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language: English
country: USA
year: 1983
form: novel
genre(s): fantasy
dates read: 17.7.24
having now read Elizabeth A. Lynn’s The Red Hawk I’m just a few uncollected short stories short of having read all of her adult fiction. the book, which was published as a fancy hardcover in 1983, is a short literary folktale set in one of the settings she regularly worked in, Ryoka. as literary folktales go, it’s pretty good. its language is consciously archaic, but apart from one “thyselves” (addressing multiple people) it’s smoothly executed (with the most prominently archaic language coming from a goddess whose speech is meant to be stylized). the narrative is convincingly folkloresque in spite of what struck me at times as perhaps an overabundance of detail.
the main character is a woman astronomer chosen by a creator goddess to oversee the management of the winds (north, south, east, west, and “upper”, the upper atmosphere winds that don’t touch the ground, which I thought was a fun addition) while the goddess visits her daughter in the sea. unfortunately for the astronomer, (1) the supernatural perception the goddess gives her allows her to perceive the effects of her management of the winds, the grief and sorrow that follow deadly storms, hard winters, etc.; (2) time is different for gods than for humans, so while the goddess subjectively is only gone for a few weeks, for the astronomer it’s several years; and (3) the goddess’s wayward son, who refused the responsibility of managing the winds, is irked that his mother left a human in charge instead, and decides to take matters into his own hands.
the result is an affair (multi-year from the astronomer’s perspective, a few weeks from the god’s), twin demigod daughters with opposite temperaments, and finally cruel abandonment as the fickle son steals the cloak that allows the astronomer to direct the winds, throwing the world into chaos, driving her to conceal herself in the shape of the titular hawk in order to escape her grief, and finally drawing the goddess back when she perceives the chaos.
it does feel a bit inconclusive — all the plot threads are tied up, but it nonetheless feels like something is missing. overall, though, I enjoyed it, albeit not as much as some of Lynn’s other short fiction (and especially her novels).
moods: reflective, sad