Rachel Hartman (1) (1972–)

Impressions:

* I did not think I was going to enjoy this as much as I did, and now I'm off to read Seraphina immediately. Thank fuck overdrive has it.

* I am SO BORED of fantasy that takes place in generic medieval europe, maybe with a different map, because that's where fantasy books Must Happen. TotR is, astonishingly, set in a medieval europe analogue that has a real sense of place and culture. Serfs and hedgerows, monasteries, natural philosophers and their societies, repressive religion with weird pagan roots, and even the clothes (I Wikipedia'd them). Plus dragons and quigutl, with interesting alien cultures of their own.

* Quigutl grammar is Absolutely Yes. The way different languages are represented in the text is super interesting, and outside the usual literary conventions (the bee/beet/beer scene for instance). Given all that, the decision to italicize the pronoun ko and use he/she/it for quigutl when the proper pronoun is RIGHT THERE is really strange.

* Quigutl culture as a whole is really weird and I love it, I love a good alien culture. The way they waver back and forth between person and animal status is... uncomfortable. I don't know how much credit to give Hartman around this, but the cultural discrimination was brushing up against real-world racialized discrimination, and of course quigutl aren't human, so that starts to go some weird places? Maybe I just get twitchy about greedy anarchic lizard-people stereotypes, idk.

* Tess is quite straight, all crossdressing aside, but I love her anyway.

* Are they really just... Not... going to address who Lord M is? It's sort of obvious, and wow that's a tough place to set up the presumptive next book in the series.… (meer)