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A review by _leitmotif_
Heart's Blood by Juliet Marillier
4.75
juliet marillier continues to be one of my favorite authors in the fantasy genre. along with robin hobbes and grace draven, she has a unique gift for creating people and places that capture a feel of what it must have been like to live before the printing press, in the time of the sword, when communities where so much more interdependent on one another for the ability to thrive and the magic of the earth and the old gods that gave meaning to people’s lives still existed close by.
learning that marillier is a part of a OBOD, an order of modern day practicing bards and druids really helped explain for me why her books feel like translated texts from the 1600s, fairy and folk tales of the every day people.
and dispite all that place (usually ireland or scotland) and history based emmersion, it’s really the characters and their growth of relationship to self and each other over time that really shines in each of her stories. i cry at times, in most of her books, because the hard won trust, care and movement these characters take is so meaningful in relationship to what they’ve each been through.
anyway, this particular story is a very loose retelling of beauty and the beast, where the beast is not who or what you’d think and the beauty is found in all of our characters ability to change for the better…all on a haunted hill, in a drafty castle, plagued by generational curses and surrounded by a farm, forest and overgrown but clearly beloved gardens.
i’ll be sad when the day comes that i’ve read the last of marillier’s books, i am very glad she has been and is a prolific writer so that day is still pretty far off!
learning that marillier is a part of a OBOD, an order of modern day practicing bards and druids really helped explain for me why her books feel like translated texts from the 1600s, fairy and folk tales of the every day people.
and dispite all that place (usually ireland or scotland) and history based emmersion, it’s really the characters and their growth of relationship to self and each other over time that really shines in each of her stories. i cry at times, in most of her books, because the hard won trust, care and movement these characters take is so meaningful in relationship to what they’ve each been through.
anyway, this particular story is a very loose retelling of beauty and the beast, where the beast is not who or what you’d think and the beauty is found in all of our characters ability to change for the better…all on a haunted hill, in a drafty castle, plagued by generational curses and surrounded by a farm, forest and overgrown but clearly beloved gardens.
i’ll be sad when the day comes that i’ve read the last of marillier’s books, i am very glad she has been and is a prolific writer so that day is still pretty far off!