regshoe: A grey heron in flight over water (Heron)
regshoe ([personal profile] regshoe) wrote2021-09-25 06:10 pm

Flight of the Heron read-along: Prologue

The news frae Moidart cam yestreen will soon gar mony ferlie...

Welcome everyone to the Flight of the Heron read-along! I'm delighted by the amount of interest there's been in this lovely book recently, and I hope this will be a great opportunity to discuss it in more depth.

Some notes:

A reminder of where to find the novel as a free ebook and a free audiobook.

My plan is to cover two chapters in most weeks, but I thought we'd start with just the Prologue, partly to provide a gentle introduction and partly because it makes it easier to split the rest of the book up in a way that makes sense.

We have a mixture of people re-reading the book and people reading it for the first time participating, so, if you've read the book before and would like to discuss earlier chapters in the context of what happens later on, please warn for or hide spoilers! I suggest using rot13, if that works for everyone.

Next week we'll read Part I chapters 1 and 2, and meet Keith Windham...
hyarrowen: (Action Hero)

[personal profile] hyarrowen 2021-09-26 06:20 am (UTC)(link)
Everyone else has said so many things I love about the prologue - the wonderful scene, the slight sense of snark about the weather, Ewen being such a happy lad, the tension introduced by Lachlan, and above all the scenery descriptions. What a wonderfully visual writer.

I've searched and searched for information about the role of the heron in folklore, and the only thing I can find is that it's a denizen of three worlds - earth, air and water. So I suppose it's a fit messenger between those worlds.
hyarrowen: (Action Hero)

[personal profile] hyarrowen 2021-10-04 11:22 pm (UTC)(link)
Well, I can quite understand why she didn't call it "The Flight of the Puffin." Same applies to ducks, really.