Don't You Love It When...

...Books you thought were out of print are miraculously re-discovered as you walk by them on your way to lunch? I guess due to the Twlight Factor (re: sudden obsession with Vampires), a trilogy of books I loved in the far off days of my youthiness are back! It is the Darkangel Trilogy by Meredith Ann Pierce, a librarian (!!) from Florida.
Basic Plot: A young girl fights the powers of darkness in the form of a "darkangel" (a sort of play on a vampire) and a lorelei, the fabled waterwitch, along with a host of other weird and gorgeous creatures of the dark. The story takes place on a world which Pierce imagines as the moon in some sort of futuristic society, where we have settled there and played God, creating lands, people, and even something called the Sea of Dust. Unfortunately, as you may guess, something goes wrong and the "Ancients" abandon their creations. So there's a lot wrong with this moon world, not the least of which is an evil, Lewis-esque "White Witch" seeking to take it over.

Here are the reasons why you should read these books:
1. They have strong roots in popular mythology, folk song, and the oral history tradition: recognizable and believable, but original. For example, the traditional vampire is reinvented into something much more beautiful and terrifying: the soulless, 12-winged Icarus, who begins life as a normal human child but, after abduction and mutilation by the Lorelei, becomes such a monster by abducting, draining the life blood from, and consuming the souls of 14 young girls. The Icarus is a creature of loathing, and the main goal is to REVERSE his condition, not lust after it...
2. The heroine DOES admittedly fall in love with the barely salvageable human inside the Darkangel, but it's much more complex and heart rending than any teenybopper romance. She spends much of the trilogy by herself, fighting inner and outer battles, only a few of which are to save her possible love.
3. The language itself is gorgeous, and the images Pierce's writing evokes are the stuff of both contemporary fiction and the best mythology.

It's a book that's a lot like such favorites as A Wrinkle In Time and, as I've already mentioned, the Chronicles of Narnia. The books are, in order: The Darkangel, A Gathering of Gargoyles, and The Pearl of the Soul of the World. If you want a fascinating read that is for all ages and very different from a lot of literature out there, pick these up!

Plus, aren't you REQUIRED to love a book that uses Albrecht Durer for its cover art??? Renaissancetastic!