THE BLACK SWAN by Mercedes Lackey
Gollancz (Orion) -  2001
ISBN 0575071974 – Trade Paperback

Reviewed by Rachel Hyde, MyShelf.com
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The ballet of Swan Lake is universally famous and its story of maidens turned to swans seems inextricably a part of Tchaikovsky’s music.  But Mercedes Lackey has separated out the tale and produced this polished and likeable version of it.  Set in some tiny fairytale German kingdom complete with dark forests, water spirits, hunting lodges and dancing peasants the unfortunate Odile lives in her father’s enchanted island domain.  He is the evil sorcerer Baron Erich von Rothbart and part of her duties involves looking after his flock of swan maidens, all of whom have been cursed by him after they have broken their marriage vows.  Queen of this flock is the divinely beautiful Odette, who manages to get von Rothbart to agree to a test – if she wins then her and the other swans will be returned to their true forms.  The man she hopes to convince of her worthiness by telling him her entire story is Prince Siegfried, who unfortunately has a bad reputation as a womaniser whose sole aim in life is his own selfish pleasure.  But something is about to change all of that…

I am not normally a fan of Lackey’s somewhat saccharine Valdemar novels and so approached this novel with some trepidation.  But I found myself enjoying it enormously with its lyrical descriptions of the mythical kingdom and huge feelgood factor.   Lackey managed to lay off from too many descriptions of domestic tasks and grooming rituals and only once did I feel that the story was losing its way as she permitted a somewhat overlong description of the hawking princess’s hobby but these were only minor gripes and what emerged was a beautifully told fairytale that stayed in the mind long afterwards. 

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