{"id":347,"date":"2005-07-31T21:23:00","date_gmt":"2005-08-01T01:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog-test\/?p=347"},"modified":"2005-07-31T21:23:00","modified_gmt":"2005-08-01T01:23:00","slug":"bujold_lois_mcm_10","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/2005\/07\/bujold_lois_mcm_10\/","title":{"rendered":"Bujold, Lois McMaster: (203) The Hallowed Hunt"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a> <\/a> <\/p>\n

Lois McMaster Bujold’s The Hallowed Hunt<\/cite><\/strong> is set in the same universe as The Curse of Chalion<\/cite> and Paladin of Souls<\/cite>, but in a different country and some time earlier (it was inspired in part by an episode in a book called Mad Princes of Renaissance Germany<\/cite>). Like the others, it revolves, first, around theology, and second, around the continuing effects of the past.<\/p>\n

Ingrey kin Wolfcliff is a trusted aide to the King’s sealmaster, sent to deal with the killing of a younger Prince during a heretical rite by the rite’s victim—one of the rite’s victims. Ingrey finds far more complications than he’d expected in dealing with Ijada dy Castos, the Prince’s killer; for one, he bears in his body the spirit of a wolf (obtained unwillingly in his youth), and it appears that his wolf wants to kill Ijada.<\/p>\n

Things get considerably get more complicated than this, of course; theologically, at least, this may be the most complex of the three novels. Unfortunately, its main characters are not as well suited to pulling the reader through these complexities as those of prior books. Not only are they individually less interesting to me, they have some serious competition. In Chalion<\/cite>, events were ultimately driven by the titular curse; in Paladin<\/cite>, by a character largely offstage. Here, however, events are driven by someone much more present in the narrative, which noticably affects the gravity of the story—in the science-metaphor sense of heavy objects on a sheet of rubber. Additionally, a couple of minor characters steal all the scenes they are in quite shamelessly.<\/p>\n

The climax of the book is fine and moving, but the rest of the book is not one of Bujold’s more engaging efforts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lois McMaster Bujold’s The Hallowed Hunt is set in the same universe as The Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls, but in a different country and some time earlier (it was inspired in part by an episode in a book called Mad Princes of Renaissance Germany). Like the others, it revolves, first, around theology, … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Bujold, Lois McMaster: (203) The Hallowed Hunt”<\/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":[48,53,15],"tags":[147],"class_list":["post-347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-chalion-books","category-sf-and-fantasy","tag-bujold-lois-mcmaster"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347","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=347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}