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malglories 's review for:
The Passion of Dolssa
by Julie Berry
Really, I'm the one of the last people you'd expect to enjoy a book with Christian themes. I don't know whether those themes aren't very present, or just easy to look past, but The Passion of Dolssa is spellbinding, nevertheless.
Perhaps because the book's heart is not with Dolssa, but with Botille, the girl who helps her, and Botille's sisters. Those three are incredible characters, funny and unique and passionate and loving all at once. It was Botille's life - her friends, her skills, her longings, her fears - that kept me glued to the novel. And even though Dolssa herself annoyed me at first, and though I had no particular regard for her message by the end, I found myself caring about her, too.
Because it humanizes history, not religion. Berry most definitely did her research, and her topics themselves - heresy and church corruption and girls in love with holy men only they can see - are in a way as impossible to look away from as someone burning on a pyre. There was a sense that I was reading true history, and in the way that history almost always goes, a sense that it might not end well. I raced ahead, not minding the questions of faith and belief, to find out what happened. And I've come away from The Passion of Dolssa with something, even if it's not religion, which attests to the novel's universal appeal.
Also, I just have to commend Berry on her spectacular, heartbreaking plot twists. The very last one, on the very last page, especially.
Perhaps because the book's heart is not with Dolssa, but with Botille, the girl who helps her, and Botille's sisters. Those three are incredible characters, funny and unique and passionate and loving all at once. It was Botille's life - her friends, her skills, her longings, her fears - that kept me glued to the novel. And even though Dolssa herself annoyed me at first, and though I had no particular regard for her message by the end, I found myself caring about her, too.
Because it humanizes history, not religion. Berry most definitely did her research, and her topics themselves - heresy and church corruption and girls in love with holy men only they can see - are in a way as impossible to look away from as someone burning on a pyre. There was a sense that I was reading true history, and in the way that history almost always goes, a sense that it might not end well. I raced ahead, not minding the questions of faith and belief, to find out what happened. And I've come away from The Passion of Dolssa with something, even if it's not religion, which attests to the novel's universal appeal.
Also, I just have to commend Berry on her spectacular, heartbreaking plot twists. The very last one, on the very last page, especially.