The Secret Country — (1985-1989) Publisher: For the past nine years, cousins Patrick, Ruth, Ellen, Ted, and Laura have played at "The Secret" — a game full of witches, unicorns, a magic ring and court intrigue. In The Secret, they can imagine anything into reality, and shape destiny. Then the unbelievable happens: by trick or by chance, they find themselves in the Secret Country, their made-up identities now real. They have arrived at the start of their game, with the Country on the edge of war. What was once exciting and wonderful now looms threateningly before them, and no one is sure how to stop it... or if they will ever get back home.
  
 The Secret Country
The Secret Country is a fun fantasy about five teenagers and pre-teens who accidentally stumble into the fantasy world that they themselves created in play. Unfortunately, they are their normal selves, not their powerful alter egos, and so they are in a magical medieval kingdom without magical abilities, weapons skills, or even decent horsemanship. And the catch is that everyone expects them to know these things, since their characters do! This book is a role-player's dream, and perhaps nightmare as well.
They get by, becoming involved in court intrigue while trying to stay out of trouble by quick thinking and by calling on their knowledge of the way the world works. But then the world starts to change, with characters and objects behaving in ways they never thought of in their game.
Pamela Dean, as always, is brilliant at characterization. Especially well drawn is the luckless, klutzy Laura, who just may be more than she seems.
The story ends just when you'd expect it to start heading for a climax. This would ordinarily annoy me, but in this case it left me intrigued and fascinated. At the time I first read The Secret Country, the two sequels were hard to find; but now that they’re back in print I plan to seek them out. —Kelly Lasiter
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Stand-alone novels:
Tam Lin — (1991) Publisher: In the ancient Scottish ballad "Tam Lin," headstrong Janet defies Tam Lin to walk in her own land of Carterhaugh... and then must battle the Queen of Faery for possession of her lover’s body and soul. In this version of "Tam Lin," masterfully crafted by Pamela Dean, Janet is a college student, "Carterhaugh" is Carter Hall at the university where her father teaches, and Tam Lin is a boy named Thomas Lane. Set against the backdrop of the early 1970s, imbued  with wit, poetry, romance, and magic, Tam Lin has become a cult classic — and once you begin reading, you’ll know why. This reissue features an updated introduction by the book’s original editor, the acclaimed Terri Windling.
Tam Lin
Tam Lin is Pamela Dean’s retelling of the classic folk tale, done as part of The Fairy Tale series created by Terri Windling. The folk tale is about a battle between the Faery Queen and a mortal girl for the heart and soul of Tam Lin, a young man enthralled by the Faery Queen. Pamela Dean has taken the innovative step of setting the story at a university in the Midwest during the seventies, which is pretty smart, because if the Faery Queen needs to hide out, where is she more likely to blend in than with a bunch of eccentric theater majors? Janet, the daughter of one of Blackstock’s professors, enrolls at the university as a freshman and moves into the dormitories. Like those at any good old university, the dorms are haunted, and like any good freshman Janet has no idea what she wants to major in. As Janet tries to decide what she wants to study and get to the bottom of the book-throwing ghost, she meets Thomas, a young man who is more than he seems. When things get complicated, she has to choose exactly what she wants to do with her life and the lives of those around her. For those readers not familiar with the fairy tale, Dean includes a copy of the folk song in the volume.
Reading Tam Lin is like walking through autumn sunshine. The atmosphere is almost tangible as Janet struggles to make an identity of her own as a new student at Blackstock. Even though the plot as dictated by the Tam Lin folk tale doesn’t really get underway until the last quarter of the book, there are plenty of hints that something is not quite right. Dean is capable of casting an aura of foreboding and making it believable that the Faery Queen could be living undetected in a Midwestern university town. Balancing the vague sense that something is rotten in the dorms is the mundanity of college living — bad cafeteria food, weird roommates, and bizarre traditions. These details flesh out the surroundings until they take on a life of their own.
Tam Lin is one of my favorite books. I’ve read it a handful of times, and it’s one of my top choices for when I’m in a funk because it is so beautiful to read. It doesn’t bother me that almost nothing happens until the last quarter of the book, that the characters run around discussing the classics like they were born in a library, or that Dean introduces in detail a wide circle of characters who exist merely to make the world more real and have no purpose in the plot. All that just serves to illuminate the gorgeous writing.
You are not going to like this book if you need action and plot advancement at all times, but if you are willing to just sit back and visit another world, content just to observe, this book will richly reward you for the time you spend walking the halls of Blackstock.
—Ruth Arnell
The Dubious Hills — (1994) Publisher: Centuries after a group of warring wizards eliminate war from the Dubious Hills, the Hills are a place where knowledge and ability are parcelled out in strange ways. Only the group known as the Akoumi understand death, only the Gnosi know how to teach, and only the Physici can know pain. Dean weaves a strange and compelling examination of knowledge, responsiblity and death.
Juniper, Gentian, and Rosemary — (1998) Young adult. Publisher: Dean's excellent fantasy takes its inspiration from the oft-told folktale. With truly marvelous  skill, Dean weaves together adolescent social and romantic fumbling, hints of magical feuds, a Nancy Drew-like mystery, urban fantasy in the manner of Charles de Lint.
 Juniper, Gentian, and Rosemary
I've read several Pamela Dean books in the past, and so I was prepared for her style; it didn't bother me much that characters quoted too often, or that the book was long on characterization and mood but short on plot, or that the ending swooped in out of the ether when I was least expecting it. I was ready for those things to be the case, so they didn't disappoint me. I opened the book hoping for a story like Dean's earlier Tam Lin, full of interesting characters, with a subtle but looming sense of the supernatural.
I didn't like Juniper, Gentian, and Rosemary as much as Tam Lin, though. For starters, I didn't feel like we got to know Gentian and her friends and family as well as we got to know Janet's circle; I wanted to know more about these people, but I always felt a little like a spectator. Then, I couldn't understand why Gentian liked Dominic. Hormones or no, beauty or no, any self-respecting girl would have become annoyed with him when she noticed that he almost NEVER said anything but quotes. And the annoyance would have turned to revulsion when he made racist comments about her friend Alma. I just don't buy into Gentian's continued fascination with him. I would have disliked him intensely. Finally, the ending is unfair to Gentian; it seems like she is punished rather than rewarded for her good deed.
I had read the relevant ballad, "Riddles Wisely Expounded," before reading Juniper, Gentian, and Rosemary. I'm not sure whether that had a good or bad effect on my reading experience. On one hand, the denouement probably would have made less sense to me if I hadn't read the ballad; on the other hand, it was a spoiler of sorts. I would certainly recommend reading the ballad after reading the book, just to make sense of things. Tam Lin contained a copy of its ballad; I wish this book did as well.
One more comment on Dominic's quoting: Though it made him an extremely annoying character, I did like the possible implications of that move by Dean. If Dominic is in fact the mythological personage he is implied to be, it's tantalizing to think that he is just made up of the thoughts of human beings, accumulated over the years, and has no existence outside of the human imagination. That aspect of the story will definitely stick in my mind for a long time. —Kelly Lasiter
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