What an unusual book this is! I’ve been interested in reading something by Naomi Mitchison for a long time (I did have The Corn King and the Spring Queen on my Classics Club list at one point, before replacing it), so when I spotted this novella on NetGalley, it seemed like a good opportunity to try one of her books.

Travel Light was published in 1952, two years before The Lord of the Rings, which Mitchison proofread for her friend Tolkien, and as you can probably guess from the cover, it’s one of Mitchison’s own contributions to the fantasy genre. It tells the story of Halla, a king’s daughter, who is cast out as a baby because the new queen resents her. She is rescued by her nurse, Matulli, who transforms herself into a black bear, picks up the baby in her mouth and carries her into the woods, where she is raised with a group of bear cubs. When Matulli and the other bears prepare for their winter hibernation, Halla is entrusted to the care of Uggi the dragon, who becomes her friend and mentor.

The book is divided into three sections and the first is devoted to Halla’s childhood with the bears and the dragons, as I’ve described above. I really liked this first section; it has the feel of a children’s fairy tale and I particularly enjoyed reading about Halla’s time with the dragons on Dragon Mountain, where she learns about their love of collecting gold and is told stories of heroes rescuing princesses from dragons. These stories lead Halla to question whether the damsels in distress really wanted to be rescued and whether the heroes are really so heroic after all!

Despite growing up feeling that she’s half bear/half dragon, Halla eventually has to accept that she is, in fact, a human, and in the second part of the book she ends up joining a group of men from the fictional land of Marob who are on their way to Micklegard (or Byzantium, later known as Constantinople) to ask the emperor for protection against their cruel governor. The book loses some of its charm after this; it becomes more grounded in reality, the politics and religion of men play a bigger part, and things happen that showed me that it’s not really the children’s fantasy I thought it was at first – or at least not one I would recommend for young children. There are still plenty of enjoyable moments, though – I loved the idea of racehorses deciding amongst themselves who should win the race – and I found the ending of the book quite satisfying.

Norse myth features heavily in the story, with references to the Norns and the weaving of fate, a Valkyrie who keeps popping up at various times throughout the book, and an encounter between Halla and the All-Father (Odin). It’s the All-Father who, just before Halla joins the world of humans, gives her a part of his night-blue cloak for protection and tells her to set aside the treasure-hoarding habits of the dragons and ‘travel light’, without material possessions or mental burdens, as she moves forward into her new life.

At 192 pages in the new Virago edition, this is a quick read. Although I found it uneven, as an example of an older fantasy novel written by a woman and featuring a female protagonist I think it’s well worth reading.

Thanks to Virago for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.