Charlotte Kersten

“Carry on imperfectly, shining Ista.”

Year published: 2005

Category: Fantasy

Summary: In a land threatened by treacherous war and beset by demons, royal dowager Ista, released from the curse of madness and manipulated by an untrustworthy god, is plunged into a desperate struggle to preserve the endangered souls of a realm.

My thoughts: It’s a testament to Bujold’s genius that she decided to make The Curse of Chalion’s sequel focus on Ista, who was one of that book’s best side characters. It turns out that Ista is a fantastic main character too – grimly determined after everything she’s been through, furious at the gods, surprisingly funny, and fierce when she puts aside the stifling constraints that have forced her into meekness for so long. She starts the book considering herself a drab, boring person who is smothered by the world around her and has wasted her life, and it’s absolutely amazing to see her gradually grow beyond that to find a purpose in life, forgiveness for the wrongs of her past, self-assuredness and new love. One of my only complaints about The Curse of Chalion was that Caz was somewhat miraculously cured of his PTSD at the end, and while Arhys kind of does something similar for Ista regarding his father’s murder, I think there’s far more ambiguity here as well as a lot more character development that leads to Ista’s healing feeling much more earned.

There’s some kind of icky, questionable stuff regarding consent in this book – characters are kissed while unconscious several times, the Bastard forces himself on Ista in one of her visions, and there’s this random bit where the side character Foix wants to use his newfound sorcery to seduce Ista’s maid Liss. This makes for a satisfying moment where Ista rips him to shreds for it, but it still made me hate him for the rest of the book and not want him to end up with Liss (which he does.) I did really love Liss, though – she is so spunky and funny and adorable.

Second paragraph of criticisms: I got very tired of reading endless descriptions of how fat Dy Cabon is. We get it, Lois, the man is rotund and he struggles with physically demanding tasks! Illvan, Ista’s love interest, is okay overall but he doesn’t really stand out to me as a character and the content of the romance is not especially strong – I was more primarily invested in the fact that Ista was getting to fall in love than I was invested in him as a love interest, if that makes sense.

The unraveling of the books’ messy, complicated curse is consistently clever and engaging, and there is a perfect balance of character development, relationship development, magical encounters and revelations, action, politics, and explorations of faith and the world’s religion. I genuinely can’t say whether I prefer this book or The Curse of Chalion – both are incredibly mature, thoughtful and masterful works of fantasy.