A Hawk in Silver

by Mary Gentle

Gentle, Mary

Genres: Fantasy, Young Adult, Fiction, Urban Fantasy

237 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 1985

About the author

This author also writes under the pseudonym of Roxanne Morgan

Excerpted from Wikipedia:
Mary Gentle's first published novel was Hawk in Silver (1977), a young-adult fantasy. She came to prominence with the Orthe duology, which consists of Golden Witchbreed (1983) and Ancient Light (1987).

The novels Rats and Gargoyles (1990), The Architecture of Desire (1991), and Left to His Own Devices (1994), together with several short stories, form a loosely linked series (collected in White Crow in 2003). As with Michael Moorcock's series about his anti-heroic Jerry Cornelius, Gentle's sequence retains some basic facts about her two protagonists Valentine (also known as the White Crow) and Casaubon while changing much else about them, including what world they inhabit. Several take place in an alternate-history version of 17th century and later England, where a form of Renaissance Hermetic magic has taken over the role of science. Another, Left To His Own Devices, takes place in a cyberpunk-tinged version of our own near future. The sequence is informed by historically existing ideas about esotericism and alchemy and is rife with obscure allusions to real history and literature.

Grunts! (1992) is a grand guignol parody of mass-market high fantasy novels, with orcs as heroes, murderous halflings, and racist elves.

Reviews

[Thom · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the author's first book, and I picked it out trying to find a book I read as a kid. This is young adult (somewhat before the category existed) but has some big topics (a war between fae).

A pure silver coin starts things off, and various folks then track down main character Holly, clearly to get it back. The blurb refers to the coin as "magic", but it isn't used as such. Holly and her friend Chris (both strong female characters) end up in strange and hidden locations and are pursued or attacked by interesting characters. Some interest in a male character with a fae connection is also in the story, but I wouldn't rank this as a romance.

The side story is the girls bullied by other girls in their school. This doesn't really resolve, and doesn't add much to the story. Perhaps chalk it up to this being the author's first novel. Coming back to the beginning, this was not a book I read as a kid, and my search continues. Would like to read another by this author in the future.

[Jacqie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm trying to read one random book from my shelves (physical, goodreads or Netgalley) each month in order to cut down on the books on my shelves by reading a book that has been languishing there and maybe finding a random author I want to read more of immediately. This has met with limited success.

Back in the day I really liked Mary Gentle- I don't know how the books would hold up on a reread, but I liked her brand of fantasy merged with our world. This is one of those books. A teenager picks a coin up off a sidewalk and weird things start to happen. However, none of those weird things proved very interesting. Holly and her friend Chris are escorted to a mysterious dwelling beneath a hill. Eventually, they are invited to go to another place. They slowly learn the history of the beast people, linked with Faerie, because their hosts just tell them. Then they are told to leave, and then eventually they are invited back yet again.

In between all this Holly and Chris are picked on by a bully at their all-girls school and this just sort of keeps happening without any resolution. It's unpleasant and doesn't feel like it connects much.

So, the book is only 200 pages long and I couldn't bring myself to read the whole thing without skimming, because everything seemed to take so looooong. Halfway through, they've met several people in a cave, had a history lesson, and then visited a secret city, but there doesn't seem to be a plot. Or, Holly and Chris are just there to see the ending of a very long story. They are observers, and we are observing the observers. It just wasn't very interesting. The book was published in 1977, so maybe there weren't as many books like this out then. I think I've devoted more space to this review than the book is worth.

[Althea Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this YA novel quite a lot, but it actually reminded me much more of Alan Garner than of the other books I've read by Mary Gentle. Where past works I've read by her (Ancient Light, The Architecture of Desire, Golden Witchbreed) have been very sophisticated and challenging, this was a very straightforward adventure story, in the modern-teens-become-involved-with-events-out-of-British-legend genre. (In this case, the teens are caught between two groups of Faerie from the Hollow Hills in an age-old quarrel).
However, this book stood out from the crowd for its vivid portrayal of British small-town life, and its unsentimental, realistic characterizations.

[LeeAnn · Rating 4 out of 5]

A retelling of "Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" and Shakespeare's "Midsummer", set in 1970s Brittain.

The plot is a bit forced (as is Twain's) and the character dialogue seems stilted (a product of its time, no doubt).

But the character of Holly is delightfully crafted, and the mystical world is lovely.

[James]

Teenaged Holly finds a strange coin which leads her and her friend Chris into strange adventures with the magical people of the Hollow Hills.

[Alytha · Rating 3 out of 5]

Finished A Hawk in Silver by Mary Gentle.

Teenager Holly finds a weird coin on the ground, in front of a normal shop in her normal hometown... then she meets a strange young man, and all of a sudden, the animals around her seem very interested in her... and suddenly she and her best friend find themselves drawn into an ancient war between two tribes of exiled fairies, the hill-dwelling elukoi, and the sea-dwelling morkani. The fate of all will be decided on Midwinter, when there will be either war, or a return to Faerie.

This book was published when Mary Gentle was only 21, and it shows a bit. It's a slim thing, a bit less than 200 pages, and still far away from the sometimes excessive descriptive style of her later works. It reads a bit more like a long summary of a fantasy epic than a novel in itself.

It's pretty good though. It picks up the characters of its teenage protagonists quite well, with all their likes, worries and fears (mainly a clique of sadistic bullies at school). In contrast to many other characters, (I think I've written about them, who, even with overwhelming evidence to the contrary, still refuse to believe in the supernatural), the girls here go along with everything very quickly, although they do some serious thinking about the things they got themselves into.
The faerie society is very detailed for such a short work, but their characters stay a bit stereotypical: the magician foster-father, the female magician, the harper...but well-done tropes are still better than unimaginative originals.

All in all, it's a nice, fast-paced little story, with a lot of worldbuilding stuffed into quite a small number of pages, with a pretty good ending

7.5/10.

[Emily Kestrel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Young adult novel about two teen-aged girls who find a mysterious silver coin and get involved in a dispute between two warring tribes of Faerie. No, it's not Tithe, but a much tamer version of this oft-told tale, first published in the 1970s. It wasn't bad, but I found it a bit plodding and pedestrian. Perhaps I would have enjoyed it more when I was in junior high school--that seems to be the target audience. Recommended for girls who haven't outgrown the unicorn stage.

[Salimbol · Rating 3 out of 5]

Goodness, very early Mary Gentle! Far less quirky and challenging than her later work, with lots of standard fantasy tropes here; what sets it apart are the slighty sweaty, grimy workaday lives of her teenage protagonists.

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

My wife Gill and I 'know' Mary online and this copy is autographed 'For Gill, with best wishes'. We now have many if not all of Mary's published books (mostly not autographed) but this one holds a special place in our affections.