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The Vintner's Luck (Vintner's Luck, #1)

Elizabeth Knox

Start date: November 1, 2016

Finish date: November 30, 2016

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Mar 08, 2010 Mo rated it really liked it

Shelves: speculativefiction, historical-fiction, romance, angelsangelsangels, queer

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Deceptively simple story of the relationship between a fallen angel and a French vintner across a lifetime. Superficially, there are some aspects of the book I didn't like - the characterization is a bit weak and parts of it tend towards melodrama. However, there's so much going on under the surface: the way that Sobran's life is shown to parallel the making of a wine, the theme of symmetry/duplication, Xas' relationship with Christ, the way the divine interacts with the natural.

Xas' single ann Deceptively simple story of the relationship between a fallen angel and a French vintner across a lifetime. Superficially, there are some aspects of the book I didn't like - the characterization is a bit weak and parts of it tend towards melodrama. However, there's so much going on under the surface: the way that Sobran's life is shown to parallel the making of a wine, the theme of symmetry/duplication, Xas' relationship with Christ, the way the divine interacts with the natural.

Xas' single annual visit overshadows everything else that happens to Sobran during the year; when Xas nearly dies, he sucks the life out of nearby organisms to heal; copies of things and people end up in Heaven or Hell after they are destroyed. There's a pattern here - this book depicts God and the Devil as parasitic, poaching ideas and vitality from the human world. But this "fearful symmetry" of God's souls in Heaven lacks the true individuality that can only be gained by real experience. Niall's soul isn't Niall, it's a distillation - like wine is the distillation of the earth and sun and plants and labor that went into it, not the things themselves, only a reminder, a "backward glance." Xas, the preemptive copy of Christ, goes to Earth, where he experiences the reality of these things - sensuality, sin, death, life. Unlike Christ, he doesn't get to return to Heaven after his ordeal (the mutilation of his wings).

Note also the significance of their first meeting - Xas catches the falling Sobran, an event which then comes up in the closing narration. "It was the first time I'd supported a human. You had such heavy bones. I put myself between you and gravity. Impossible." It occurred to me that this might function as a reference to the Biblical Fall of Man, which Christ's sacrifice was supposed to redeem. In this version, there is no redemption (it's "impossible" to save a human from falling/gravity), and it's Xas who falls, sins, and lives.

Plus there's the hot-half-naked-angel-on-handsome-Frenchman action. You know you want to get on that. ...more

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