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Type of bind: Paperback
EAN num: 9780142402443
ISBN number: 0142402443
Label: Puffin
Manufacturer: Puffin
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 272
Printing Date: October 21, 2004
Publishing house: Puffin
Age index: Young Adult
Sale Popularity Level: 600542
Studio: Puffin
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What magical beings inhabit earth’s waters? Some are as almost-familiar as the mer- people; some as strange as the thing glimpsed only as a golden eye in a pool at the edge of Damar’s Great Desert Kalarsham, where the mad god Geljdreth rules; or as majestic as the unknowable, immense Kraken, dark beyond the darkness of the deepest ocean, who will one day rise and rule the world. These six tales from the remarkable storytellers Robin McKinley and Peter Dickinson transform the simple element of water into something very powerful indeed.
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Rated by buyers 
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This book consists of 6 short stories- 3 by Mckinley and 3 by Dickinson; as indicated by the title they all center around water. Mckinley is by far the better author, but Dickinson's contributions are worth reading as well. I always enjoy reading Robin Mckinley's short stories because they are self-contained and provide the reader with a full story. Many authors make the mistake of writing a short story as if it were a single chapter in a novel; Mckinley does not fall into this trap (which is odd, given the multitude of loose ends that exist in some of her more recent novels). This book is definitely worth the price, especially for a Mckinley fan.
Rated by buyers -
I picked up this book because it featured Robin McKinley's stories. She is a highly talented author.
Peter Dickinson's stories are on the most part drier and more brittle than McKinley's smooth, tautly woven prose. He lacks the beauty and mystery of McKinley's writing, but he introduced a fine piece in The Kraken, which is well worth the read.
McKinley, on the other hand, displays three well-turned stories that further her reputation as a writer. She never hesitates to flirt with old myths and legends, drawing on their ancient mystery, and spinning out new tales that combine old stories into her imaginative prose. Her writing is never forced or overdone. Each is seamlessly woven and smooth.
She features three stories, but The Pool in the Desert is definitely the gem of the entire collection. It tells of a girl's longing for a place she can visit only in her dreams. She falls in love with the dark sentinel of the desert, and yet she cannot stay in Damar, but is drawn back each morning to her dull life and her domineering parents. Her longing for Damar overcomes her humdrum life and she finds a way to journey to the place of her dreams. Overall, a strangely wistful but powerful story.
I'd say that the Pool in the Desert is probably the only one that shines. Water is definitely worth the read, if only as an introduction to Robin McKinley's writing.
Rated by buyers -
On the whole, I was drawn into RM's stories more quickly than PD's (my favourites are "The Sea King's Son" and "The Water Horse"), although after repeated exposure I've developed some liking for two of his three. McKinley's stories herein seem to me to have more detailed and polished world-building. None of the six, to my knowledge, have been published previously.
"Mermaid Song" (PD) Setting = very like Puritan New England. (I'd have enjoyed it more if PD had simply made it an alternate Puritan history.) While the mundane setting may be off-putting at first, the sea-people's introduction is well handled when it comes. In a way, this is two stories - a family tradition (handed down from mother to daughter) and the story of the protagonist, young Pitiable Nasmith, left with her maternal grandparents upon her mother's death in childbirth.
Near the end of her life, Pitiable's grandmother tells her the story behind the most unusual of her songs - how their ancestress Charity Goodrich really survived shipwreck upon arriving in the new world as a girl. Although the People's culture isn't fleshed out much, the very first contact scene between Charity and her sea-children rescuers is realistically detailed. In a neat reversal of some sea-people stories, the air-breathing person was a pet, kept in an undersea cave with no way out.
The present-day story turns grim when the grandfather takes to drink after his wife's death, which seems to have quenched what little of his heart survived his daughter's passing. Eventually he takes to walking along the seashore, and finds something that only Pitiable has learned to recognize, shaping up to a possible reversal of the secret tradition.
"The Sea-King's Son" (RM) Jenny, only child of a well-off farming family, grew into shyness as she grew up, and never let on that she had fallen in love with Robert, a good-looking younger son of another farming family from a village on the far side of the harbour separating the small towns they live in - a harbour under a curse by the king of the sea people, to avenge an injustice inflicted by the land people in the days when the two races had dealings with one another (though only a trade in luxury items, never friendship, each race considering the other too alien to grow close to). But when Jenny's parents make plans to send her away to the city for a season, in the hope that she might shake off her shyness, and perhaps find a good husband, Robert finally makes a move - for love of Jenny's inheritance rather than for her. But late in their courtship, Jenny makes an unannounced visit alone to Robert's family home, and what she learns there is more terrible for her than any ancient tale of sea-curses, and drives her onto the shortest road home - the direct route across the harbour.
"Sea Serpent" (PD) I was disappointed with the initial scene-setting, although the wave-riders eventually won me over a bit. The conflict between the New religion's chief god and the Old's chief goddess comes to a head as the builder of a new temple seeks building stone taken from the goddess' shrine (which seemed unoriginal). The magic-working temple-builder forces the neutral wave-riders, worshippers of the Sea God, to help transport the stones. The details of the minutiae, practical politics, and ethics of the wave-riders' work make the latter portion of the story a decent read.
"Water Horse" (RM) "This island is a strange place...a threshold between land and water; and the boundary between us is striven for, and fought over, and it shifts sometimes this way, and sometimes that...it is over this one island that the war is fought, and if once we yielded, then all those lands behind us - farther from the boundary we protect - would immediately come under threat, and they have no Guardians. We are the Guardians; and here we hold the line." So says Western Mouth to her inland-born apprentice, Tamia, who began her training at fourteen as do all apprentices, and can't help worrying that she's not really suitable for the work. But Western Mouth was a very old woman by the time Tamia came along...When Western Mouth has a stroke five years into Tamia's apprenticeship, the defenses are torn open, allowing a creature of sea-magic to slip through that Tamia must face in her Guardian's stead.
"Kraken" (PD) Somewhat similar to "Mermaid Song", although the two humans swept into the water are saved by more supernatural means and for more complex reasons. The protagonist, a young sea-princess indulging in her last rule-breaking before coming of age, runs serious risks to try to return them to the upper air.
"A Pool in the Desert" (RM) The only Damar story herein - not surprising, for a country bordered by desert in the more recent ages of the world. The protagonist, a present-day Homelander (not unlike our own present), begins dreaming of a time so far in Damar's past that it has become ... Read More
Rated by buyers 
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This book struck me a blow across the mouth when I very first read it, and I've grown in appreciation of it on subsequent readings. These are not pretty stories, but neither are they squalid; they are sometimes slow, sometimes difficult, sometimes piercing, all chilly and wet. These mermaids have sharp fins and keen calls, and it is an extremely refreshing shock to read both authors' contributions to the book. As I have time, I will be reading more of Peter Dickinson, whom I had not read previously. This is a simply good book.
Rated by buyers -
I've been a fan of McKinley's writing ever since I randomly selected "Spindle's End" off the shelf at the local Borders, and so when I discovered the collection of short stories put together by her and her husband Peter Dickenson (all based around my favorite of the four elements), I was thrilled.
Once again, Robin has not let me down in her production of fantastic tales. From the hopeful, innocent, and adorably naive Sea-King's Son to the continuance of her famous Damarian stories, I was sucked into the worlds that Robin creates once again and came out the other side with a smile on my face.
Peter Dickenson's stories were a delightfully dark contrast to Robin's upbeat and cheerful writing style. I admit that, at first, I found his stories to be slightly dry and slow (though The Kraken was wonderful), and even left off reading Sea Serpent for boredom. However, just this past week, I decided to give the story another go, as it was the only one in the book I hadn't read and I was desperate for new material. It took me but a few pages to realize that he was, in fact, writing about one of my favorite subjects: Arthurian Legend. I'd read in one of the other customer reviews that they felt that the gender-issues presented in this story were never fully explained. They must have, however, not caught the obvious references to Merlin, Stonehenge, the English Channel, and the battle between Christianity and Paganism (the male Church vs. the priestesses of Avalon). After seeing the connection, I paid closer attention to the story and, while it didn't become my favorite, it certainly raised my opinion of Dickenson as a writer.
Overall, the stories were well worth reading and were a great source of entertainment and enjoyment. I can only hope that the pair will release a book for each of the other three elements. Congrats Robin and Peter, you did a great job.
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