The Book of Atrix Wolfe by Patricia A. McKillip

I suppose you can read into this the message that language is a kind of magic – why else do we read fiction, if not to be enchanted by things that are not real and yet somehow true? The ambiguously named Saro is unable to speak, and yet she is capable of magic, although the spells often rely on language. When trying to extinguish a candle flame, Talis instead shatters every nearby mirror.

Everyone’s lives have been overshadowed by the murder committed by the Hunter – and, inasmuch as the Hunter is his proxy, by Atrix Wolfe himself.Īnother theme is the paradoxical nature of the spells written in the eponymous book. Remind you of anyone? This book was published a couple of years before Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, though, so it’s OK.Īnother main character is called Sorrow – or Saro (in an American accent I suppose they’re homophones) – and sorrow is a major theme of the novel. The main character, Prince Talis Pelucir, is a bespectacled trainee wizard whose parents were killed (one directly, one indirectly) by a malevolent magical being when he was a baby. The spell that created the Hunter turns out to have wreaked devastation beyond the world of mortals the fey Queen of the Wood has been seeking her lost daughter for two decades. The Hunter is awakened a couple of decades later when the prince born on the night of the slaughter discovers a paradoxical spellbook written by the wizard. The resulting magical entity is uncontrollable and kills many and ends the war. The story starts with a prologue set twenty years before the main narrative takes places and shows how one of the land’s most powerful wizards – Atrix Wolfe – is persuaded, coerced – tricked? I’m still not entirely clear on the motivation – into working some sorcery to facilitate a war of conquest. Even at less than 250 pages, it took me a long time to get through it – I had other things that just seemed to demand my attention more. Like that previous story, The Book of Atrix Wolfe is short, gentle, thoughtful, but less than totally gripping. McKillip is not one of the more well known authors, but I’ve read one of her previous works, The Riddle-Master Trilogy, and remembered it as interesting, low-key, well written, but a little slow and dull.

I picked this book up recently at What the Book? in Seoul.

The Book of Atrix Wolfe by Patricia A. McKillip