A few weeks ago SCBWI announced a small grant opportunity for writers of MG / YA fantasy and science fiction. It was initiated by Alice Orr Sprague's sister, Michelle Orr, upon A. Orr's death in 2018 after a short struggle with cancer. A. Orr was the author of The World In Amber books in the mid-1980s and, I learned, part-owner of the historic inn, Alexander's, in Key West of my homestate Florida, where she wrote the first book.
Grant applications will be accepted Feb.17-Mar. 20, 2020, so get your MSs ready! Eligibility and submission guidelines are listed here.
Before applying for the grant, I felt I needed to read the books. I want to make clear: what follows is NOT a review. It is NOT my opinion about her books, her writing, her world. It's a summary of each plot and the bare-bones writing techniques used, nothing more.
Orr's writing is different from the compact, focused storytelling expected of YA books now. Her vocabulary is quite high. There are pages of dialogue. I remember reading many a book like this when I was a teen and sucking up books like a vacuum cleaner in the 80s, but I hadn't come across this series. In many ways, it's the premise -- an entire universe, randomly caught in a petrified drop of amber -- that piques the reader's interest.
Luckily, my public library was able to find copies of both, which is a minor miracle! They were still in circulation, as I believe they're considered OP -- out of print -- although you can pick up a few used copies on Amazon (see the links at the end of each review).
A very special thank you to the Oregon Institute of Technology Library, in Klamath Falls, and the McAllen, Texas Library for fulfilling my Interlibrary Loan requests, and thanks to my public library for doing such a great job tracking the books down and requesting them for me!
This first book in the duology starts with the POV of the king of this world encapsulated in amber, known as Phar-Tracil.
King Ambrose wakes in a forest far from his soft, cushy king's bed and spends the next few months eking out a living with an old crone and an imp, who acts as a sort of memory box for all the things humans have done over the course of history. Along the way, he learns he'd gotten soft 'round the tum and in the brain, and his barons and counselors have conspired with King Halus, in another country, to stage a coup and take over. The physical exertion hardens Ambrose's mind and body (he's rather startled it would do this!) and he's prepared to stop the invasion -- if he can get home in time.
The POV then shifts to his wife, the Queen, Maldive, who also wakes up from the same cushy bed, but as a mangy, thin, starving red cat. She goes down to the kitchens, where she's never been before, learns her servants don't think highly of her, begs for food, taunts the dogs, and also overhears the plot against her husband and her son, Isme. The barons figure while they can imprison Ambrose and Maldive, they'll have to kill Isme to prevent a future uprising, as he's pretty well-loved by everyone.
The book then shifts to Isme's POV. He's stuck in a "world of poets' thoughts and pagan magic," and frolicks (this is NOT a MG book) with a satyr and a fawn, then encounters a beautiful real girl, Severn, who's not at all innocent -- she's frolicked with the fawns and satyrs, too, over the years, and knows a thing or two. They get together more than euphemistically, although nothing is graphic by today's romance writing standards, and therefore are paganly "married."
All three POVs mention the character Judah Hilah, a sorcerer, and it's while you're reading Isme's POV that you learn Judah's goal -- to steal Isme's heart, cut it out of his chest, drain him of blood, and thus make him a sorcerer of wild magic and immortal. Along the way Judah also cleverly has Isme eat an apple of knowledge, so he "knows" everything there is to know, once he becomes a sorcerer.
Judah is the engineer of King Ambrose and Queen Maldive's recent enlightening excursions, and they all wake up at the same moment, six days before King Halus is set to invade. They arrest the barons, find lords loyal to them to meet the invasion force on the beach, and Ambrose uses his new-found muscles and a magic sword (imbued with defensive powers by Isme, depicted on the cover) to fight King Halus for the realm.
King Ambrose knocks King Halus unconscious, wins the fight, and Halus sends his forces home while he and King Ambrose become, if not friends, equals. Judah retires to his wife on the Isle of the Blest, having done his duty to the kingdom -- knocking some common sense into a king and queen and creating his successor sorcerer.
I had to read these out of order, as that was the way they came in to my public library (thank you again, McAllen Library!). This book is the story of Isme, who is a sorcerer and used to be a prince before his heart was cut out by his mentor-sorcerer and creator, Judah Hila. He's now immortal and can't be killed, not by any means.
Isme receives wild magic in the form of songs that course through and out of him, and as such, he has little or no control over when it comes to him or what it does when it does come. Nevertheless, he's expected to respond to the realm's crises and use it to save everyone.
In a story line that's eerily reminiscent of what we're experiencing today, with global warming, the realm's oceans start rising. The fishermen notice it first, but then beaches disappear, and soon entire towns have to evacuate and retreat to higher ground as the water levels continue to rise.
Isme thinks at first to use his wild magic to build a way out of the crisis. But the magic won't come when he tries to use it to move giant boulders and stone to help the workmen build seawalls and other barriers.
Instead, his magic pulls him to the northlands. He ventures out, dressed as a commoner, is jumped and stabbed and thus acquires a friend and apprentice, Wings, who rescues him and takes him under his world-wise wing and acts as his guide on the journey. On the way they encounter many obstacles, including giant sheets of ice that are breaking off the realm's polar caps and floating treacherously in the sea, sinking ships and killing fishermen. Wings is killed by outlaws (the scene is depicted on the cover) right before they reach their destination, and in Isme's grief, he takes Wings to Judah Hila to be buried on the Isles of the Blest.
Isme then continues on to the Ice Palace of Ash Badden, King of the Black Isles, and Slowwine, King of the Glaciers. There he discovers the two sorcerer kings have created five or six firesnakes, huge worms that feed on the cold and spit out fire and warmth and are slowly melting the ice cap, by burrowing into it, melting it and creating tunnels. The kings have created something else, too, from the sorcerer's dew in Isme's toe: a "perfectly balanced" man, who has no life yet, although the two kings plan to bring him to life shortly.
Isme hunts them down and his magic finally comes to him, killing the firesnakes first. Then, he goes back to the Ice Kings' palace to deal with the homonculus. Instead of awakening as one man, it splits into two -- one white, one red, one good, one evil -- that Ismes' magic catches up and flings into the stars, forcing them back into one being, and "depositing a new messiah onto a new planet..."
When Isme confronts the two kings about their hubris, they just don't see it, feel no guilt, and promptly start on a new experiment. Crushed, Isme goes to the Isle of the Blest to get guidance from Judah Hila and discovers the Isle has given Wings a new life, and his friend is not dead, after all.
