sayyedanis

I really enjoy Bujold's imagination. Her fantasy ideas are never like anything I've ever seen before and her worlds are so rich and complex and utterly believable. And she is so good at letting them unfold slowly and naturally and at making characters that I totally fall in love with. This is actually the second time I read this book, I don't usually read books twice, but I bought it for a quarter at my mom's library last week because I didn't have anything to read and I was desperate. I had been rather disappointed on my first read of this book, it reads something like a romance novel (and I do enjoy a good romance novel) but that isn't what I read Bujold for or what I'd been in the mood for maybe. On this second read-through though, I was so much more struck with the world she was building and the philosophies behind it. I loved it so much! Everything in the world is filled with a quality (called ground)(kinda a plutonic ideal aura) that makes it its own essential self, that when you create something new, the ground itself shifts and changes and holds that creation together. This ground was a source of an disappeared ancient mis-handled magic, but remnants of that magic sometimes leak back into the world in frightening creatures called malices. And these immortal malices suck ground (and turn into a gray lifeless dust) everything around it, from animals and humans even to plants and rocks, getting stronger and more cleaver as it steals the intelligence and knowledge in all those stolen grounds. Only the lakewalker peoples can see ground ("farmers" can not), and only the lakewalkers can teach the malices to die. But the malices are multiplying while the lakewalkers are slowly dwindling, no longer able to keep up with even their minimal patrols. It's becoming apparent to a few that a new way must be found, that the strict social divisions between lakewalkers and farmers are making matters worse, that the world is slowly coming unraveled from every direction, and yet few can yet see it. Oh it's so lovely, I want to go read it again.

2023-07-12 05:29