Robin McKinley has been described by her friends Terri Windling and Mark Alan Arnold in Horn Book as a "person who approaches every instant and event with such boisterousness, energy, and vehemence that even the most mundane aspects of her life are infused with vibrancy." According to Windling and Arnold, McKinley is "special and extraordinary," an "important writer of our generation." Yet McKinley has recalled that she was an awkward adolescent who spent her time alone, reading, riding horses, thinking about horses, and wishing she could have the kind of adventures boys seemed to be having.

"I despised myself for being a girl," she once stated, "and ipso facto being someone who stayed at home and was boring, and started trying to tell myself stories about girls who did things and had adventures." Just after graduating summa cum laude from Bowdoin College with a degree in English literature...