2003
Awards: Nebula, Hugo, Locus
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ –
Lois McMaster Bujold has won Nebulas and/or
Hugos for five books. This is the only one that was not an installment of her long-running
Vorkosigan Saga, and (not coincidentally) this one stands head and shoulders
above the other four.
It is both a war story and a ghost story, with
a relatively strong heroine at its core and an intriguing secret parallel world of gods and
demons who influence everyone’s actions. The writing can sometimes get a bit overly
romantic, but that is more than made up for by the strength of the tale.
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The main character, Ista, is a member of the
royal family of her land, Chalion. But her life is not glorious. She had a
period of alleged madness several years ago, and although she has quite
recovered, her well-meaning family keeps her closely observed and confined in
their castle so she won’t go off and do anything crazy again.
To make matters worse, Chalion is on the brink
of war with the neighboring country of Jokona. The impending war plus concern
for Ista’s supposedly fragile sanity are perfect twin excuses to keep her pent
up in her stultifying prison.
Eventually, Ista thinks of escaping by going on a religious
pilgrimage, an idea which she knows her family cannot refuse. She quickly gathers
a few of her most loyal guardsmen and attendants to go with her, dresses
incognito, and packs and leaves before her family can organize the ridiculously
huge retinue they think should go with her.
Ista has a fabulous time on
her pilgrimage in the beginning: she loves the outdoors, the colors, the people, the freedom. Since
she is traveling incognito, no one is overly protective or obsequious.
And you are happy for her. Because, the thing is, Ista is not mad at all, really. Her
problem is that she has second sight: the ability to see the gods and demons in
the world around her. And this, naturally, makes her feel a responsibility to
do something to protect everyone else from the demons. It is a huge burden on her and makes
her seem crazy to the 99% of people who cannot see the spirit world.
Ista’s people, the Chalionese, subscribe to a
five-way deity system (the deities being the Mother, the Father, the Son, the
Daughter, and the Bastard). Every deity has particular strengths and abilities,
and every person has a particular deity who they have more of an affinity to
than the others, who guides and aides them while they are alive and who will
accept their soul when they die.
Unbeknownst to most people, the gods are very
active in the real world, observing and interfering and directing things. This is
generally a good thing, because there are demons out and about in the world,
too. Demons attach themselves to an animal or person, gradually gaining more
and more control over it, and jumping to another being when their host dies.
Trouble first comes to Ista's pilgrimage when her party is
attacked by a bear occupied by a demon. One of her guardsmen kills the bear, only
to have the demon jump into him.
And then, when they are heading to a temple of
the Bastard to try to exorcise the bear demon from the soldier, they run afoul
of a troop of Jokonans, who overwhelm their party and take them prisoner.
They eventually are rescued and taken to the
safety of a Chalionese border castle, and Ista falls in love with one of the
two handsome warrior brothers who are the castle's proprietors. But by then the dominoes
are tumbling. The incident with the Jokonan troop precipitates an all-out war
in which Ista is on the front lines and her second-sight god-seeing and
god-speaking abilities turn out to come very handy strategically.
I’m sure that plenty of people would say that
this is primarily a romantic love story. But I think it is more about the
triumph of a person who is trapped in a suffocating life, empty of love and
excitement, until she breaks herself out. In trying to gain her freedom, Ista puts
herself in peril and has some very rough and scary times. But she also finally finds
true friendship and love, and discovers that her talents give her an important
role in her world.
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