The Bitterbynde Trilogy: The Ill-Made Mute, The Lady of the Sorrows, and The Battle of Evernight

Dart-Thornton composed her classic Bitterbynde Trilogy with abundant detail, intense colors and complex, beautiful descriptions. It's the modern literary equivalent of a Pre-Raphaelite painting. I soaked myself in this trilogy in high school like it was a warm bath effused with fragrant salts. I've heard some say they found it too slow, and if you aren't a fan of poetry, or dark folk-and-fairy tales populated with obscure legendary creatures, or a logophile who loves to collect words like "pearlescent," and "propinquity" or "tintinnabulation," this might not be for you. But I encourage you to at least read the first chapter and give it a try. The action begins almost immediately, and the world building is inspired and unique. Behind the net of golden prose there are some fun characters, an exciting plot, sharp dialogue and a story that lingers in your mind long after the final page. I re-read it constantly and I know there are people who feel the same. Granted, it isn't for everyone, and if you are looking for a more character-driven, action-oriented fantasy series, and don't want to be distracted by a word or two you don't know, this is not for you.

Plot and story: 5🌟 Writing technique: 2🌟 World-building:5🌟 Characters: 3🌟 (Average = 3.75) STORY The plotting here is masterful and truly epic. It begins in the middle of the tale because at one point the protag loses all memory so it only makes sense to begin the telling there. Because of amnesia, It's especially hard to give a recap without spoilers. Even to reveal the MCs real name or gender would be a spoiler. It begins small, as a good epic tale often will, with a character who desires to see more of the world than their meager circumstances allow. They stow away on a flying ship which then ends up being attacked by pirates. And the misadventures continue for a while in that vein. Things escalate when information comes to our hero that rightfully needs to be given to the king. And so a quest begins. Eventually, when memory is restored, a new quest is revealed which involves not only Erith, the world of Man, but the Faerie Realm as well. There is a slight bit of predictability when the author uses the same plotting technique twice. Without revealing too much, it's the technique where "the thing you've been seeking was with you all along" (as in the Wizard of Oz). But on the whole this was minor and easily forgivable since it affects only a dozen pages out of the thousand plus in the whole trilogy. Other than that one note, I can find no faults with the plots of these books. Which reminds me.. I read this trilogy straight through, as if it were one long book. So I didn't really pay attention to where each book ended and whether each had a legitimate tale of it's own. Normally that's a criteria I consider important but in this case I can't really report on it one way or the other as I've apparently missed noticing it this time. The "book" took me a month to read. Not the author's fault (mostly). I used to be a fast reader but life circumstances have made it very hard for me to find time, so I only get through a few pages a day now. Not your problem, I know, but that also means my review may ignore since things that would be more obvious to someone who could go faster and have more details fresh in memory as they read. Just adding that as a disclaimer there. WRITING Here's where the book fails the worst. Mostly it wasn't the actual writing that was at fault, but the editing. When most non-writers say "editing" they usually mean copy-editing or proofreading, but that's not what I mean here. The proofing was more than adequate. In the whole 1400 pages I found only two typos and two other places where the author uses an obscure word that I thought was being used incorrectly. But that's not the "editing" that was lacking. It was obvious that if the author hired an editor at all, either she willfully ignored the editor's advice or the editor was blatantly unqualified to handle this book. Possibly both. The errors fall into two major categories. The more egregious of the two is in the inclusion of long rambling passages of useless and overly florid description. And not only description but a few whole scenes (or even chapters) that were unnecessary to the plots and not even overly helpful in setting up the world. A skilled editor would have cut this book to slightly over half of its current length and nothing of importance would have been lost. Near the end I found it easier to skim over many pages, just trying to pick out the nouns and verbs and ignoring the rest. Hoping that would give enough of an impression to get through the plot. It didn't really work as well as I'd've liked but it helped me identify when I needed to go back and reread important bits. The other editing flaw was in the excessive use of obscure and archaic language. This is less serious but it's still an issue of sorts. The author has a note after text where she apologizes about this, which makes me think it was an intentional inclusion in opposition to the advice of others. The words themselves are not an issue (except in the case of the very few that I think were used incorrectly). A love of reading and love of words go hand in hand. But here they are most often used in ways where context is of no aid in deciphering them. This is a sinful misuse of vocabulary and detracts from the reading experience. While reading this it will be helpful to have a very large (multi-volume) dictionary, preferably a very old one as most of these words have been expunged from modern dictionaries. The alternative is to simply skip over these words, which I'm sure the majority of readers will do. I even did so myself a few times, but that's really a very bad habit to get into, and I blame the author for encouraging it. WORLD Possibly the best part of the book was in the well developed world. Based very tightly on Celtic fairy lore, it is obviously very well researched and holds together perfectly. This review is already getting too long so I won't into too much detail, but if you are at all interested in fairy lore then you will find many wonderful elements here. Not entirely Celtic, there's a few Germanic elements in there too, but mostly Celtic I think. She doesn't add much of her own other than changing place names to fit into her world. But what she does include is well done. CHARACTERS The individual characters are likeable enough, and fairly unique, but not exceptionally memorable. The author relies too heavily on physical description of places and individual character personalities do suffer for it. But with that being said, the fact that the characters are likeable rather than loveable still leaves plenty of room for the other parts of the book to shine through. OVERALL Overall I'd say it's a worthwhile read. Even for being interminably long and time consuming, it's still a good read. I'm glad to have read it and probably will do so again. Highly recommended.

After reading the introduction, I was excited to read these three books. Sadly, I found the introduction a bit better than the book. First, the chapters are way too long, and there were several sections where chapters could have (and should have) been divided. There were breaks in the narrative flow that were very jarring, and could have been mostly alleviated through chapter breaks. The author's grasp of the English language is truly impressive, and her descriptions are some of the best in literature. I found myself wishing, however, that she had spent a little more time on plot and flow (action) and less time on descriptions. I don't want or need to now the detailed menu at a feast, I want to know the characters, and how they interact while at that feast. I truly feel that with better chapter breaks, the book would have been better, but I also felt that too much time was spent on scenery and other less important aspects, time that would have been much more effectively spent in action/flow. The overall narrative was impressive, but getting from place to place was kind of plodding.

I loved them interweaving of old lore and language. This story connects the readter to old ways in a lovely dance.

I struggled somewhat between a 3 and 4 star rating, and had there been a 3.5 option would have chosen it. I read a lot, and have a fair to large vocabulary, yet still spent the first several chapters looking up the meaning of obscure if descriptive words in the dictionary. At first I wondered if it was a thesaurus run wild, but as the story progressed I came to realize the author just truly loves words. Their feel, their use and meaning and, well, lots of them! The story itself is compelling, the heroine admirable and at times riveting. I did not however enjoy being ripped from the story over and over by a plethora of words neither Google dictionary nor I had ever heard. Yet. The story was good enough to keep me reading for 3 books. This speaks of admirable skill in both story telling and character building. This series would appeal to a far larger audience with a good editor and I dare say, a thesaurus to help the author find more commonly used words to create their vision. Still I loved the story, so much so that I read the optional last chapter not because I needed the story clarified for me, but because I didn't want it to be over. This then is my advice to you: bring your dictionary, skip some of the words you don't know as there will likely be 2 or 3 you do know to follow it that mean essentially the same thing, and hang on for the ride...it's worth it.

Haven’t read this book yet. Will post real review at that time.

I didn't finish because I couldn't get beyond what I thought was excessive verbiage.It felt like wading waist deep in a swamp.