Post by GRWelsh on Apr 20, 2021 7:22:47 GMT -5
I got this on Kindle and I like it so far. It is set in 1348 during the Black Plague, which must have seemed like the end of the world to the people living through it. Buehlman describes that quite well, emphasizing how society is in tatters... Many of the dead lay unburied, as no one was left to bury them and people were afraid to touch the bodies of those killed by the Black Death, as they weren't sure how you got it. So many places are abandoned, and basic things are unavailable. The survivors and orphans roam around trying to survive and often do horrible things to each other. As if that is not bad enough, Buehlman adds another layer: what if the world was really like what the medieval people of France believed it was, with the spiritual warfare between angels and devils, healing power of saints, and monsters out of medieval bestiaries being real?
A comet had appeared last week, near Cygnus, and he looked to see where it was moving. It would not be long before it cut the neck of the pretty swan in the east. He knew it was wicked, a plague token in a sick sky, but it was so beautiful he couldn't stop looking at it. There had been others before it. Three at once had shared April's sky, one so bright it washed out the stars near it: this was before the plague had come elsewhere, and everyone was talking about Judgment Day. He remembered the tales of the travelers they met, and often robbed; an earthquake in Italy, dwarfed by the earthquakes and freak storms that punished India; how the earth had cracked in the land of the Mongols, all the way down to Hell, and it was Hell that burped up this pestilence.
