The Curse of Chalion isn’t my normal fantasy fare. It’s high...
The Curse of Chalion isn’t my normal fantasy fare. It’s high fantasy for one (i.e., completely imaginary world. Also, it’s a medieval world.) It’s long! And it isn’t action packed, nor gut bustingly funny. But I was completely sucked into it, and lost sleep over it, so that is more than enough reason to review it.
One of the huge strengths of the book lie in its world building. Although vast swathes of the world are based on medieval Europe, the “Five Gods” of Chalion are wonderfully unique. What actually drew me in, is a more recent release of Ms. Bujold called Penric’s Demon which features a devotee of a god called The Bastard, “master of all disasters out of season.” I think anyone who reads I Bring the Fire can probably understand why a theology with such a god would be of interest to me. Anyway, I wound up picking up Curse because I wanted to go back and start at the beginning of the series.
Where the book really shines is in the characters. Although I love the Five Gods system, the characters in the book could have been thrown into medieval Europe and it would still be a lovely story for the personalities the author paints.
One of my fans recently commented that she was disappointed that so many protagonists are so young. (The only reason Amy was so young in I Bring the Fire was because an older woman would have kicked Loki to the curb.)
One of the nice things about The Curse of Chalion and it’s follow up, The Paladin of Souls is that both books feature a protagonist who is an adult. That means plot lines can’t fall back on a teenager making teenageresque mistakes. Cazaril, the main protagonist of Curse is a 35 year old man. He isn’t a prince, and has played the part of slave due to a “misplaced” ransom. His reaction to the experience is quite believable. His heartbreak, insecurities, and later courage due to this event are really moving. I admit it, I cried.
What really holds the world building, and the amazing characterization together are Ms. Bujold’s prose. She is a wordsmith. As I mentioned above, the story doesn’t “move quickly”, but it didn’t need to in order to hold my attention. The prose was just so lovely and evocative it kept the reading from being dull. As evocative as it was, it never once became overwrought. It wasn’t one of those stories where you feel like the author just combed their way through a thesaurus in order to make their language more varied.
Anyway, I really enjoyed the story, and highly recommend it. The Curse is an older book and traditionally published. It’s $7.99 for the Kindle Version on Amazon or the $11.87 for the Paperback.
If those are too steep you can find it at your local library. I actually wound up borrowing the Audio version from the library and greatly enjoyed it. Curse is available on Scribd and Oyster as well.
The author is more famous for her Sci-Fi series, The Vorkosigan Saga. I have put it on my to be read list. But if I read it right now, I’ll never get any work done!
