Deerskin

Robin McKinley

Nov 2014 · Open Road Media

About this eBook

From the Newbery Medal–winning author of The Hero and the Crown: the story of a princess who flees her father’s unwanted attention and finds an unexpected new life.

Princess Lissla Lissar is the only child of the king and his queen, who was the most beautiful woman in seven kingdoms. Everyone loved the splendid king and his matchless queen so much that no one had any attention to spare for the princess, who grew up in seclusion, listening to the tales her nursemaid told about her magnificent parents.

But the queen takes ill of a mysterious wasting disease and on her deathbed extracts a strange promise from her husband: “I want you to promise me . . . you will only marry someone as beautiful as I was.”

The king is crazy with grief at her loss, and slow to regain both his wits and his strength. But on Lissar’s seventeenth birthday, two years after the queen’s death, there is a grand ball, and everyone present looks at the princess in astonishment and whispers to their neighbors, How like her mother she is!

On the day after the ball, the king announces that he is to marry again—and that his bride is the princess Lissla Lissar, his own daughter.

Lissar, physically broken, half mad, and terrified, flees her father’s lust with her one loyal friend, her sighthound, Ash. It is the beginning of winter as they journey into the mountains—and on the night when it begins to snow, they find a tiny, deserted cabin with the makings of a fire ready-laid in the hearth.

Thus begins Lissar’s long, profound, and demanding journey away from treachery and pain and horror, to trust and love and healing.

Ratings and reviews

Excellent story. I've reread this many times. Princess runs away from her father, who wants to marry her because she looks like his late wife, goes thru some severe hardships while being on her own before quietly making her way into another kingdom where she finally grows into herself. Can be very dark at times but also a really great story.

This story took a dark turn that I didn't expect. Lissar resolved everything with a show of courage and strength that I hope would empower any woman who has been wronged to heal and recover.

Must read for lovers of fantasy, and feminist literature. I first read this book when I was 13 and didn't necessarily grasp the full ins and outs of the trauma that takes place. But I loved it then, and when I bought it for my digital library a few months ago, I loved it again. There are some graphic scenes in the book, but it's so much more than that. It's a story of overcoming abuse and assault, and finding yourself again. Robin McKinley truly turned what was a rather sickening fairy tale into an empowering journey for sexual assault survivors.

About the author

Robin McKinley has won various awards and citations for her writing, including the Newbery Medal for The Hero and the Crown, a Newbery Honor for The Blue Sword, and the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature for Sunshine. Her other books include the New York Times bestseller Spindle’s End; two novel-length retellings of the fairy tale Beauty and the Beast, Beauty and Rose Daughter; Deerskin, another novel-length fairy-tale retelling, of Charles Perrault’s Donkeyskin; and a retelling of the Robin Hood legend, The Outlaws of Sherwood. She lives with her husband, the English writer Peter Dickinson; three dogs (two hellhounds and one hellterror); an 1897 Steinway upright; and far too many rosebushes.