At just over 100 pages, this is just a beautiful little novella. It won the Hugo for Best Novella, the Crawford, and was a finalist for a bunch of other awards. If that makes it sound like it's going to be some stuffy nonsense you don't want to read, let me reassure you that this is some interesting material.
Cleric Chih is recording stories from an elderly woman named Rabbit about the time Rabbit served as a handmaiden to empress-in-exile In-yo. Look, I just described the book in one sentence. That's all it needs to summarize the plot, but it's really a story about loyalty and grief told with lyrical prose. Huge thumbs up and, hey, it won't take you very long to read it!
4/5 stars
Lines of note:
Chih was old enough to know that no one was harmless, and still young enough to obey instantly that tone of command from an older woman. (page 14)
Ha ha. We're ALL scared of our grandmothers.
She was as little like a proper Anh lady as a wolf is like a lapdog...(page 40)
I always like to note a good animal analogy.
That's something I think peasants understand better than nobles. For them, the way down matters, whether you are skewered by a dozen guardsmen or thrown in a silk sack to drown or allowed to remove your robe and walk down to the shores of the lake before you gut yourself. Peasants understand that dead is dead.
Dead is dead. Truer words, I guess.
Words I looked up:
caparison (page 39) - as a verb, (of a horse) to be decked out in rich decorative coverings
insectile (page 79) - I have never seen this word used as an adjective - resembling or reminiscent of an insect
Insectile? I'm going to start using that word!
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