satakieli]

My problem with Tam Lin is mostly pacing, and the dearth of fore-and-back-connections. The individual pages are great, but the whole does not hang together well for me. Now, real life is not sensibly paced or tightly plotted, and certainly does not include appropriate foreshadowing or exclude inappropriate foreshadowing, but I have come to expect books to hang together more sensibly than real life, and not feel quite so accidental. I had this problem again and perhaps even more so with The Secret Country, which is why I haven't yet read any of its sequels.

For the first time, you are tempting me to go to reunion. (The majority of my acquaintance are not in my graduating class, for obvious reasons.) I think campus rules would prefer a rain-accessible surface to a wall, though...

[timeripple]

*cough*tunnel*cough*