This is not your typical fairytale involving kings and princesses in distress but rather an imaginative take on Feudalism.  And rather than have the heroic male come to the rescue, McKinley, as usual, has her heroine save the day as well as her masculine counterpart.

Mirasol is a common beekeeper.  Her skills are of peasant stock but her blood still has much of the earth sense of old.  As such, when the old Master and Chalice perish from a fiery death, Mirasol is chosen as the new Chalice.  Her master, the younger brother of their old master, was an apprentice of the Fire priests.  It is said that the Fire priests are not entirely human and any who dare to learn their practices can never again live among humans.  Drawn by duty and responsibly, their new Master returns to take up his brother’s mantle.  Inevitably he finds this a difficult task, for how can he win the trust of his people when he can burn them with simply a touch of his fingers?  It is up to Mirasol to bridge the gap between the Fire priest and his subjects.  But how can a simple beekeeper succeed in matters of the state when all her life she had only known her bees?

Chalice is a beautifully written and creative tale, as can be expected from Robin McKinley.  The concept of Chalice and Master is an interesting take on feudal politics.  The Master rules only his own demesne and the people who reside on and work his land.  His counterpart, the Chalice, is a spiritual guide that binds both the earth and the people so that natural disaster would never befall them nor would they fall victim to treachery from within.  In more ways than one, it is actually the Chalice that holds more significance than the man who rules and doles out judgment.  As such, any who causes physical injury to the Chalice is sentence to death, and not even the Master is exempt from this rule.  This political dynamic McKinley has set up is intriguing and opens the door to many possible future stories.  

But despite this creative background, Chalice was a little disappointing.  McKinley is known for engaging characters that have depth and personality, i.e. The Blue Sword and Sunshine.  Mirasol is a very simple girl with very one dimensional thinking.  She sits in her chair and frets about what she should do before mumbling a mantra to herself about how she is Chalice and that duty must fall to her.  She then goes out and accomplishes whatever is asked of her despite her seemingly lack of knowledge and the absence of any guidance, just to do it all over again.  Not only is this tiresome, but the unrealistic quality of this makes it annoying.  You want to like Mirasol as clearly McKinley does, but there are times when the reader cannot help but wish that she finally failed at her task.  As is typical of McKinley, her two main characters are, of course, attracted to one another.  In this case, the relationship seems to be downright ridiculous.  Mirasol first met her master as a little girl, which somehow left enough of an impression on her that she could love a man she cannot touch or even see clearly half the time.  The ending of the story was predictable with certain plot holes explained away with magic, and everything is tied up in a neat little package.  That is not typical of McKinley as her stories often do not end, rather the telling of these particular events has simply concluded.  She usually engages her audience enough that it gives the reader a sense that the lives of her characters continue much further into the future and what happens is a tale for another day.  Chalice ends too much like a typical fairytale, “and they lived happily ever after.”

Overall Chalice was an enjoyable read.  Robin McKinley delights her audience with a fantastical world of magic and intrigue.  But this particular novel lacks the authentic feel of her other books.  Mirasol lacks the genuineness of her predecessors that made them so interesting to read about.  The plot, while creative at times, has some unexplained elements as well as some dull, almost repetitive moments.  Chalice is definitely not one of McKinley’s best works.