Books like The Woman Who Loved Reindeer

I gave The DarkAngel (of The DarkAngel Trilogy) by Meredith Ann Pierce three stars when I read it in early 2009. Absence made my heart grow fonder, or something, and I later upgraded it to a fox force five. I would tell my sister about it and that made it a different kind of reading experience. Something like loving something because it meant something to you when you're young. Images that stuck out in my mind, what represented wistfulness and longing. It's something, I think, how reading a book that's telling in a confidential way can have a feeling of, "Man, I wish I had had this when I was young!", or "It's not the same now..." and sharing secrets doesn't make it feel bigger, just same-sized and somehow emptier for being same-sized. It's different if you read it as a kid or teenager kind of story. If you're young and everyone you know talks to you like you're TOO young, you know? Someone to share with... There are talking quietly to the person you're most yourself around kinds of telling that make you wish you always had that young book. I'm sure that I retold it in the way that I'd talk to myself and that made it feel more intimate... Or I'm sometimes young and that's the secret for getting special always-been-there-for-me childhood favorites. The something might be feeling as if someone is talking to you. Too old? I loved the idea of the unwilling nursemaid who gives up her helpless charge to a witch. Not everyone wants to be a mother. The vampiric wraiths, twisting pity into guilt. The gargoyles and biting hands that feed. I know the next two books had weaker parts too (a lot of fantasy I've read is oddly reminiscent of the other). You don't have to have youthful memories to feel that bittersweet nostalgia. So... What the hell is the deal here? I was done being cynical and "Come on and be different" and stopped thinking "This part reminds me of Sharon Shinn. This reminds me of Robin McKinley" (also totally unfair because Pierce wrote her books before Shinn's books or Garth Nix's Sabriel). (Maybe I talk to myself too much!) It felt like I HAD read it when I was young and I felt wistful. "Remember when that happened..." Sigh.Blah, blah, blah. I get the feeling that I'm not going to feel anything more for The Woman Who Loved Reindeer. It did not talk to me in a "Hey, Mariel". It talked to me like I should already know. "Hey, you person." It talked too much. It was trying too hard and doing the wrong thing to feel good again.But just in case, I'll retell it right now. (In my head I pronounced it like Cara-boo and this song was in my head for two whole hours. My mind never shuts up. The Pixies not good enough for you, Mariel? I liked Caribou the band a lot in 2010.)Caribou is a witchy sort of girl who lives in isolation despite being a mere thirteen years of age. For a moment I thought it was going to be like Monica Furlong's Wise Child (a book that I admired more for the principles than actually enjoyed). The Karate Kid meets witch craft and learning from daily toil you don't think about until it's in your blood. Nope. Why do that when you can tell the reader what to think?Caribou is shunned and mistrusted because she has dreams and knows shit. Homeopathic remedies type shit and pop psych before there was pop psych. She understands people even though she has little to no contact with other people, or seems to understand anything about herself on a personal level. But hey, dreams! It worked for Agent Cooper on Twin Peaks. Mountains are wonderous places. I have a shark's jaw mounted on my wall (one of three things I got from my grandfather when he died. A live cat [not stuffed!], a shark's jaw and a table we made together when I was 10). If only it had been a deer! I'd be shamanistic and shit. (It's pretty much only good for looking scary and my birds like to sit in it.)Orphans have it so bad! Her brother didn't take her in because his new wife (gasp! a foriegner! Caribou obviously never heard the saying about people who live in primitive housing shouldn't throw sticks at other primitive houses in different villages because she's mistrustful of the gal for this. Not one of US, you know) didn't want her around. That doesn't stop the wife from coming by to drop her son beget by another man on the girl. Infidelity?! We knew we didn't like her, didn't we, Caribou? She vaguely understands things like that her brother would forgive the sex outside the marriage because the knowledge appears in her head. But the wife doesn't want the kid because its father has promised to come back for it. The father isn't one of us either and that's not a good thing. Caribou gets the kid and wants it even as she doesn't admit she wants it. In a blink of pages the brother and father get killed. The father is a reindeer! Even though Caribou KNOWS THINGS she doesn't figure it out. Thirteen years go by and Caribou suckles (this word is used more than a few times in the book!) the boy as if he were her own son. There's not a whole lot of dashing, dancing, prancing, or blitzing going on. The "You're all I have and that makes you mine" phase. Cupid must've descended on a comet and gone hunting because he accidentally shot her instead of a deer. In another blink of pages and suckling it must be love (like that. "It must be" and not really knowing or feeling much of anything). The vixen! He's like your son! You SUCKLED him! What a donderhead. He leaves her to run with the other reindeer as if she hadn't suckled him to her breast. Don't worry! He'll be back. The reindeer is damned horny too. It must be love if you don't know what you feel. (I'm all out of reindeer jokes. Shit. This review is in deep trouble.)What I don't get is that Caribou feels lonely and detached from society. She and her golden reindeer boy are not on the same wave length because he supposedly doesn't have a human heart. Okay, since when do all humans feel the same, and understand the same? Why would Caribou? They would not have keys to hearts in hand if he WAS made of her flesh. Sure, she has the dreams and mystical shit (which preclude her boy. She could have used this as a chance to relate like other people do, with him). But she's lived alone. She supposedly feels apart. She reminds me of a Morrissey fan who finally found the voice in the dark that spoke to their soul. She felt restless in the world? And then found someone she wanted to hear? And then never bothered to look for any other voices and horded it to themselves, in the dark (and made bitchy comments about me at a Morrissey concert and stepped on my foot) and stopped listening because she was too busy trying to hear what she wanted to hear. "I don't understand you! You don't understand me!" They don't progress beyond this point until some pat cliche about if you love the thing and it lets you go...So the reindeer comes back because he's horny and his race fuck human girls because that's how they have kids. Historically, they take the kids and don't give a stag's ass if she misses the babe. But he kinda misses his mama/love interest. Hey, he already knows she'd make a good mom. She suckles like nobody's business. But oh no! Her people are in trouble. The people who shunned her now need her to help them because she's got dreams of midgets and backwards talking. Caribou is such a rednoser (yes!) that she talks him into leading her people (although it was forbidden before it suddenly isn't now) to his land for help against natural disasters like earthquakes. There's more stuff I didn't buy like winning them over by being useful and needed. Maybe she just needs to suckle to get it off? So there's lots of that and various magical beings who refuse to help or agree to help the people who I didn't care anything about at all.She's also dependent on her reindeer and wishes he'd go to his "man-shape". Yay co-dependency AND manipulation. He does return to his man-shape and they have sex. I'm putting this in my bestiality shelf anyway (and lemonincest, although they are not blood) because I want to. That's the best thing about reading a book like this. (I made two new shelves too.)Maybe I'll grow to like the vague ideas about how love isn't something you can name? They weren't really mother and son. They didn't know what they were to each other. That COULD have been good... But she just says stuff like she learned she can't bind him and love is free will. Says! It's like the dreams. I want to know, or feel like they know it and are confiding in me. He lets her stay to help "her people" and will come back for sex and to see their kid (better watch out for any suckling) until the day she's ready to be with him. That's nice... But, um, where in all of that did they stop trying to label and assume that everyone has to feel the same things? I can't tell myself they did. He found other reindeer. She found people who needed her more than they were afraid. I still don't know what love is!Hot!P.s. Early in the book Caribou eats the flesh of the reindeer's reindeer papa. It tastes like butter and as if it were cooked, by magic. I was waiting for her to get hungry again. (There are mentions of eating caribou. They use the non-magical kind as their animal slaves. They named HER Caribou. How disgustingly cutesy! When they are finally together I bet they whittle that on all their stuff.)If they were stranded in a life boat would he let her eat him? That could be an even truer test of love than the letting things go and come back test. Or she could feed him by suckling him.P.s.s. Since she wears the tribal hipstery headband on the cover... and has prophetic dreams... and loves four legged mammals... I had this song in my head.P.s.s.s. Ten peckered owls and toads should form a coalition with reindeers to get more paranormal romances made in their honor. Why are wolves and cats supposedly so much better in bed? Enquiring minds (not mine! It is busy singing Xanadu) want to know.