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When crippled Durrik makes a strange
prophecy regarding the dying young count, he and his friend Pedrin go on the run from the evil Regent’s soldiers, while their parents and most of the village are imprisoned to pre-empt a rebellion.
 Durrik’s
prophecy involves six people and a deadline of “when the last petals fall from the
StarThorn tree”, so when he and Pedrin discover the count’s sister and her maid hiding in the forest, and their team is joined by a strange old man and a dirty little thief girl, they begin to believe they are destined to save the count and overthrow the evil Regent. But the
prophecy is vague, and if their assumptions are wrong, they will all risk their lives for nothing. Their journey together to seek a cure from
the wise Erlrune of Evenlinn creates a strong bond of friendship, loyalty, and love, and they are each faced with difficult decisions and tests of their courage.
The StarThorn Tree is an engaging and multi-layered read that will be enjoyed by adults as much as children. Forsyth doesn’t spare her characters the pain and hardship of their task, and
The
StarThorn Tree is quite dark in places. The characters are memorable and have great depth, their perspectives shifting naturally through their experiences. There is plenty of action and fantasy adventure as the five children and the old man battle gibgoblins, hobhenkies, and loralei.
My only criticisms of this book are minor. Firstly, Forsyth’s introduction of her main protagonist, Pedrin the goatherd, gave no hint of him being a child – I wrongly assumed, from his mature-sounding claim to have chased off a hobhenkie, that he was an adult, or at least in his late teens. Forsyth then flashes back to an event when Pedrin was seven, before stating his age as twelve. By this stage I had started imagining an adult, then battled to reconcile his maturity with that of a seven-year-old, and then finally shifted to picturing a pre-teen Pedrin. Because of this I didn’t really connect with Pedrin as much as I did with some of the other
characters, such as Briony, the young maid, who is introduced in a way
that allows the reader to develop deep empathy for this wonderfully
complex character.
Forsyth is known to use dialect spellings for dialogue in most of her books, giving her characters Scottish-sounding accents. It’s distracting to start off with, and is difficult even for adults to read. I found myself glossing over it and translating many of the words into ordinary English to keep the pace from slowing down. The book is too exciting to stop and form an accent in your mind whenever the characters speak.
Finally, I would have liked fuller descriptions of Forsyth’s “monsters” to come earlier. The characters enter the forest terrified of encountering gibgoblins and hobhenkies, but since the reader doesn’t have anything to equate these terms with, the imagination is left suspended, waiting for a clue as to why these are fearsome creatures. Since the children know what they are, it would be easy to include the reader in this knowledge, while still leaving enough surprises when they encounter the creatures they’ve only heard tales of. Hobhenkies are similar to trolls, gibgoblins are sadistic talking reptiles whose weapon of choice is a whip.
The StarThorn Tree is well worth a read, and its strong themes, fast pace,
and complex plot would easily make it a favourite book for more mature
readers who can cope with the difficulties of reading dialect.
copyright © Elsa Neal 2007 (Please contact the
for permission to reprint this article.)
The
StarThorn Tree is available from Amazon.com Kate
Forsyth is also the author of The
Witches of Eileanan series.
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