I have been a fan of Patricia McKillips' fantasy for some years now. It is always moving and lyrical, and she captures the feel of old fairy tales better than any other author I know of. I have slowly been acquiring all of her books, and so in the course of my collecting I happened upon Moon-Flash in an out-of-print mass market edition. I immediately liked the cover art, for the alien animals and because Kyreol was a woman of color -- something still FAR too rare on the SF and Fantasy shelves. Something about the cover, too, reminded me of Island of the Blue Dolphins, though I can not tell you what it was.
I finally got around to reading Moon-Flash because I was falling behind in my SF Challenge and it was very short. I read it in a morning's sitting, falling easily into McKillip's more toned-down style (at least, compared to her fantasy; there's still plenty of symbolism and metaphor compared to most SF out there) and into Kyreol's child-like perspective. This is definitely a book suitable for a fairly young audience -- I would say it's suitable for even precocious 9-year olds -- but it is one of those rare books that despite that still holds riches for mature audiences. Children will immediately be able to relate to Kyreol's vast curiosity and fear; adults will be able to understand better the parts of the world that Kyreol can not -- its simplicities and its strangenesses, its tragedies, its hard choices.
It is a coming-of-age tale, a romance, a meditation on the power of dreams. It is a traveler's tale, and a tale of first contact. It is also a delicately beautiful exploration of the ethics of Star Trek's Prime Directive: an exploration, I say, because McKillip gives us no easy answers. But ultimately, it is a moving book about love, in all its forms: romantic love, the love between parents and children, and the abstract love of entire peoples, which can build monuments and change worlds.
I finally got around to reading Moon-Flash because I was falling behind in my SF Challenge and it was very short. I read it in a morning's sitting, falling easily into McKillip's more toned-down style (at least, compared to her fantasy; there's still plenty of symbolism and metaphor compared to most SF out there) and into Kyreol's child-like perspective. This is definitely a book suitable for a fairly young audience -- I would say it's suitable for even precocious 9-year olds -- but it is one of those rare books that despite that still holds riches for mature audiences. Children will immediately be able to relate to Kyreol's vast curiosity and fear; adults will be able to understand better the parts of the world that Kyreol can not -- its simplicities and its strangenesses, its tragedies, its hard choices.
It is a coming-of-age tale, a romance, a meditation on the power of dreams. It is a traveler's tale, and a tale of first contact. It is also a delicately beautiful exploration of the ethics of Star Trek's Prime Directive: an exploration, I say, because McKillip gives us no easy answers. But ultimately, it is a moving book about love, in all its forms: romantic love, the love between parents and children, and the abstract love of entire peoples, which can build monuments and change worlds.
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