The Corn King and the Spring Queen

by Naomi Mitchison

Hardcover, 1990

Status

Available

Call number

823.912

Genres

Collections

In Storage, Gifts

Publication

The Overlook Press (1990), 720 pages

Description

Introduced by Naomi Mitchison. Set over two thousand years ago on the calm and fertile shores of the Black Sea, Naomi Mitchison's The Corn King and the Spring Queen tells of ancient civilisations where tenderness, beauty and love vie with brutality and dark magic. Erif Der, a young witch, is compelled by her father to marry his powerful rival, Tarrik the Corn King, so becoming the Spring Queen. Forced by her father, she uses her magic spells to try and break Tarrik's power. But one night Tarrik rescues Sphaeros, an Hellenic philosopher, from a shipwreck. Sphaeros in turn rescues Tarrik from near death and so breaks the enchantment that has bound him. And so begins for Tarrik a Quest - a fabulous voyage of discovery which will bring him new knowledge and which will reunite him with his beautiful Spring Queen.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member isabelx

I'm so glad when I finally got hold of a copy of "The Corn King and the Spring Queen", as it was such a long time since I originally read it, and it was just as good as I remembered.

It is partially set in Sparta at a time when they were trying to re-introduce this systems after it had fallen out of

use and the Spartan nobility had reverted to the pursuit of luxury like the other Greek cities. In the book the king and his supporters are very idealistic about their plans for social engineering, and the new system starts with all debts being cancelled, and the land and wealth shared out equally among the men, so it is very popular with the poorer citizens. I re-read it just after seeing a three part documentary about Sparta, and the harshness and cruelty of the system isn't apparent in this story.

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LibraryThing member lindawwilson

I read this book many years ago, probably in the 1980's; came across it by accident in a book store and liked it so much; it was unusual; a combination of novel and feminism and mythology, but very well done. In 2008 I bought another of Mitchison's books because of this one; she was out of print

and now in again; eventually I will read and review the new one

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LibraryThing member ritaer

Ritual king and queen from Black Sea visit Sparta and Ptolemaic Egypt

LibraryThing member z-bunch

Long, occasionally interesting, often tedious, with frequent unexpected changes in point of view in the middle of a paragraph to add confusion, this book was a slog for me. The main characters were well-developed and complex, as one would hope with so long a book with no particular plot, and mostly

sympathetic. The details and philosophizing bogged down. The descriptions, in spite of being abundant, were often unclear. There was a lot of exposition that could have made it easier to understand that the author didn’t include, I guess so that she could make room for digressions into secondary characters or artistic process or philosophy. The outcomes of the various conflicts were often unsatisfying and of the whole book more so. I’m glad I’m finished and am not convinced I shouldn’t have just quit.

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