Review: The Riddle

The Riddle by Alison Croggon

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



The Riddle starts out exactly where The Naming left off. It is still largely a travel-quest story, but the havens are fewer and the stakes are much higher than before. I found this second installment did not remind me as much of Tolkien as the first. I believe it's because the story leaves the haunted lands of barrows and wights and the enchanted forests, and pursuit by the Dark is less immediate.

The story grows in leaps and bounds, really taking off in its own direction, and Croggon outdoes herself with her powers of description. The Naming was beautifully written, but The Riddle takes place in a much broader variety of landscapes, and Croggon brings each of them alive so that you feel that you are there with the smells, sounds and sights. She takes you from warm tropical islands and sea voyages with the smell of salt on the air to mountain tops and passes, to the frozen north with dog sleds and northern lights and wolves, where you can feel the ice cracking. It's truly breathtaking, and I love this series as much for the vivid world she evokes as for the people struggling in it.

This is quite a bit darker than The Naming, as reality sets in and Maerad begins to crack under the pressure. I found her annoyingly bratty through at least half of this book. She willfully lashes out and pushes people away, and spends a lot of time feeling sorry for herself in her self-alienation. On the surface, it's disappointing that she is not just the perfect hero-child, riding forth valiantly to sacrifice everything. Looking a little deeper, though, her reactions are plausible - until a few months ago, she was an ignorant slave. Now she has discovered she is fated to save the entire world, and she is still not firm enough in her new life to understand and accept the support and love of others. She is very confused, and unable to bear the weight of this new world on her own. I didn't like her, and I didn't like all of the decisions she made, but I understood where she was coming from.

Fortunately, one of Croggon's strengths is bringing transformation to her characters, and the change is believable because it happens through experience and real circumstances. Maerad is forced to confront the consequences of her childish actions, and she grows through hardship, mistakes, and painful discovery of herself.

Once this soul-journey truly began, I found it very hard to put the book down. While Maerad is undergoing such a painful process, the story itself takes some unexpected turns, defying the 'quest narrative' expectations in my mind and keeping me on the edge of my seat. Rarely these days do I find a story that surprises me as well as evoking such a variety of emotions, and I'm not letting go of this series for a long time.




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