wow what a dreamy and romantic book....who is doing it like middle grade fiction writers.

the pacing and language throughout this seem so carefully woven in a way that feels unreal to read, but instead of leaving a disconnect i found it very enchanting. normally, scenes and events that would make me go ??? actually helped build this kind of fantastical world where strange things can happen and you just take them as they are.

its an atypical fantasy story to me (though i think this style was more common in my youth...) but refreshing and wholeheartedy dedicated to its own mythos, especially in the way it is written. many touching characters (Lyo and the periwinkles <3) and themes of growing up and seeking your place...

A wonderful tale of magic, love, and learning to live with the treasures and heartaches that the tide brings in.
I love the skillful way Patricia McKillip has with prose. She weaves the story around you letting you love and sorrow with the people in the story. I may need to read this story over and over again. Thank you Jeannette for recommending it.

"What have you done?" she asked herself aloud. "What have you done?" She answered herself a few moments later. "I've gone and fallen in love with the sea."

Flawless!
Patricia McKillip should give lessons in how to write fantasy romance - imaginative, charming, balancing a tear with a smile, loneliness with selflessness, poetry with the prose of day to day living. She is one of the most consistent writers of modern fairytales I have come across, her lyrical style immediately identifiable, yet bringing something fresh and original with each new book she writes. She infuses even the darker stories with beauty and a sense of wonder, and she turns a deft hand at light comedy when the situation requires it.

She felt as if she had stepped into some dream where anything might happen: Her head might float away and turn into the moon; starfish might walk upright onto the sand and dance a courtly dance.

Peri, as in Periwinkle, is a young girl who lives in a small village by the sea. When she loses her father in a violent storm, she puts a curse on the cruel sea, throwing into the waves some of her amateurish magical wreaths. Who would believe that a simple scullion girl in the local inn might have the power to awaken terrible forces from their deep blue slumber? Yet soon enough, a magical dragon starts to haunt the sea near the village, a magnificent multicolored beast that is chained to the bottom of the sea by a heavy gold chain. A young man, the obligatory "tall, dark stranger", is also haunting the beaches, always looking out to the sea. Pretty soon, another young man will mirror the first one by gazing longingly from the beach towards dry lands. Both of the boys find refuge in the humble hovel of the girl Peri. And spring is coming to the world, awakening in the three young hearts the thoughts of romance.

The air was warm, silken, promising longer, lazy days, more light, promising all the soft, mysterious smells and colors of spring after the harsh gray winter. The sand itself was streaked with colors from the sunset.

Love triangles have been done to the death in the genre, so expect McKillip to not be satisfied with this classical set-up, and to make Peri a girl with her head screwed the right way onto her shoulders, not too easily swayed by the Heathcliff vibe of tragic destiny in the young bucks coming to her door. Read on, and you might find the resolution of romance to be a logical, if unconventional one.  There's a third young man, a young wizard named Lyo, who waits quietly in the background for Peri to realize there's somebody who is not a prince or a tragic hero, yet wants to spend his whole life by her side.

The plot is inspired by the old Celtic legends of the Changeling, by the magical realm of the faeries existing hidden beside our own reality, and by the dangers of crossing this invisible barrier between the real and the magical realms. There's a legend like this in the kingdom where Peri lives, a mystery that she unwittingly steps into and must now help to unravel.

Once upon a time there was a king who had two sons: one by the young queen, his wife, and one by a woman out of the sea. The sons were born at the same time, and when the queen died in child-bed, her human son was stolen away, and the sea-born son left in his place. Why? No one truly knows, only the woman hidden in the sea, and the king. And perhaps the king does not even know. Why? Why is the wind, why is the sea, why is a long road between the world and me.

I believe I have said enough about the plot for now. I would like to add, as usual, that one of the reasons I love McKillip stories is the treatment of magic in her imagined worlds. Like Guy Gavriel Kay, she considers magic not as a mechanical, learn spells by the rote and cast them whenever you need them, sort of Force. Magical is a secret and wild thing, elusive and unpredictable, a talent that requires an open mind and a lot of patience to develop. Kyo, the young magician hired by the villagers to recover the huge gold chain holding down the dragon, explains to Peri how he experiences magic:

Slowly you learn to turn the dark into shapes, colors ... It's like a second dawn breaking over the world. You see something most people can't see and yet it seems clear as the nose on your face. That there's nothing in the world that doesn't possess its share of magic. Even an empty shell, a lump of lead, an old dead leaf - you look at them and learn to see, and then to use, and after a while you can't remember ever seeing the world any other way. Everything connects to something else.

In the current novel, this majesty, mystery and danger of magic is symbolized by the sea, a fickle mistress that can in the blink of an eye turn from coy to murderous. Lyo, with his magical eye, can unveil the poetry of the sea in a way that the gold crazed locals have long forgotten in their daily drudge of earning a living.

He seemed delighted by the sea life, as if he had seen little of it, yet he rowed fearlessly farther than Peri had ever gone, out to where the very surface of the world was fluid and dangerous, where the sea was the ruling kingdom they trespassed upon in their tiny, fragile boats, and the life and beauty in it lay far beneath them, in places forbidden to their eyes.

The Changeling Sea is one of the novels I would love to see turned into a movie (especially after watching the horrible example of what passes for rom-com today with "Trainwreck"). It may not be action filled or grimdark or even epic, but it has style and charm enough to put me in a good mood, more inclined to see the wonder of the world around me instead of its dinginess.

It's an odd thing, happiness. Some people take happiness from gold. Or black pearls. And some of us, far more fortunate, take their happiness from periwinkles.

3.5 stars.
Amazing atmosphere, and Peri and Lyo were good characters. A bit too short for me to go crazy about it, but I will definitely read more books by McKillip.

I brought some books with me on vacation. Since it was gorgeous out, and this book seemed small, decided to tackle it

Tackle it I did - finished it in one sitting.

I don't think I am the correct audience for it, nor do I think it made sense at times. Nevertheless, I am rating it two stars for the writing an the overall story.

I am rating it down three because the bits and pieces we gained from the story was confusing; the random hook up at the end (DID NOT SEE THAT COMING!); and, lastly, the length.

I think if you like fantasy stories, you'll like this and you'll either come out liking it or disliking it. I don't think there is a middle ground on this book.

This was really quite lovely. The prose is lyrical and the plot is seemingly straightforward, and then not at all. I will probably end up buying this and upgrading it to 5 stars upon rereading. It was just lovely. In tone, along the lines of UP A ROAD SLOWLY, but with magic and lyricism and myth and legend. A definite gem.

Lovely, haunting, full of fairy-tale wonder

RTC!!!

Heart-breaking, atmospheric and unforgettable.
This story was all I could ask for, and more.
It doesn't need three hundred or four hundred pages, much of them filled with boring details to tell its story.
It slowly arrives, it tells its tale, it imprints it in our hearts and minds, and calmly goes away...

A coming of age punctuated by loss and finding what's important in one's live.

n  "It’s an odd thing, happiness. Some people take happiness from gold. Or black pearls. And some of us, far more fortunate, take their happiness from periwinkles.”n

oh the sea, that rough and unkind mirror, the unknowable depths, the shallows that still can drown. it gives and it takes away. you shall project your own fears and desires upon it. will it care? be angry, be sad, be lonely, be defiant; little chance the sea will respond to your petty mortal concerns, they are as stones thrown at a mountain. but what if it does respond? in its own strange and watery way. its shore can be a gateway, one used as entrance or exit, from either direction. you cast your angry hexes upon the sea. and to its shores, to you, comes a boy. first one boy and then another. two boys for the price of one fit of rage and grief. which is the boy you will love? the boy from the sea but born of the earth or the boy born of the sea brought to live on earth? which changeling shall love you in return? of course your own choice is clear: you yearn for the boy with the stars of the sea in his eyes, the earthbound boy born of water, the boy who yearns to return to his home. you love best what is most out of reach. and so your love shall be in vain, for a boy who is like the sea cannot love you back. you are but a creature of the earth, after all.

It's no secret that Patricia McKillip is a most beloved author for so many fantasy readers. I discovered her late in the game, when I ran across a beautiful reissued omnibus edition of The Riddle-master Trilogy in a Barnes & Noble several years ago. After finishing that excellent trilogy, I went looking for any other McKillip books I could get my hands on. The result was a binge, of sorts, in which I blew through six or seven titles without a by-your-leave. And it was an immensely good time. But it did result in a little bit of fatigue, as her writing style is very specific and lyrical and I wound up needing to cleanse my palate a little after. Since then I've re-read a few of my favorites here and there, particularly the Riddle-Master and The Book of Atrix Wolfe, but not since The Tower at Stony Wood's release have I picked up one of her new ones. While I was perusing the McKillip section on my shelves the other night, the slender little volume THE CHANGELING SEA caught my eye and I got to thinking it might be time to get back on the McKillip wagon. Originally published in 1988, this young adult fantasy has stood the test of time. Firebird put out the pretty little edition pictured on the right in 2003 and, having worked hard to find my own used copy, I was happy to see new life breathed into it. I also think it's the most accurate artistic representation of Peri herself and the spiraling, mesmerizing tone of the novel.

Nobody ever really noticed Periwinkle. She and her small family have always been a bit on their own, quietly living out their lives in their sleepy fishing village. And then the year she turns fifteen, Peri is suddenly really and truly alone for the first time in her young life. It seems the sea has taken everything that she loves. First her father who drowned and now her mother who failed to get over her father's death to the point where she no longer talks to Peri at all. And so Peri spends her days working as a chamber maid, scrubbing floors at the local inn, and her nights trying desperately to curse the sea that's been the source of all her sorrow. Magic has always been a part of Peri's world, though it's never made itself known with quite such a presence as it does the day the King arrives in town with his son Prince Kir. The unhappy prince has a problem that plagues him, a problem he hopes Peri may be able to help him with. If she will just include something of his in her latest curse, perhaps the longing that rides him will abate. Neither of them expect the sea monster who rises as a result. A sea monster bound by a golden chain and from that point on, nothing is the same in Peri's life, and it is with gratitude she accepts the help of the wizard Lyo--a sort of local wise man. Between the four of them--the girl, the prince, the wizard, and the dragon--they piece together the mystery of what happened in that same place so many years ago and why it's rearing its ugly head now.

I loved Peri instantly and without reserve. From the very first page, she is not your classic fairy tale heroine. The opening lines:

No one really knew where Peri lived the year after the sea took her father and cast his boat, shrouded in a tangle of fishing net, like an empty shell back onto the beach. She came home when she chose to, sat at her mother's hearth without talking, brooding sullenly at the small, quiet house with the glass floats her father had found, colored bubbles of light, still lying on the dusty windowsill, and the same crazy quilt he had slept under still on the bed, and the door open on quiet evenings to the same view of the village and the harbor with the fishing boats homing in on the incoming tide. Sometimes her mother would rouse herself and cook; sometimes Peri would eat, sometimes she wouldn't. She hated the vague, lost expression on her mother's face, her weary movements. Her hair had begun to gray; she never smiled, she never sang. The sea, it seemed to Peri, had taken her mother as well as her father, and left some stranger wandering despairingly among her cooking pots.

She is not beautiful or poised or charming or sweet. But she is kind and determined and involved in unraveling the mystery from beginning to end. She earns the trust of the men around her before (if) she earns their love and we (and they) are frequently reminded of her flaws, from scraped knees to a nose on the large side. Urchin from top to bottom, it is most definitely what's inside that matters with this girl. And it matters quite a lot as so many come to depend on her, including the unusual and wondrous creature from the sea who is himself not exactly what he seems. As is always the case with a McKillip tale, the poetic language and gracefully interwoven magic lend a golden glow to the whole. At the same time, this is one of her more "real" stories. Peri is so real. Cloaked in the unreal and unbelievable elements around her, she remains focused and bright. Clocking in at a scant 144 pages, it is also a prime (and all-too- rare) example of a book I don't wish longer. It's perfect just as it is, especially the ending. The briefness only accentuates the sweetness and strangeness and I never fail to finish it at ease with my world and hers.

My ship did not sail, but the book was still breathtaking & gorgeous.