The Hero and The Crown

The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley

Aerin, the daughter of a witch and the king she bewitched, lives a lonely life, derided by her countrymen, scorned for her lack of gifts. Somehow she takes an elderly, broken-down warrior horse and heads off to kill a small dragon. In the process, she finds her life.

It was grueling to read the parts of the story where Aerin faces the enormous dragon, burning off her hair, scarring her. It felt, for some reason, more difficult to read than stories of men facing dragons. I do not know why.

I don’t know what children would make of this story. Big vocabulary. Tragedy. Love.

But I liked it a lot. Aerin learns much from a mystical mage, falls in love with him, and yet chooses to leave him to save her people, her ungrateful, cruel people.

More Love for the Hero and the Crown

Like Melissa, I read The Hero and The Crown a long time ago. I was an adult, but I've always liked fantasy, and when this was publicized as award-winning YA fantasy, I eagerly picked it up and wasn't disappointed. I went on to read everything that Robin McKinley published (which has not been nearly enough over the years!), most recently Sunshine - a post-apocalyptic vampire story - and I've loved them all. So I'm hardly an objective reviewer either.

I never re-read The Hero and the Crown after I discovered it in the late 80's, though, so when I picked it up last week I really couldn't remember why I loved it so much, nor many of the details of the story.

It didn't take me long to realize that (again, like Melissa) it was the writing and the characters - especially Aerin, the main character - that really got to me. Like J.R.R. Tolkien (sorry, but that's what got me hooked so hard on fantasy as a child), McKinley combines the mythical and the down-to-earth perfectly. And furthermore, she writes about a young girl, the rescue of a beautiful and intelligent horse, dragons, and secret powers - I would have read this and re-read it countless times if it had been out when I was an adolescent. Now, I noticed how cleverly that McKinley portrayed Aerin as a likable, irreverant, smart outsider - much like Rae in Sunshine, come to think of it.

There are a few things that bothered me a bit this time around. McKinley does an incredible job of world-building, but the Damarian names for things jarred sometimes. I didn't mind sol and sola (princes and princesses) so much, but hafor (for "folk of the household") and yerig and folstza and a few other terms interrupted the narrative unnecessarily.

There are two love stories in the book - I liked them both, and the more than "happily ever after" ending was a refreshing change. Funny how I completely forgot about Luthe (and pretty much Tor, too) since the first time I read The Hero and the Crown. Mostly I remembered Aerin, her horse, and the dragon. But although there's nothing particularly explicit about Aerin's relationship with Luthe, I think that it makes the book more appropriate for older Newbery readers. Plus, the writing (though exquisite), can be rather intense. Take this excerpt about despair:

A blast of grief, of the deaths of children, of crippling diseases that took beauty at once but withheld death; of unconsummated love, of love lost or twisted and grown to hate; of noble deeds that proved useless, that broke the hearts of their doers; of betrayal without reason, of guilt without penance, of all the human miseries that have ever occurred; all this struck them, like the breath of a slaughterhouse, or the blow of a murderer. (p. 208).

Have you ever read a more poetic description of despair and depression? Luckily, it is overcome, and the story ends happily with puppies and kittens and love. For a while, anyway, and isn't that the case in real life, too?

Hero and the Crown

I told myself when I signed on to this project, that I wasn't going to read any of the Newbery's that I've already read. Then Alicia came up with her July challenge, and I noticed that no one else has read this one, by Robin McKinley, yet. And I figured it was about time to re-visit this old friend.

There is no way I can give this book an objective review; it is one of the few that solidified my love of YA books as well as earning McKinley a special place in my heart and on my shelves. I love it. I have loved it since I first read it, which wasn't as long ago as it should have been (I was only 12 in 1984 when this book came out; this was one book I should have read, and would have loved, when I was that age. But I missed it completely.)

It's a companion book to The Blue Sword (if you haven't read that one, you should. It was written first, but you can read these two in any order), though it takes place centuries before. Aerin is the daughter of Damar's king, Arlbeth, though she's not comfortable in that place. For one, her mother was a foreigner, a Northerner, and not especially trusted. And she's often despised and ridiculed for existing. She does have one friend, Tor, who sticks up for her, teaches her swordplay and horsemanship, and eventually falls in love with her. Aerin tries to find her place in a world that she doesn't feel she belongs in. After a near-fatal accident, she discovers a recipe of sorts for kenet, which eventually leads her to being able to fight the little dragons that annoy and disturb the countryside. That leads, on one fateful day, to her facing the Black Dragon, Maur, and from there, discovering and embracing her destiny.

It's a marvelous tale. Aerin is perfect: headstrong, lovable, understandable. What girl hasn't felt that she fit in? What girl doesn't long to make her parents proud, but is ashamed of her insecurity? What girl doesn't want to know how she can make a difference? Aerin is one of those characters that you embrace and cheer and understand and love. And whose courage and bravery seem not super-heroic, but real and attainable.

This conversation takes place soon after Aerin kills her first dragon, and is, afterward, sworn to serve the king:

Aerin and her father looked at each other. For the first time she had official position in his court; she had not merely been permitted her place, as she had grudgingly been permitted her undeniable place at his side as his daughter, but she had won it. She carried the king's sword, and thus was, however irregularly, a member of his armies and his loyal sworn servant as well as his daughter. She had a place of her own -- both taken and granted. Aerin clutched the spears to her breast, painfully banging her knee with the sword scabbard in the process. She nodded.

"Good. If you had remained hidden, I would have sent Gebeth again -- and think of the honor you would have lost. "

Aerin, who seemed to have lost her voice instead, nodded again.

"Another lesson for you, my dear. Royalty isn't allowed to hide -- at least not once it has declared itself."

A little of her power of speech came back to her, and she croaked, "I have hidden all my life."

Something like a smile glimmered in Arlbeth's eyes. "Do I not know this? I have thought more and more often of what I must do if you did not stand forth of your own accord. But you have -- if not quite in the manner I might have wished -- and I shall take every advantage of it."

And McKinley's writing is nearly flawless (there's a place at the end where you have to read through a couple of times to get what happened). This is when Aerin faces Maur:

Maur raised its head with a snap, and the spear bounced harmlessly off the horny ridge beneath its eye; and Talat lurched out of the way of the striking tail. The dragon's head snaked around as Talat evaded the tail, and Talat dodged again, and fire sang past Aerin's ear, fire like nothing either Talat or Aerin had seen before, any more than this dragon was like any other dragon they had seen. The fire was nearly white, like lightning, and it smelled hard and metallic; it smelled like the desert at noon, it smelled like a forest fire; and the blast of air that sheathed it was hotter than any Damarian forge.

There really isn't much more to say about it. It's one of my favorites, and may always be. It's also become one of my oldest daughter's favorites, something which I'm very happy about. And not just because it's an excellent book. But because it's an excellent book about an admirable girl.