Books 2010: the countless lonely voices
Mar. 7th, 2010 12:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hawkwing_lbBooks 2010: 17
17. P. C. Hodgell, Bound in Blood.
Since first reading Godstalk, only a handful of years ago now, I've been unable to view Hodgell's work with anything other than inarticulate glee. For a series with such an undeservedly uneven publication history over the last twenty-eight years, each book is remarkably fresh and, from Dark of the Moon, startlingly deep.
I spent Wednesday and Thursday rereading Seeker's Mask and To Ride a Rathorn in anticipation of this volume - and how incredible is it that, at last, I'm reading them with a reasonable hope of seeing the series completed? I found them after Meisha Merlin collapsed, leaving me with a very exciting, very elegant, very tantalising To Ride a Rathorn and a bucketload of dismay - and reminding myself of all the ways in which these books are weirdly brilliant: migrating trees, weirding mist, the native forces of Rathilien, the Haunted Lands, the changers, Jame's balancing act between her personal honour and the potential for destruction and damnation which she embodies.
Bound in Blood follows To Ride a Rathorn, with a lacuna of only a few days. Jame, having succeeded in the autumn cull, is to remain at Tentir. In amongst the tension of her relationship with her brother, Torisen Black Lord, her obligations to the hill tribes as the Earth Wife's Favourite, and the problems of being her brother's heir in a college full both of potential enemies and potential allies - the latter hardly less dangerous than the former, and often in the same person - her uncle, the last Knorth Highborn to train at Tentir, appears to be haunting its halls.
Fantastic book. Truly.
17. P. C. Hodgell, Bound in Blood.
Since first reading Godstalk, only a handful of years ago now, I've been unable to view Hodgell's work with anything other than inarticulate glee. For a series with such an undeservedly uneven publication history over the last twenty-eight years, each book is remarkably fresh and, from Dark of the Moon, startlingly deep.
I spent Wednesday and Thursday rereading Seeker's Mask and To Ride a Rathorn in anticipation of this volume - and how incredible is it that, at last, I'm reading them with a reasonable hope of seeing the series completed? I found them after Meisha Merlin collapsed, leaving me with a very exciting, very elegant, very tantalising To Ride a Rathorn and a bucketload of dismay - and reminding myself of all the ways in which these books are weirdly brilliant: migrating trees, weirding mist, the native forces of Rathilien, the Haunted Lands, the changers, Jame's balancing act between her personal honour and the potential for destruction and damnation which she embodies.
Bound in Blood follows To Ride a Rathorn, with a lacuna of only a few days. Jame, having succeeded in the autumn cull, is to remain at Tentir. In amongst the tension of her relationship with her brother, Torisen Black Lord, her obligations to the hill tribes as the Earth Wife's Favourite, and the problems of being her brother's heir in a college full both of potential enemies and potential allies - the latter hardly less dangerous than the former, and often in the same person - her uncle, the last Knorth Highborn to train at Tentir, appears to be haunting its halls.
Fantastic book. Truly.
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no subject
Date: 2010-03-07 01:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-07 01:54 am (UTC)I am... intrigued, by the possibilities which the cadet Shade presents, as of the end of Bound in Blood. It would be interesting if Jame were not the only honourable person with darkling taint succeeding volumes.
Succeeding volumes! I hear Baen has contracted for one more at least, and I still find it hard to believe after so much waiting. :)
I do like how circumstances are forcing Jame to become a team player despite her personal preferences. And it seems about time that Tori tried to open his mind a little.
no subject
Date: 2010-03-07 04:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-07 07:59 pm (UTC)