Why PEGASUS Needs to Sell Really Well*
I went to the dentist again today. This was the tactical meeting. I didn’t have to sit in the Official Chair of Torture.** He has other, subtler methods of rendering a vict—client into a small pile of bone chips and burnt hair. Wide screen photos of my teeth, for example. AAAAAAAUGH. Enough to scare anybody into self immolation.
Okay, here’s the deal: over the next two years, I’m going to be spending approximately the entry level salary of an editorial assistant in New York City solely on my teeth.
And that’s only for the immediate problems. I have to hope that the rest of them will refrain from exploding, vaporizing, or falling out till we get this first lot stapled in.*** And can turn our attention to the next lot. . . . Because there will be a next lot. My teeth are the dental version of the South Sea Bubble.†
So this afternoon, after they ejected me onto the street again, we are talking industrial strength cheering up needed.††
So I came home and reread the following, which had arrived in my inbox this morning.†††
I emailed your publisher to request an ARC and (truthfully) described myself as a fan since 1979‡. Imagine how thrilled I was to find a copy of Pegasus on my doorstep a few days ago! Below is the review I posted to the YALSA Book Discussions list serve. [yalsa-bk@ala.org]
Susan Cassidy
Eight hundred years ago, humans came to this land and allied themselves with the pegasi to defeat the monstrous creatures that preyed upon both species. In the intervening centuries, the Alliance between the pegasi and the humans became a defining characteristic of both races. And although they have created a structured and mutually beneficial relationship, their inability to speak each other’s language without the aid of magician translators has kept the two races in many ways unknown to each other.
As the fourth child of the current human king, Sylvi is bonded on her twelfth birthday to Ebon, the fourth child of the pegasus king. The identity of her bond-mate was a well-kept secret, but Sylvi stuns the audience at the ceremony when she calls Ebon by name—a name she learns when he silently (and snarkily) introduces himself to her during the ceremony. That Ebon and Sylvi can understand each other perfectly through thought-speech is unheard of in the known history of human/pegasus relations.
Over the next four years, Sylvi and Ebon become closer to each other than they are to anyone else. Their unusual bond affects not just themselves, however: it will have major consequences for both of their countries.
One of my students last term, while booktalking The Outlaws of Sherwood, said that McKinley’s books are for people who like good stories…and words. McKinley’s words are here in full force, creating a story that seems to be unfolding at a leisurely pace but is, in fact, steadily building to a cliffhanging ending that won’t be resolved until the sequel (still being written) is released.
Sylvi’s coming of age story is intertwined with politics, history, power, magic, families, art, war, and above all, love. The love between Sylvi and her rational, compassionate father is a highlight of the book, as is the portrayal of Sylvi’s soldier mother. But it is in the creation of the pegasi, and Ebon in particular, that McKinley works her best magic. The pegasi are beings who are shaped somewhat like a horse, with the hollow bones of a bird, the wings of an archangel, and a civilization as advanced as that of the humans. The love story between Sylvi and Ebon is the core of this book, and it is a testament to McKinley’s gifts that although the humans in Sylvi’s world think her relationship with Ebon is unusual (and possibly dangerous), the reader enthusiastically embraces it and will have difficulty waiting for more.
Susan Cassidy
Teen and Children’s Librarian
Stanislaus County Library
Adjunct Instructor
Modesto Junior College
Modesto, CA
And yes. I feel better. ‡‡
Meanwhile, speaking of the McKinley oeuvre, there’s a SUNSHINE giveaway happening here: http://calico-reaction.livejournal.com/163766.html which includes as one of the options the shiny brand-new gold-cover edition. Which I am still waiting for even ONE copy of.
And anyone who doesn’t automatically hang on every daily entry here‡‡‡ you might want to check back on Saturday. Because there might be a PEGASUS ARC giveaway. There might. Mwa ha ha ha ha ha. So reread the review and think about it.
* * *
* Aside from paying off Third House.
** I’ve told you he has a video screen on the ceiling over the C of T, haven’t I? It usually shows fish. He’s got an entire library of piscine adventures and I’m beginning to feel rather Pavlovian about it all. I’m afraid the next time I meet a real aquarium—in a restaurant, for example, or someone’s sitting room—I’ll burst into helpless tears and run away.
*** Do you know that implants are made out of titanium? I love it. Well, I sort of love it. What am I going to be able to do with the Fifty Million Dollar Teeth, aside from grinding them^ over the smoking hole in the ground that used to be my bank balance? Bite aggressive off lead dogs? Okay, that might be worth it.
^ Gently. Not to damage the merchandise.
† Insert modern financial scandal of choice here.
†† I’D RATHER BE GARDENING. I am drowning in little green things. Colin was going to be late for handbells today and I was in the greenhouse stuffing marigold seedlings in a bigger tray when I heard Niall being assaulted by hellhounds in the kitchen.^ I had come back from the dentist to a more than knee-high assemblage of cardboard plant-nursery boxes on the front step bursting with little green things saying, yo, get me out of here, I’m talking to you, and that means now. My newly arrived rooted dahlia cuttings have been liberally sprinkled with slugbait^^ still in their plastic shipping tray.
^ Arooooou! Get ’im! —Silly man. I’d left the top of the front door open, and he’d tried to come in.
^^ Thank the gods for organic slugbait. It’s probably not as ‘organic’ as all that, but this is a straw I am willing to clutch. I do use a lot of copper rings, but copper rings are expensive.
††† Yes. I asked if I could post it here. She said yes.
‡ Note that BEAUTY, my first book, only came out in 1978.
‡‡ Also Peter made mayonnaise^ and opened a bottle of champagne.
^ It does not get better than Peter’s mayonnaise. And the first English asparagus of the season.
‡‡‡ Hmmph.
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