#riddle master

These are some of my favourite ‘older’ High Fantasties. They might be considered slow-paced by most standards now, but the atmosphere, characters, philosophical riddles and metaphors fill me with a sense of warmth and wonder.

There may not be a lot of the battlefield clashes (often a staple of the fantasy genre), but there’s peril aplenty, and often of a far more intimate kind.

These three titles/trilogies are very different from each other, but my fondness for them is very similar. Not just escapism or comfort reading (although they can certainly be that, too), these books have things to say. And I love the way in which they say them.

Earthsea trilogy, by Ursula K. Le Guin (1968-73)

Riddle-Master trilogy, by Patricia A. McKillip (1976-79)

Patricia McKillip was by far my favorite author in my early teen years. Her along with Tanith Lee, Peter S. Beagle, Ursula Le Guin, Tolkien and Roger Zelazny. She died recently and in my reminiscence and feeling the loss of this guiding light, I started reading Stepping from the Shadows which I understand is semi-autobiographic in a magical realist sort of way, starting in childhood and continuing into the college years. Now inspired to better understand her in the context of her lived through experience, I was disappointed to find very little on the web in the way of photos or info.

Hello, fellow McKillip fan! I have indeed read and enjoyed Ombria in Shadow, though I think my favourite of her standalone novels is probably Alphabet of Thorn.

If you love McKillip’s work, definitely give Riddle Master a go. In terms of genre I would definitely not classify it as ‘YA Fantasy’, especially as the genre is currently defined and characterised. There are young protagonists (the main character is in his twenties) as well as plenty of characters who are...very much not young. And the series itself, in terms of style and themes and characterisation is far more epic fantasy (despite being shorter than even a single volume of many modern epic fantasy series) than anything else, really. 

Are there specific cliches you’re worried about? I can probably confirm/deny without too much risk of spoilers, but overall most of the things I’d think of as cliche in current YA fantasy are not things I think of when I think of RM.