King of Morning, Queen of Day

Don't be deceived by the silly romance cover. This is a good sf/fantasy novel. McDonald has fun parodying Victorian and cyberpunk fiction in this story tracing three generations of Irish women's interaction with the "mygmus" (mythoconsciousness).

Katherine Kurtz calls McDonald 'a poet masquerading as a novelist'. She's right. McDonald has essentially written 2 novellas and a novel. Each is very different in terms of sense of time, and even place, although Ireland is the locale of all three tales. Inteconnected, yes; still, each stands well on its own. 'Craigdarragh' is an Irish manor estate at the cusp of World War 1, specifically 1913. Chiefly through diary entries, we meet Emily Desmond and her parents, Edward and Caroline. Emily, at 13, is a very imaginative girl on the verge of sexual awareness. Edward is an eccentic astronomer, confounde by his daughter, who risks family name and fortune to communicate with what he believes to be alien visitors fom the stars. Caroline is a respected poet with more than a slight acquaintance with her daughter's interest in the Otherworld. Emily's explorations of Bridestone Wood, and its repercussions, form one story line. Edward's obsessin with alien visitors marks the second. Along the way we are introduced to a blind musician and his female companion, a dancer. There is Dr. Hannibal Rooke, a paranormal investigator. Finally, the poet William Butler Yeats. The musician, the dancer and the doctor will visit in the other tales. 'The Mythlines'- Jessica Caldwell is one of three sisters in Ireland during the 1930s. An artist, she has big dreams at 17 and 3/4. She also has an attitude problem. Tiresias and Gonzaga, a pair of 'itinerant journeymen,' are trying to find her, for Jessica is beginning to see the mythlines, borders between our world and Faery. She is seeing Dr. Rooke, who has an interest in helping Jessica confront her past. Then, there's Damian, her new boyfriend. member of the I.R.A. 'Shekinah' introduces us to Enye MacColl, a twenty-something in advertisement by day. By night she battles the phaguses of the Otherland, using Japanese swordfighting techniques. Enye, too, sees the mythlines; as a child she invented a complete world in her grandmother's garden. Along the way, we meet Jaypee, Saul, Elliot, Mr. Antrobus, and the Midnight Children. All play an important part in Enye MacColl's journey. Three women of Ireland. Each forced to confront great tragedy. Ian McDonald does an excellent job at telling their stories. 'In its contemporary form, the pookah has been demythologised by the centuries into another member of the pantheon of fairies major and minor- a rural Puck figure, generally good-natured, if prone to ocassional acts of minor domestic mischief. In its ancient manifestations, the pookah has been terrible and dangerous, the spirit of the forest itself, with its roots in the racial memory of the woolly mammoth of the periglacial fringelands, hunting with tusk and claw and sinew the sights of the Mesolithic settlers.'

I knew, just by reading the back cover blurb, that this book was right up my alley. Women with mystical powers? Check. Faeries? Check. Ireland? Check. In fact, I think the only reason I didn't discover this book earlier is that it was published in 1991, and I only started reading fantasy sometime in the late nineties. The story begins with Emily, a bratty but endearing girl of fifteen, poised on the edge of adulthood in the early 20th century. Emily knows she is special, set apart-and when she sees the faeries in the wood by her family's home, she knows she will never be satisfied with ordinary life. Emily makes a colossal mess of things, as bratty fifteen-year-olds will do, and sets in motion events that will affect generations to come. What follows is a fairy tale, but not precisely a tale of faeries; it's more of an exploration of the nature of reality and of myth, as seen through the eyes of Emily and two other women: Jessica, a glib-tongued teenager of the 1930s whose tall tales have an uncanny way of coming true; and Enye, a woman of the late 1980s, torn between everyday life and a battle with supernatural forces from the world beyond. This is a stunning story and one that I'll probably reread over and over again. It doesn't suffer one bit from the ailment that afflicts so many multigenerational novels-the tendency for one or more of the intertwined stories to lack luster. All three of the women, and their lives and times, are vivid and passionate. And I must say, there are few male authors who can write such nuanced and three-dimensional female characters. Get your hands on a used copy of this. I wish they'd reprint it...

I first read this novel about ten years ago, and reread it faithfully every year. It's a lyrical exploration of the lives of three generations of Irish women entangled by a supernatural force that they don't understand but can't escape. Haunting and riveting, it remains in my thoughts even today.

This story was so beautiful. It was very descriptive and captivating. I had to read it a few times to understand it, but I loved it.