2016 read #75: The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley.

The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley
246 pages
Published 1985
Read from September 27 to September 29
Rating: ★★½ out of 5

There comes a time when you must ask yourself why you're reading YA fantasy novels from the 1980s. Especially right after completing a book as psychologically intense as The Girl on the Train, this is lightweight stuff -- not a relaxing change of pace so much as a reason to question my life choices (or at least my tastes in literature).

A prequel to McKinley's The Blue Sword, telling the story of the fabled Aerin the Dragon-Killer, The Hero and the Crown is enjoyable enough, but utterly average and unremarkable. The proto-steampunk elements that drew me into the early chapters of Sword are of course absent here, leaving behind a fantasy kingdom setting that could have been painted on the box of a table-top RPG or repurposed from any number of generic fantasy kingdoms from 1970s sword-and-sorcery. The climactic showdown pits our hero against a beguiling, silver-tongued sorcerer atop an impossibly high black tower. Said hero is what I'm now coming to recognize as a stock Robin McKinley protagonist: A tall, awkward girl with no self-confidence, happiest reading a book or brushing a horse far from the notice of other people, who gradually learns of her great power and earns great competence. It's good stuff for a kid to read, probably, but such a generic character in such a generic setting made it hard at times to care about what was going on.

That said, Hero earns points for its charm. Damar never really develops into anything unique, as far as fantasy settings go, but after Sword, it carries the warmth of familiarity. Aerin is too bland to stand out for much of the book, but from about the halfway point on, her inevitable maturation offers hints (only hints, but discernible nonetheless) of McKinley's later skill with sensitivity and pathos. None of the other characters develop much at all, which is a shame, given that this may be one of the earliest YA fantasy love triangles I've ever encountered.