Despite having devoured and loved and reread (and reread) all of Patricia Mckillip's other books, I somehow skipped over this one? It's been a few years since I immersed myself in one of hers, but it's so easy to fall back into her gorgeous and totally unique prose. It's like she's painting with words. I don't even know how to describe it but I've never run across another author whose writing begins to come close. It's like she weaves these elaborate dreams around you that slowly begin to dissolve as soon as you turn the last page.

The story swoops and loops, taking the reader and characters on a journey of self and ambition and fear and captivity and what it means to be free and to love. It's haunting and mysterious and wondrous and breathtakingly beautiful.

Sybel is mysterious and distant and cold but also warm and loving and hungry. Coren looks at her and sees stars in his eyes, sees another of her mythical beasts. Watching them come together and get pulled apart over and over was hard, but worth it in the end.

Now that I've finished, I want nothing more than to revisit all of her other books because nothing else could ever compare. The thought that there won't be any more is incredibly sad, but at least I'll be able to continue rereading them forever.

*Thanks to NetGalley and Tachyon Publications for providing an early copy of the 50th anniversary special edition for review.

I'm so glad this is being re-released so more people will have an opportunity to read it. There is no fantasy writer like Patricia A. McKillip. This story reads like a fairytale from another world. The prose is exceptional and the story is ancient and modern at the same time. Sybel is.a unique protagonist, a fiercely independent young wizard living alone on a mountain with her menagerie of mythical beasts. We follow her journey as she learns to love and hate. Everyone should read this.

"The Forgotten Beasts of Eld" is a timeless classic that beautifully interweaves magic, mythology, and intricate character development. Patricia A. McKillip crafts a mesmerizing tale that delves deep into themes of power, love, and identity. The novel's lyrical prose enchants the reader, while its mythical creatures add layers of complexity and wonder. McKillip masterfully constructs a world where each choice comes with weighty consequences, making it a compelling read that lingers in your thoughts long after you've closed the book. Highly recommended for fantasy aficionados.

I just finished reading this wonderful, fantasy novel by Patricia A. McKillip and let me just say: WOW!!

I received an ARC of The Forgotten Beasts of Eld by NetGalley as they are releasing a special edition to celebrate the 50th anniversary of this magical novel 💖

And just as Gail Carriger said, this is like no fantasy novel I have ever read.

Patricia’s writing transported me through prose into a magical world of talking beasts, powerful wizards and weak kings… but it is also so much more than that, it is a tale of love and loss, revenge and forgiveness, found family and the darkness within.

It was so beautifully written I could not put it down!!

I honestly was not expecting to love this book as much as I did but it unexpectedly made its way into my top favorites.

This is a book I will talk about for the rest of my life 🤍

All thoughts are my own 💭

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Tachyon for providing me with an advanced copy of this book for review.

The Forgotten Beasts of Eld is one of my favorite books from childhood. I probably read it 15 times as a kid and wore out the spine of my paperback copy so badly it almost broke in half. I hadn't picked it back up for over 20 years, but when I saw this on NetGalley, I really wanted to re-read it and see if it held up all these years later.

It does. Oh boy, does it hold up. This new Tachyon edition also has beautiful illustrations, which compliment the story perfectly. I'll definitely buy a copy of this for myself when it becomes available.

As for the story... Sybel is probably one of my favorite heroines. Stoic, powerful, and virtually alone (except for the magical creatures she inherited from her wizard father), she lives high in the mountains. One day, a lord from one of the fiefdoms below brings her a child to keep safe. In raising the child and meeting this lord and subsequent events thereafter, she learns to love, to hate, and to examine her own actions/mind. The novel has powerful philosophical and moral messages, but it's also so beautifully and artfully written that reading each sentence is a pleasure.

I might compare my emotional experience of reading The Forgotten Beasts of Eld to how I feel about Peter S. Beagle's The Last Unicorn (which is my favorite fantasy novel). It's a book I know I'll come back to in 5 years, 10 years from now, and still find something new to love.

This review is for the 50th Anniversary edition of Patricia McKillip's eerie and at times disturbing story of the wizard Sybel, who is collector and caretaker of a menagerie of magical and legendary animals. This edition has an introduction by Marjorie M. Liu (Monstress, Dark Wolverine) and a foreword by Gail Carriger (The Parasol Protectorate, Tinkered Stars). This edition also has artwork by Stephanie Law (Dreamscapes).

The Forgotten Beasts of Eld is a book I have kept going back to since I was a teenager, and I was extremely excited to get a galley copy of this book from Net Galley. Our Protagonist had been seeking a white bird called Liralen when her search is interrupted when a man comes to her door with a baby who turns out to be her cousin. Sybel's aunt had apparently had an affair with the young man's brother, and the king wants the baby dead. The man, a young and strangely knowledgeable noble named Coren is not quite knowledgeable enough to realize that isolated young women who have very little contact with the outside world are not expert baby minders. She is however willing to add the baby to her collections of creatures she takes care of.

(Sybel is one of those characters who give me neurodivergent feelings. Sybel has a somewhat flat affect, and does not realize that saying something like, "oh, he'll make a nice addition to my collection" is not the most reassuring thing you could possibly say to someone. She doesn't understand social interactions, very well and Coren is initially so offput by this he thinks she's being unkind/cruel instead of having immediately slotted the baby into "something I need to figure out how to care for because I know nothing about babies." This is a big reason why I like this book so much and keep coming back to it.)

Sybel raises her cousin Tamlorn with the help of a witch who lives down the road. Years pass, and it's discovered that Tam is really the king's son and not a bastard. Coren attempts to get her on the side of his brothers but this goes poorly.(She doesn't want Tamlorn to end up a political pawn, and wants nothing to do with the outside world and politics in general.) Sybel, who has only the very vaguest concept of personal boundaries summons the king and interviews him to see if he'd be a good parent for Tam. This turns out to be a very large mistake! The king decides to try luring and then coercing Sybel into marrying him. This goes very poorly for all concerned!

The Forgotten Beasts of Eld is a fairy tale about agency and consent, love and devotion, hatred and revenge. I generally have a somewhat mixed reaction to it. It's undeniably a favorite, but there is a tiny bit of fridge horror in certain aspects of the story. (Sybel's family history at the beginning of the book--especially where you find out that Sybel's father kidnapped her mother--kind of highlights her terror when something similar happens to her. ) So, I go through stages where I find Eld to be too upsetting to read. At the same time I find Sybel's journey toward greater human interaction to be compelling. McKillip's work has a thoughtful, introspective and dreamlike feel, and The Forgotten Beasts of Eld is just a powerful and thought-provoking as the first time I read it in my teens.

Beautiful anniversary edition of a modern fantasy classic. McKillip's writing is gorgeous and eadily stands the test of time. There's an enthralling fairy tale here as well as a story about how you are treated determining who you become - and how to become something better. Simply lovely.