If you like: Naomi Novik, Sharon Shinn, Robin McKinley, The Darkangel Trilogy.
This was one of those magical used bookstore moments, when I grabbed the slim novel on a whim. It was probably because the cover looked like something of the novels of my adolescence, a cross between A Wrinkle in Time and Jacob Have I Loved. Like fate, it was sitting on top of that stack of books, waiting for me.
I've read almost all of McKillip's books since then, but I still think The Changeling Sea is her best. It's tightly written, with magic by moonlight and a wry sense of humor.
Peri scrubs floors by day and tries to give the sea indigestion at night.
The sea has taken everything she cares about, but there's no escaping it on her island home. She meets a prince who is also drawn to the sea and what follows is a tale about underwater palaces, sea monsters, wizards and cold kisses.
Peri is not the type to go looking for fairy tales. As a heroine, she's prickly and curious and practical. She's also frustrated by how things have come apart. So she creates tangles of string, in the way she learned from an elderly woman who may or may not have been a witch.
"For some odd reason they fascinated Peri, as if by tying a knot in a piece of string she was binding one stray piece of life to another, bridging by magic the confusing distances between things."
Peri has to get over her grief and deal with a sea monster she accidentally summoned with her angry spell tangles.
But the sea contains more dangerous things and her prince isn't the kind that comes with a happy ending. To make it through it all, Peri must reach across those confusing distances herself. She learns to accept the sea for what it is, even as it breaks her heart.
There is a cynical voice in my head that sometimes chimes in about how convenient it is for three men to fall in love with Peri in such a short amount of time, but it's easy to dismiss. McKillip makes it all mean something. One man loves Peri because she is like the sea, one man loves Peri because she is like the land, and one man loves Peri because she is like herself.
It doesn't end with a wedding, but there is hope for a more interesting future.
"The Changeling Sea" by Patricia McKillip; Ballantine Books; 1988.
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