Bujold, Lois McMaster: Paladin of Souls
Paladin of Souls (2003)
Written by: Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 482 (Mass Market Paperback)
Series: Book Two (Chalion)
Why I Read It: When I read The Curse of Chalion last year, I liked it okay, but I wasn't enthralled. So many of you swore that I should read on, because Paladin of Souls was so, so good. After reading and enjoying the hell out of Cordelia's Honor (not fantasy, but still Bujold), I was infused with a new enthusiasm for all things Bujold, and decided to go ahead and pick up Paladin of Souls. Thanks to the Mount TBR challenge, I'm getting to read it now, and I'm thrilled to pieces.
The premise: ganked from BN.com: Follow Lois McMaster Bujold, one of the most honored authors in the field of fantasy and science fiction, to a land threatened by treacherous war and beset by demons - as a royal dowager, released from the curse of madness and manipulated by an untrustworthy god, is plunged into a desperate struggle to preserve the endangered souls of a realm.
Spoilers, yay or nay?: Yay. There are lots events I want to talk about, namely in how the female characters of this story interact with each other, and that may spoil some of the bigger plot points. If you haven't yet read this book, please skip to "My Rating" and you'll be in good shape. Everyone else, onward!
So aside from a growing respect and admiration of Bujold's ability, one of the things I kept hearing about this book was how the main character was a middle-aged woman. Not a common choice for a hero, or a heroine, which made her story immediately more compelling in my eyes. I wanted to take my time with this book, to really absorb Ista's journey, so that I could fully appreciate it. I think that was one of my problems with The Curse of Chalion: I was trying to read it too quickly, and it's not meant to be a super-fast read.
Right away, I found Ista to be a compelling and sympathetic character. I remembered her from The Curse of Chalion, the mad mother who was actually afflicted by the gods, the woman who tried to lift the curse for her children and failed. This story takes place three years after the end of Chalion, and she's still considered by many to be mad and fragile. Everyone's afraid of what she'll do to herself if left alone. On page 2, she ruminates:
She knew what she feared -- to be locked up in some dark, narrow place by people who loved her. An enemy might drop his guard, weary of his task, turn his back; love would never falter.
It's this fear that fuels Ista's desire to run, to leave, and after a impulsive dash down the road when no one is looking, she comes across a pilgrimage on her way back and instantly knows what she needs: a pilgrimage of her own.
What I love about Ista is that despite her fear -- and trust me, she is burdened by fear -- she's willing to take action and make the decisions to get herself away from all that suffocates her. When her people finally agree to her pilgrimages, she seizes on the opportunity to take as small a party with her as possible, people who won't see her as a mad, fragile widow, but just as a woman, a Royina meant to be obeyed.
I don't want to say the book has a slow start. Bujold takes her time, letting you get immersed in Ista's world and her desires and fears. It helped that I was already familiar with it from Chalion, but I appreciated the time taken to get reacquainted, because there are things I've forgotten since January 2011. I have slept since then.
I found many of Bujold's description to really hit the nail on the head in terms of evoking the right visual or mood to set the scene for me. Some examples:
Page 112:
Blackness gave way to grayness, shadows to shapes to forms tinged with color, as the starry sky paled in the predawn. A low mist hung on the water and curled up over the flat banks, and the horses stirred it like milk as they passed.
Page 124:
She wasn't a tall woman, but neither was she the willow-whip she'd been at eighteen. Unfair -- the man had to be as old as she was, but his strength was clearly unimpaired by whatever years had grayed his beard.
Page 367:
His lips tasted of soot, and salt sweat, and the longest day of her life. Well, and horsemeat, but at least it was fresh horsemeat.
Page 422:
It came resisting, surging and spitting, streaming corrosive violet shadows like water spilling. It burned her spirit hands like vitriol, and she gasp with the unexpected pain, which seemed to strike down into the center of her being and pulse back out to every extremity, the way the shock of a great wound reverberated in a body. The creature was very dense, and ugly. And large. And old, centuries old, rotten with time.
Page 425:
I'm not getting it all sorted, she worried. I'm not getting it right.
You are brilliant, the Voice reassured her.
It is imperfect.
So are all things trapped in time. You are brilliant, nonetheless. How fortunate for Us that We thirst for glorious souls rather than faultless ones, or We should be parched indeed, and most lonely in Our perfect righteousness. Carry on imperfectly, shining Ista.
Page 434:
She approached the possessed animal, who lowered its head again and laid its face flat to her bloody bodice in what might be submission, love, or dementia.
By time the story comes together, and the reader, along with Ista, starts getting a clue as to what the gods' purpose for her might be, I was rather hooked and found the book difficult to put down. I loved the nature of the magic between Ilvin and Arhys, and I loved the complexity of their situation and story. Hell, I loved the complexities of the characters themselves.
Ista is just awesome. I loved her surly grumpiness, how she might fume silently, but she'll always do the right thing. She's quick on her feet and cares fiercely for her people, and while she's not always happy or willing to put her neck on the line, she does it anyway, without too much grumbling, because she's an honorable character. I can't stress enough my love for this character and her journey. As the book drew into the final conflict and onwards towards its end, I was on the edge of my seat. I loved the scene where Ista and Arhys blessed each other. Simple and powerful and very moving. I loved the banter between Ilvin and Ista. I loved how Ista and the Bastard seemed to be a perfect if unlikely fit.
And let's look at the other women in the book:
There's Liss, the courier who's thrust into a pseudo-handmaiden role, who's strong and self-sufficient and straight to the point. In many ways, she embodies a certain freedom, and I always enjoyed her scenes.
There's Cattilara, who was an immensely complex character that I liked and hated and liked again. No doubt, she was a selfish woman, willing to sacrifice anything to keep her husband living long past his death, despite what it would do to his brother, what it would do to his spirit, and what it would do to her soul. I imagine some readers might roll their eyes and Catti being a kind of villainess, a selfish soul who is only motivated by her desire for her husband and need for a child, but it's a valid motivation. Makes her frustratingly real, which is what makes her quiet defense of the castle later on all the more redeeming, because despite all she has lost, all she was so unwilling to lose, she finally broke down and did the right thing. Sure, it was a last minute thing, but she did it, and on that road lies redemption.
Lastly, there's Joen, the real villainess of the piece, possessed by a demon so old and powerful that it's rotted out her soul. There's reflection by Ista and others of what this woman could have accomplished had the lifting of the curse not awakened the demon within, and certainly, while her methods were reprehensible, Joen wanted what she thought was best for her country and her people. And that's important. Even villains think they are the heroes of their own tales, and I feel like if we'd gotten this story from Joen's point of view, that would've certainly been the case.
The role of women in this book is fascinating. We see quite the spectrum of human nature, and that I appreciate. I really loved the section between Ista and Catti, when the former is trying to convince the latter to help (page 380):
"Arhys would have protected you from this choice, as a father would a beloved child. Arhys is wrong in this. I give you a woman's choice, here, at the last gasp. He looks to spare you pain this night. I look to your nights for the next twenty years."
That's profound to me in a way I can't quite describe, except to say it rings of truth, and it's something I would've never thought of on my own, but having that particular train of thought opened to me, it makes me wonder why I never thought of such things before.
And before I stop making sense completely, let's wrap this up.
My Rating: Couldn't Put It Down
It's so funny that The Curse of Chalion was an okay book for me. Good but not great. Now that I've read Paladin of Souls, I want to go back to Curse and sink my teeth into everything that I missed the first time. Granted, it helped already being familiar with the world, the characters, and the gods, so I was immediately comfortable with Paladin of Souls in a way that I was never comfortable with Chalion. That being said, Ista is a wonderful heroine. A kind of running joke regarding her is that instead of calling her "Sweet Ista," she should be called bitter or cranky or cross instead, and yet all of this comes as an endearment, because Ista is the kind of woman who does not suffer fools gladly, and yet has her own grace. It's the kind of woman that's inspiring to me, as well as a woman I don't get to see very often in fiction.
So I'm thrilled I decided to give this Hugo and Nebula-winner a shot. I'm glad I have the third book in the series waiting on the shelf, though it's definitely going to wait. Because I've been warned it's very different from both Chalion and Paladin, and that it's better appreciated with some distance from both, which is what I intend to do. And then one day after that, I may just re-read these books all over again.
Cover Commentary: This cover caught my eye from the start, when I first saw it in a Barnes & Noble in Baltimore after it won the Hugo. It was a fascinating cover, but I wasn't brave enough to try new-to-me authors at the time, even if they'd won a major award. But the cover did the job: when I finally learned who Bujold was, I recognized this book immediately. I love the faces shadowed in the cloak, how she's dressed so appropriately, especially how she's described in the book. The pose looks a little awkward though, but that may be due to all the robes she's wearing.
Next up: Devil's Punch by Ann Aguirre