Robin McKinley is a favorite of mine, my go-to author for high fantasy. She has a lovely, dreamy, fairy tale style without a glut of Names with Apostrophes, characters who die off regularly or book stop size tomes.
Chalice is everything you’d want in a standard fairy tale. There’s a pretty girl with a magical connection to the land, a handsome, dangerous love interest and an evil overlord whose quest for power threatens the well-being of the town.
That said, I would have liked a little more on top of it. Mirasol is such an innocent soul that she has zero comprehension of political maneuvering. The evil overlord here is actually named “Overlord” and the slight that threatens tall handsome and dangerous’ life is so very minor that it almost seems much ado about nothing. While Mirasol is sweet and easy to connect with a lot could have been added with her actively trying to win over or compromise with her broken Circle members instead of just throwing spells at the tension and hoping that fixes it.
Also, it would have been nice if tall, dark and dangerous love interest had not been deus ex machinaed out of his dangerousness but instead learned to work for his people despite it.
Not a terrible book because the lyrical nature of McKinley’s writing makes the act of reading beautiful. But not my favorite of her books.