Green Rider by Kristen Britain

Novels are funny things. They build up so many expectations, particularly when they sit on your shelf for a year, two years, maybe even three, and you glance at them occasionally over your university reading and long to pick them up and burrow into a delightful story rather than read in depth about the agricultural and occupational differences between the Hutu and the Tutsis in the 1850s.

I bought Green Rider by Kristen Britain several years ago at a lovely bookstore in Colorado called The Tattered Cover. I highly recommed this store if you're ever in Denver. I remember beautiful hardwood shelves reaching to the ceiling and lists of recommended books that helped me pick out this and other very enjoyable reads. In any case, this book sat on my shelf for years, a lovely fantasy novel with a cover of a pretty woman on a horse, riding fast over a forest path and looking behind her, concerned with the grey-cloaked rider that occupied the back cover. However, the title and the cover grew more and more plain to me - the wash of green over the woman's outfit blended too well into the forest cover, and as my writing professors told me that fantasy and science fiction were "genre fiction" (ie, not real fiction), I began to wonder if my choice of paperbacks had been mistaken.

Initially, I felt I was justified. The main character, Karigan, seemed flat, and the adventure she set out on - to deliver a message to her king - seemed like a micro-Lord of the Rings adventure. There was even a strange detour to a magical house occupied by two spinster sisters, a house quite like Tom Bombadil's in its ability to shelter and soothe those on a quest. But when Karigan is captured on her route by two warriors, and she is almost raped and forced to fight off two male attackers, my interest was renewed. The author wasn't afraid to put her heroine through hell, and the heroine actually survived it. My appreciation of Karigan grew, and the rest of her journey and her struggle over whether she should join the ranks of an elite messenger group that insits she was called to them (which is left unresolved at the end of the first volume) pulled the book from the run of the mill fantasy and made it into a story with real characters who don't take the choice of adventure over family as lightly as other novels might. Though the several continuing volumes that have been published since I bought this paperback so many years ago tell me that Karigan makes the more interesting choice, I appreciate that the author did not push the choice into the first volume. A quest, several murders, and a plot to overthrow the king is quite enough for one novel.

*My only criticism of this book, and it must be noted, is the poorly named country that Karigan inhabits. "Sacoridia" tripped me up again and again in the text. It sounds more like a GI infection than a country. I could not decide how to pronounce it, and not one pronunciation made it any more melodious or interesting as a name. Definitely should have gone back to the drawing board on that one.