"Kingspeaker," by Marie Brennan

[Scott H. Andrews]

This thread is for discussion of "Kingspeaker," by Marie Brennan, which appears in BCS Issue #3 from Nov. 6, 2008. Feel free to post even if you haven't yet registered on the BCS Forums--you can post as a Guest.

This is my favorite of the BCS stories so far (didn't read Crystal Stair yet). The world feels 100% real, the plot is elegant, the conflicts come to a head beautifully....

The Goddess Triumphant/Blood Goddess is an interesting counterpoint to what we see in modern fantasy, where the gods are often at best incompetent and at worst bloodthirsty and incompetent. I think Brennan played a strong hand balancing that sort of divine intervention with a sense of "fantastic" mystery, (e.g., the second pair of Nidhiri: where did they come from and where did they go?...so simple and so cool).

Michael

This is probably my favorite story yet here at BCS (although I also really liked YHL's story). I especially liked the way that it confounded my expectations about the treatment of the ritual speechlessness, and the way that motif was involved in the story. I wrote about this in more depth here: http://jsbangs.wordpress.com/2008/11...ed-subversion/.