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Herr Der Winde (2011)

by Rachel Neumeier(Favorite Author)

3.37 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

340420655X (ISBN13: 9783404206551)

languge

English

genre

Paranormal Fantasy

publisher

Bastei Lübbe Taschenbuch

series

Griffin Mage

review 1: Griffins have come to Feierabiand, bringing the desert with them. But these fierce creatures are in need of a healer, and when Kes agrees to go with them she little suspects the turns her life will take. For the rest of the country, however, the griffins are a frightening invasion, one they cannot understand and cannot stop. Can peace exist between two so wildly opposing species? Or will griffin's and men's blood once more spill on desert sands?From the beginning, this is a innovative twist on a creature far too often ignored in fantasy. The griffins here are not merely beasts, nor furred and feathered men: they are alien, predatorial, elemental. The strangeness of them keeps everyone encountering them off-balance. It's never clear where the griffins will go, or what they ... morewant.Nor are the human characters overshadowed by such fierce competition. Kes is shy and often confused, but not overly simplistic. Her childlike faith and hope are pitted against complicated questions to which there are no easy right answers. Bertaud is a man also thrown headlong into this morass, and to his dismay his loyalties are not nearly as clear as he thought them to be. When forced to weigh necessity against right, he cannot find a happy medium but must decide which part of his soul he would rather sacrifice.The one thing that is a bit hard to follow is the names. I love the long, strange names of the griffins, and the equally strange (if somewhat shorter) names of the people, but for a first read-through it required a bit of paging back to remember which name went with which character.The book ends well, particularly for the first of a trilogy. It could easily stand alone. I am very glad there will be more to come. I rate this book Highly Recommended.
review 2: Secondary-world fantasy about a tribe of griffins sandwiched between two warring human kingdoms; the POV alternates between your fantasy-standard teenage girl trying to help the griffins out, and a guy who's the advisor to one of the kings. (I could not quite figure out whether the guy was supposed to have a crush on the king or if he was just weirdly jealous of the queen for no reason.)There's some interesting worldbuilding here -- I liked the descriptions of the griffins' fire magic, and the idea of people having empathic "affinity" for certain kinds of animals, while certainly not new in fantasy, is explored interestingly. But the characters, especially Kes (the teenage girl) are kind of unsympathetic and hard to root for. I know the plot is about her losing her humanity, but I kept thinking that there had to be a way to write her that would make me like her anyway, and I couldn't come up with it.A lot of the book is devoted to fighting and political/diplomatic wrangling, and that stuff here is kind of meh. Still, I liked the griffins, and I will probably read the rest of the trilogy anyway. less

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