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A review by kristi_asleep_dreaming
The Dubious Hills by Pamela Dean
5.0
What a wonderful, deep, thoughtful book. Very odd fantasy. What a strange line, between knowing and memory and doubt... I don't think I quite grasped it on my first reading, not until after. This was my third reading.
I think most writers telling a tale of this sort would have made escape from the spell the goal, and thus Halver hero, not villian. I'm still not sure. But the society wasn't a bad one, the people not unhappy, mostly, even if they couldn't know it. I suppose the key is the end, with Oonan's "It's not the certain knowledge, the right knowledge, that did us harm, if harm was being done to us. It was refusing to step outside it." And so they didn't know that a mother leaving might cause pain in her children. Until she read about all the cruel mothers.
I wonder about the wizards. It says they set up the society to eliminate war, murder, and yet no hint as to why that particular setup would achieve that goal. Perhaps just that no one had the knowledge of killing? Or perhaps the loss of certainty... If they thought war was rooted in certainties, leading to fanaticisms.
I think most writers telling a tale of this sort would have made escape from the spell the goal, and thus Halver hero, not villian. I'm still not sure. But the society wasn't a bad one, the people not unhappy, mostly, even if they couldn't know it. I suppose the key is the end, with Oonan's "It's not the certain knowledge, the right knowledge, that did us harm, if harm was being done to us. It was refusing to step outside it." And so they didn't know that a mother leaving might cause pain in her children. Until she read about all the cruel mothers.
I wonder about the wizards. It says they set up the society to eliminate war, murder, and yet no hint as to why that particular setup would achieve that goal. Perhaps just that no one had the knowledge of killing? Or perhaps the loss of certainty... If they thought war was rooted in certainties, leading to fanaticisms.