I confess, I’m a bit of a tough sell when it comes to fantasy books (unless they are for really young kids). I don’t do vampires, I’m not thrilled with dystopic settings, and although I love dragons and fairies, other fantastic beasts tend to make my eyes roll, and I…well, I lose interest. I believe in magic, but it has to be really well written to keep my interest, and frankly, I’ve not finished a lot of really well done fantasy novels.
I do try. Regularly, in fact. Darling Daughter is always trying to get me to make it through one of the huge fantasy tomes she’s carrying around. (Side Note: Why are they all so large? I feel like I would finish more if they were under three hundred pages.) And I always give it a go — particularly when Kelly Barnhill has a book come out, because her writing is so lovely.
I held on to Barnhill’s The Girl Who Drank the Moon for quite some time. I didn’t let Darling Daughter read it first, as is often our pattern — I hid it for myself, saving it for a time when I could enjoy it all on my own. It was worth the wait.
From the first Shirley Jackson-esque (The Lottery) chapter I was hooked. It’s a terrible premise — every year the people of the Protectorate leave a baby as an offering to the witch who lives in the forest. But very quickly, thanks to Antain (who is at the beginning and the end of the story, but is only deftly sprinkled through the middle so you don’t forget how dear and important he is), the reader realizes that something is wonky and tenuous with regard to this carefully preserved “tradition.”
In any event, the baby in question — the one this book is about — is rescued by a kind witch named Xan, who, as it turns out, has no idea why babies are left in the forest. She has simply rescued the children and delivered them to families on the other side of the forest for ages. She’s been doing it for who-knows-how-long when she finds Luna, the baby who changes everything.
You see, Xan feeds the babies with starlight as she takes them to their new families. Starlight! This is exactly the sort of fantasy detail that makes my heart go pitter-pat. Such whimsy, such metaphor! Love it! Luna gets moonlight, not starlight, however — quite accidentally, you understand — and the moonlight fills her with extraordinary magic. Which is why Xan decides to raise her instead of giving her to a family as she usually does. Therefore, Luna grows up with a wise Swamp Monster, a Perfectly Tiny Dragon, and a kind witch as her family. These endearing characters provide a large share of the delight of the book. They did not once make me roll my eyes.
When Luna’s thirteenth birthday is on the horizon, her magic — carefully restrained by Xan for most of her childhood — begins to leak about…and the plot thickens! As she grows and changes and learns, she becomes all the more magnificent. So does the story. There are creeptastic birds, a woman with a Tiger’s heart prowling around, and heroic efforts made on the very world’s behalf.
But Luna! Oh, Luna is so incredible! She is strong and determined, loving and wild, smart and magical. The kind of magic that is real. The kind of magic all girls have — and we must help them tap it, because it’s precisely the kind of magic that the world tries to beat out of them, and now more than ever they need to tap their magic, people!
As soon as I finished it, I handed it to Darling Daughter. “It’s terrific,” I said. I did not say “It’s important!” but it is. So important. This is, as the bookjacket says, “a coming-of-age fairy tale.” It’s a gorgeous book. And I’m giving it today to one of my nieces on the occasion of her twelfth birthday. I can’t wait for her magic to be fully-realized — she’s amazing already.