Yearwood

by Paul Hazel

Book Overview

Yearwood by Hazel, Paul. 4 1/4 x 7. 1st ptg. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0553266810
• ISBN13: 9780553266818
• Release Date: April 1987
• Publisher: Spectra Books
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Favorite Book and Author

This has been my favorite book since it first came out in the early 80's. I love Hazel's writing style, and the fact that it wasn't the typical fantasy crap. Finn is a very sympathetic character in that many people around him know who he is and what he's supposed to do, but no one will ever give him any straight answers. Because he is young and sometimes haughty and angry, things that seem plain to the reader still go right over his head. Alot of the mysteries Yearwood leaves you with are answered in the second book of The Finnbranch, Undersea. But then Undersea leaves you with more. The third book, Winterking, answers some of those, but is altogether very different from the first two. In fact, Finn is not even a major character. It took a few readings of Undersea and Winterking for me to unravel things. This would frustrate the hell out of many readers, I understand. Like I said, I love Hazel's writing......... Hazel doesn't seem to publish anymore. I think he may still be teaching. I've read everything I could possibly find by him, but unfortunately, it's not much.

Strange yet familiar

Yearwood is an unexpected book. On the one hand, it is full of half-familiar, half-remembered names from Celtic and Gaelic lore, old themes of selkies ("selchies"), speaking crows (think of the Northern Ravens), islands in the seas and other witcheries. For me the cadence took some getting used to, although 20-odd years ago when I read more of the older fantasies and original materials it would not have seemed so odd. The wounded hero, Finn, is not weak, but a mixture of ignorant and arrogant, the way youth and beauty can and should be. I think it is a very good book, but it is not fast and easy going, and it is not just the same old same old rehash of Americanized pop pseudo-Celtic themes. I am looking forward to reading Undersea and Winterking also. If you liked this melange of familiar yet not quite the same, you might like Tad Williams' To Green Angel Tower.

Great book.

I agree with the first reviewer: this book is excellent. Very dark, descriptive but not too wordy (for those of you who couldn't stand Peake), not formulaic at all. Makes you stop and think, makes you stop and feel gloomy, but leaves you satisfied, wanting more. (Keep some sugar handy in case the gloom gets to your head and you need to perk up, though.) About a "boy coming of age in a dark time" alright! :) Buy it, if you can get your hands on it; disregard the terrible paperback cover you may see at some used bookstores. You can tell Hazel graduated from Yale. The guy's a genius.

Good Book, why is it out of print?

I thought this was a good book. Why the heck is it out of print? I think most of the fantasy genre is really crappy formula written. Everything since Tolkein has the same Tolkeinish plot, except Yearwood, which is not so much an epic about fantasy and killing the great evil plague. It was about a young boy coming of age in a dark time. Can't wait to read the other two books.