I always get excited when I hear there’s a new Robin McKinley book, even if I don’t have the means to acquire it right away. She’s a Newbery-Award-winning fantasist who has written a dozen or so novels (CK), ranging from semi-historical (The Outlaws of Sherwood Forest) to secondary-world fantasy (The Blue Sword) to alternate-reality-with-dragons (Dragonhaven). She lives in England with her husband, Peter Dickinson, and their two hellhounds, Chaos and Darkness. (No, I don’t actually know what a hellhound is, but it appears to be a greyhound-type dog.) She’s been studying piano and homeopathy of late, in between writing books.

Chalice concerns itself with Mirasol, who was a beekeeper and had a woodright, until recently, when the previous Chalice for the land died and the Circle came to her, to be the new Chalice. A Chalice is a kind of magic-worker who binds and heals the land by use of cups and some sort of liquid — usually water or wine, but Mirasol is a Chalice in honey. Normally a Chalice has a long apprenticeship, but Mirasol has no choice. When the old Chalice died, so did the old Master, and the new one — the previous one’s younger brother — must return. However, while he was gone, he was a priest of fire, and he’d almost hit the point where it was impossible for him to live among regular humans anymore. Can an untrained Chalice and the world’s only ex-priest of fire keep the land together?

This is sort of an odd book, and I can understand why those who didn’t like it, didn’t. It doesn’t really explain much — one just sort of accepts that this is a world where the land is somewhat volatile and they’ve developed councils of magicians (of a sort) to keep it under control. The story starts a bit in medias res, after the deaths of the previous Master and Chalice, and Mirasol is already working and a bit confused. If one totals up the events in the book, it probably isn’t 250 pages’ worth, because there’s a lot of reflection in between each event, and some meditations on honey, landrights, and what the job of Chalice entails.

Honey is very important in the book, as one might guess. Mirasol’s bees are a bit fantastic. They’re larger than normal and better-behaved than the real-world honeybee. Their honey, while based on real-world honey, is the supercharged version; most honeybees produce one kind of honey based on local flora, but each of her hives produces a different sort depending on where that hive decided (as a collective) to collect their nectar that time. I can’t possibly believe that Ms. McKinley wrote the book without knowing of the current plight of honeybees (diseases are threatening to kill them constantly), and this book only made me feel more sympathetic to them.

I liked the book a great deal. I was a little surprised when I got to the end and realized that I was mad — not mad at the way the book ended, but mad that it ended before I’d gotten to spend enough time in that world. I don’t know that Ms. McKinley is ever going to write another book set in that land, and undoubtedly not another one involving the same characters, and I was not pleased to realize that, either. I thought Mirasol was a fascinating character, and I also liked the Master quite a bit. The world-building, of course, is the superlative factor in the book, which probably prompted my reaction. Her synthesis of so many different elements turned into a slow-moving yet compelling whole, and I’d recommend it to those who have enjoyed Ms. McKinley’s works in the past, and those who don’t mind books without whiz-bang action and movement. 4/5 stars.