Good morning, squiders. Hope you’re doing well!
I finally finished The Elvenbane, which I think I started two years ago. Do you ever do this? There wasn’t anything wrong with the story–and I did enjoy it in the end–but sometimes I just put a book down and then…take forever in picking it back up. If I pick it back up. It’s different than a conscious decision to not finish a book for whatever reason.
I’m not 100% sure where I picked up the book, but it has a pink dot on the side, so maybe Goodwill?
Title: The Elvenbane
Author: Andre Norton and Mercedes Lackey
Genre: Fantasy
Publication Year: 1991
Pros: Great worldbuilding with several distinct cultures
Cons: Older fantasy format with lots of viewpoints
I do want to say that I’m not against having a lot of viewpoints–high fantasy tends to do this, even today–but I’m not wild about including viewpoints we only see once. Maybe we just…don’t need to see what that person is up to.
ANYWAY, The Elvenbane is principally the story of Shana, an elf/human halfbreed who is found and raised by dragons. The dragons live in caves in the desert, keeping their existence a careful secret from the elves who run the rest of the world (both dragons and elves consider the humans to be animals) so they can live in peace. They can shapeshift, so occasionally some of them go among the elves/humans to see what they’re up to/cause trouble, including spreading a prophecy about the Elvenbane, a half breed who will destroy the elves. (As such halfbreeds are prohibited.)
There’s a lot going on here, and while the book is in limited third (so only one person’s head at a time) there’s a lot of different types of characters. As I said, there’s a number of single chapters from some characters’ viewpoints (and a lot of those almost feel like unfinished threads–like they were throwing things at the wall to see what would stick) which I didn’t particularly care for, and sometimes other characters get lost.
Something interesting I noted is that a lot of the action happens offstage. Like, a viewpoint will end with the lead up to something happening, and then the next viewpoint will be reacting to that thing having happened. In some cases it made me feel a bit robbed, but in general it worked okay, mostly because the battle or the fight or whatever was skipped is not really the point of the story, you know? Not sure how to explain that.
I did enjoy it though, and apparently it’s the first book of a three book series (the fourth was planned but never published due to Andre Norton’s death). I don’t think I’ll read the rest of the books–I feel like we left things in a good place, and I had no idea there were any more books until I started this blog post.
I think I picked this book up because Andre Norton and Mercedes Lackey are both SFF greats who I’ve heard of but have read very little by. I wonder how they went about writing together. I’m always very interested in how other authors handle collaborations.
Have you read The Elvenbane, squiders? What’s your favorite Andre Norton and/or Mercedes Lackey book?
