Reviews and Comments

I liked this book. It's kind of low key or modest, but it's also kind of haunting; and it just covers so much life. I think the web of relationships is clearly entertaining.

I like the way the story jumps back and forth in different characters' lives, which are barely tangent to each other. It's more entertaining than just staying with the future, broken-down community surviving in a harsh land.

I was angry at Sahyeed when he told Kirsten to hurry up and don't be an idiot when the caravan finally figured out that the warning Kirsten had relayed was sound advice, but Sahyeed was unpacking candles for their performance while Kirsten was relaying the warning.

I wondered why I added this 2014 pandemic book to my reading list, but now, in the book, society has collapsed like The Parable of the Sower.... I think I would settle down with other people and/or migrate seasonally and garden/farm, but in the book, people congregate in clusters for safety.

This book portrays a culture of Christian child brides.

Edmund was vengeance, an emperor, and “egotist”. He made an Italian bank, possibly raised a peasant to his own chief bandit and took care of the other bandits! He tricked a French banker into accepting his Italian bank's credit.... They abducted the banker! (after abducting his other rival’s son!)

Amazing story with many more details about his 2 French lives and life on the northern Mediterranean and “the Greeks”. He owned a “Nubian” slave, whom he saved from death. There's a fascinating book about the author’s father, who was in the Haitian revolution?