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A review by trish204
Ka: Dar Oakley in the Ruin of Ymr by John Crowley
3.0
After having been to the Limestone Kingdom and magical Austin in my last two books, I thought this was the best choice, thematically. Well ...
We meet Dark Oakley, a crow (yes yes, I know the bird above is NOT a crow, but ravens are more prominent on the internet *shrugs*). We meet him back when he didn't have a name. We follow him when he is named, when he finds a world next to his own (Ka). We follow him when he travels from one world to the next, meeting horses, owls, boars, foxes, humans of all ages and more. Eventually, we watch him find his mate and steal the secret of immortality - and when he loses it again. Dar Oakley dies, is reborn without memory of his former life/knowledge, always regains the memory eventually, learns more from life to life, but always dies again eventually. Until ...
This is an Odyssey-ish quest through a number of realms that combines a number of mythological tropes and themes and characters. Coyote is in here too (just like in my previous two books).
The problem? The way these tropes and themes and characters were treated weren't anything new. Add to that the fact that the way the story is told is long-winded and just trickling along at too slow a pace. There is no rise-and-fall, there isn't any (or much) suspense, and while the realms change and therefore challenge Dar Oakley and his mate, I never felt challenged or surprised or ... much of anything.
I sometimes liked the philosophical examination of the nature of things (creatures) and evolution of stories as well as the book's point that we all ARE stories. As a bookworm, the thought that we are nothing without thought and memory (Hugin and Munin), without stories we tell and stories that are told about us, appealed to me. There is a saying that people cannot live on bread and water alone because we need stories to tell us HOW to live. Sadly, this story, despite its potential and the research into the social behavior of crows (the difference to ravens, too), didn't have much to say on that subject. It reminded me of the ramblings of a guy I'm trapped in a car with on a long-ass road trip through the middle of nowhere after I made the mistake of asking for a story because I know he's written a book. *lol* That sounds harsh, I know, but while I didn't DNF or scream with frustration, I was disappointed with how the source material was treated here, especially after the interesting foreshadowing we got in the book's prologue.
The writing also didn't blow me away. After a few people I know have called the prose graceful and lyrical and beautiful, I might have expected too much. I'm not sure. But the prose was nothing special in my opinion.
So while this wasn't truly bad, it was also nothing remarkable, sadly. So why 3 stars? Well, because I'm a sucker for corvids and mythology and stories about the nature of stories (thought + memory = stories), mythological creatures and us silly little humans smack in the middle of it all.
We meet Dark Oakley, a crow (yes yes, I know the bird above is NOT a crow, but ravens are more prominent on the internet *shrugs*). We meet him back when he didn't have a name. We follow him when he is named, when he finds a world next to his own (Ka). We follow him when he travels from one world to the next, meeting horses, owls, boars, foxes, humans of all ages and more. Eventually, we watch him find his mate and steal the secret of immortality - and when he loses it again. Dar Oakley dies, is reborn without memory of his former life/knowledge, always regains the memory eventually, learns more from life to life, but always dies again eventually. Until ...
This is an Odyssey-ish quest through a number of realms that combines a number of mythological tropes and themes and characters. Coyote is in here too (just like in my previous two books).
The problem? The way these tropes and themes and characters were treated weren't anything new. Add to that the fact that the way the story is told is long-winded and just trickling along at too slow a pace. There is no rise-and-fall, there isn't any (or much) suspense, and while the realms change and therefore challenge Dar Oakley and his mate, I never felt challenged or surprised or ... much of anything.
I sometimes liked the philosophical examination of the nature of things (creatures) and evolution of stories as well as the book's point that we all ARE stories. As a bookworm, the thought that we are nothing without thought and memory (Hugin and Munin), without stories we tell and stories that are told about us, appealed to me. There is a saying that people cannot live on bread and water alone because we need stories to tell us HOW to live. Sadly, this story, despite its potential and the research into the social behavior of crows (the difference to ravens, too), didn't have much to say on that subject. It reminded me of the ramblings of a guy I'm trapped in a car with on a long-ass road trip through the middle of nowhere after I made the mistake of asking for a story because I know he's written a book. *lol* That sounds harsh, I know, but while I didn't DNF or scream with frustration, I was disappointed with how the source material was treated here, especially after the interesting foreshadowing we got in the book's prologue.
The writing also didn't blow me away. After a few people I know have called the prose graceful and lyrical and beautiful, I might have expected too much. I'm not sure. But the prose was nothing special in my opinion.
So while this wasn't truly bad, it was also nothing remarkable, sadly. So why 3 stars? Well, because I'm a sucker for corvids and mythology and stories about the nature of stories (thought + memory = stories), mythological creatures and us silly little humans smack in the middle of it all.