3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
- Published on Amazon.com
Clouds hang low in the sky where I live. They seem to touch the flat brown fields around our village, and to shadow the broad backs of the horses pulling the plow.
From the opening sentence I was trapped in the dark, oppressing world Patricia Elliot so convincingly creates in Murkmere.
This is a world where the search for knowledge is severely punished and birds are worshiped as gods; their wishes, mysteriously translated by an inbreeding elite called the Ministration, used to submit the people. High above them, in the distant capital, the Lord Protector, divinely bound with the Eagle, the supreme of all Gods, rules uncontested.
Yet not everyone is content. Forbidden books are still read in hiding and the peasants, pushed to their limits by a brutal militia, are flirting with rebellion. But nothing threatens the established order more than the rumors about the avia. The avia, the legend claims, are the descendents of those who long ago dared to challenge the gods by flying. In punishment, they were forced to be trapped between two forms, bird and human, for ever.
Far from the capital, at the edge of the civilized world, lies Murkmere, a rural state that has been deteriorating since its Master became crippled in an accident following the death of his beloved wife in childbirth.
As the book begins Aggie, a girl from the nearby village, is called to the manor in Murkmere to be the companion of Leah, the Master's ward, a wild girl of fifteen, he plans to make his heir on her sixteenth birthday.
Like in so many classics of the gothic genre--the tale of a young girl coming to a decrepit old manor--the girl is the narrator of the story. But in this case, the choice of Aggie as the narrator is, in my opinion, a big mistake.
Aggie is a secondary character, with an uninteresting story of her own. Yet because she is the narrator the reader is forced to follow her through all her boring daily activities. The story picks up when Aggie interacts with Leah, with the master, or even with Silas, the handsome, mysterious steward. These three are, by far, much more interesting characters than Aggie. Unfortunately they are not in the foreground often enough.
Aggie is not only an unreliable narrator--her vision of the events she relates is distorted by her religious zeal--but her motivations and actions are somehow bizarre. She is always at the right time and place, without a convincing reason to be there except that she must tell the reader what is happening. Also, her changing feelings for her mistress, a development that propels most of her comings and goings, seems forced.
Aggie is a character so secondary that if she were to be taken from the story, the main plot would remain unchanged.
Murkmere had the potential of being a powerful story, but the choice of the wrong narrator, an ending that lacks resolution and a plot that fails to address the most interesting elements of the story ruined it for me.
At the end, and although I was impressed by the haunting beauty of Murkmere and the depth of the world the author has created, I was disappointed.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
- Published on Amazon.com
In a land where the Eagle is God and bird omens determine the course of human life, young Aggie Cotter leaves her village for the nearby estate, Murkmere, where she will be companion to Leah, the willful ward of the estate's Master. As she struggles to gain acceptance, Aggie begins to suspect that nothing is what she thought or as it seemed: not Leah, who disregards the superstitions of faith and has an unnatural bond with the mere's swans--nor Aggie's family, or the religion and government that she has always trusted. Murkmere suffers from a number of faults, including poorly constructed characters and an unsatisfying conclusion, yet the book is engrossing and possesses a certain sense of otherworldy magic that keeps the reader constantly curious, always hoping to discover more. Although I have reservations, I recommend the book on the basis of that mystery and magic, and I hope that the sequel delves deeper into that promising aspect.
On the whole, this book is unremarkable. It is peppered by a number of faults: The villains, both large and local, are unoriginal, some following the tired trope of twisting religion for personal gain, some merely evil by nature. The narrator, although the purported protagonist, goes through little character growth and is much less interesting than Leah, who has a more important story to tell. Although the book's climax is satisfying, the ending feels empty--for Aggie, there is no real conclusion; the reader is not privy to the end of Leah's story. Although minor on their own, together these faults combine to take the book down a notch, making it a little too simple to read, a little too shallow in depth.
For all of this, Murkmere has a certain charm. By and large the writing style is nothing special, but skillful pacing builds a sense of foreboding, inserts action to hold reader interest, and leads to a satisfying climax that fulfills the sense and scope of the book. More than all of this, there is also a strange, unearthly beauty to the story: in the obsession with birds, in the Leah's still-secretive nature, in the secrets also of Murkmere itself, the book seems to offer a magical world that is not yet explored. I wish that the book did delve more into this world, indulge in the fantastical aspects, show us more of Leah's story and her character--yet even if I wish for more, what is present is atmospheric and interesting, pulling the reader deep into the book (which is quite hard to put down) and keeping him ever curious for more information, for one more glimpse of magic.
It was the mysterious fantastical aspects that kept me avidly interested in Murkmere and it is on that basis that I recommend the book. While far from the best I've ever read, I found myself constantly intrigued. I hope that the sequel better embraces this aspect--the faith without close-binding rules, the magic without fear or superstition--and, even better, that they adopt Leah as the narrator or at least the primary character. However, even in the sequel disappoints, I do recommend this book. It has many faults, but it also has a sense of beauty, mystery, and wonder that I wish I saw in more books and greatly enjoyed the the tantalizing, limited glimpses in which it is presented here.