Review: The View From Castle Always

The View From Castle Always by Melissa McShane
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Melissa McShane has been regularly making my Best of the Year list lately, and books like this are why.

The old enchanted castle trope is a good one, and here it's handled well and with some originality. Not only do different parts of the castle look out on different parts of the world (including from different windows in the same room), but the castle's purpose seems to be to give questers their choice of token and then shove them out the exit to meet their destiny.

But Alianthe, who has only come to the castle because the trees of her woodland home have rejected her, is trapped in the castle, and it won't let her leave. It may even be trying to kill her.

Fortunately, she has company: a man who came in, not in quest of anything, but in order to get out of the rain, and who is stubbornly refusing to choose a token, because he doesn't want to be shoved out in some random part of the world to live or die at the whim of fate; he just wants to go home.

Cue slow-burn romance - interrupted when a would-be chivalrous idiot comes questing and refuses to leave without rescuing Alianthe, who is perfectly capable of rescuing herself. Meanwhile, the castle is becoming stranger and more dangerous all the time (but so is Alianthe, rather to her disquiet).

A terrific twist ending; some good-quality reflection on the nature of choice, goodness, and heroism; and a delightful cat all combine with excellent editing and strong writing to take this to five stars, and into a high position on my Best of 2019.

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