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4.0 out of 5 stars
Mythic story of the foundation of Dalemark, Sep 10 2001
The third book in Diana Wynne Jones' Dalemark Quartet is _The Spellcoats_. This book is set in the prehistory of Dalemark, hundreds or thousands of years prior to the action of the first two books (and, I assume, the fourth). It deals with a family of children: Robin, Gull, Hern, Mallard (or Duck), and the narrator, Tanaqui, who is presented as weaving the entire story into the title "spellcoats". The so-called "Heathens" have invaded their land, and Gull and their father are recruited to fight -- a war from which Gull returns apparently mad, and from which their father returns not at all. At the same time, the children face hostility from their fellow villagers, because they are bright-haired like the Heathens. As an enormous flood strikes the village, they are forced to flee down the great River to the Sea. Along the way they receive mysterious advice from their dead Mother, and from a strange man, who seems to be a wizard, and who Robin falls in love with. They learn that an evil wizard, Kankredin, awaits at the mouth of the river, and that he seems to be calling Gull to him. After encounters with both Kankredin and the young King of the Heathens, they head back upriver with their own King, and with their strangely changed "Undying" figure. All the children must learn their own surprising destinies, and the true nature of their Undying, of their Mother, of the "wizard" Tanamil, of Kankredin and their River. Magic is closer to the surface in this book than in the other two, and the events closer to mythical events. It is partly a nation-formation tale -- it becomes clear that this is the story of how Dalemark as Dalemark came to be -- as such, an important set up, I would guess, for the final volume, which presumably will concern the reunification of the sundered Kingdom. Perhaps because it's such a "mythical" book, it's also darker, and perhaps grander, than the first two books. All in all, another very fine Diana Wynne Jones story.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Deep magic from the dawn of time, Mar 13 2002
Unlike the standard fantasy series, in which each volume follows the continuing adventures of a single cast of characters - a
series of tunes played on the same set of instruments - this one really is designed as a "quartet". Each of the first three books
is all but independent of the rest, told in its own distinct voice. They interlock, but in subtle ways - through common
geography, family names that link with the long history of Dalemark and its peculiar "gods". Diana Wynne Jones always
provides the pleasure of well-told, formula-busting stories. In her Quartet, she also provides the pleasure of watching an
intricate pattern unfold behind the stories.The third volume is the true heart of the series, epic and mysterious, bright-lit and misty, awash in magical happenings and still more magical lyricism. "The Spellcoats" is the only book in the Quartet which is told in the first person. The voice we hear belongs to a young girl named Tanaqui, living with her family and her family's collection of gods on the banks of the great River. She doesn't speak her story, or write it - she weaves the words into an intricately detailed "rugcoat", a kind of wearable diary. The time is many centuries before the Dalemark of the first two volumes. There are no guns or bombs, scarcely any musical instruments, and the continent has a different shape, dominated by the one huge brown north-flowing river, worshipped by Tanaqui's neighbors as a god in its own right. The surprising mythology of this dawn world comes slowly into focus for us as Tanaqui weaves her story. Neither her family, nor the river-worshipers, nor the "Heathens" with whom her whole country is at war, quite understand what the "gods" really are, or the predicament those gods are in. Their religions all have a piece of the truth, and the whole truth must be pieced together to defend the land from the evil mage Kankredin, who imprisons the souls of the dead in his far-flung nets. Just for rousing storytelling, I give volumes 1 and 3 four and a half stars, volumes 2 and 4 four stars. But the Quartet is more
than the sum of its parts, and the series as a whole merits five.
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by Diana Wynne Jones
by Diana Wynne Jones
by Diana Wynne Jones
by Jones D Wynne
by Diana W Jones
