The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley

I expected to love this book, but I’m not sure if I do. It was a lot more “real” but also a lot more “epic” than young adult books I usually read. A lot of time (i.e. months and years) was spent learning and convalescing - in many fantasy books, the “Chosen One” has two days of training and manages to defeat monsters that no one has ever come close to hurting. The character also seemed to grow with age - incidents in her childhood are described with detail, even if insignificant, but comparatively few pages are spent on the more heroic parts. It was an interesting writing style, I need to process more to figure out how I feel about it. I definitely liked the protagonist and most of the characters. This might be a spoiler, but I thought the second love interest was unnecessary, but understandable. After building up Tor to be such a sympathetic character, I wasn’t prepared to like anyone else. However, it did add some realism to the book.

Sorry if that was too much of a ramble!

Posted on LibraryThing on January 19, 2011