Pegasus, Robin McKinley (Oh the cruelty!)

Recently, at the library, as I was running around after two small, giggling and squealing hooligans,futilely trying to say the library's not the place for tiggy, I snatched up a book by one of my very very favouritest authors. 
I've known it was out for awhile, as the reviews I had glanced at hadn't been that enthusiastic and I was scared of being disappointed. 
I wasn't disappointed. In Pegasus, Robin McKinley made up another rich and wonderful world, another likeable, dog-loving, horse-loving (in this case more Pegasus loving)heroine, and two more rich and dense cultures. The main character Sylvi, was a delight to spend time with, and her bond-mate and best friend the black Pegasus, Ebon, who introduces her to his elegant and graceful culture had all the best qualities of a teenager - playfulness, inventiveness, lack of ceremony. 
For the time I was reading I was totally immersed and interruptions found me blinking and confused. 
As usual the writing was descriptive and warm and all too easy to be lost in. There was wonder. There were sections that just made my heart sing and soar.
It wasn't until I was reaching the end of the book that I began to twig to the fatal flaw. 
There weren't that many pages to go and yet nothing had really been resolved - it seemed like a climax had been built to - but not enough words left to fix everything in a way that was... fulfilling. 
Frowning began. Both at the thought of the book ending (Nooooo!) and that... I didn't see how the resolution could be crammed in. 
So I did some rapid googling... and discovered there would be no resolution. The story had been cut in half (McKinley doesn't believe in sequels so it's 'one story in two books') and ... this is the killer -
- The next book is not due out till 2014. 
That's right folks. 
2014. 
So yeah. 
Much as I loved it. 
(And I did, I did I did! I will re-read it again very very soon. And then re-read it and then put it on my too-be-reread every year list) It was alive and lovely and rapidly became very very dear to me. 
I would advise you not to read this first half until 2014 when you can read the story in it's entirety and thus not be left hanging for  two *&%$##%^^ years. 

Beauty and Rose Daughter by Robin McKinley

It takes a certain chutzpah to re-tell a story and sell it to the rest of us twice over. 
However I am exceptionally grateful that Robin Mckinley decided to do just that. 
 Beauty was Robin Mckinley's first re-telling of the lovely fairy story Beauty and the Beast, and is the more straight forward and traditional re-telling, although none the less enchanting for that. It is an exceptionally satisfying and comforting read and just what a fairy story aught to be (in yours truly's humble opinion!) The writing in Beauty is lush and beautiful, the characters are agreeable and the ending is deliciously happy. 
Twenty odd years later McKinley returned to the scene of the crime and wrote Rose Daughter which is a darker, more intricate and complex re-telling of the same story. 
While possibly not as satisfying (it diverges a little too much from the fairy story as I know and love it and there are a few too many loose ends) it is still exceptionally interesting, has some wonderful details and descriptions and is still an enchanting read in its own right. If it were not that I had read Beauty first, and found it perfect, my praise might be stronger yet. 
While each book on it's own is lively and vivid and Mckinley's strong and distinctive voice is always a joy, reading the two together makes for an even richer experience and I find it interesting to compare the two and see the result of twenty extra years. 
It is particularly lovely to see the blooming of Mckinley's love of roses in Rose Daughter. In an afterward McKinley explained that she wrote Rose Daughter after moving to England and acquiring a Rose Garden (also a husband, in one of my favourite romantic stories... sigh) 
I read Rose Daughter again recently as a.) I have been un-packing my books into our new house - happy sighs - and it was at hand and b.) we have been taming our own roses in our somewhat overgrown garden (this is a massive understatement) and I now more fully appreciate and understand Mckinley's loving pages of description of pruning and compost and the deep scratches a true rose afficiando wears with pride.  
My beloved and I spent an entire afternoon recently demolishing the vast tower of a dead and dying rose, discovering only at the end of our labour that the beast had actually swallowed and half-digested a poor plum tree. 
I now understand the satisfaction of Beauty in Rose Daughter as she tends to first her own cottage rose garden and later the Beast's green house full of neglected and dying roses. As I busily prune and plant, being scratched and torn in the process and discovering it to be somewhat addictive, the two stories keep me company - and such pleasant company!