Homegoing

Homegoing, Michelle Markey Butler, 417 pages

Doctora Bann had thought she would live out the rest of her life at the Roth’s castle, helping build a library and promote the lost art of reading in his kingdom. But when an impossibly tall ship brings a letter from the unknown land of Saradena, promising that they will return in one year, Bann must travel to places she’d thought she’d left behind years ago to embark on a frenzy of research in ancient, moldering texts. Where is Saradena? What are the Henrican observances? As the neighboring kingdoms, each of which has received a similar letter, prepare for war, Doctora Bann must dig deep into the troubled past – not just the Three Kingdoms’, but her own.

What a fascinating surprise! A high fantasy novel about a medieval scholar. Doctora Bann must translate ancient texts and struggle with mouse-eaten, incomplete texts – only guessing and hoping that the information she seeks even exists. And it is deeply engrossing. Bann is a marvelous heroine – intelligent and resourceful, irritable and impatient, and constantly tempering her fascination with the ancient texts she uncovers with her pressing deadline. The worldbuilding is fairly standard, but well-executed, with bare hints of hidden depths. The only thing that took me out of the story Butler paints is the unfortunate abundance of typos. I’m not sure if the editor just skimmed through the final draft or if it’s a cunningly metatextual commentary on the fallibility of scribes (Bann must decipher the handwritten texts and is impeded by errors), but there are many, many typos. Apart from that, I thought this was a very well done book, refreshingly different from standard high fantasy plots.