Imagine reading a great, pages-long description of a cityscape, and thinking “Wow, this is super pretty and really readable” but then, in the same through, wondering “…but is this really necessary for advancing the plot?” Most times the answer was an ambiguous maybe.įor one thing, it took a long time for me to find the plot in the first place. This book sat right on the borderlands, never crossing completely over into gratuitous purpose prose territory-but it came so damn close most of the time, it was almost hard to tell the difference.
But I think that had this book been written by an author with even a smidge less talent, it would have been viewed by critics as entirely self-indulgent, rather than “gloriously vivid and rich” (Adam Roberts, The Guardian). The prose in A Stranger of Olondria is stuffed full of imagery, metaphor, and description. Yet even as the country shimmers on the cusp of war, he must face his ghost and learn her story before he has any chance of becoming free by setting her free: an ordeal that challenges his understanding of art and life, home and exile, and the limits of that seductive necromancy, reading.Īnd what is most immediately noticeable about Samatar’s work, indeed, the aspect of this book you’ll probably hear talked about most, is how gorgeous this author’s writing is. In desperation, Jevick seeks the aid of Olondrian priests and quickly becomes a pawn in the struggle between the empire's two most powerful cults. But just as he revels in Olondria's Rabelaisian Feast of Birds, he is pulled drastically off course and becomes haunted by the ghost of an illiterate young girl.
When his father dies and Jevick takes his place on the yearly selling trip to Olondria, Jevick's life is as close to perfect as he can imagine. Jevick, the pepper merchant's son, has been raised on stories of Olondria, a distant land where books are as common as they are rare in his home.
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