The Hallowed Hunt

I wept on the train to work and again in the office. Quite a wonderful book. ( )

Interesting story. I had difficulty keeping the gods, animal spirits and characters straight listening on audiobook ( )

This third book is much the same and significantly different than the others, so much so that they're all about the same amount of difference between them while in the same world, but all of them have so much of the same gentleness and levels of extreme intensity. It's very odd to describe, and I'm sorry for making a hash of it, but it's still valid.

The gods are always making a mess of things, and sometimes it's so much worse than we think. Here's to the wolf! And here's to the Horse! Can we rely on the gods to help us in the mortal realm, or do they just wanna deal with the souls? Well, that's a big and important question across all the novels, and rather than just making a saint or creating a Paladin, I actually get to feel really sorry for Ingrey, our resident werewolf and god-ridden hero and the love of his life, the spirit-touched geas-ridden Ijada.

Such a fascinating and torturous tale, from how both of them are plagued by gods, how their world distrusts them, to the geas they both must fulfill, separately, even as they learn to love each other in such a serious, serious affair.

I can say, honestly, that the climax was all sorts of awesome and scary and quite unusual for a fantasy tale. The mythos that Bujold describes has been consistently borrowing from common symbolism but it's very deep and powerful all on its own and quite amazing. :) Just thinking about all those animals, iterations of animals, gives me the chills.

Very good novel and worth a lot more praise and close reading than I think it has gotten by the general public, perhaps. :) ( )

Chalion #3 ( )

This is the third and (at least for now) last novel of Five Gods cycle. There are some also short stories and novellas. Just like the first two, they are set in a common world but have different main characters and storylines. Once again there are strong theological musings, this time with a version of druidic-type faith. The story is set several centuries prior the previous volumes and we find out that Five Gods faith came with invaders (think Christianity) destroying local societies with their tribal ways and totem animals. The fantasy element is that people were able to actually ‘ingest’ animal spirit as a part of their souls.
The story starts with the murder, and not an ordinary one. A prince and possible heir is killed by a girl he tried to rape. A special investigator is sent by the court in order to hush possible undesirable rumors and find out what happened. He finds that the old and forbidden animal magic is involved. The problem is that he himself has a wolf spirit in him.
For me this is the weakest novel of the three. It is still quite interesting but less engulfing at least for me.
( )