by David Clement-Davies
Recommended Age: 14+
Richard Adams, the author of Watership Down, has called this book an “anthropomorphic fantasy.” His own book is another example of the type: fantasies that get inside the minds of animals, that explore their relationships and experiences as if they were people - yet in a grown-up, semi-realistic way. I mean, the animals act mostly like animals. They don’t walk on their hind legs, wear clothes, drive cars, and so forth.
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Adams did it for rabbits in Watership Down and for dogs in The Plague Dogs. But now a new master has come, whose “anthropomorphic fantasy” about red deer is a tale filled with dramatic power, lyrical beauty, and a deep dark thread of myth.
Fire Bringer is a story about the red deer of the land we call Scotland. It focuses on one young stag, born with a white mark shaped like an oak leaf on his forehead, and born on the night of his father’s murder. From the first moments of his life, Rannoch is hunted – hunted by a Lord of the Herd who aims to destroy the natural, old way that deer have lived, and to create a new Great Herd ruled by reason, power, and fear. Hunted because his very existence is a reminder of the old ways. Hunted because his escape is an embarrassment to the powers that be. Hunted because of a prophecy that describes just such a fawn with an oak-leaf mark, and that makes him a direct threat to the tyrannical, hornless stag named Sgorr.
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And then, like me, you will rush out and buy Clement-Davies’ second “anthropomorphic fantasy,” which is about wolves, and is titled The Sight. [UPDATE: Since I first wrote this review, the same author has also published books titled Fell and The Alchemist of Barbal.]
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