The Dubious Hills

by Pamela Dean

Takes the reader to an enchanting and heartfelt world where magic works in a rather "dubious" way and to a society of wizards and farmers with some rather strange ideas

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy, Young Adult, Science Fiction, Speculative Fiction

316 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Pamela Dean is an American fantasy author best known for Tam Lin, a novel that reimagines the classic Scottish fairy tale in a Midwestern college setting inspired by her alma mater, Carleton College. She has written six novels, including The Secret Country Trilogy, The Dubious Hills, and Juniper, Gentian, and Rosemary, and has contributed short stories to various anthologies.
A member of the influential writing group The Scribblies, alongside authors such as Emma Bull and Patricia Wrede, Dean was also a contributor to the Liavek shared-world anthologies and is part of the Pre-Joycean Fellowship. Her work is often praised for its lyrical prose, literary depth, and rich mythological influences.
Both Tam Lin and The Dubious Hills were nominated for the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature. She has also written essays and reviews, showcasing her deep engagement with fantasy literature. Readers drawn to intelligent, literary fantasy with a strong sense of folklore and academia will find much to love in her work.

Reviews

[Annie · Rating 3 out of 5]

But like, what the fuck did I just read.

Godalmighty this book was confusing. Trying to keep your head in the game here is like trying to take an exam after two days without sleep. You have to read every sentence twice and even then you just shake your head and blink.

Basically, the premise is that some wizards put a spell on the Dubious Hills so that nobody can “know” anything other than their “province,” a field of knowledge that comes to them when they come of age. They don’t even know what colours things are, or if something is ugly or beautiful, or even about their own likes and dislikes, without asking someone. They can’t even hypothesize or have opinions about them, like we do. Therefore it’s a very interdependent society, plus nobody ever fights because only one person knows about a given subject so there’s no reason to fight.

The province of our heroine, Arry, is pain. Which means she basically feels everyone else’s pain for them and lets them know they’re in pain (they have no idea and have to take her word for it). Which seems like the suckiest province ever, basically. Other people know the names of flowers and shit, but poor Arry is not only the only person who feels her own pain, she also feels everyone else’s pain for them too.

Anyway, in the Dubious Hills, the word “doubt” is an expletive as bad as “fuck” and “doubtful” is basically used like “fucking” (“What is that doubtful thing?” “What in doubt are you doing?”). Nice touch.

Now, Dean’s trilogy (set in the same world as the Dubious Hills but a dif area), The Secret Country, is frankly out of this world. One of my favourite fantasy series of all time, no question. And I know that Pamela Dean is an extremely weird person who is all kinds of down to take creative and intellectual risks and gamble the interest of the reader in favour of writing a really different story.

She is a veritable genius and should be viewed as a game-changer in YA fantasy (if she isn’t, it’s because her books have only recently gotten a bit more popular, and reading them now we’re unimpressed because we’ve read many books like them. Of course, that’s because directly or indirectly recent books are derivative of hers).

But this is just too much. She overstepped. I’m out. This isn’t good. This book just wasn’t fun for me. I wanted to throw myself on the ground and burst into tears and pound the floor with my fists like a tired, cranky five year old throwing a temper tantrum.

The Dubious Hills reminds me of the thought experiments we used to read in philosophy of mind. “Imagine Mary lives in a world where colour is inverted such that what looks green to us looks red to her…” etc. This is a book about epistemology- how do we know what we know? What’s the nature of knowledge? How is knowledge shared, and how do you know enough to trust what someone else tells you something you didn’t know? Good idea for a philosophical thought experiment. Bad idea for a novel.

It doesn’t help that the characters are quite feeble compared to the Secret Country’s heroes. Or that the plot is much more plodding.

Actually, very little happens in the Secret Country outside of a few big scenes. Much of the time, the characters wander from room to room going to visit each other to sip tea (or often wine, even though they’re like, eleven) and argue about the state of affairs. But somehow it’s riveting in that series. I can’t explain it, but the tension and the unsaid things and the unspoken, undefined relationships is all done with amazing finesse. Less so here in the Dubious Hills. We’re still wandering from house to house drinking tea, but it feels appropriately unexciting.

Until the end, the very, very weird end, when a coven of Shakespeare-quoting five-year-old witches in a pine forest plot to murder their werewolf teacher who wants them to open their minds to new ideas or die- but when they invite him for tea and drug him, they don’t push him in the river because, I shit you not, they realize it’s “not polite to kill your tea guests when they trusted you.” They speculate that maybe next time they can be his guests and can therefore kill him without being rude. But in the end they end up killing him with kindness. Literally. By which point I had two fingers on my temple and was wearily shaking my head, groaning “I’m sorry, what...?”

Still, I have to give Dean credit for dreaming up what may be the grossest meal I’ve ever heard of: “cold oatmeal-and-onion balls.” Mmm mmm good.

And every now and then we still get some of Dean’s mind-bending dialogue thick with nebulous meaning. Feeding me that is like giving candy to a baby.

Plus Dean weaves some of her polyamorous lifestyle into the story beautifully. Always refreshing in fantasy!

Still. Just not enough for me, I’m afraid.

[Elizabeth · Rating 2 out of 5]

I shelved this under fantasy rather than science fantasy or sci-fi because the premise...doesn't make sense. Which, okay, I can totally roll with that, it's not like my adored Arthurian legends have much resemblance to reality.

But this doesn't hold together. I feel like I was handed a bowl, and when I tried to take the dough out of the bowl to knead and bake, it turned out to be batter. This doesn't hold together, I don't understand how this world functions, I don't understand the laws of magic here, I don't understand what Arry is trying to do half the time, and I am therefore not happy.

copperbadge says that the line in Doctor Who 5.01, "Believe me for twenty minutes," is Steven Moffat as the writer talking — just believe me for twenty minutes. Just suspend your disbelief for twenty minutes and let me tell you this story. But the thing is, if I do you that favor, if I agree to believe for those twenty minutes, because I do not owe you the author my suspension of disbelief, you have to give me something in return, and I don't think Dean did. Her writing seems purposefully opaque here, intentionally dense. I would have been grateful for an info dump or two, because this makes no fucking sense.

[Ruby Hollyberry · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very peculiar book. The Dubious Hills are a place deliberately set aside from the rest of the fantasy world they are part of by a great spell performed by wizards long ago. There is no traffic to speak of in and out and weird rules govern the workings of the inhabitants' lives. For one, each area of human knowledge can only be the province of one adult at a time, and for another, even though magic is very useful to their simple way of life, it is only possessed by very young children. All the spells in the book, by the way, are quotations from English poets, mostly Romantics, which is a nice touch. The main character is an adolescent girl whose area of knowledge is pain. She is struggling to raise her small siblings after the disappearance of her parents, and her confusion about life is easily sympathized with. Then there start to be scary rumors of werewolves plaguing the village, and that some member of their community is in league with them. But scariest of all is what the children of the village are capable of getting up to, if no one can guide them otherwise. The ending is a complete surprise.

[Shawn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I see this as, first and foremost, a book about unintended consequences of efforts at solving major problems - in this case, war.

What if your knowledge was constrained in such a way as to make you dependent, beyond your control, upon other members of your community, and they upon you? How would that change the way you lived, the way you thought?

Pamela Dean explores this through a deeply enchanted rural community adjoining her 'Hidden Land.' Prior fans will find her particular strengths on display, and will gain some context from prior worldbuilding, but the book stands well on its own.

I appreciated the implicit recognition in this book of children as their own individuals, with their own pastimes and priorities. In my experience that is a rare gift in fiction where the protagonist is not also a child. I also - as usual in Pamela Dean's writing - greatly enjoyed her technique of adding an additional resonance, or shock of recognition, to the spellcraft in the story. Spells and charms are made of quotes from old ballads, Shakespeare, and occasionally fairy tales. The concept of magic as a thing one intrinsically recognizes has a substantial appeal for me, and Dean's method is the best I've seen for consistently evoking this.

The ending is satisfying, in that it resolves the major tensions of the story without untidy loose ends, but it leaves a number of open questions to consider, both within the context of the story and in the world at large.

[Francesca Forrest · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Dubious Hills is mysterious, powerful, paradoxical story. It’s both very small (milk pans left outside, dogs sleeping on a doorstep, planting beans while school’s out) and very, very big (the nature of knowledge, pain, and freedom and compulsion). It’s a story that directly addresses philosophical questions while at the same time making you remember what it’s like to be five years old (or live with a five-year-old). It’s about coping with abandonment and loss; it’s about struggling to care for your little brother and sister in the face of a terrifying threat.

I just can’t get over how many things it does at once, and all in prose that’s simultaneously beautiful and unassuming:

The wind pounced on them hard. It had blown some of the clouds away and stretched the rest across the sky like rags on a loom to make a rug. A blue and white and gray rug like that would be pretty, thought Arry. But how do I know that? Do I know that?

Why does Arry, the story’s fourteen-year-old protagonist, ask how, and if, she knows about beauty? She asks because in the Dubious Hills, where she lives, everyone has only one province of knowledge. This is the result of an ancient spell, designed to end conflict and war.* A person may know about people’s characters, or about pain, or about the names and properties of plants, or how to cast spells**—but that’s the only thing they know. For the rest of their knowledge, they have to depend on other members of their community. Arry’s province is pain. She knows when other people are hurt, and to some degree she knows how they may heal their hurts, though if it comes to things being broken (a split lip, a broken leg), it becomes her friend Oonan’s province.

Within your province, your knowledge is complete and utter. You have no doubt. (The word “doubt” is an obscenity in the Dubious Hills.) And so long as you can attribute a piece of knowledge to someone else whose province it is, that knowledge is certain too. You know the saying about the hedgehog and the fox ("a fox knows many things, but a hedgehog one important thing”)? The population of the Dubious Hills are hedgehogs.

So what would disturb a population of hedgehogs? How about the coming of some foxes? Beings that suggest that you needn’t be limited to knowing one thing? Within the story, the foxes are wolves—werewolves. In particular, one great werewolf, who kills when he is not hungry and wants to free the people of the Dubious Hills from their benighted state. Like the snake in the Garden of Eden, he tempts the innocent, as here, speaking to Arry’s wayward little sister Con:

“This is the only way to know everything,” [the werewolf said] …
Con scowled as only Con could. “How do you know it’s the only way?” …
“I don’t,” said [the werewolf], readily. “But it’s the only way for you, here and now.”
“Mother said anything worth having was worth waiting for.”
“You have been waiting for it … You needn’t wait any longer now.”

I think Pamela Dean is a genius, because she manages to make you root—against expectation and cultural habit—for the circumscribed way of life of the Dubious Hills, when normally stories are all about coming out from under limitations and into greater knowledge. We’re used to Prometheus being the hero, but this story makes you think about what the cost of knowledge is. It’s a hardscrabble, chapped-cheeks Eden of wizened apples up in the Dubious Hills, but Pamela makes it infinitely precious.***

She doesn’t fail to show the werewolf’s perspective: How can I conscionably leave you in ignorance? It’s not a spurious question by any means, certainly not in real life, and not in the story either. But if you once decide that someone poses a deadly threat, how do you deal with it? Let me use a double negative and say that the solution Pamela offers is not untroubling. It works within the story—it has heft and feels right—but, well, it’s not untroubling.

I’ve focused on the big-question aspect of the story, but I adored the daily-life aspects, too. I loved Arry’s interactions with her neighbors and especially with Con and their brother Beldi. Con was marvelous: insisting that she be allowed to do a task barefoot, singing songs with no words, playing games with piles of slate, making pancakes using an intoxicating concoction—definitely marvelous.

(Also the story took place more or less at this time of year, in a climate more or less like mine. There were crocuses and new greens, just like there are now.)

I am so very, very glad I read this book. I look forward to reading some of Pamela’s others—Juniper, Gentian, and Rosemary, for instance. It and The Dubious Hills are now in print again after a long absence. You can get them here (scroll down).

*The logic of the ancient spell casters isn’t ever laid out explicitly. How does everyone having just one province of knowledge prevent conflict? I think the notion is that in order to live—in order to know what plants are edible and how to give birth safely and how to erect a barn—you’re going to have to depend on your neighbors, so you had better not be fighting with them.
**The broadness or narrowness of the various provinces, and their levels of concreteness or abstraction, are arbitrary (and varied). This is fine: given that the whole set-up was brought about by human spellmaking, it makes sense that it would be arbitrary and not particularly logical—like humans themselves.
***And she does it without an ounce of annoying whimsy. There's nothing cutesy or foolish about the people in the Dubious Hills. You don't feel inclined to condescend to them.

[Cera · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think I understood it this time!

The Dubious Hills are a place in which there is no doubt; a wizard or wizards, sometime in the past, seem to have decided that doubt is what leads to conflict which leads to people getting killed. Avoiding doubt means that people have to absolutely Know whatever it is they know, and thus knowledge is divided into different functional groups and parcelled out amongst the members of a community. The heroine of the book, Arry, Knows pain; she feels it when other people are experiencing it and helpfully tells them what to do in order to feel better, whether it's drinking some tea or going and talking to her uncle who Knows medicine. The community works, and works well; people rely upon their own knowledge for a small slice of the world, and trust everyone else to keep them straight on the other slices. Arry's life isn't perfect -- her parents disappeared a while back, leaving her to raise her two younger siblings without either knowledge or life experience to guide her -- but she's content enough.

Then, of course, things change. In some ways there wouldn't be a novel otherwise. But the changes, the challenges, aren't why I liked the book, although they were interesting and unexpected; I like the ordinariness of it, the details of life in an unusual functional community, and I liked Arry a lot. A lot of the book is about thought and knowledge, experience and doubt, what it means to trust another person and what to do when that trust may be misplaced. It's a very talky book, a very thinky book, and not one to read in a hurry; I suggest a warm chair, a nice cup of tea, and a long afternoon to think about the ramifications of the cosmology Dean has set up.

I think I actually like this one more than Juniper, Gentian & Rosemary, although that may be because the ending of JG&R continues to dismay me.

[ribbonknight · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a beautiful fantasy novel, one in which people consume many pots of tea, plan for childcare, prepare food, & herd cats. It contains the type of mundane details that I wish more speculative fiction would include.

The premise is that wizards eliminated war by parceling knowledge among the members of a community so that they have to rely on one another to navigate through life. One person teaches, one person experiences pain, one person knows plants, etc. Then, the wolves come.

In her review (http://www.tor.com/blogs/2011/11/expa...), Jo Walton said this book expands the possibility of what fantasy can be. It really does.

[LiB · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dean, always a peculiar author, has here decided to take on the most high-concept philosophical conceit one could apply to human characters and then make it into a YA genre fantasy marketed to the post Harry Potter market. I gave it four stars for daring, and for managing to create a readable narrative out these workings, but be warned that reading it can feel like trying to pass a watermelon between one's ears.

The Dubious Hills are a place enchanted, generations ago, so that its post-pubescent inhabitants have one specific sphere of knowledge each and doubt everything else*. They therefore each know some things to be certain with an instinctive certainty, but most knowledge, including such basics as whether they themselves are in pain, has to be taken on trust from the inhabitant with that specific Knowledge. They can be told facts by the inhabitant who does Know, and remember them; while they are apparently able to reason by induction or deduction, they will only accept as certain what is based on magically Known information. Through such psychological manipulation wizards tried to create a society with such mutual dependence, such psychological inaccessibility to ideology or fanaticism or self-righteousness, that war and violence would be impossible**.

The main character, Arry, is a fourteen year old whose parents have disappeared, leaving her to care for her two young siblings. In the communistic society of the Dubious Hills, magically engineered to erase conflict and violence, all material goods are apparently held in common, and a lot of the story takes place during Arry's trudges over the hills delivering her own produce and assistance and receiving food and supplies from other crofters. Arry and her sibling might be physically provided for, but their (dwindling?) society has no one who can meet their emotional needs. Arry is the only one in the Hills who can feel pain; she feels everyone's pain in fact, possibly the worst magical skill ever. Her task is to tell the inhabitants of the Hills whether they are hurting, and how to avoid damaging themselves. Being newly come into her Knowledge she is only still developing an understanding of the emotional aspects of pain, and much of the book is about her growing understanding that the distress she senses in herself, her siblings and others, is real.

It's possible that the Knowledges are simple categories such as "plants", "weather" and so on. This is how the characters in the book describe them, inasmuch as they ever do. However, all the characters we actually meet appear to have a branch of knowledge that corresponds with an epistemology, a way of learning information rather than just a collection of facts on a certain topic. The Knowledges we actually see used include book learning(Sune), repairing things (Oonan), psychological insight (Winn) and teaching others (Halvar). Arry's domain is Pain, which can be read as a metaphor for learning through bitter experience, and learning through bitter experience is in fact an apt description of what happens to poor Arry throughout the novel. Otherwise we have Niss, whose Knowledge is Magic, which in this world seems to correspond to poetic insight and Tiln, who knows what is beautiful and what is ugly (Aesthetics). The exception to this is Derry whose Knowledge appears to be "animals", but then again, might represent something like taxonomy or categorisation***.

We are not told, and it must be deliberately, whether ethics is a sphere of Knowledge. Certainly none of the characters ever speak in moral terms, and Arry, whose mental POV is the only one we have, casts moral judgements in terms of what is hurtful. Whether the characters are actually aware of good and evil is in many ways the crux of the plot. This is the story of the Fall retold; although it is left to our own judgement to decide whether understanding is worth the loss of innocence and certainty, we are shown that it comes at a high price and an unfair one considering that until the choice is made the chooser cannot understand their own decision.

One of the amazing things about this book is how all this philosophising, all the brain-bending attempts to write as a person who thinks about as differently from the norm as a person can while still being human, all the weightly implications of the plot, is woven into a story where everyday life is constantly going on. Arry looks after the children, bizarre, articulate terrifying wizard children, but still children who throw tantrums and hit each other. Arry cleans the house. Arry collects food. Arry tends animals. Arry tries to get her siblings to do housework. Arry has to cope with everything in the plot alongside the inescapable drudgery of everyday life. There is mud and undone chores, and finding she has run out of anything easy to cook, and not knowing how everything will get done. I wish I saw this more in normal genre fiction.

I am not sure this works as a YA novel. It's very confusing, and it took trying to write this review for me to get a better sense of what was going on (my Knowledge?). A lot of the most impressive world building is so subtle there is no way I would have noticed it when I was a teenager. The children, as a product of their society, are creepily unchildlike in our own. The underlying story is a lot more substantial than many ostensibly more gruesome grimdark fantasy for teens, and I think I would have found it very upsetting without quite being able to understand why. Still, I am glad something so challenging and experimental was written. I'm sure I'll be thinking about this novel, trying to figure out exactly what I think, for a long time.


*The children doubt everything, but are all super powerful wizards until the age of five to make up for it. These toddler wizards also do most of the essential work, such as harvesting crops and lighting fires. Somehow everyone is still alive.

**One of the interesting passages in the book is Arry being asked to consider why, given the wizards succeeded in their stated aims, they never expanded the spell and decided against applying it to themselves.

***I say this because way she shares her knowledge (and they all share information in ways specific to their Knowledge) is to rattle off something like an encyclopedia entry.

[Catherine · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was like “The Giver” if “The Giver” had werewolves and was bad.

[Kris Larson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beyond question, one of the strangest fantasy novels I've ever read that was still good. In the Dubious Hills, everyone has one specialty of knowledge -- and no one knows anything outside his or her speciality. For example, if your speciality is plantlife, then you know without being taught and with absolute certainty about the properties and uses of plants. But having that kind of inborn certainty about one thing makes you unsure of everything else. So you are aware that fire will burn you if you touch it, because the person who knows has explained this to you, but you don't feel you really know it.

The slow pacing in this reminds me of a drawing-room novel. There's a lot of visiting and discussing with other characters as the heroine, Arry, tries to solve the mystery of her parents' disappearance. If you need quick action (or any action), give it a miss, but if you like a lot of conversation between sensible people -- oh man I am making this sound duller than it is, sorry -- then give it a try.

"According to Halver, today was the first day of May in the four-hundredth year since doubt descended. According to Wim, it was the second hour after dawn. But since dawn in its wandering way moved about, back and forth over the same small span of hours like a child looking for a dropped button, some of the leisured scholars at Heathwill Library (according to Mally they were leisured, according to Halver they were scholars, according to Sune there was indeed a structure called Heathwill Library) had named all the hours of the day from their own heads without regard to the shifting of the sun."

[Melanti · Rating 1 out of 5]

In this world, sorcerers enchanted one section of the world so that the people there could only have true knowledge of one subject. For anything else, you'd have to be be doubtful of it and rely on someone else's word.

For instance, you could look at someone's hair. You would have to consult with someone who knows colors to find out it was blond, consult with someone who knows beauty to find out if it's pretty, and consult with a third person to find out it's called hair. You could forget those things at any time, then you'd have to track down one of those 3 people or someone who had talked to them as well so that you could be reminded.

The main character, Arry, is a 14 year old girl who is the only one in town who knows pain. Thus, if you wanted to know if you had a headache or not, or, if you wanted to know if sticking your hand in a fire and letting it burn would hurt, you'd have to consult with her. Unless you asked her, you'd be unaware of your pain. One of the side plots is that Arry is trying to figure out how her sister can be in pain when she's not physically injured. She's sure it has something to do with their parents recently dying, but since she's the only one in town who knows pain, she has no one to ask about grief, which is a form of mental pain.

I didn't care for this book at all, but I can see where it gets its appeal and reputation from.

[Kristi Thompson · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a wonderful, deep, thoughtful book. Very odd fantasy. What a strange line, between knowing and memory and doubt... I don't think I quite grasped it on my first reading, not until after. This was my third reading.

I think most writers telling a tale of this sort would have made escape from the spell the goal, and thus Halver hero, not villian. I'm still not sure. But the society wasn't a bad one, the people not unhappy, mostly, even if they couldn't know it. I suppose the key is the end, with Oonan's "It's not the certain knowledge, the right knowledge, that did us harm, if harm was being done to us. It was refusing to step outside it." And so they didn't know that a mother leaving might cause pain in her children. Until she read about all the cruel mothers.

I wonder about the wizards. It says they set up the society to eliminate war, murder, and yet no hint as to why that particular setup would achieve that goal. Perhaps just that no one had the knowledge of killing? Or perhaps the loss of certainty... If they thought war was rooted in certainties, leading to fanaticisms.

[Clio · Rating 4 out of 5]

I decided to read The Dubious Hills because I'd heard good things about Pamela Dean and wanted to check out her work. Most of her books seem to be out of print, which is really sad. I would like to read more.

Usually when I'm reading fantasy books, I know what's going on right away. (Science fiction books often keep me guessing for a while.) In this case, it took me a little while to figure out what kind of place the Dubious Hills were and how everything worked. It was nice to see that in a fantasy story, kind of refreshing.

The Dubious Hills is a small-scale fantasy story in that it focuses on a small community of people, the fate of which will not much effect the outside world. I've read more large-scale fantasy stories than small-scale fantasy stories. It's kind of funny how often an entire kingdom, the world, or magic itself is at stake. There's nothing bad about that, but I like reading small-scale fantasy stories too, and there aren't nearly as many of them. This story doesn't have any battles or epic quests, but it was engaging and interesting nonetheless. I especially liked the relationship between the protagonist and her younger siblings.

[Kyra · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you loved The Last Unicorn by Peter Beagle, I highly recommend this book by Pamela Dean. Precious...but not TOO precious fantasy set in a borderland where everyone grows into their assigned 'skill' - all designed to keep violence & war away from their homes. The protagonist Arry is a 14 year old 'pain feeler' trying to raise her two younger siblings after the disappearance of their parents. Violence does indeed come to their small community and Arry has to figure out a solution. Lovely lovely book - a bit too long-winded partway through, but sweet and thought-provoking and utterly unsentimental.

[Elemental]

In a lifetime of reading fantasies where the protagonists are almost always Type A aggressive go-getters, finally meeting someone who has doubts was incredibly refreshing. I ranked it right up there with The Magic of Recluce. Heroes with doubts and disbelief (in themselves and the system they live in or believe in, not for the actual world, like Thomas Covenant)ring much more true to me.

Besides, I can't stand Type A people.

[Carolyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

A more mature and experienced Dean does much better with her children protagonists than in the Secret Country trilogy. She deftly handles a premise that invites reader nit-picking - or shall I say, "further discussion"? - and comes up with a good plot and intriguing interactions that make the nits tolerable.

[Opal Edgar · Rating 4 out of 5]

You read this book slowly, so as to digest every grain of information you get to build this truly original world into your mind. I loved it. I also loved how young children are given a big role and importance in that society. Really intriguing.

[Genevieve · Rating 3 out of 5]

I feel I should have liked this more than I did. I did like the poetry spells, but grew frustrated with the characters. Will try rereading it sometime and see if it improves.

[Mely · Rating 5 out of 5]

2022 reread.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

The language is beautiful and the descriptions kept me reading but I found this difficult to get through. It felt like a knot of a book because of the premise even though the plot itself was actually simple.

[Bix · Rating 4 out of 5]

4-

[Arkuat · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my personal favorite by this author.

[Lori · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not fun at all....but heard good things about this author so maybe I will try something else. Just too difficult to enjoy.

[Risa · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was pretty weird, but very engaging.

[Sarah Koz · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wanted to love this. But it is dreadful, plodding and repetitive. Maybe that's the plot gimmick. Didn't work for me. All the tea in all its pages could not keep me awake. What a waste.

[Ruth Lavery · Rating 5 out of 5]

Curious but good

Another excellent tale from Pamela Dean. She writes in a way that confused me but keeps me hooked and makes me think.

[Sarah Melissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a brilliant alternate reality book, about a small town in which adult citizens specialize in profession or capability of analysis. The three chief specialists are the doctor, the educator, and the one who perceives pain. Pain takes precedence, but Arri the "physici" is only fourteen years old, and still has tensions of authority with particularly the educator, who is male, and older than she is, and to a lesser extent with the doctor, who is six years older than she is, and her uncle. In this town children work magic until about the age of five, and then take a break until early adolescence, when they come into their knowledge. But werewolves who offer immortality in exchange for loss of knowledge throw a hammer in the wrench. One of the great things about the book is that they use "doubt" as a swearword, and another is that almost all the spells are Shakespearean or derived from other English poets who no longer have copywrite.
It is unclear whether or not Dean will ever publish her sequel to this book, but I look forward to this maybe taking place.

[Laura · Rating 2 out of 5]

An interesting book. Not a lot happens, it's more a philosophical story on society and freedom of choice.

[Samantha · Rating 2 out of 5]

Popsugar 2016 Reading Challenge: a book you haven't read since high school.

You know how they say that books have a particular place and meaning in your life, at a particular time, and how reading a book at the "right" time effects you?

I have considered myself a huge fan of Pamela Dean ever since I first read Tam Lin in the mid-nineties (back in high school). I remember reading this book and thinking how much I loved it. In fact, this particular book is one I have always looked for at used book stores because my copy was paperback and it had gone out of print. In recent years, I would look for an (unofficial) ebook version without success. Early this year, I purchased a used copy from a Barnes & Noble seller, which happened to be a first edition, great condition -- so great, in fact, that I refused to read it. This month, I bought the recently available ebook version.

I've spent a lot of time and money on this book, which makes my re-reading of it bittersweet.

I didn't like it as much as I remembered. Very early in the book, the writing method became tedious, actually.

The premise is really difficult to explain: Arry lives in this 'other world' that still references Earth, somehow, where the people's knowledge has been split. Arry knows about pain, whereas others may know about reading, or character traits, or what's considered beautiful. Someone in their community moves beyond this accepted way of life, opening the door to knowledge for Arry, making her choose what she would be willing to live with.

I'm glad I read this for the first time twenty-plus years ago, because today I wouldn't read more by Pamela Dean, and this tells me to simply remember how much I enjoyed Tam Lin and not to go back to it, just in case.

[Kate · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this because of how much I enjoyed Tam Lin. The Dubious Hills never really clicked for me, though. I was somewhat interested by the premise, that those in The Dubious Hills don't experience pain, and know some things with a deep certainty, relying on the knowledge of others outside of their expertise. But much of the book seems concerned with asking if this is a good thing, and it feels like even the main character doesn't know what to think at the end of the book. The ambiguity almost works, but fails at the last minute.

I'm glad I didn't read the back of the book until later, as it gives away the entire plot, including twists found in the last twenty pages or so.