{"id":119,"date":"2002-03-22T13:02:52","date_gmt":"2002-03-22T18:02:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog-test\/?p=119"},"modified":"2002-03-22T13:02:52","modified_gmt":"2002-03-22T18:02:52","slug":"watt-evans_lawr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/2002\/03\/watt-evans_lawr\/","title":{"rendered":"Watt-Evans, Lawrence: Touched by the Gods"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a name=\"75030491\"><\/a> <a name=\"link_75030491\"><\/a> <\/p>\n<p><strong>Lawrence Watt-Evans&#8217; <cite>Touched by the Gods<\/cite><\/strong> is a competent and entertaining standalone fantasy. At birth, Malledd is named the gods&#8217; chosen champion. He grows up in strange times: the gods stop speaking through oracles, non-divine magic appears, and it begins to appear that the Empire itself is threatened. Malledd hates being singled out, though, and is skeptical that he really was marked by the gods. Hardly anyone in the outside world knows that he was named at birth; will he step forward in the Empire&#8217;s need?<\/p>\n<p>Well, of course he will&#8212;this isn&#8217;t a Stephen Donaldson book, after all&#8212;but why and how he joins the struggle is portrayed sensibly. That&#8217;s my predominant impression of this book: not flashy in plot, character, or style, but a thoughtful working-out of the actual experience of an adult facing the claim that he is a divine champion. It&#8217;s a good story in an interesting world, moves briskly, and while I doubt I&#8217;ll re-read it, I&#8217;m perfectly happy to have read it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lawrence Watt-Evans&#8217; Touched by the Gods is a competent and entertaining standalone fantasy. At birth, Malledd is named the gods&#8217; chosen champion. He grows up in strange times: the gods stop speaking through oracles, non-divine magic appears, and it begins to appear that the Empire itself is threatened. Malledd hates being singled out, though, and &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/2002\/03\/watt-evans_lawr\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Watt-Evans, Lawrence: Touched by the Gods&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,15],"tags":[427],"class_list":["post-119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-sf-and-fantasy","tag-watt-evans-lawrence"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}