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Pigs Don't Fly
in Hardcover edition on 1994 and has 370 pages.
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Second in the Pigs Don’t Fly fantasy series with the focus on the naïve and newly orphaned Somerdai.
My Take
It’s a life’s journey undertaken as Summer finds herself, blossoming from the waddling duckling to the graceful swan in her year of travel and adventures.
For the most part, it’s a lively, adventurous, and fun tale as Summer learns more about herself and begins to take charge of her own happiness. My one niggle is how stupid she keeps being, never seeming to learn from her mishaps with larcenous travelers.
That mother. What a mother of a mother, she was! I find myself wishing that Summer had left while her mother was alive and was forced to care for herself. Sir Gilman. Well, that was definitely the best decision she could make, although I could wish she would warn the poor boy.
As for the villagers . . . what a bunch of scumbags! My god, the things they said, their timing, their utter callousness. I gloried in that blaze that Summer set!
The Story
Her mother’s unexpected death results in Summer being thrown out of the only home she’s ever known, and she takes a masterful revenge on these greedy buggers.
As part of her escape, Somerdai accumulates a parade of misfits who want only to find their homes. With her kind heart, Somerdai does her best to help them all, even as her heart breaks.
The Characters
Somerdai is the name she learns she was gifted with at birth.
Sir Gilman was the beautiful man she finds broken, blinded, and being tortured by the next village. Sir Robert and Jeanne de Faucon are his parents. Rosamund is his duplicitous fiancée.
Growch is the scruffy little dog with the filthy mind she first picks up as she leaves her village; Mistral is a badly used horse stolen from her family; the Wimperling is a pig with vestigial wings; Traveler is a unique pigeon; and, Basher is the lonely tortoise.
Matthew Spicer is the kindly merchant who takes Somerdai in that winter’s afternoon. Suleiman is Matthew’s fellow merchant who heals. Saffron is Matthew’s ginger cat.
The Cover & Title
The cover reminds me of the fairytale, The Bremen Town Musicians, with its stack of critters in this colorful and fantastical collage of palatial pillars, the olde worlde banner across the top showcasing both title and series name, and the blind Sir Gilman holding Mistral’s tail as Somerdai leads them along.
The title is Somerdai’s own discovery and subsequent astonishment, because, as we all know, Pigs Don’t Fly.
