Books like The Forgotten Beasts of Eld

how to express how much I love Patricia McKillip and her books, how much her stories move me, how they slowly and invisibly transform from enthralling fairy tale to a genuinely emotional experience? how to describe the prose: so refined and elegant, so expressive, so light and delicate, so deep and beautiful, and yet often so simple? just so: her arrangements are perfect, my own kind of perfect. how to describe all of that, to make into something as plodding as a book review? love is a subjective experience and so resists codification. it would be easier to describe why I liked that walk in a forest, that beam of sunlight hitting the leaves in just that way; or how I like to watch the fog roll in past that great hill, making of the world a dreamscape. words seems so small for such a task, and yet words are the very tools she uses.the tale is about a magical woman in a forest. she is a cold woman and her forest is surrounded by an angry world. she surrounds herself in turn, with what she loves, the only things she truly understands: her beasts - her friends. the story is about being loved and falling in love; it is about making bad decisions and letting terrible things turn you into something terrible. it is about being understood and not being understood, why understanding is not always necessary, why it can be hardest to understand yourself. it is about letting go; it is about letting other people be a part of you. it is a fable, and so much more.