I really enjoyed this creative fantasy. I especially loved the main character, Peri (short for periwinkle). She was strong, loyal, and did not give up on life, although all those she loved had been lost to the sea in one way or the other. The only thing that I didn't like as much was the romance in it - although Peri was believable, it was harder for me to buy the Prince's performance. And although his reactions were understandable given the story, it didn't stop me from wanting him to show her more affection. All and all, a very sweet and enchanting read.

I’ve returned to this book again and again since I was about 8 years old.
Still lovely and wonderful, still holds up.

The ending reminded me of this verse (L.M.Montgomery's Emily's Quest):
Since ever the world was spinning
And 'till the world shall end
You've your man in the beginning
Or you have him in the end
But to have him from start to finish
And to neither borrow or lend
Is what all the girls are wanting
And none of the gods can send.

I first read a book by Patricia McKillip about three years ago and decided I must read more of her work. This has proven to be an excellent life choice since it's introduced me to books like The Changeling Sea, a beautifully written (and short stand alone!) fantasy story with themes of love and loss. The combination of legendary occurrences and everyday life by the sea is handled masterfully, and I added this memorable book to my favorites shelf immediately after finishing it.

Full Review: http://www.fantasybookcafe.com/2016/0...

https://www.psicologorroico.it/2019/0...
Una perla scoperta per puro caso. Vorrei che libri del genere venissero ristampati più spesso...

Edit 02/07/2017: mi manca un sacco questo libro!
Edit 18/10/2019: recensione sul nuovo sito!

His lips brushed hers, cold, yet she knew he gave her all the warmth he had. “If I could love, I would love you,” he said softly. After a moment she smiled. “Why is that strange?”

“If you could love,” she said simply, feeling as if she had taken an enormous step away from herself, and into the complex world, “you would not choose me to love.”

Sometimes I’m scared to reread old favorites, in case they don’t live up to my memories and lose their place in my heart. But The Changeling Sea holds up and then some, I might even love it more now. Just a beautifully written story of wild magic, the restless sea, and heartbreak.

reviews.metaphorosis.com

3.5 stars

Peri, daughter of a fisherman lost to the sea, meets Prince Kir, who has his own strange ties to the sea. When a sea dragon with a gold chain appears, she tries to unravel the mystery with the help of an enigmatic magician.

The first Patricia McKillip book I read was The Forgotten Beasts of Eld. I didn't care for it, and mostly found it dull. I think I considered The Throme of the Erril of Sherrill, but the strange title put me off. Somehow, though, some years later I happened across, as I hope everyone does, The Riddle-Master of Hed. If you haven't read that, drop everything and go get it now.

Despite Riddle-Master's  success, not everything McKillip tackled worked so well. The Changeling Sea was preceded by  McKillip's only (I think) fling with science fiction (the Moon-Flash stories) - an interesting but uneven duology. It was followed by the Cygnet duology, which started well, but ended weakly. McKillip seems to have been finding her feet before finding the storytelling style she later perfected.

I recall being disappointed by Changeling Sea.I liked it better this time, but it's still not great. It doesn't have the depth of Riddle-Master - not in the story, the characters, the emotions, or the magic. It's a thin volume, and it reads that way. It is charming, in the way of later McKillip books. Peri is a likeable, capable young woman who does the things we might. There's no simpering, no coy smiles, no damsel in distress. Most of the other characters are similarly pleasant.

Changeling Sea should probably just have been a bigger book. There's no room in this limited space to explore everything that's going on, or, better said, McKillip doesn't use the space well. The ending is thin, and tends more toward golden sunsets than the credible, real people that the book is built on. Looking back, it's as if McKillip has found the tone that suits her, but hasn't yet found stories to go with it. Changeling Sea is the start of a good story, but the end of a weak one.

If you're a McKillip fan, go ahead and read. You'll like it well enough. If you're new to McKillip, this is not the place to start. She's an amazing writer, but this book won't prove it. For everyone else - this is light, harmless fun. If you can borrow it or get it cheap, have at it. If not, make it one of the later books you add to your collection, after some of her stronger works.

Fairytale Wonderful!

Oh, I had forgotten how beautiful Ms. McKillip's writing is.

Reading this book made me feel like I was a little girl again, reading a fairytale. The sense of wonder and yearning and impossible odds, just beautiful. And the writing! I was hi-lighting almost every other paragraph by the end. Plus we have sea monsters! Sigh...it just doesn't get any better than this :)

The story is clean.

This books was everything I needed, a story about letting go and allowing all the things that come in your way, even when they are hard to understand. Sea, sea-dragon, princes, magicians, taverns, moonlight, magic, mermaids, love that makes you cry at its beautifully painful faith. I did not expect to finish it in one day, but it mesmerized me. And I drowned in it. But how do I get back now?

Its my second book by Patricia McKillip after the The Riddle-Master of Hed. I liked that book but I loved this one. It is a short, simple and beautifully written book. It is a story of a girl, two princes, one magician and a sea dragon.

After Perriwinkle's father's death, her mother is in a deep depression. Peri has stopped living with her mother and has started living in an old woman's abandoned house near the sea. Though she visits her mother occasionally but her mother rarely acknowledge her presence. With each passing day Peri is getting more and more frustrated. One day when she couldn't bear anymore. She uses a little magic and hexes the sea and curses it. This sets a series of events in motion and Peri finds herself between two princes and their wishes to live in a place they crave for.

Peri is a very intriguing character. She is introvert and alone, a girl craving her mother's love and attention. When her father who was a fisher dies in the sea, her mother starts thinking that her father is alive and is in a Kingdom that exist under the sea. That is one of the reason that she wants to unravel the mystery of the sea. She is a brave girl and her courage earns her the trust and respect of the men around her.

Its a fairy tale kind of story and McKillip has told this in a wonderful way. Her writing has lyrical feel to it. The story is short yet it has a great character development.

All in all its a story of magic, mystery, fear, courage, hope and love.

Originally reviewed on The Book Smugglers


In a small fishing village on the coast of the wide, stormy sea, a bright-eyed young woman named Periwinkle makes her home. After her father, a fisherman, rows out his ship and never returns, Peri's mother lapses into quiet despair, forgetting to talk and always staring out at the roiling sea and fantasizing about the people that live in its depths. Without her parents to watch over her or remind her to do things like brush her hair or hem her clothes, Peri grows from a quiet child to a wild and somewhat neglected young woman - her hair always a tangle, her dresses bleached of all color, too tight in some places, too loose in others. Even the old wise woman who used to brush Peri's hair in her small cottage disappears one day, leaving Peri without anyone to care for her at all. During the day, she works at the local inn, scrubbing floors and cleaning rooms; by night, she returns to the old woman's cottage and makes her own isolated home where she plots her revenge against the sea. Hateful of the ocean that has taken both of her parents away, Peri crafts three crude hexes to curse the sea - it is here that she meets Prince Kir, who also knew the wise woman and years for her counsel. Kir has deep troubles of his own, also connected to the watery depths, and hopes that Peri can help him make his peace with the ocean that haunts his every waking moment. When Peri finishes her hexes and throws them deep into the great water, she also includes an offering from Kir - and to Peri's great astonishment, her hexes start to work.

A great sea dragon starts to appear amongst the fishermen's boats on the sea, with an impossibly large gold chain around its neck. Then, a magician comes to town, promising that he will be able to remove the chain and give the gold to the villagers - for a price. And most importantly, Kir's dreams of the sea grow more fevered and frantic, as his own unknown, hidden past catches up to him. And it is all up to Periwinkle to set everything back to rights.

To date, I've only read a handful of books and short stories from Patricia McKillip, mostly her recent releases. The Changeling Sea, however, is one of McKillip's earlier works, originally published in the 1980s and instantly endeared itself to me - a changeling fable that takes place by the stormy sea? What better place to jump into McKillip's rich and extensive backlist? And you know what? I absolutely loved this book. Shortly put: The Changeling Sea is another gorgeous, wonderful book from the incredibly talented McKillip.

I'm going to say something that sounds incredibly cheesy, but it is so very true: Patricia McKillip has a way with words that is simply magical. Like The Bell at Sealey Head or The Bards of Bone Plain, The Changeling Sea is a slender book, but one written with lush and evocative prose that is as beautiful as it is simple. For example:

A sigh, smelling of shrimp and seaweed, wafted over the water... In the deep waters beyond the stones, a great flaming sea-thing gazed back at her, big as a house or two, its mouth a strainer like the mouth of a baleen whale, its translucent fiery streamers coiling and uncoiling languorously in the warm waters. The brow fins over its wide eyes gave it a surprised expression. Around its neck, like a dog collar, was a massive chain of pure gold.

Beautiful, no? Such is McKillip's writing, littered throughout with these gleaming gems of description and story.

Love and anger are like land and sea: They meet at many different places.

As the title suggests, The Changeling Sea is a fable about a changeling, and a story whose heart is inextricably tied to the sea. It's a book about love - no, scratch that. It's actually a book about yearning for what once was, and what can never be again. It's the book of a King that yearns for the beauty of the sea queen in all her splendor, the story of two brothers crossed at birth that yearn for their true homes on sea and on land. It's the story of a wild haired, barefooted fisherman's daughter that dares hex the spiteful sea, and yearns for the love of one that can never return it. Aren't these some of the best of all? These stories of want and hate and love, all jumbled up into one powerful package of emotion?

And then there are the characters! Periwinkle, our heroine, is a pinched and angry character at first, who scowls at the ocean but refuses to leave its shores despite her hate. She's bold and wild, who cares little about the conventions that bind others - she doesn't have secret dreams of catching the prince's eye like the other girls who work at the inn, and she doesn't pay attention to her clothes or her hair. She's smart but rough around the edges, passionate but obstinate - and for all that, a character you cannot help but love, flaws and all. There is the tortured Kir, who is...well, defined by his yearning for the ocean and his feeling that he does not belong on dry land. There's also the sea dragon himself, who is not at all what he seems, and a king that has made mistakes in his past but loves his children and lovers dearly. But for all that, my other favorite character in this beautiful little book is Lyo - the canny magician, with his smiling face and his penchant for twisting magic in delightful, unexpected ways.

All in all, I loved The Changeling Sea, and absolutely recommend it. I cannot wait to try more of Patricia McKillip's work - now, any suggestions on where to go next?

To me, The Changeling Sea was captivating by to first chapter.

I think I found my new favorite author. Super excited to continue reading Patricia McKillips' works!