"Answer the unanswered riddle."
I just finished Harpist in the Wind, book #3 of Patricia A. McKillip's Riddle-Master Trilogy.
Reading
this series a second time was nothing short of incredible for, knowing
the answers to the riddles from the outset, one realizes the true depths
of McKillip's cunning. It was clear from the first chapter of book one
that she had this cataclysmic riddle-game planned point for point, one
riddle leading into another as warriors and wraiths, harpists and
shape-changers, and a farmer-prince with three stars on his face came
into his power alongside a princess of An. It is, in the older and more
profound sense of the word, awesome. The strictures of wizardry may
teach the avoidance of death, yet those of riddlery teach that the
person who flees from death often finds themself running towards it and
that it is better to turn forward into the unknown rather than backward
toward death. And it was riddlery that won the day.
"Beware another riddle-master."
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