7/50:
Beyond the Burning Lands by John Christopher (real name, apparently,
Samuel Youd, who knew?)
This was a reread of a childhood favourite. John Christopher's books were regulars on my bookshelf as a kid. His protagonists were sort of heroes, but they had plenty of flaws, so you never felt they were too far removed from one as to be unreal. This is one in a series set in a semi-medieval society of a post-apocalypse England. Luke is the son of a self-made Prince of Winchester who is tapped by the Seers, a sort of spiritualist priesthood, to follow his father to the throne. In this story, he returns to Winchester from exile to a place at the court of his half-brother, who has seized the throne. Luke leads an expedition across the fiery wastelands that separate his land from the Wilsh, and finds the civilization there very different from his own. Adventures of all sorts take place, and eventually he returns to Winchester.
Christopher's stories are well told, IMO, and are a little more relevant, I feel, than books like Susan Cooper's Dark Is Rising series, which was another favourite of mine at the time. Cooper's books weave more traditional myth and legend into the telling than Christopher's, but they feel as if they have somehow less substance to them. Christopher's stories are somewhat abbreviated (they often feel as if he could have provided more background, developed scenes and characters further, spun the story out a bit more), but the characters feel more as if they are enmeshed int he events, where Cooper's seem, like the reader, just to be onlookers.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
