Posted by I have to admit I had no idea what to make of this title or cover as far as what to expect within the book. But, I started it on the first day of fall so that’s extremely fitting.
I had no expectations going into tis and was pleasantly surprised to get a story based around a disabled main character. My 9-5 job now is assisting people with autism with daily living skills and vocational rehabilitation. I spend a lot of time with people from all “levels” of the spectrum for a lack of a gracefully succinct way to put it. There were so many relatable moments within this character’s inner thoughts. People speak about my clients in their presence as if they aren’t there and it drives me fucking insane. One of my main goals when I first start services with a client is often times self-advocacy. “Hey, I’m here, just speak to me” is a shockingly common starting point. Sometimes my clients have the answers to questions but the words form slowly and so people just move on without giving them a voice. But they still have an answer they’d like to get out if you just wait a second. She appears to have sensory input issues and would sometimes focus on someone’s breathing that in her opinion is too loud and distracting to think properly. This was a very well developed character that I think provides great representation for those with autism even if this character doesn’t specifically have that diagnosis.
The story starts out with her father trying to get her educated before she comes of age. Despite her physical appearance (which she used to be in a wheelchair but now uses crutches, she has thin white hair and looks “sick”) her father thinks she’s still potentially suitable to get married and he doesn’t want his daughter to be an embarrassment if she’s out in public. However, no one who has worked with her before has been able to get academic lessons to sink in. She was proving to be too ‘difficult’ and ‘challenging’ for her childhood tutors and so the family had given up for a while. It doesn’t help that she genuinely doesn’t have a lot of interest in a formal education anyway and so she was resisting the tutoring.
Well, as it turns out she ends up getting a tutor and he’s a good match for her. He may not be a warm and encouraging tutor, but he gives her space to go at her own pace rather than assuming she can’t do something because it takes her a while. He recognizes that she’s not stupid, she struggles with writing runes because of how badly it hurts her hands. This is basically the whole plot of the book, it’s basically a character study imho. We watch as she struggles through an every day life of a disabled person in a classic epic fantasy setting trying to learn how she’s going to fit into society, and also how she can manage to do that not just socially, but physically. You can tell the author thought about it a lot how it would feel to have a body that doesn’t want to cooperate. Everything from eating, talking, holding a quill, sitting in a chair, it was all thought about and explored from the perspective of someone in chronic pain. She goes from hating books and thinking education is next to useless for someone like herself, to genuinely enjoying learning and academics. I think this worked better for me than other books that started out slow because the expectations were set from the beginning that this was going to be a more intimate and slower book. I wasn’t ever really questioning whether a larger more high stakes plot was going to form later on, and was settled into a mindset of a small scale story.
The prose was solid using clear and concise language to set the scene and I was able to keep a pretty consistent and clear head-movie throughout the book. There was a bit of witty dialogue from time to time, and overall the fluid nature of the prose made this book go by quickly. I would not call this a “fast paced” book but I did read through it in just a couple of sittings.
For those of you tired of long and drawn out series, this one wraps up as a single story. There might be more stories about this couple later on but the story stands on its own. I did make it to the end of this one and so it’s safe for now. I think I’ve got like 5 safe books right now that are potential semifinalists and I really don’t know which one of those is going to go forward and I still have five more to read after this one!