The Goblin Mirror

by C.J. Cherryh

Things weren't right in the little kingdom of Maggiar, so the princes Bogdan and Tamas set off to seek an answer to the kingdom's troubles in the world over the mountain, a world they knew only from legends. But that glorious place was great no more. The goblins had declared war, and no one--especially not visitors were safe from the raging battles, the darkest sorcery, and the evil that roamed the land....

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy, Science Fiction, Audiobook, High Fantasy, Adult

308 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

Currently resident in Spokane, Washington, C.J. Cherryh has won four Hugos and is one of the best-selling and most critically acclaimed authors in the science fiction and fantasy field. She is the author of more than forty novels. Her hobbies include travel, photography, reef culture, Mariners baseball, and, a late passion, figure skating: she intends to compete in the adult USFSA track. She began with the modest ambition to learn to skate backwards and now is working on jumps. She sketches, occasionally, cooks fairly well, and hates house work; she loves the outdoors, animals wild and tame, is a hobbyist geologist, adores dinosaurs, and has academic specialties in Roman constitutional law and bronze age Greek ethnography. She has written science fiction since she was ten, spent ten years of her life teaching Latin and Ancient History on the high school level, before retiring to full time writing, and now does not have enough hours in the day to pursue all her interests. Her studies include planetary geology, weather systems, and natural and man-made catastrophes, civilizations, and cosmology…in fact, there's very little that doesn't interest her. A loom is gathering dust and needs rethreading, a wooden ship model awaits construction, and the cats demand their own time much more urgently. She works constantly, researches mostly on the internet, and has books stacked up and waiting to be written.

Reviews

[Red Haircrow · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am a long-time thru-and-thru fan of Cherryh, and this was one that had escaped me over the years of collecting and reading. I love her style, most storylines and the unique wordy, repetitiveness that is unmistakable as hers. It was a true pleasure to read one of her older works that I'd missed. The only reason I rate it less than a 5 is I would have preferred a little more detail and explanation in certain areas and the "heroine" was the kind I really dislike: meaning very headstrong into dangerous situations without common sense, yet its a great story overall because that worked in the end. Yes, despite being powerful, some lovely ladies also need support lovingly provided. Secondary characters, as ever, were strong and unforgettable.

[Elentarri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not the best fantasy novel C.J. Cherryh has ever written, but still one of the best novels I've read in a while. The writing is beautiful and atmospheric. This novel has a Russian flavour making it a bit more exotic. The characters (including the non-human ones) all have distinct personalities. The plot is a bit simplistic but the wonderful writing makes up for it. Not to mention Azdra'ik, the Goblin. She could have written a whole novel about this guy.

[Mervi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maggiar is a small and rural kingdom. Lately, it’s in trouble and king Stani’s old (and only) wizard Karoly insists that he must seek advice from his witch-sister. Nobody knew he has a sister or that she lives over the mountain where nobody ever goes. Except that Stani’s mother came from a country over the mountain. Trolls and goblins haunt the forests.

Stani agrees to send Karoly with the escort of guards, the master huntsman, and Stani’s two eldest sons. Bogdan is the heir, a brash and proud young man. Tamas is the middle son, quiet and studious. The youngest Yuri is just fourteen and over his protests, he needs to stay. Tamas doesn’t want to take his foundling dog, so he makes Yuri promise to look after him.

The journey up the mountain is hard. The weather is constantly against the small group and Karoly behaves oddly, speaking rarely and then in riddles. When they near Karoly’s sister’s tower, they are ambushed.

Meanwhile, Tamas’ dog runs away and Yuri decides to follow him. Yuri thinks that the dog is following Tamaes, so Yuri takes his pony and little provisions and follows the group.

Russian mythology has clearly influenced this story. The goblins and trolls aren’t what you’ll find in a European-inspired fantasy. Also, while the story has a lot of magic, it’s not clear-cut spell casting. It’s dreams and not being able to do or think what you want to. Willing things to happen and other people’s will is against you. It wasn’t really clear in the book, either.

Tamas and Yuri are the two main POV characters. Both are very young and trying to understand what’s happening around them. Tamas is trying to figure out who he can trust and that’s not easy. But he thinks things through rather than brashly leaping to conclusions. Yuri knows how to take care of himself in the woods, even though this is the first time he’s done it alone. He’s scared but determined to find the dog and later to find his brothers. For his age, he’s very brave. The third POV character is the master huntsman Nikolai, an experienced woodsman who is trying his best to protect the foolish people under his care. The other characters are quite distinctive, even the dead ones.

Most of the book has a claustrophobic, fearful atmosphere. The rambling, repetitive style adds to the atmosphere. Unfortunately, it’s not very clear in places.

I liked the characters and the world, but the writing style didn’t really work for me.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Love it. Taps into Russian folklore & fairy-tales, which is strongly & refreshingly apparent (refreshing since most fantasy lit draws on English, French or maybe German setting/folklore). Real-feeling story & characters with a good degree of complexity. The fact that you may feel a bit lost now and then I found bound me more to the main character--he's not completely sure what's going on, so neither does the reader, and you both have to figure it out. It may help to be acquainted with a few Russian fairy-tales in order to 'get it' sooner.

[Grandma · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have read this three times, the first time in 1996. Three young nobles, a hunter, a wizard and a dog battle evil witches and goblins with the help of good goblins, witches and trolls. As always, great characters, great atmosphere. Cherryh's protagonists are often "tween" boys, but this book also has a "tween" girl, strange, difficult, and brought up knowing nothing of the real world or her role in it. She and one of the boys need to figure out how to keep Evil from taking over the world.

[Nigel · Rating 5 out of 5]

You can trust that when CJ Cherryh writes goblins, the take is going to be nore sophisticated than cartoonish monstrous bad guys, in fact everything about this tight little fantasy adventure is full of sophisticated little subtleties of setting and character and plot, but it is first and foremost an atmospheric adventure of magic and ghosts and brothers and witches and magicians and goblins - I really like her take on goblins, it feels way ahead of its time.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

She has an interesting take on magic: when the spell is cast, it carries everyone along with it, whether you are good or evil. At one point, the characters in the story are discussing this, wondering which magic is moving them, good, or dark.

[Phil Yates · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm a great fan of C J Cherryh's writing and this is no exception. The plot is her typical 'young man finding his place in the world' - although this time it's two young men, but that doesn't detract from her excellent creation of a sense of world and place. I love her conception of magic as something nebulous, even to wizards, that does things, but not in a flashy way. It's more like Gandalf in Lord of the Rings. He's one of the most powerful wizards, yet creating light is a significant feat. He's more at home with a battle of wills with a big baddy - 'You Shall Not Pass!' Her Rusalka, goes deeper into the same idea. Here, it is the exploration of the unknown and the interaction with the other that takes centre stage. It's a great book.

[Andrea · Rating 5 out of 5]

2024 - third (?) read:
Maybe 4 stars? 4.5? Cherryh's writing style in this one is perhaps a bit meandering. Still an excellent story though.

[Aricia Gavriel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Part of me desperately wants to rate this book four stars because the story -- though actually simple and couched in riddles -- is inspired by, and fueled by, Russian folklore, which is different enough to be delicious. In fact, if this YA novel had been "properly written," it would have been a five-star read, hands down! But, but, but...

The narrative style Cherryh uses is probably (to her, at least: and she'd know) reminiscent of Russian prose. It doesn't work very well in English -- it might be effective in a short story, but when you take something that would interesting in five thousand words and prolong it twenty-odd times that distance, it becomes quite wearisome. I've read Cherryh before, so I know she can "write properly," and what she's doing here is deliberate --

Sentences running up to, at worst, a third of a hardcover book page (no exaggeration), and sentence structure that's verbose, rambling, repetitive and, worse, vague. Way too often, you have no real idea what someone has just said, or thought, which makes the narrative line as confusing as the dialog is aggravating.

Fact: straighten out the narrative line, bash it and the dialog into conciseness (I didn't say brevity; just clarity, for the reader's sake), and this book would be 25% shorter. It would have benefited from the firm hand of an editor with the reader's best interests at heart.

The story is actually very simple; the plot twists are good; the teenage characters are okay; the Russian source material is terrific ... and the character of Azdra'ik, the Goblin, is the best thing about the book. He is fantastic -- I could happily have ditched all three of the children and read about him, the old wizard and the ghost! THAT would have been my story of choice to come out of this story idea!

However, you have to pick your way through this book: it's a buffet table of ideas and tidbits. And then one gets to the ending ... and Cherryh literally abandons Azdra'ik with about 40pp to go before the end, after he's been the one that gave the whole thing direction and purpose. The finale is, sadly, so far underwritten, it needed more to tie itself off satisfyingly. As if is, we'll just have to "make the rest up" in our imaginations. I know what I like to imagine!

So -- three stars, and a "doah" ... and a recommendation, with appended warning: you will have to be patient and as forgiving as a saint with this one. And take a very, very deep breath before starting each sentence, because they will turn you purple, never mind blue.

[Tom Ackerman · Rating 2 out of 5]

Lordy what a slog. This is not a big book, but it took me sooo long to finish and it's tough for me to describe exactly why. I was excited to read Cherryh for the first time. I liked her writing, I liked the characters, I liked the overall shape of the plot and fantasy world, but dang, after the first 100 pages it became both boring and frustrating. So much of this book is built around characters not knowing things or not understanding things, and there's many, many points where you think they're going to learn things... then they don't. Not because they're stupid, just because Cherryh has to keep stuff deliberately obtuse - for the characters and for the reader. I'll definitely try another C.J. Cherryh in the future... but not for a while.

[Jim Bogue · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hard times have come upon the land, and the local lord sends his Wizard and his two elder sons to find out what’s going on; back over the mountains to where the boys’ grandmother hailed from. The younger son trails along, but in the rear.
They encounter witches and goblins and trolls and a fragment of an evil mirror. And a cute friendly witch, who is in over her head (as are they).
Cherryh always provides imagination, a fantastical plot, and intriguing characters. But she has a tendency to spend too long insider her people’s heads, and here it slows down the action, sometimes to a crawl. Overall entertaining, tho.

[Maureen E]

Goblin Mirror by C.J. Cherryh is not exactly my favorite Cherryh, but it does demonstrate her ability to deliver a claustrophobic atmosphere that’s really, really effective. I did like some of the twists and turns in the storyline, but I still haven’t read any Cherryh that tops the Foreigner series for me. (Speaking of which, maybe I just need to reread all of them!) [read for the first time, 6/30]

[Marianne · Rating 2 out of 5]

Feels rather like a classic Snow White type story, that has been novelized. A great evil, caused by witches who should have known better. Brothers and apprentices striving to fix the problem, accompanied by bumbling dogs and family wizards. The flow of the story felt a bit fractured at times, though I'd be hard-pressed to explain why.

Fun enough, but done with the book.

[Dannica · Rating 3 out of 5]

Everyone said that Cherryh's standalone fantasy novels were not her best work. and they were right.
Didn't hate it but it's confusing. Like a less unique and exciting Finisterre--get the muddled emotional journey without the cool worldbuilding, with less interesting characters. Ok maybe I did dislike it. Still, I might have liked it more if Cherryh didn't set me up with higher expectations.

[Roy · Rating 5 out of 5]

An older book by Cherryh, but her mastery of writing is once again displayed. She combines seemingly ordinary things with the fantastical. It all feels like an old story, something she couldn't have possibly created on her own but in reality she has. Her writing style feels so simple and easy that it's easy to miss the genius at play. Such a fun read.

[Sara · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am not a huge fantasy fan, but this was entertaining. That being said, I found a good portion of the writing to be unclear and that detracted from my enjoyment of the story.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not her strongest novel but I definitely wanted to know what happened next. Also, I want to play in this sandbox. Loved the world building.

[Chris Duval · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an enjoyably paced novel with young adult main characters. It is nicely contoured to speed up toward the end.

Early on in the book I was struck by how vivid the wounded forest near the mountain pass was described--in the manner of a naturalist. In this it contrasts with Stephen Donaldson's forests that are infested with an anti-life, anti-sunlight malaise; here the blight is mundane.
Later in the book is another weirder forest with a witch in the center of its maze and time distortions. This remindeded me of Robert Holdstock's Ryhope wood. The trapping maze aspect taken by itself also resembles the Old Forest near the Shire, and the time distortions are like those in Lothlórien (both in J.R.R. Tolkien).

The book's conclusion consists of a radically positive social transformation brought about by persistence of vision, but I do not believe this should be taken as allegory for modern leftist utopianism. The latter draws on the Romantic, which in turn pulls from older sources (e.g., the Jewish Messianic and the Egypto-Christian Revelations). I believe C.J. Cherryh was pulling from the same cultural milieu that is a part inspiration for some revolutionaries.

[Camilla · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting stand-alone fantasy story with a Slavic flavour, which you don't often get in a genre dominated by generic medieval England settings.

Following a winter of unusual omens, the local wizard sets out with the local Lord's two elder sons to find the source of the trouble. Their younger brother, resentful at having to remain at home, runs away to follow them. Predictably, things go horribly wrong, the three brothers are separated, and must get to the bottom of things while searching for one another.

My only real problem with it is that the author's style relies on seeing things through the characters' eyes too much, resulting in a slightly jerky, cryptic, stream-of-consciousness style. I normally like to not have everything stated too plainly, but I think this book could use a bit more explanation.

Of course that's a matter of taste, so I'd recommend this book to people who don't mind not having things fully explained.

[Peter · Rating 2 out of 5]

Published in 1992, The Goblin Mirror is one of the dozens of stand-alone novels produced from the fertile mind of Caroline Janice Cherryh. Starting out as a pilgrimage by a small kingdom's wizard escorted by the King's oldest two sons and a few others, the story evolves into the unveiling of a world dominated by a goblin queen, sometimes in conjunction with wizards and witches, sometimes in conflict where the task is unclear and the role of the key actors is unknown.

As such the rules for a happy outcome are unclear to the reader even at the end. Along the way there is much confusion unravelled too slowly, the most entertaining aspect of which is the ongoing misunderstanding of a goblin leader by the middle son who is accompanying a young witch who might or might aware of her mission.

Sound confusing? It is. I've enjoyed other Cherryh stories. This one doesn't quite cut it for me.

[K.S. Trenten · Rating 4 out of 5]

Magic becomes a mystical and mysterious muddle, when a boy finds himself in a strange land, bereft of brothers; in the company of a witch and stalked by a goblin. Where they’re going, what’s pursuing them, and what lies in wait for them is all tangled up in a legacy of witches; which he discovers he’s a part of, as much as his witch companion. His brotherly bond with his younger sibling proves to be as strong as any magic, when his little brother follows him into danger; a web of wizards, witches, and a goblin mirror missing a shard, which keeps its queen’s power from being complete.

This was a lovely, lyrical tangle, which was delicious to lose myself in; bringing all the ambience of a fairy tale, the pulse of a dangerous adventure, the emotional demands of the heart, and a desperate determination that drove the plot and the characters through the tangle, to discover what they truly wished for and what they could do.

[Rob · Rating 1 out of 5]

I bought this book way back when I was in the Science Fiction Book Club. The cover looked cool and the short blurb in the SFBC catalog sounded like it might be a good read, plus Cherryh is a well known author. Well... boy was I mistaken. I ended up forcing myself to finish it. It started out alright, but by the middle of the book I could tell that it was going south. I couldn't wrap my brain around the whole magic thing (it's not your typical magic seen in most other fantasy novels). The second half of the book was confusing and half the time I couldn't really figure out what was going on, but I just told myself to continue reading and hopefully it'll make sense, which it didn't.

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

I prefer Cherryh's SF to her fantasy. She just does SF better. This book had some interesting features including a different view of magic, but it felt sluggish and a bit disjointed and essentially uninteresting until the last 30 pages or so. It took me longer than usual to get through the book partly because it was not good enough to keep me awake on the train. Even the climax felt flat as the villian never did really make an appearance. She flitted in and out of a couple of scenes. The final confrontation happened off-stage, which was unfortunate.

[Jacob · Rating 3 out of 5]

I hadn't read much old-school fantasy lately, and I found this as we were packing and unpacking. Overall, not bad. The plot kept me going, and I liked the feel of the world. Everything had an eastern European feel to it, mysterious forests and ruined towers and so on. The characters felt a little cookie cutter, but interesting enough. I definitely didn't like the way Cherryh's magic worked. It felt like she wanted it to be mysterious, but mostly it came off vague and confusing.

[Beguine · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an above average fantasy novel that I love beyond it's objective merits. I love the uneasy truce with a character that should be an antagonist, I love the dark tinge that's generally present in Cherrryh's fantasy novels, and I read this book and fell in love with it when I was but a wee dorkling so it will always be the literary equivalent of comfort food for me.

[Gail · Rating 3 out of 5]

Three minor princelings discover their true heritage when called on in a giant magical machination.

[Carolyn]

Based on Russian/Slavic folklore

[Betty · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really intriguing YA from one of my favorite authors. I liked some of the plot twists that raised it above a lot of other stories in this genre'.

[Howard]

8-SFBC