2000 fantasy. Maskelle was a high-ranking priest, but did something
bad and has been living in exile. Now she's called back to Duvalpore,
because something strange is going on with the Hundred-Year Rite that
will reinforce the world…
This is splendidly non-Eurocentric fantasy. Its world is not ours
anyway, but the inspiration for it quickly becomes clear as the Khmer
Empire and in particular the temples of Angkor. I think what works
particularly well for me is that, from the outsider's perspective of
Rian (a foreign swordsman whom Maskelle rescues), this clearly isn't
the sort of religion you understand in a hurry, even when someone
tries to explain it to you. At the same time, Maskelle's challenges
make sense to the reader even if we don't grasp in fine detail what
she's doing.
The nun Tiar was looking past him toward the archway into the tower.
Now she said, "Do you know if there's any progress? Everyone is very
worried and no one will tell us anything."
If such a thing had happened in Markand, there would have been panic
and bloodshed in the corridors of the Hold. Here, everyone was "very
worried."
There's a certain feeling of Paladin of Souls here, three years
before that book would come out – a god-touched older woman as the
protagonist, who has had it with all this crap and gets straight to
the point, because manners are all very well until they stand in the
way of what needs to be done.
And there's a troupe of travelling players (and not just a rerun of
the Commedia dell'Arte from The Element of Fire), and a little light
romance, and a haunted puppet, and the end of the world.
Perhaps the book starts a little slowly. But it's a lush setting and
I enjoyed wallowing in it even before the pace picked up.
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