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A review by chirson
The Hallowed Hunt by Lois McMaster Bujold
4.0
I picked this book up in August, but my mood just wasn't right then; the world was bright and full of buzz and energy, and I was busy and lacked the attention span this novel demanded.
It's a very difficult book for me to review because it is quite a bit more complex than it seems on the surface (and it reads light even though it is far from being slight!). Very few things about it match what they seem at first. It zigs when you think it would zag. It is a novel that has very little action and yet things keep happening; it is a romance between a man and a woman but the greatest tension is found between male characters; there's a lot of humour and it reads like a breeze, but it's also thoughtfully spinning a metaphor about how trauma of genocide and destruction of a culture and a religion can hold over hundreds of years. And how things and people survive despite many difficulties.
I loved the two previous novels in the World of the Five Gods, but this one really made me fall in love with the world Bujold built; I one-clicked the first Penric novella the moment I finished reading this (she exaggerated but only slightly).
It's a very difficult book for me to review because it is quite a bit more complex than it seems on the surface (and it reads light even though it is far from being slight!). Very few things about it match what they seem at first. It zigs when you think it would zag. It is a novel that has very little action and yet things keep happening; it is a romance between a man and a woman but the greatest tension is found between male characters; there's a lot of humour and it reads like a breeze, but it's also thoughtfully spinning a metaphor about how trauma of genocide and destruction of a culture and a religion can hold over hundreds of years. And how things and people survive despite many difficulties.
I loved the two previous novels in the World of the Five Gods, but this one really made me fall in love with the world Bujold built; I one-clicked the first Penric novella the moment I finished reading this (she exaggerated but only slightly).