Stage properties, the line-drawings at the head of each chapter, scenery, plot and theme of The Blue Hawk, all suggest a very early period of Egyptian culture, but this is not an historical novel. Peter Dickinson leaps still further from any actual historical starting-point than he did from Byzantium in The Dancing Bear. As in that book, he produces an illusion of authenticity while taking freedom to arrange events and choose characters as it suits him. At the same time, the associations with an exotic past that flock into the mind as we read cannot but add to our enjoyment of this complex, circling narrative. (p. 2811)
This is not the first story of the clash between tyranny and freedom of thought and it will not be the last, but it is certainly one of the most specific and compelling. Quotations from the texts prescribed by the priests for any and every contingency, religious or domestic, texts committed to memory by acolytes like Tron, are inserted naturally in the story and provide evidence of the power of the priesthood beyond what is obvious from their actions, whether honest or conspiratorial; these snatches of chanted words seem to go right to the heart of the matter. The tight quasi-verse structures, as well as the elaborate, concentrated descriptions of ritual, create a strong atmosphere of ancient mystery; the tyranny of O and AA, or rather, of those who purport to interpret Sun and Moon to the people, is in this book a great deal more than a mere matter of statement. Again, Peter Dickinson stresses through their speech the contrast between the inexorably formal priests and the human, freedom-loving King whom they must destroy if they are not to lose their unique status in the kingdom.
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