The Forgotten Beasts of Eld: The 50th Anniversary Edition by Patricia A. McKillip. Marjorie M. Liu (Introduction), Gail Carriger (Introduction), Stephanie Law (Illustrator) and Tom Canty (Cover artist). (Tachyon Publications, 2024

By Lis Carey: This is an early McKillip novel, and as one expects of McKillip, it has beautiful, lyrical language. This 50^th anniversary edition has a beautiful Tom Canty cover, and excellent internal illustrations by Stephanie Law add very appropriate visual element.

It’s also a book I’ve reread every few years. Each time, I see more nuance and complexity. My appreciation of the growth and complexities of the characters get stronger, as I see more of it with each reading.

Sybel is the daughter and granddaughter of wizards, and a wizard herself, continuing the family tradition of collecting strange and magical animals. She needs no one except her magical animals. She has not mixed with her neighbors much, or at all, and has no children. What she has had is her own adventures, in pursuit of more magical knowledge and creatures.

Then a local, lesser lord, Coren, arrives at her gate carrying a baby boy. The baby is Tamlorn, the son of her mother’s younger sister, and also of King Drede.

But Drede believes, with some reason it must be said, that Tamlorn is in fact the son of one of Coren’s older brother, Norrell. Norrell and Rhianna are dead, killed by Drede. Coren asks her to love, protect, and raise Tamlorn.

Twelve years later, Coren comes back, wanting to take Tamlorn away, to help Coren’s family overthrow Drede, take revenge for Norrell’s death, and place Tamlorn on the throne. Tamlorn doesn’t want to go, and Sybel sends Coren away.

But this makes Tamlorn curious about his father. When Drede arrives, having discovered that Tamlorn really is his son, and Rhianna and Norrell never had the chance to be alone together, Tamlorn wants to meet him. Ultimately, he decides he wants to go with Drede.

This is the point from which Sybel’s life truly becomes complicated.

Up to this point, she has more or less replicated the lives of her father and grandfather, living in her tower, collecting and caring for her magical animals, studying magic. And raising one child. This is a point of some difference, in that Tamlorn is not a wizardling, and Sybel sought the help of a local witch woman, Maelga, which her father and grandfather never had, and they become, in effect, a family of three, rather than a family of two.

But now Tamlorn is gone to become Drede’s heir.

And Coren and his brothers still want their revenge.

It’s easy to worry at the question of whether Drede or Coren is the real bad guy, or if they both are. Yet McKillip lets us see gradually that they each have real and valid reasons for their positions and actions, even if neither of them is completely in the right, either.

Coren and his brothers have a plan. Drede also has a plan, based on his fear of having such a powerful wizard close by, and with an interest in his heir. And Sybel is determined not to be used. Nor is Sybel the sweet, mild, quiet woman her beauty and her outwardly quiet life with her magical animals might make her appear. Nor have her adventures in pursuit of magical beasts and magical knowledge been safe ones. Even fear of her magic doesn’t alert her neighbors to how tough she is at her core.

When Drede pays another wizard, Mithrin, to eliminate the danger he sees in Sybel, while enabling him to keep her as his meek, contented, but still magically powerful wife, he unleashes something that will disrupt all their lives, as Sybel becomes a third party seeking revenge.

In many ways I’m describing the wrong things about this book. Sybel, Coren, Tamlorn, Maelga, and even Drede are all multilayered and interesting characters. Sybel’s magical animals are not just living trophies, but powerful, opinionated, and often wise. The language is beautiful and rich, but never so ornate as to be a distraction. And the three major contenders here, Sybel, Coren, and Drede, all need to confront their fears in the most literal and terrifying way possible, if they are to survive and achieve their goals.

This is a wonderful book, and it’s a joy to reread it after many years.