On "Kingfisher": A Book Review

Title: Kingfisher

Author: Patricia McKillip 

Genre: Fantasy

About the book…  

Pierce Oliver longs for more than the small fishing town he’s grown up in and when his mother, a sorceress, finally reveals to him that the father he has never known is a knight, he knows he has to go to the city to find him. Headed there, he comes across a small town with an inn where they hold an unusual weekly ritual and upon stealing a knife used in that ritual begins an unexpected journey that leads him to family and a quest for a missing artifact.

What I think...

Okay, so I actually have a negative review for once. McKillip tends to be a hit or miss author for me and this book was a definite miss. 

She chooses to look at the grail/king fisher king myth in a contemporary setting. Having read a number of her other books, which do not take place in a contemporary setting, I found it jarring when sunglasses or limos came up in the story. In later portions of the book this is not quite as bad as cars, motor bikes, and phones are mentioned more frequently. This is not to say I did not find reading about a basilisk sitting on a fire engine to create an interesting image, it just wasn’t expected for what she usually writes about and it wasn’t well integrated. 

Certain parts dragged out and were seemingly more for the purpose of filling space than for the benefit of the story. Similarly, there were a considerable amount of intentional misleads as to where the plot was going which got annoying. The ending is somewhat rushed, though there’s a semi-second ending following to wrap things up in some ways.

I’d forget who certain characters were, as there seemed to be a lot with little purpose other than to fill space.  

To sum it all up…

Not one of my favorite McKillip books, especially having read other better ones to compare it with. Overall, I wish I would have re-read The Bell at Sealey Head or Ombria in Shadow instead (both which I highly recommend). ♥