Quote:
Originally Posted by slm
...one reviewer on Amazon wrote:
Quote:
|
You could almost make yourself believe "Red Moon and Black Mountain" is a quasi-sequel of The Chronicles of Narnia or The Lord of the Rings , as the story is very much written in their spirit. At times author Joy Chant seems to be working with the template of "The Lord of the Rings" given the contents of her story: there are horse-people here, and a beautiful magical maiden who gives up her immortality for love, and a Dark Lord who threatens the freedom of the world. There's a white city, and giant eagles, and a race which has a deep kinship with the stars, and fantasy names like "Vandarei" and "Kendrith" that wouldn't look out of place in a Tolkien novel.
|
All of the points of similarity are accurate but the details and overall feel of either or the "cognates" are very different from Lord of the Rings. |
It's funny. Because when you read the Wiki article on Joy Chant, she explains that the land of Vandarei was her playworld from childhood, once called 'Equitania' when she was really into horses:
Quote:
|
... it began as a playworld, the sort that a lot of children have, and I was of course the Queen, the character about whom I created the adventures. But I had the disposition of a pedant. I didn't really want to pretend: I wanted to know, to be sure, to get it right. So even in its childish form this playworld tended to become concise, factual. As I grew older, horses became a passion and the playworld developed into "Equitania"—the horse motif strengthening. During this time the history of the country itself assumed an importance and I began to actually write. At fifteen, however, the last links with "Equitania" wavered and the name "Vandarei" appeared. The Queen was abandoned and ceased to be an avatar of myself, becoming a character whom I manipulated, but with whom I no longer especially identified.
|