genXcrone (she/her)
Richard Martin-NielsenI am reading and loving @adapalmer #InventingTheRenaissance and it is - within my mind - in (mostly gentle) discourse with #JoWalton’s #Lent and #GuyGavrielKay’s #ABrightnessLongAgo, both of which I read years ago, and which I now want to re-read. #bookstodon
During war between Ygrath and Tigana, the son of the King of Ygrath is killed. In retaliation--in grief--Brandin of Ygrath, king and sorcerer, destroyed Tigana. He destroyed it be erasing it entirely from the minds of everyone, everyone except the people of Tigana. Their punishment is to know that to everyone else it's as if they never existed.
Brandin took everything they were, every mark they made on the world, and he made it so no one knows. No one but them. It would have been one thing if the Tiganans themselves couldn't remember, because there would be no pain for them. But they can remember. They do remember. And no one else does.
To me, that is unbearable. It's still difficult for me to grasp the entirety of that horror. To speak the name of your people and have no one but you even be able to hear it. I cannot imagine.
And then there is Brandin and Dianora. The great and tragic love of this book. There's no other way it could have ended but the way it did, but how I wished for something else.
And the great spoiler. That one that made me sob.
Three men see a riselka: one is blessed, one forks, one shall die.
Pepijn Vemer
Laurabunny
Jarulf
Actusf
Sean Eric Fagan
Rhevian