Fire Arrow
Edith Pattou
Harcourt Brace, 332 pages
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In Hero's Song, the first of Edith Pattou's Songs of Eirren series, the boy Collun leaves
his farmstead on a quest to find his kidnapped sister Nessa, and meets with high adventure along the way: powerful
sorcerers, inhuman races, enchanted forests, impenetrable labyrinths, and a host of magical creatures both helpful
and sinister, including a vast white Wurme that he must kill in order to set his sister free.
Fire Arrow, next in the series, takes up the tale of Brie, one of Collun's companions along the quest. Brie
saw her father murdered when she was a child, and since then has lived only for revenge. Her search takes her north,
into the mysterious land of Dungal, where she finds and slays her father's killers. But vengeance, which has governed
her life for so long, proves hollow in the achievement. Brie takes refuge in a small fishing village, where she
learns the ways of the sea and tries to discover a new direction for her life.
But evil is brewing in the northern land of Scath, ruled by the witch queen Medb, whose attempted invasion of Eirren
Collun and his companions turned back in the previous book. Now Medb wants to conquer Dungal. She unleashes a variety
of evils upon the land--shoals of rapacious sea-snakes to infest the ocean, drought and windstorms to decimate
the crops, roaming bands of murderous goat-men to terrorize the populace--and sends the sorcerer Balor to lead
the invasion. Brie and Collun, reunited, must assemble a ragtag army and journey out to face Balor and his huge
force of goat-men and evil, lizardlike morgs--a fight to the death for the salvation of Dungal.
Fire Arrow is a more accomplished book than its predecessor--which, despite its swift adventure, was slowed
by big chunks of explanatory dialogue and awkward point-of-view shifts. Fire Arrow's narrative stays with
Brie, who is both appealing and believable in her brave determination. There's little of the narrative-halting
exposition that marred Hero's Song, and rehash of previous action is kept to a minimum. Pattou has a formidable
imagination; Fire Arrow is replete with fascinating and fantastical images, creatures, and settings. I particularly
like the story's integration--and transformation--of Irish myth and folklore.
There is a sense, sometimes, of a little too much going on--the adventures come so thick and fast the reader hardly
has time to absorb one before being vaulted onward to the next. Some of the characters are annoyingly stock, making
it a little difficult to remember who is who. And the nitpicker in me cringes each time someone eats corn or tomatoes,
New World vegetables unlikely to exist even in an Ireland-that-never-was. But overall, this is an engrossing, well-crafted
book, and will be much enjoyed by young fans of high fantasy.
Copyright © 1998 Victoria Strauss
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